UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: bonndan on April 16, 2009, 12:56:21 pm
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I've been following this remarkable project for quite a while now and feel compelled to give an advice concerning the project's communication strategy to end users.
1) The "home" page should be targeted more towards players. You have lots of interesting media and the fascinating story on the "about" page. So maybe link the gallery to the screenshot and copy the first sentence from "about" to the "home" sidebar. In my opinion the translation status is not useful information (except for some developers) and might give the impression that development is hardly going on (sorry for that).
2) It is difficult to estimate where the project is going. You have a lot (technical) information like the TODO in the wiki, but there is no document/post etc. that says in five lines "we are going to do a,b,c in 2.2. and maybe d,e,f in 2.3" (or it is hard to find). A brief roadmap document in the wiki could be helpful for both players and contributors.
3) The monthly reviews are fine, and I am longing for them every new month, but
a) the frequency is a bit low in the times of twitter - I guess it takes more efforts to write a review covering the whole month's development at once than writing more shorter posts
b) they are far too technical ("A bit more threading in various components." says nearly nothing). You could use "New UFOpedia images and textures" as headline for a smaller post instead.
Conclusion: Few changes can render UFOAI much more attractive.
Kind regards
Dan
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We don't really have anyone who maintains the website, apart from the news updates. If you think you can help in that area, drop by on IRC and talk to mattn.
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I contacted him on ICQ, thanks. You can also pm me or preferably email to bonndan (at) gmx.de
Depending on the CMS you use I can support the project more or less.
Regards
Dan
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Very good proposals imho :)
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I like the news updates, however maybe someone could make a short summary what is happened... been some time since the last update by now, maybe next week someone can put in some news? Or are you guys doing holidays finally :P
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I offered my help on condition that a CMS (no matter which) is used, but the admin insists on his solution to manually update one php file. This is totally fubar and matches the project -, quality- and communication management of this project. Rest in peace.
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I was going to comment about "age of Twitter" and how the availability of instant gratification makes no comment about its value. Now I'll just say don't let the door hit you on the way out, eh?
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I was going to comment about "age of Twitter" and how the availability of instant gratification makes no comment about its value. Now I'll just say don't let the door hit you on the way out, eh?
Most tweets are nonsense, no doubt about that, but it could be used to communicate the latest developments to the crowd. Some projects (and companies) do. I don't say that is really necessary, it's just the total opposite of what's going on here.
Still, things haven't changed a bit (see the April update). Compare this project to wesnoth.org or wz2100.net... For me it's hard to believe that a group which is able to program such a complex game is not able to maintain communication to its audience. That's one of the downsides of open source: nothing stops you doing things wrong.
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Still, things haven't changed a bit (see the April update). Compare this project to wesnoth.org or wz2100.net... For me it's hard to believe that a group which is able to program such a complex game is not able to maintain communication to its audience. That's one of the downsides of open source: nothing stops you doing things wrong.
Yupz. I guess we cant really compare to wesnoth or wz2100. They have decided to come up with a much simpler game / interface, and keep it that way - simple.
Well, i know this is discussed but i think i want to reinterate a point here - We are aiming to constantly improve the system, interface, gameplay, storyline all at the same time. lol.
But i do agree that matt btaxis and the rest of the team should get feedback from all the actives users here:
1) Where the project should be headed for this nx release.
2) Charting our major milestones and work towards tat for each release, releasing a 'stable' version everytime tat milestone is achieved.
3) Inserting a new milestone in between existing ones only when the team agrees? :P
4) Get a more or less full time person to come up with the storyline already. (See notrium's way of coming up with the story - they have a competition for story part 1.... .then a few submissions for part 2, all the way to a GRAND FINALE of a 30 parts story!!! Talk about getting fans involved!)
:P
My 1.5 cents worth...... lol
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Yupz. I guess we cant really compare to wesnoth or wz2100. They have decided to come up with a much simpler game / interface, and keep it that way - simple.
...
But i do agree that matt btaxis and the rest of the team should get feedback from all the actives users here:
I've played nearly every single player scenario of Wesnoth. Though the game might be a bit simpler than UFOAI, it's story and background is much bigger. And WZ2100 is a 3D game like UFOAI, it can't be much simpler (I nearly completed the game). The point is just that their communication is different.
A forum like this is nice for insiders, but only few people are reading all the threads and know what's going on. (I doubt many will answer your call for feedback.) So both end user and developer feedback will remain hidden here. And this forum is misused to post information which is not (primarily) meant for discussion. Convince whoever to install a CMS/Blog/whatever.
