BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Development => Topic started by: Azerax on October 01, 2012, 07:51:24 PM
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Greetings all,
October is another busy month for the dev team! Listed below are the items we plan to achieve in October 2012.
October 2012 Goals:
Siege Engines in Scout Reports
Automated Market Offers
New Message System
Facebook updates
Continued Doctrinifying the Guild scripts
Continued updating of the Admin backend
Continued Bug Fixes
Region Subtypes
As always, questions and comments are welcome.
Scott
edit: added Region Subtypes - we weren't sure if it should be included on the roadmap as it's a database entry but since phase 2 of it will be noticable I've added it.
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Facebook updates? What is that about?
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Seems like a lot of work is going to be done this month.
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Curious to see that the statues addition is not in there
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The additions to the game like "Siege engines in scout reports" - is the goal just to get them on Testing in October, or onto Stable as well?
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I would imagine that statues would be a low priority thing compared to the major changes like sea zones and such.
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Yes, it is indeed a busy month for the developers.
Anything listed in the Roadmap is planned on being fully implemented across all islands in that given month.
As for Statues and Monuments not being included, after we estimated how many hours each item would take, compared it to how many volunteer hours the developers had available for October, we had more development hours required for all tasks vs available hours, so I removed it.
The Facebook updates is something I'm working on. I have many years experience working with social media and know that having a Facebook page that's updated on a regular basis will help raise aware of the game and attract new players. Once my plan for this is done I will post it publically.
You will also see that there is a great deal of work being done on the code infrastructure of the game itself. This is something that is extremely time consuming and has to be done. This is also why some approved features that seem easy to implement aren't being implemented as it would require them to be implemented twice (old code and new code) which is not time well spent.
Thank you for your questions and comments, I always welcome them!
Scott
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October Week 1 Update
October is a really busy month for the dev team. The burn down chart this month will reflect the "Planned Work Done" vs "Actual Work Done". This is reflected in total estimated hours. As you will see, the dev team is volunteering 52 hours this month.
I like to post Burn Down Charts on Fridays because my weekends are not predictable. This means that the dev team is being measured against 7 days when infact they've only had 5 to work.
October Goals
Siege Engines in Scout Reports
Automated Market Offers
New Message System
Facebook updates
Continued Doctrinifying the Guild scripts
Continued updating of the Admin backend
Continued Bug Fixes
Region Subtypes
(http://i48.tinypic.com/n1pawx.png)
As always, questions and comments are welcome.
Best regards,
Scott
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Why doesn't the Planned Work line go down to 0?
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You're expected to extrapolate.
Also, a comic referring to such:
http://xkcd.com/605/ (http://xkcd.com/605/)
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what are region subtypes actually?
maybe its an idea for the future to have a mouse over text box that explains the individual features.
I can imagine that most people don't know what the title of those features mean.
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You're expected to extrapolate.
Also, a comic referring to such:
http://xkcd.com/605/ (http://xkcd.com/605/)
lol that's awesome.
It should hit 0, I'll fix it
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what are region subtypes actually?
It's to assist with the upcoming food re-balancing that needs to be done.
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October Week 2 Update
October Goals and Status
Siege Engines in Scout Reports - In Progress
Automated Market Offers - In Progress
Doctrinifying the Guild scripts - In Progress
Admin backend updates - In Progress
Sea Routes - Live on Testing Islands
New Message System - In final testing
Facebook updates - Complete - now requires regular updates which has been happening
Region Subtypes - Complete
10 Bug Fixes - 22 have been completed
New Addition
Buying Provisions - This is an expansion of Sea Routes
(http://i48.tinypic.com/2pt7whd.png)
You'll notice there is now a slight bump in the blue line, this is due to the addition of Buying Provisions.
As always, questions and comments are welcome.
Best regards,
Scott
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So if I am reading this right it means our awesome Devs have worked slightly more than they said they would so far.
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What about Character list? Is that on the menu by any chance? Cause it looked and worked awesome now it's gone down the drain. I mean it just listed and everything that it was has been taken away... also we can no longer easily look at family pages from it.
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Assuming you're talking about more than just no Family link, you can fix the Character List by emptying your cache.
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That's exactly correct.
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What do you guys mean by cache? I have cleared Firefox's cache five times and I am still getting funny tables and the dynamic maps are not working... Are you guys only clearing cache or are you clearing cookies, history and all that too?
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Using Chrome, I cleared the cache and they worked fine. Did you empty the entire cache or just "the last hour" or something?
