I'll troll a little bit:
Are you one of the people who doesn't have time to help volunteer? ;-)
Be nice to have sea lanes on the other continents
Quote from: Noone you know on April 03, 2016, 12:06:03 AM
I'll troll a little bit:
Are you one of the people who doesn't have time to help volunteer? ;-)
Be nice to have sea lanes on the other continents
I'm safe on that point, I swear! I'm a proud member of an NGO that tries to reintroduce young adults in a difficult situation to secondary education and work. Currently working as English teacher, may teach them other stuff next year too :)
Quote from: D'Espana on April 03, 2016, 12:59:14 AM
I'm safe on that point, I swear! I'm a proud member of an NGO that tries to reintroduce young adults in a difficult situation to secondary education and work. Currently working as English teacher, may teach them other stuff next year too :)
good on you! I was actually referring to the game, but you definitely pass :-)
Quote from: Noone you know on April 03, 2016, 01:09:33 AM
good on you! I was actually referring to the game, but you definitely pass :-)
Oh, my bad then. I have actually never seriously considered doing it, but you do have a point there. I have the time, though my computering skills are below zero in most complex matters. What more can be done?
pick an island,
1) start a "Volunteer Task - Sea lanes for X Island" in the Development area to see if anyone wants to work with you. Tasks usually are more fun & get done more quickly if there's a couple of people. Move all of this post over there.
2) Write up a proposal of seas for that island. You can save a copy of the actual map & mark it up with Paint or any program like that, or just explain where they would be drawn.
3) Get dev input on your proposal, since they have some strategic bearing on the game
4) While waiting for #3, create a list of possible names to use
5) Ask the devs if they can supply you a list of coastal regions - name & id - to save you time. Find out exactly what info they need to tie the Sea Id to the Region Id so that a number of hours can be set. The same with Sea Id to Sea Id.
Off the top of my head, that's all the non-coding stuff that can be done, but it's considerable and only really requires an understanding of the game.
What is this? Sailing coming to other isles? Who said that?
Quote from: Noone you know on April 03, 2016, 03:09:03 AM
pick an island,
1) start a "Volunteer Task - Sea lanes for X Island" in the Development area to see if anyone wants to work with you. Tasks usually are more fun & get done more quickly if there's a couple of people. Move all of this post over there.
2) Write up a proposal of seas for that island. You can save a copy of the actual map & mark it up with Paint or any program like that, or just explain where they would be drawn.
3) Get dev input on your proposal, since they have some strategic bearing on the game
4) While waiting for #3, create a list of possible names to use
5) Ask the devs if they can supply you a list of coastal regions - name & id - to save you time. Find out exactly what info they need to tie the Sea Id to the Region Id so that a number of hours can be set. The same with Sea Id to Sea Id.
Off the top of my head, that's all the non-coding stuff that can be done, but it's considerable and only really requires an understanding of the game.
Is that an actual task that can be volunteered for? I thought the dev team had said that they would rather develop it themselves, they would likely change so much for strategic reasons that they might as well do it and skip the volunteer part. Am I right?
i don't recall reading that, but if you did, then obviously check on it.
I can't see why they need to pick the names & things like that themselves.
I was talking about this post from Anaris, it's in your own thread proposing the "Volunteer Tasks" stuff in the Development forum.
QuoteThere's actually very few things in BattleMaster that would take less effort to set up a way for volunteers to help with than it would to just do ourselves.
Drawing sea zones probably aren't in that list, because we would want to be the ones deciding how they are laid out, and once we do that, communicate it to the volunteers, and create the script for drawing them...we might as well have drawn them ourselves.
That's what I meant.
yeah, i think he's wrong though. I think it's a case of, "we think it's too hard to explain, so we'd rather do it ourselves"....and then wait 2 years to actually get around to it.
It's classic micro-management.
there are enough long-term players who could get a pretty close first run & then let them tweak it a little. there are some obvious, some guesswork, a couple of existing examples to study. drawing, I don't know, but you also have to do the simple work of setting up the connections information in the database which volunteers can do unless it is completely different from what I imagine.
i think this is a 90% volunteer job.
And of course, you know better than the dev team.
That's why you ragequit the dev team, because we wouldn't do everything your way.
Guess what? We still won't.
Quote from: Anaris on April 08, 2016, 01:51:26 PM
And of course, you know better than the dev team.
That's why you ragequit the dev team, because we wouldn't do everything your way.
Guess what? We still won't.
Do you recall how many years ago that was? How pathetic you still can't get over it.
No, I know best on this because I've been a professional programmer working on large teams for more than 15 years, and know what I'm doing. I'm making an effort to nudge you forward into the modern era and actually help the game improve.
BTW - it's 2 days early, but congratulations!