I'm not an IT senior, but I doubt your company would follow the same development approach. Couldn't you help to get some structure into the project?
Regards
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@bonndan:
I've already stated that I at least partially agree withyour ideas.
Simply complaining about 'nothing has changed' is not a good 'communication strategy' either imho.
'leading by example' is a much better strategy ;)
Why don't you just write *your version* of the the 'monthly update' and post it here, so the community will see the difference ?
On a sidenote: communication strategy should be independent from the tools involved.
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My experience...
I just found this game about a month ago. I played the 2.2.1 release and it took me quite a while to get the hang of it. The wiki and stuff are more incomplete than the game. I figured out what worked and what didn't using what I could from the wiki and loved it. In hunting for more information on playing it on the forums I realized everyone is using the 2.3-dev version. I installed that and loved what I saw, but immediately hit the pathfinding and other bugs making it unplayable. So I went back, read the last months of forums posts in most forums, starting reading the wiki for development stuff. I am a c++/java/c# (and about a dozen other languages) programmer and thought I could help, thought I could fix the bug, but there is just so little outline and I have spent some time browsing the code, but I am not a big fan of C and don't know the Quake II engine so it will take me a while and I don't have that huge amount of time I would need to spin up on things (and I have largely been waiting to get a version that I can run and compile without hunting through the forums to figure out what I am missing in C::B for UFO Radiant).
I can't wait for 2.3 and this is one of the first Open Source projects I have found that I felt like I wanted to and could contribute to, but it is not 'easy' as a player or a potential contributor to get involved. Right now my plan is to read the forums until I see something I can help out with, because I have no idea what, when or why when it comes to the wiki. I huge part of the problem is I haven't been willing to devote the time to figure out where to even start or what I need to know. I am use to finding a bug, grabbing the source, compiling it, finding the area in the code, reading some documentation about the specific area, fixing the bug, testing it, submitting it and moving on with my life. That breaks down here because 'reading the documentation' is a hunt of forum posts and wiki posts, its prohibitive. Criusmac had more determination (time?) than I did to actually get involved, but reading his post it seemed like he was fighting obstacles to try and help. I think you are losing a lot of potential help. Some specific points feedback:
- Pretty much everything a player will see is focused on 2.2.1 which is over a year old. Its pretty obvious once you hit the forums that 2.2.1 is barely a memory in anyone's mind, but if you don't look at the forums you will hit up an incomplete manual and fiddle around with 2.2.1 and thats it. The only thing that even made me really look into this was the monthly update on the front I realize it was still under heavy development, otherwise I would have assume that over a year since the last stable version = dead project. I am not going to say to release things more often, its done when its done, but if it is going to be greater than say 6 months between any stable release, there needs to be some kind of "reasonably stable" dev version that people can try out and test and get a better taste of whats to come. I.e. right now all the responses are, check out 2.3, but not really because it is under heavy development, find a version that works in X 10 page thread. If a dev release works decently well maybe make a note of it on the wiki with some comments on where it will break so people can try a dev version without trying to figure out which ones could potentially be playable.
- The technical area of the wiki looks like my personal wiki. Stuff is all over, linked to all over. Its completely unclear what is current and what isn't and most of it has a large amount of assumed knowledge associated with (its not wikified). This works fine for my personal wiki, the directory is password protected and no one other than myself should ever see it. It probably works fine for most of the developers here, but it is a heck of a hurdle for someone trying to learn.
- The 2.2.1 manual was a huge help, but left me dying to know more a lot more. I can see why no one has done much with it since it seems pointless with 2.3 so different. There probably needs to be a good start with the 2.3 manual and while it will change a lot it could be ready close to go for the 2.3 release.
- Most pages in the wiki need some sort of "applicable to X version" page. There is a lot of good information there, but if you actually find it it is impossible to know if it is current or not. For example, I can go look at the Tweak weapons page and the weapons *.ufo page. The last edit was July 2008. I assume it was made for 2.2.1, but maybe it was made for the 2.3 dev version at the time? Or both? Is it still applicable in 2.3? At the very least it needs to have a version it was written for and then it can be updated when the next release comes out and/or make notes about what has changed in the dev version.
- I don't know about a CMS, I mean the monthy updates are great but what else are you going to put there? The daily SVN logs? Forums are fickle, information gets lost and few new people read anything but the stickies (if that) unless they are searching out something specific. I would try and make the wiki the focal point, make the main page updated with current notes and have at least all the pages that link from the main page be well designed and up to date. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of activity on there though.
