Devnote Tuesday: Forums, letters and development

[CrashTestDanny]

1 hour ago, softweir said:

However, the number of bugs tends towards zero as time approaches infinity; so the longer, the better. Just don't hold out for zero bugs.

Alas, it's not always true.  It's based on the incorrect assumption that developers don't create problems while fixing other problems.  It also violates the second law of thermodynamics...

 

Danny

[WWEdeadman]

OK, so just to give my 2 cents about the forum changes:

I can totally understand why you decided to change to another forum software, after reading this. Thanks for giving us the reasons.

However, I find the design of the new forums to be EXTREMELY bland and unappealing. It looks to me like someone just threw together some preset assets, planted the KSP logo on the top and called it "design". Sorry if that sounds harsh, but after being used to the old design, this just doesn't do it. Also, I'm generally not a fan of bright white background, which is also a thing with this design. All in all it's really just an eyesore to me. And I would REALLY appreciate an overhaul or at least some sort of darker background and less bland "We-only-had-one-shade-of-blue-lying-around" color scheme.

As for functionality, everything seems fine to me now. So that's at least a good thing. Apart from that one paragraph up there (before "However") seemingly randomly being 2 lines, instead of 1... I didn't do that. At least not on purpose, and I don't know how to undo it. Never seen that happen. Also the paragraph after this sentence goes from a single line to 3, when I wanted 2. (Let's say some stuff acts weird, compared to any other forum I ever used)

 

As for 1.1:

I can't wait to see how it turns out. A better lighting engine sure sounds good, since lights kinda always behaved a bit strange IMO. And I hope that Unity bug with the shadows can be fixed somehow. As I said, I can't wait to see the update run on my PC.   (Another thing I just noticed, When I clicked the emote selection thingy and added that Kerbal smiley, it put in 3 of them at once...)

 

EDIT: One more thing about the forum: The Search function is as useless as ever. Still better off using Google to search than the build in search.

Edited December 4, 2015 by WWEdeadman

[Temeter]

Eh, it's not like Bulleting was ever appealing either. I'm sure we'll get used to it in no time.

[Claw]

It would be nice to have a bit more theme around here. Perhaps in time, as the forum settles out and we learn more about the new system.

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, WWEdeadman said:

(…) However, I find the design of the new forums to be EXTREMELY bland and unappealing. It looks to me like someone just threw together some preset assets, planted the KSP logo on the top and called it "design". Sorry if that sounds harsh, but after being used to the old design, this just doesn't do it. Also, I'm generally not a fan of bright white background, which is also a thing with this design. All in all it's really just an eyesore to me. And I would REALLY appreciate an overhaul or at least some sort of darker background and less bland "We-only-had-one-shade-of-blue-lying-around" color scheme. (…)

Your argument has merit, although I do not think that a particular amount of design went into the previous forum either. It just had a certain look, and this one has a different look. Yes, it's bland and boring. Thank goodness for Stylish as it allows me to read the forum in a way that doesn't wear me out*.

But... it begs the question, where do we want Squad to put their priorities? The forum update was less of a choice and more of necessity. Sure, it could probably work for another six months, or maybe a year, but eventually disaster (in the form of either an epic break down or security breach) would strike and why didn't you do something about it while you had the chance would be all over the place.

So, aside from the necessary migration, how much more time and energy should be devoted to the forum, instead of to the game? With that in mind I have no problems with the barely customized theme that was used. Yes, more Kerbally would be nice. But so is EVA'ing without blowing up and I'd rather see the latter fixed, so to speak.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Kerbart
* In other words: there's a mod for that!

[Virtualgenius]

The forum is the key to the community, its where the mods are posted its where the squad news is, its where friends are made without the forum its just another steam game so the forum is what binds us altogether to make a community so it should be the best that it can be. There are pages of stuff that need to be addressed to make it better but i guess its going to be a work in progress I would really like to see my subscriptions returned.

[Captain Sierra]

On 12/1/2015, 6:42:03, cantab said:

Maybe I'm oversceptical, but I shan't be surprised if that "stuff" goes over like a lead balloon with the existing players.

Well .... I'll allow my sig to do most of the talking but I dare say you're probably onto something.

[Sampa]

2 hours ago, Captain Sierra said:

Well .... I'll allow my sig to do most of the talking but I dare say you're probably onto something.

Well, haven't seen you around in a while!

[WWEdeadman]

On 4.12.2015, 17:40:27, Kerbart said:

...

But... it begs the question, where do we want Squad to put their priorities? The forum update was less of a choice and more of necessity. Sure, it could probably work for another six months, or maybe a year, but eventually disaster (in the form of either an epic break down or security breach) would strike and why didn't you do something about it while you had the chance would be all over the place.

So, aside from the necessary migration, how much more time and energy should be devoted to the forum, instead of to the game? ...

 

Yeah, cause the people who program the game are the same that do the forums... Seriously, work on the forums has no impact on the games development. You make it sound like the same 3 people either work on the game or on the forums, when those two things have nothing to do with eachother.

Edited December 14, 2015 by WWEdeadman

[Kerbart]

10 hours ago, WWEdeadman said:

Yeah, cause the people who program the game are the same that do the forums... Seriously, work on the forums has no impact on the games development. You make it sound like the same 3 people either work on the game or on the forums, when those two things have nothing to do with eachother.

What makes you think there's someone dedicated to the forum back-end on the payroll? So yeah, whoever from Squad is dedicated to the forum transition will not be able to perform his/her daily duties. And the more time they spend on that, they less time they spend on their regular daily tasks.

[Speadge]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

What makes you think there's someone dedicated to the forum back-end on the payroll? So yeah, whoever from Squad is dedicated to the forum transition will not be able to perform his/her daily duties. And the more time they spend on that, they less time they spend on their regular daily tasks.

do you consider that "maintenance" could be a daily task?

And- i think Kasper & Badie are the people on the community side and not working on the code. So Kasper took a Weekend (with NO daily tasks) for the update - and others are keeping it running as their daily task.

i think @WWEdeadman is right here that everyone has his field of work to do - and i bet that i.e. harvester & Nathan & all the other programmer (see "staff") were not disturbed in their "coding-tunnel" with updating the forum. That said, i think we are in no possition to judge the priorities of the team - and if they decide to push 1.1 to 2017 you can still be happy to get a free update to the game.

So while for sure everyone want the update right now, we should be happy with everything the way it is - and thankful!
 

Edited December 14, 2015 by Speadge

[softweir]

As I recall, it was KasperVld who did most of the work on the forum conversion, and he doesn't do all that much development work. The time he spent on it won't have detracted from anything that HarvesteR and the rest were doing - the only "wasted" resource was his payroll, and I don't think that they are short of cash right now. And if the effort spent now save effort later then that's money well spent.

Yes, they could sack him and employ a new coder, but that would be of very little benefit at this time:- sane developers don't take on new development staff during crunch, they wait until the crunch is over and spend time teaching the new guy how the program works while things are quiet.

Actually, the way SQuad is progressing, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new name or two mentioned in the months after the Unity 5 port has been released and is reasonably stable.

Edited December 16, 2015 by softweir

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, softweir said:

As I recall, it was KasperVld who did most of the work on the forum conversion, and he doesn't do all that much development work. The time he spent on it won't have detracted from anything that HarvesteR and the rest were doing - the only "wasted" resource was his payroll, and I don't think that they are short of cash right now. And if the effort spent now save effort later then that's money well spent.

Kasper is the head moderator mainly.  He does do some work, but you are correct.