April 10th is the 2 year anniversary of the War Improvements Package announcement (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5596.0.html), which you've done almost nothing on. Trying to top your 3-year New Estates System rollout, or the Caravans/Markets rework?
Keep doing it your way! We'll keep eating Magical Endless Honey & begging to have our characters unstuck.
Yay, you know how to do well in large teams of well-paid people.
I'm sure all that knowledge will transfer over perfectly to a small and shifting team of volunteers doing all of this entirely in their spare time and for personal satisfaction.
If it would help, I would consider offering my help as an Agile coach and practitioner to the team. It's one way to bring big, expensive programming techniques to volunteer teams.
Quote from: Anaris on April 08, 2016, 01:51:26 PM
[...]
Quote from: Noone you know on April 08, 2016, 02:15:09 PM
[...]
Please, no name calling. You are both working towards making from Battlemaster a better game, so you should be actually quite proud of yourselves and quite fond of other people's efforts towards the same goal. You're on the same page here.
Quote from: Shulee on April 08, 2016, 04:43:04 PM
If it would help, I would consider offering my help as an Agile coach and practitioner to the team. It's one way to bring big, expensive programming techniques to volunteer teams.
That's more like the attitude. Thanks, Shulee.
Quote from: Anaris on April 08, 2016, 02:43:58 PM
Yay, you know how to do well in large teams of well-paid people.
I'm sure all that knowledge will transfer over perfectly to a small and shifting team of volunteers doing all of this entirely in their spare time and for personal satisfaction.
Anaris, is there something you think that us non-coders can help you with?
Quote from: D'Espana on April 08, 2016, 10:12:25 PM
Anaris, is there something you think that us non-coders can help you with?
There is, and I've created a thread for it (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,6915.0.html) in the appropriate place.
Quote from: Anaris on April 08, 2016, 10:30:42 PM
There is, and I've created a thread for it (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,6915.0.html) in the appropriate place.
I had seen that thread before, but I thought Ossan was taking care of it already. Besides, my drawing and artistical skills are... how to put it delicately... deficient?
Quote from: D'Espana on April 08, 2016, 10:47:57 PM
I had seen that thread before, but I thought Ossan was taking care of it already. Besides, my drawing and artistical skills are... how to put it delicately... deficient?
That's OK, it doesn't require any.
It's entirely about re-creating the existing game maps using the Age of Wonders map editor, which just lets you place map tiles and then little decorations on those tiles.
The current South Island map was created entirely by me in the Age of Wonders map editor, and my drawing and artistical skills are similarly deficient.
Ossan hasn't updated on his progress since February, and even if he's still going to get Dwilight done, I'd very much like to have AoW map files for all the mapsâ€"including the ones that are currently sunk, though they'd be lower priority.
Quote from: Anaris on April 08, 2016, 11:00:38 PM
That's OK, it doesn't require any.
It's entirely about re-creating the existing game maps using the Age of Wonders map editor, which just lets you place map tiles and then little decorations on those tiles.
The current South Island map was created entirely by me in the Age of Wonders map editor, and my drawing and artistical skills are similarly deficient.
Ossan hasn't updated on his progress since February, and even if he's still going to get Dwilight done, I'd very much like to have AoW map files for all the mapsâ€"including the ones that are currently sunk, though they'd be lower priority.
What the heck, I'll give it a shot. Do know that if I end up being thrown cabbages at for the poor look of it, I will put the blame on you. You've been warned! ;D
I'm going to take a second look at the thread, post something there so that we stop spamming the wrong thread and then start planning everything. I'm about to buy a new computer way better than the genuine crap I am using right now, so I guess I will start working on it.
There is also updating the wiki manual and help pages. There should be starter material on Helpline Forum (here) threads and the in-game Mentoring Forum threads. I (and other devs) can answer further questions via the same forums.
Announcements of different Island events on the respective Local board would pressure me to at least share that announcement via the BM twitter account.
Feedback on bugs on the bugtracker is always helpful. Reporting more bugs.
Anything marketing/recruitment/advertising related.
I would not consider this an exhaustive list.
Quote from: Shulee on April 08, 2016, 04:43:04 PM
If it would help, I would consider offering my help as an Agile coach and practitioner to the team. It's one way to bring big, expensive programming techniques to volunteer teams.
That kind of help would be great!
They're not "big, expensive programming techniques". They're the same techniques an individual uses when he wants to bang out a new website on the weekend.
Personally, I'm not sure the whole dev team is ready for Agile but the techniques can be learned by individuals to try to do their own work in that way. I think you'll face the old monolithic, nothing pushes till it is completely "finished" attitude to a point.
There's been an attitude for years that "we're not professionals, so we can't be expected to do things correctly" and not even making an effort to learn or improve.