Anyways I am trying to be constructive I hope no one gets offended; I am probably not saying anything that is new or that anyone doesn't already know, but thought it might help. I am software engineer and am just finishing up two months of documentation work and just about want to kill myself (which is why I was hoping to jump in and start coding something neat), I know the pain of trying to write junk to explain complex things to people who know nothing. If I can motivate myself maybe I will try and start doing a 2.3 user manual on the wiki or trying to figure out what needs to be update and how it might better be organized, it would be a good project for learning to code and figure out how things work and what needs to be done...
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I've played nearly every single player scenario of Wesnoth. Though the game might be a bit simpler than UFOAI, it's story and background is much bigger. And WZ2100 is a 3D game like UFOAI, it can't be much simpler (I nearly completed the game). The point is just that their communication is different.
Oh? U have done every scenario of the game? I have followed wesnoth since 0.1 days..... and i must say there are SO MANY scenarios (including fanmakes) it would be impossible to complete them all. Dun pull a fast one......
It IS btw, much simpler - in terms of programming and system structure. (If you have not been reading my lines properly...... i did not say GAMEPLAY was simpler, which btw, IS simpler, due to simple strategy planning and for most, a save load save load experience..... which is BAD IMHO).
A forum like this is nice for insiders, but only few people are reading all the threads and know what's going on. (I doubt many will answer your call for feedback.) So both end user and developer feedback will remain hidden here. And this forum is misused to post information which is not (primarily) meant for discussion. Convince whoever to install a CMS/Blog/whatever.
I'm not an IT senior, but I doubt your company would follow the same development approach. Couldn't you help to get some structure into the project?
Well, as u said it, I am a full time staff working and overseeing a dept..... it IS A full time job. This is an open source project which ALL OF US are NOT fulltime. Yes, we all spend our free time getting this fanmake (or rather, inspired-make) project going. And trust me, get ur hands dirty before you complain the place is dirty.
The folks up there doing the updates on the webbie - they are ALREADY doing very well. Anymore u want, u have to delve into the development yourself. Hmmmmph.
And oh the structure, FYI - there are such things as Project managers, Dept managers, programmers, programmers team managers, and many more in the real world. being 'senior' does not makes me a Super-odie. Hmmmm. haha. Ok? What i am suggesting are "SUGGESTIONS" to get those who actually can afford more time and are willing to track it for us. Yupz.
Sorry for this messy unorganised thread, but i haven slept for 30+ hrs...... been at the real world's work. :P
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The folks up there doing the updates on the webbie - they are ALREADY doing very well. Anymore u want, u have to delve into the development yourself. Hmmmmph.
OK, agreed. Wesnoth is simpler. Maybe they also have more resources in terms of contributors (why?).
UFOAI has made the last release one year ago, though there are people working on it constantly. (Wesnoth released 1.7 today).
I offered my help to get my hands dirty and take the communication to the Wesnoth level, but they rather stick to "Battlescape fixes and updates, including actor movement smoothness, ability to move multiple actors simultaneously, weapon balancing work, TU calculation fixes, bsp light loading and reaction fire fixes." (obviously I am a bit displeased).
Imho it's fair to compare UFOAI to other OSS games, they all work under the same conditions, be the app simpler or not. "Doing well" certainly applies to programming (and I really appreciate their work), but to communication/management?
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@bonndan:
I've already stated that I at least partially agree withyour ideas.
Simply complaining about 'nothing has changed' is not a good 'communication strategy' either imho.
'leading by example' is a much better strategy ;)
Why don't you just write *your version* of the the 'monthly update' and post it here, so the community will see the difference ?
On a sidenote: communication strategy should be independent from the tools involved.
Are you, as an end user, really looking for "monthly updates"? Do you really want to read the summarised SVN commits?
I am not going to hang around in IRC and watch the discussion. Contributors, which deserve more appreciation for they work than they now get, should for instance blog short posts about who they are and what they are doing. That's something personal and makes it much more understandable why the next release takes another six months. An outsider like me can only maintain the tool and its contents, try to find sources of interesting content and maybe summarise some forum discussions.
I agree that the tools should not play a role, but using one file sftp-ed to SourceForge instead of the its hosted apps (for instance) is ... I dont know what to say.
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OK, agreed. Wesnoth is simpler. Maybe they also have more resources in terms of contributors (why?).
UFOAI has made the last release one year ago, though there are people working on it constantly. (Wesnoth released 1.7 today).
Fyi, 1.7 released today is DEVELOPMENT's Built. So, its not an official stable release. If u read the change logs, u will notice that they are already 8333 lines (including space in between) of changes. They are established in terms of frameworks and a modding kit. They also have a wide circle of ppl who speaks diff languages - resulting in a lot of updates.....
