WHEN WILL THERE BE A RELEASE OR ARE YOU GUYS DED???!!!!!!!

[ghoulsblade]

your can allwase upload to the gallery and than includ to the wiki

i just tried, it worked to some degree but is rather cumbersome and unflexible, e.g. i had to manually adjust the url to end with .png to get it displayed and i couldn't find a way to specify the thumbnail size.
a wiki-system for a game should have the option to upload images enabled, otherwise it is no wonder that no-one uses this system.
i don't want to upload new screenshots, i only wanted to display screenshots in the layout.

one suggestion : savemode has a sort of development-blog-thread here in the forums, this should be promoted as it shows there is still progress, and many people will miss it here in the forums.
something like this is far better than any "news" section that is not periodically updated anyway.

with image upload enabled in the wiki it would also be possible to include screenshots with blogposts.
this can be very motivating for users as well as for developers,
for an example of how this looks, check the devblog of a project i'm involved in : http://www.iris2.de/index.php/Iris-Ogre_Development
(this is a totally different genre, so it is not meant as advertisement, just as an example for how a wiki based dev-blog with image upload can look)

[Ryder P. Moses]

Har, yes, no competition at all for the second most in-demand skillset in the world. Because, y'know, even if you disregard the entire page of classifieds most any newspaper has listing lucrative job postings for coders, it's not like everybody and his dog has their own amateur game project online. Freakin' John Romero has Craigslist ads posted. There's stuff like FSSCP out there that's way off beyond VS's level of development and fast approaching the horizon. I'm an artist, a skill far less generally valued, and right now I'm talking to about six people a week who want to pay me to do effectively the same stuff I've done here and for other online projects. If you are conversant in C# and can't find work except in the open-source stuff that by nature cannot actually turn you away? That's your own, personal problem, and does not reflect the reality for anyone else.

People (or at least people not you) work on open-source stuff because it looks interesting and it's fun to mess with. Not because they have nowhere else to go. Make it look not interesting, or not fun, and you're not gonna see anybody. VS has some advantage in that it already has more tangible presence than most amateur games, but now that that presence is a few years old and doesn't so much have a discernible direction anymore it's a small wonder nobody's biting.

People are getting pissed because you, as someone who has SVN access and can presumably figure out how to run an FTP client on your own if its helpfile uses only small words, could solve this whole problem and do what they've been asking in less time than it takes you to make one of your tiresome posts about how it's too complicated to do when what we really need is more paperwork. You may not have upload access to the main site, but it's not like there aren't alternatives.


Ghoulsblade: I suspec there's space limitations and some concern about abuse of the upload system. Wiki is by nature open to tampering. Someone anonymously overwrites every entry with the word 'penis', that's annoying but fixable. Someone tries to upload 30gb of horse porn to the wiki and exceeds the site's bandwidth limit causing a shutdown, that's more of a problem. The gallery could do with an overhaul, though, it's true - that or some proper security could be installed to the wiki engine.

[ghoulsblade]

we are screaming here because we want to see VS live, don't take it as an attack, or would you prefer that no-one cares about the project ?

i think it is unfair to yell at savemode, he is doing a good job cleaning the code.

Ghoulsblade: I suspec there's space limitations and some concern about abuse of the upload system. Wiki is by nature open to tampering. Someone anonymously overwrites every entry with the word 'penis', that's annoying but fixable. Someone tries to upload 30gb of horse porn to the wiki and exceeds the site's bandwidth limit causing a shutdown, that's more of a problem. The gallery could do with an overhaul, though, it's true - that or some proper security could be installed to the wiki engine.

important wiki-pages like the start-page can be set to "protected" so only admins can change them, and i don't see how the uploading images in the gallery would be more secure than uploading them in the wiki,
mediawiki is a mature platform, not some kids first php project.

i like wiki as platform for coordinating development efforts (both code and art), so i feel this kind of restriction very limiting and discouraging contributors, might be just me though, so it other opinions would be interesting.

it is not very motivating to see that noone of the other devs at least voiced an opinion about suggestions like the auto-updater and the mainpage revamp,
maybe we could have arranged a cooperation there, but it
seems like this project doesn't want things like that and is happy with the current situation, correct me if i am wrong

is there interest in non-art-contributions by the community, or does the VS team prefer to work in secrecy and just dump the code online ?

[jackS]

it is not very motivating to see that noone of the other devs at least voiced an opinion about suggestions like the auto-updater and the mainpage revamp

Last I checked, HellcatV and ace123 are (and have been for the past 2 weeks ) on vacation ( Bavaria, if I'm not mistaken) so I wouldn't expect them to have any response until they return .