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What do you guys mean by cache? I have cleared Firefox's cache five times and I am still getting funny tables and the dynamic maps are not working... Are you guys only clearing cache or are you clearing cookies, history and all that too?
for me i went tools:options:advanced:clear cache
and that path worked for me
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control+f5 should also do this (in theory)
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I am guessing it was a Firefox issue. When I would clock "Clear Now" under Options>Advanced>Network>Cached Web Content, it would drop from several hundred megabytes to 9 kilobytes. I even mad sure to have all BattleMaster tabs closed before clearing the cache and it always kept 9 kilobytes for some reason. This morning, however, clearing the cache resulted in removing all data and everything works again. Thanks for the help!
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October Week 3 Update
October Goals and Status
tl;dr status: On Time
Notes: While working on the new features we ran into a situation where we had to first convert the affected portions of code to the new doctrine method before work could actually begin on the feature. This essentially changes adding one
of the new features from a 1 person job at X hours, to a 2 person job at 2(X) hours.
This will become very apparent with next week's Burn Down Chart as the Actual Work Hours line will fall below the horizontal axis, meaning they are putting in more hours then planned.
Due to this, the dev team has decided to place a heavy focus on converting the remaining code, which is a huge undertaking. This will be reflected in future Roadmaps.
Siege Engines in Scout Reports - In Progress
Automated Market Offers - In Progress
Doctrinifying the Guild scripts - In Progress
Admin backend updates - In Progress
Sea Routes - Live on Testing Islands
Buying Provisions - Live on Testing Islands
New Message System - In final testing
Facebook updates - Complete - now requires regular updates which has been happening
Region Subtypes - Complete
10 Bug Fixes - 40 have been completed
New Addition(s)
None
Burn Down Chart
(http://i46.tinypic.com/m1xqs.png)
As always, feel free to ask questions or comment.
Best regards,
Scott
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Wouldn't the chart make more sense to the average viewer if it went up from 0, 0?
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Yes and No. Yes because it's more intuitive, but No because it measure the amount of work they've commited to doing vs how much they've actually done. Since we move forward in time we base status on work left to complete.
Next month we'll be going back to specific goals (bugs I think) so it will change again.
If the community in general would like to see the graph (when it's in hours) go up from 0,0 I'm happy to do that.
cheers,
Scott
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Yes and No. Yes because it's more intuitive, but No because it measure the amount of work they've commited to doing vs how much they've actually done. Since we move forward in time we base status on work left to complete.
Next month we'll be going back to specific goals (bugs I think) so it will change again.
If the community in general would like to see the graph (when it's in hours) go up from 0,0 I'm happy to do that.
cheers,
Scott
I think showing "work done" is more intuitive, and avoids having "negative time" on the graph.
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I think showing "work done" is more intuitive, and avoids having "negative time" on the graph.
I'll have to agree with that, of course.
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I'll have to agree with that, of course.
When you're working on something that you know will take X hours (let's say 10), when you are judging how you're doing, do you look at how many hours you have already worked (a positive graph) or how many hours you left? (a negative graph).
I'm OK with a positive graph, I just wanted to add a better explanation of why the graph goes down.
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Please keep the burndown chart.
A positive graph is unlimited, and would leave the dev team with the impression that there's always more we could have done. The burndown chart tells us that at some point, we've done it. That is important from a motivational point of view.
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Please keep the burndown chart.
A positive group is unlimited, and would leave the dev team with the impression that there's always more we could have done. The burndown chart tells us that at some point, we've done it. That is important from a motivational point of view.
Ah, in that case it does make more sense. I withdraw my previous statements.
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October Week 4 Update
October Goals and Status
tl;dr status: Some Items Delayed
Notes:
This week three members of the dev team had unexpected work and real life completely derail their volunteer capabilities for BM. Available hours are expected to remain very short for the remainder of the month. However, as you'll see by the burndown chart, the dev team has already put in more hours then planned and there is still one week left to go.
As we continue to work on the new features, we keep running into issues where extra code conversion has to occur before progress can be made. We have decided to put the new features on hold and start the monstrous task of completing the code conversion while also fixing bugs.
How monstrous of a task? There are 8543 function calls that need to be changed. I am not kidding. This is what we keep running into while working on new stuff.
Siege Engines in Scout Reports - On Hold
Automated Market Offers - On Hold
Doctrinifying the Guild scripts - In Progress
Admin backend updates - In Progress
Sea Routes - Live on Testing Islands
Buying Provisions - Live on Testing Islands
New Message System - In final testing
Facebook updates - Complete - now requires regular updates which has been happening
Region Subtypes - Complete
10 Bug Fixes - 56 have been completed
New Addition(s)
None
Burn Down Chart
(http://i48.tinypic.com/2z7kd5f.png)
As always, feel free to ask questions or comment.
Best regards,
Scott
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Ya'll rock.
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This is the most regularly updated free game i've ever seen of this style... By far