If u have not noticed, YET, UFOAI is still undergoing heavy framework-related programming, tweaking, and at this point, they are actually UPGRADING the frameworks, as compared to WESNOTH who has decided to retain their simple framework.
IF YOU have been playing wesnoth long enough (which i hope u did), u will notice that their AI is good, but gameplay is otherwise simple, with hardly much 'micromanagement' parse.....
UFOAI? On the otherhand, has IMMENSE controls to take care of - from 3D (which btw is WAAAAAY harder than 2D gif file programming) Geoscape, 3D rendering of battlescape, 3D graphics, 3D animations (notice the amount of 3Ds here.... each one can kill someone), AI, base control, soldiers' control, research trees, scripts, and i can go on and on and on........
If tat all is compiled with the changelog in just 1 line per change, we are already at 24460 (that is TWENTY THOUSANDS, FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY) changes already........ that is IF you still want to compare.
I offered my help to get my hands dirty and take the communication to the Wesnoth level, but they rather stick to "Battlescape fixes and updates, including actor movement smoothness, ability to move multiple actors simultaneously, weapon balancing work, TU calculation fixes, bsp light loading and reaction fire fixes." (obviously I am a bit displeased).
Well well, if u really are helping as much, take a peek at Mattn, BTAxis, Destructavator or some of the deepline programmers / soundsman / map crafters / AI scripters / graphics developers / translators......
Have u seen em whine? I dun thnk so......
Imho it's fair to compare UFOAI to other OSS games, they all work under the same conditions, be the app simpler or not. "Doing well" certainly applies to programming (and I really appreciate their work), but to communication/management?
Ahem. Well, have u come across any OSS (Open-source software for the uninformed.) game with this level of programming? Dun thnk many..... and if u can name a few which u thnk are above this level, let me know. I be O.o o.O O.O why? Cos i am very faithful OSS gamer. For all u know, I might be surprised why they are.
Hmmmph.
IMHO said. (Thats "in my humble / haughty / hungry / hectic opinion" - take ur pick).
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Fyi, 1.7 released today is DEVELOPMENT's Built. So, its not an official stable release. [...]
The point is that they release - keeping the goal in mind to deliver a game for end users. Your 24k changes without an intermediate release (if I understood you correctly) is probably not something good.
The work of a story contributor for instance will not be released to the public (and reviewed by the users) until the latest 3D XYZ routine in the new framework is working. No maintenance release or branch (to develop a version with the new framework) is present (or I missed it).
Yes, I whine.
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A little problem that I noticed is that there's not a clear line or even better a unique medium of communication.
Some of the devs read the forums, some are mainly in IRC, others could have even other likings (may be reading the trackers).
IRC may be nice for direct contact (even if I personally don't like it much) but it's like a chat hard to read and especially absolutely inefficient in case you want to know if sth has been discussed etc. Searching the logs is just a mess!
The forum on the other hand is a good source for information because it's more (kind of) structured and searchable, but requires more reading and "discipline"; perhaps a little difficult for s/o not native English speaking and/or used to chat without punctuation...
I'm not sure how to combine this?
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Are you, as an end user, really looking for "monthly updates"? Do you really want to read the summarised SVN commits?
Yes and no.
If I were an end user, I'd like to see:
- beta(sometimes alpha) releases every 1-4 weeks
- a list of the bugs fixed in that release plus even small new features that are significant to the user
I wouldn't want to be bothered with their lives nor with the technical stuff they do for me.
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The website was recently added to the SVN repository. I believe this means that anyone with a will to seriously overhaul how it works is now at liberty to do so.
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The website was recently added to the SVN repository. I believe this means that anyone with a will to seriously overhaul how it works is now at liberty to do so.
Thanks for your efforts.
I had a quick look at it- it is exactly what I expected. If you stick to this, you will be lost.
If you dont want to mess around with a full-blown CMS with database, I suggest you have a look at http://www.pivotlog.net/ (I used this some years ago). Just sftp the files to SourceForge or Ninex, edit the config file and you are ready to go.
I cannot do this myself because of lacking privileges, but I can offer to port the current stylesheet to pivot as well as most of the info in SVN. The same applies to WordPress or other CMS.
Regards
Daniel
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Criusmac had more determination (time?) than I did to actually get involved, but reading his post it seemed like he was fighting obstacles to try and help. I think you are losing a lot of potential help.