As for me, my apologies for the delayed response. Various things I was intent on finishing took a bit longer than planned for (read: my CSS-fu is weak).

The auto-updater is an excellent direction to pursue. We began working on an update utility from scratch once back when we were still using CVS, but it didn't get much traction. If we can instead adapt an already functional tool to our purposes, the odds of our success would seem greatly improved.

Still working on the mainpage revamp. I'll take a crack at tying in some notification of blog posts / svn commits / whatnot directly to the front-page after I get a few hours of sleep. Reccomendations on preferred mechanism for such updates are welcome. Said sleep will also (one hopes) fuel a reasonably cogent news post.

@Ryder - re: Milestone binaries --
There are the occasional necessities of "co-evolution" of binary and data that make for incompatibilities from binary only updates, but most of the time it's certainly doable to just drop in a new binary, and we would be well served to explore that option.

I know we tried to get VS to play nicely with the Sourceforge nightly build services at one point, and that the efforts weren't fruitful. However, I don't recall what the breakdown in the process was. If anyone feels like doing some investigating, that's certainly a convenient way to pop out new binaries if it's actually workable.

[ghoulsblade]

Last I checked, HellcatV and ace123 are (and have been for the past 2 weeks ) on vacation ( Bavaria, if I'm not mistaken) so I wouldn't expect them to have any response until they return .

As for me, my apologies for the delayed response. Various things I was intent on finishing took a bit longer than planned for (read: my CSS-fu is weak).

ah ok, no problem =)
thanks for reacting, i got the feeling it would just drown.

The auto-updater is an excellent direction to pursue. We began working on an update utility from scratch once back when we were still using CVS, but it didn't get much traction. If we can instead adapt an already functional tool to our purposes, the odds of our success would seem greatly improved.

if you have questions or problems or need anything, please contact me (preferably over icq or email), and i'm sure we can work something out.

Still working on the mainpage revamp. I'll take a crack at tying in some notification of blog posts / svn commits / whatnot directly to the front-page after I get a few hours of sleep. Reccomendations on preferred mechanism for such updates are welcome. Said sleep will also (one hopes) fuel a reasonably cogent news post.

i don't know if a news section as the primary element of the mainpage is a good idea, it soon gives the impression that the project is dead if it is not updated every few days as we have seen, so i would advise against it.

we have made good experience with a devblog using a wiki (preferably with image upload of some sort for screenshots, these don't need to be perfect, bug-shots or out-takes are interesting as well), the important thing is that people see that there is someone working on VS without digging through tons of forum posts. it is also very motivating for developers to talk about what they are currently doing.
there is no need to embed this devblog onto the mainpage, a link will also do.

i found this article (by one of the paid devs in the subversion project) very helpful for main-page layout: http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/gett ... -statement
it mainly states what a first time visitor to the website expects to see.

first few seconds should give him a short mission statement of what the project is about, like the

Vega Strike is a 3d OpenGL Action Space Sim for Win/Lin/Mac allowing players to trade and bounty hunt. You start in a beat up Wayfarer cargo ship with endless possibilities before you and just enough cash to scrape together a life

which i took directly from the sourceforge project.

then a short featurelist, which can also include features which are not fully complete as long as they are marked as "planned" or something like that.

then a link to the screenshot gallery and binary downloads of course.

a short status information like "playable but still under development" with links to more detailed info about the status, here i think the the link to the devblog and the roadmap is most appropriate.

after that some links for further info like user-manual, irc-channel, forum, (mailinglist?), version control and bugtracker access, contribution info : what is needed, how to get involved, howto's and infos (also links to forum threads etc) about how to make models/ships/equipment, info about how to mod the game, etc...

if you don't like wiki, the devblog could also be realised as a simple forum thread like the "janitorial work" thread started by savemode. the important thing is that anyone on the dev-team can post there without using an ftp client or even ssh, and without the need to write html code, even if the devs ARE able to do that it is just too cumbersome for a devblog. Also entries should be visible immediately, not when someone finds the time to update the main-page, therefore wiki or forum thread would be the most flexible and easy to implement options.

this would also be a good place to write stuff like when someone goes on vacation and won't be available until <time of return>

[Statick]

here's my 10 cents worth into the discussion

i'll just quickly add that the new front page looks great, good work there guys !

regarding the CVS...

despite the fact that i'm technically competent enough to run my own PC repair business, that i used to code windows apps for a living (v simple ones i might add), that i've installed and used CVS many times in the past because of this...

i still play 0.4.3

why ?

because at present i fall into the download > install > play camp. i don't have the time or the inclination to install and configure CVS software, knowing that it's highly unlikely it'll get used for anything else

if a new windows binary appeared on the front page, i'd download it straight away. but the barrier of having to install CVS software to obtain a later version is enough of a barrier even for me, even when it's software i've used before !