Woo hoo! I got mentioned! Err, really fast that. I'm not sure I'm involved even yet. I'll consider myself involved if I successfully manage to create a patch. What I did though was see an obvious, but somewhat complicated problem that needed to be fixed, get some additional info from the person who wrote the accepted proposal (of visibility), and then hunted around the source for other code that did what I wanted to do. A few copy/paste later, and I've at least started, though it sure isn't pretty. I still suspect this is beyond my abilities, but I suspect the worst that can happen is I fail, and nothing gets done. At least the ideas posted seem better than they originally were, in my opinion anyway, which means time wasn't really wasted.
- Pretty much everything a player will see is focused on 2.2.1 which is over a year old. Its pretty obvious once you hit the forums that 2.2.1 is barely a memory in anyone's mind, but if you don't look at the forums you will hit up an incomplete manual and fiddle around with 2.2.1 and thats it.
If a dev release works decently well maybe make a note of it on the wiki with some comments on where it will break so people can try a dev version without trying to figure out which ones could potentially be playable.
My attempts to generate a patch are a bit different than the requested method of grab the latest dev version, and apply the changes directly to it. I decided to do my work on the stable version directly. I decided this since my changes (visibility) do not exist, in part or whole (as far as I know) in the latest dev version. It's a bit riskier since the code is a good year old, but I don't have to worry about any of the latest bugs that may have cropped up, or been fixed. I don't have to download dev versions and test my code against them (yet). Since I know where in the branch I got my files from (2.2.1), a merge patch is possible which means it should be easy to merge my code into the latest development version when I'm done (free tools exist to do this). Once that's done, I can see if my code still works. So, for me, having a stable release is all I need since if something goes wrong, it's probably a bug introduced via my code, and will be easier to locate and fix. There's a lot of assumptions I'm making here and there, but for the most part, any assumptions I make don't actually change anything. For example, if it turns out I can't merge my changes into the latest development release, I'll just download the dev release later, and manually merge my finished changes in. Still a lot simpler than developing on the dev release itself. Maybe this would work for you as well?
- The technical area of the wiki looks like my personal wiki. Stuff is all over, linked to all over. Its completely unclear what is current and what isn't and most of it has a large amount of assumed knowledge associated with (its not wikified). This works fine for my personal wiki, the directory is password protected and no one other than myself should ever see it. It probably works fine for most of the developers here, but it is a heck of a hurdle for someone trying to learn.
I gave up with trying to learn anything general about what people want done. I picked a task that I felt was needed in the game, and I'm concentrating on it alone. I saw the wiki, but I don't think I did anything with it. The proposals page (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Proposals) is a great place to find something you want to do, and I'm really lucky what I wanted to do happens to have an entry.
- I don't know about a CMS, I mean the monthy updates are great but what else are you going to put there? The daily SVN logs? Forums are fickle, information gets lost and few new people read anything but the stickies (if that) unless they are searching out something specific. I would try and make the wiki the focal point, make the main page updated with current notes and have at least all the pages that link from the main page be well designed and up to date. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of activity on there though.
The forums are absolutely horrible to search through here. Things I saw by randomly reading I can't find again even with a few keywords to help. The wiki does seem like a good focal point, but it should be accessible from the forum page somehow via a link. It would have saved me a lot of time if I had known it was so connected to the forum's ideas. As for updating things, it might be possible, but I can't imagine a quick and easy way.
Anyways I am trying to be constructive I hope no one gets offended; I am probably not saying anything that is new or that anyone doesn't already know, but thought it might help. I am software engineer and am just finishing up two months of documentation work and just about want to kill myself (which is why I was hoping to jump in and start coding something neat), I know the pain of trying to write junk to explain complex things to people who know nothing. If I can motivate myself maybe I will try and start doing a 2.3 user manual on the wiki or trying to figure out what needs to be update and how it might better be organized, it would be a good project for learning to code and figure out how things work and what needs to be done...
I personally don't see how a 2.3 user manual will help until 2.3 is a stable release. This user manual you suggest is for people new to the game, right? If this is true, then they should be playing the 2.2.1 stable release anyway. Playing a dev release is, well, ugh? (ugh = bug ridden, crash prone, unbalanced, and who knows what else). What drew me to this project is the eye candy, game play, complexity, and probably a few other things, like todos. I like complex things, as can probably be seen in my own terrifying posts. It is tough to pick a starting point, but mine I saw from within the game itself (and it bugged me), so it was easier for me. Whether or not I can do it, only time and luck will tell. My suggestion is similar to others here though. Download Code::Blocks and use it since that's all people seem to use here. Once you have successfully compiled the code, you can start changing it, and hopefully it'll be improved when it's done. Doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to be complex, I'm sure anything you do will help out, as long as it works properly. I like to keep a d20 (20 sided die) around to help me make decisions like this.