[Ryder P. Moses]

JackS: Excellent. I like the new top bar, by the way.

Ghoulsblade: Keep in mind also that code work isn't as visible by nature as art. The code team collaborates a lot more, which calls for a better medium than a forum thread, and half of a python module isn't as interesting to the general public as an untextured space airplane. It's kind of natural that they keep their own setup running on the side. The notion that the developers exclusively should be allowed to see anything new in action is Savemode's own, and does not reflect the general consensus.

[ghoulsblade]

JackS: Excellent. I like the new top bar, by the way.

i agree, the top bar looks good, but the news are still from 2006.
there is no point in making a new news-post now, we'll have the same problem in a few months. if no-one updates this at least every few DAYS (not weeks, not months, not years) then if it is labeled "news", everyone visiting thinks "what a pity, another dead project" an moves on without looking deeper.

not only does this loose potential players and contributors, it also hurts the people who know there is still some life left in the project.

Ghoulsblade: Keep in mind also that code work isn't as visible by nature as art.

i am a coder, not an artist (c++ for more than 10 years) and i totally disagree on that point.
if you are working on something for which screenshots wouldn't be sensible,
a short line like "we've started cleaning the network api, it will probably take 2 about weeks, today we fixed a little memleak in the compression function" or something like that is by an order of magnitude better than no info for several months.
it doesn't have to be a major breakthrough, just a life-sign that this project has not been abandoned.

i am not aware of any active development on VS except save-mode's STL integration. while i am not a part of the VS community, i have been observing the project for a while and reading a bit in the forums, more than you can ask of your average by-passer.
correct me if i am wrong, or better, write it somewhere where even stupid people like me will see it.

The code team collaborates a lot more, which calls for a better medium than a forum thread,

a forum thread might not be the best thinkable option, but it is realisable with little effort and would improve the current situation.
it doesn't even have to be started empty, look at savemode's janitorial work thread, this is very similar to a devblog.
(for the lazy : http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... ght=#83590 )
a wiki-page would be even better.
but waiting for a perfect solution to fall from the sky isn't a realistic option.

and half of a python module isn't as interesting to the general public as an untextured space airplane.

anything that says something else than "VS IS DEAD" like the main page is highly interesting right now, it doesn't need to be major breakthroughs, a simple "we're working on x" is enough.

savemode wrote that while working on the code he experienced a bug that 2 space stations orbited his ship and started shooting each other.
This sounds like it would be an excellent devblog post that could have a funny screenshot/bugshot attached.
screenshots in the devblog don't need to be pretty, they can also be funny or show very simple things as well.

half of a python module isn't as interesting to the general public as an untextured space airplane.

are you working on an unfinished python module ? what is it for ? what is the last part of it that you finished, what part are you currently working on, and what do you plan to do next ? do you have any diffuculties with something ? maybes someone has an idea or can help... how long do you think it will take to complete ? is the code in svn somewhere ?

EDIT : can you please tell me who is working on what ?
(there haven't been wiki edits besides mine in more than 30 days, so any info in there will be badly outdated)
i'd like to put together a little list ( http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... mentStatus ), this might be just for my personal interest, or it might be a good content for a status section on the mainpage, for an introductory devblog entry, or even for a news-post in the case that you ignore my advice about replacing the news section on the mainpage with a link to some form of dev-blog.

[charlieg]

Good work on the website jackS, and the devblog is an excellent compromise for between the "no news" and "not newsworthy" camps.

[ghoulsblade]

congratulations, excellent work ! now everything looks a lot more alive and healthy

EDIT :
suggestion : add the adress of the irc channel to the mainpage : irc://irc.freenode.net/vegastrike

broken link : to the devel mailinglist on the "about vs" page : a %22 at the end of the url is too much.

the devblog registration confirm mail is taking a bit long, the mailinglist confirm was there immediately, the devblog reg confirm still not after 20 minutes, does anyone have the same problem ?

is it possible to display the author name in the devblog, e.g. next to the date ?

[www2]

@jackS
Nice work!

only i hef found vew bugs in the wiki with firefox (i can not see the edit link) and i can not sing up to the devblog with my gmail adress.

www2

[loki1950]

Some more broken links the pending release page all of the screen shots don't load.

Enjoy the Choice

EDIT: they work now

[jackS]

First off - everyone should remember to thank Zaydana for doing all of the intial design work. I wouldn't have anything to be nudging the website toward if he didn't.

Some more broken links the pending release page all of the screen shots don't load.

Enjoy the Choice

EDIT: they work now

Yeah, those picture links actually weren't broken - that's just sourceforge.net sometimes being reticent in its responsiveness .

The non-emailing dev-blog, however, seems to be quite real (it's not e-mailing anything to anyone, it would actually seem). It appears convinced that it's sending the e-mails, although I need to double-check on that. Either way, there are number of links in the chain from filling in the php form to mail leaving the sourceforge servers, so it may take me a bit to track down. If a solution does not reasonably quickly present itself, we can manually add users while pursuing other options.

@ghoulsblade:
re: about VS page -- typo fixed.
re: irc channel -- certainly seems reasonable to link it somewhere nearer than the wiki, even if not on the front page itself. I'll think a bit on where best to put it. I honestly haven't the foggiest how active/useful the channel is at the moment because... I've never been there, but I'm sure people who have can tell me
re: authornames -- should be there now


@all:
re: linking to feature pages / development pages in the wiki --
shorter answer: yes, I'll link to them somewhere - certainly from ABOUT, maybe other places as well.
longer answer: yes, but I'm probably not going to get around to linking them in somewhere until A) they've been updated/created/split-from-existing-pages, and B) I probably won't get around to making sure they're updated/created/etc. until I'm done tinkering with other website-stuff-type-things

Speaking of website-things, my apologies if your forum browsing experience takes on an odd fashion sense in the next few hours (please pardon my many-colored-dust)

[bpsl]

here's my 10 cents worth into the discussion

(cut)

i still play 0.4.3

Me too.

I don't understand (my English is poor) why it's so difficult to compile a (SVN? CVS? HUH?) to get a windows installer for... "brainwashed".
Call it Beta, call it what you want, but what about to get a new release? My heart squeezes, when game stops somewhat 30 Km away everything and maybe a Clydesdale just comes up 250 mt over me (whomp!).

[loki1950]

#bpsl getting the developer version(SVN) to work on XP is not difficult the guide in the wiki is not difficult to follow an i would be happy to help if you run into any problem that's what i'am here for http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... eckout_SVN the hardest part is setting up the SVN client Tortoise SVN and even that is not that difficult and you don't have to compile any thing so give it a try.

Enjoy the Choice

[ghoulsblade]

Me too.
I don't understand (my English is poor) why it's so difficult to compile a (SVN? CVS? HUH?) to get a windows installer for... "brainwashed".
Call it Beta, call it what you want, but what about to get a new release? My heart squeezes, when game stops somewhat 30 Km away everything and maybe a Clydesdale just comes up 250 mt over me (whomp!).

you can try this binary, ca 836mb :
http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/veg ... _11111.zip
run the updater.exe in the maindir to get the current version but it is somewhat unstable

[bpsl]

#bpsl getting the developer version(SVN) to work on XP is not difficult

Maybe it's not so difficult. Nothing is difficult, with time and will, but it's not the point.
Often, I install a stable version, than a beta. But, in this case, there are 3 years in the middle.

The point is: the stable version, should be stable. I think 0.4.3 is stable (until now, no crash), but has some critical bugs.
(I have another problem: I play games with a PC small size, PII/800, no internet)
Respect for the work made, but I don't understand (maybe the language problem) why it's so difficult, to release a stable version... for everyone. Programmers and... brainwashed (I don't agree with this word).
Maybe there are 3 of us willing to translate VS in Italian. But, until next release (PLEASE, tell me is on the way for August or September!), is not worth. We are waiting.

I don't know if I am explaining my point of view. Simple players, need for a stable version. Windows users need a stable version with installer.

0.4.3 was in 2005, right? How many SVN, in 3 years?

Anyway... thanks for all.

[loki1950]

@bps a new stable version is in the works we are bug stomping ATM and adding content etc it is coming and .5 will have better translation support for your wee project

Enjoy the Choice

[ghoulsblade]

(PLEASE, tell me is on the way for August or September!).

they said it was planned for some time in august on the mainpage.

[Halleck]

As far as I know, we are holding steady for a late august release of 0.5.x (0.5.0pre/beta or whatever we wind up calling it.)