Fortunately, people like Vita has always been open minded & willing to learn things; I don't know who else is on the team but I'd imagine they're more of that variety. Some quiet one-on-one mentoring might go much further; I'd be happy to help work with anyone, and there are even sites where people will advise you on your code (I don't know anything about this one, but: https://www.refactor.io/) or you can sign up at http://phpmentoring.org/ for a mentor to work with you for a while.
Good programmers are constantly learning and improving - that's what we love about it, that we can spend our whole lives programming for work & hobby and never grow bored, and we can easily teach it and pay forward what we've learned. I consider myself to be a fairly experienced programmer, but I spent last night finishing a book on improving my coding style, and am anxiously awaiting a friend's new release. Volunteering on sites like this are a great place to earn your chops - an old, brittle codebase with desperate need to be refactored is a huge challenge that even more experienced programmers look at as a challenge.
We don't sit and make excuses for why we have to stagnate.
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:50:02 AM
There is also updating the wiki manual and help pages. There should be starter material on Helpline Forum (here) threads and the in-game Mentoring Forum threads. I (and other devs) can answer further questions via the same forums.
This! There is so much out of date info - there was a great volunteer project years ago to bring in the semantic wiki, but another sweep is something anyone in the game could be involved in.
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:50:02 AM
Announcements of different Island events on the respective Local board would pressure me to at least share that announcement via the BM twitter account.
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:50:02 AM
Feedback on bugs on the bugtracker is always helpful. Reporting more bugs.
This was the point I was trying to make before - there are a limited number of programmers, so you want to keep them as close to 100% *programming* as you can. Look for ANYTHING like this someone else could help with.
The inverse is true - dev team members should be looking at their tasks and trying to eliminate EVERYTHING they possibly can. Are you *really* the only one who can do that?
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:50:02 AM
Anything marketing/recruitment/advertising related.
This again!
Any Communications students here? Practice writing "press releases" and articles you can spread around about the game changes or interesting things that set it apart.
Start a blog about BM & see if you can make it popular.
Start a medieval RP contest "sponsored" by BM.
This is a real life laboratory where you can actually do the stuff we used to have to get internships for - go for it!
Other Tasks:
========
- SURVEYS! The best marketing info comes from your existing customers. The dev team already has survey code that has never been implemented (according to earlier convos): get some questions to send to new players after a few days, a few weeks, a few months. Collect info from them if they quit, best you can.
Player retention is one of the most important tasks right now (and for the last 5 years or so), and absolutely nothing is being done about it.
- If you are the uber-organized type, I personally think the dev team could use a practicing Technical Writer who 1) works with them to help think of all the affects a new change might make, then ensures those things have been covered & play-tested 2) is the one who writes the Wiki page & announces to the game the parts everyone is allowed to know (vs. the "black box" stuff left to the dev team)
FYI - technical writers can make pretty good money. If you are a little bit technical & have good writing skills and good attention to detail, this is a great chance to try it out & see if you might like to do it more seriously.
- Collect notes of what differences there are among the different islands, and compile. I'm not sure what system of feature flags & branching they are using but I'm convinced a lot of stuff "being tested" has merely been forgotten about.
Some examples of what I mean - the Information page varies per island; Show Fame isn't on all the islands; East Island doesn't have the new looting or all the magic scroll stuff that is working elsewhere. These are things that are way past the need for testing; they need to be migrated.
It might be useful to have a list somewhere of what is currently being play-tested, and when that started, so that it can be migrated to the other islands when deemed ready.
- Collect notes on incomplete features - there really shouldn't be "TODOs" in the game, or only half-completed features, but at least we should know about them. I nearly had a death duel with a guy over takeover options, only to find out that only two of those options even work.
Excellent list.
Quote from: Noone you know on April 09, 2016, 10:23:04 AM
- Collect notes of what differences there are among the different islands, and compile. I'm not sure what system of feature flags & branching they are using but I'm convinced a lot of stuff "being tested" has merely been forgotten about.
Some examples of what I mean - the Information page varies per island; Show Fame isn't on all the islands; East Island doesn't have the new looting or all the magic scroll stuff that is working elsewhere. These are things that are way past the need for testing; they need to be migrated.
It might be useful to have a list somewhere of what is currently being play-tested, and when that started, so that it can be migrated to the other islands when deemed ready.
I've been making an effort to keep stable/testing/war synced as much as possible the last couple of years. The small differences that add up, not the larger features like Sailing. Show Fame has been on all islands' Information pages for a few months now. Information pages should be the same on both stable and testing (advy and nobles still differ) for some months too. All islands do have scrolls; summoning scrolls are only on testing islands (BT, DWI). Only BT has lords acquiring scrolls from discovered witches, autofiring scrolls etc. The new looting is still only on testing.
Good brainstorming you two, that is more like what I had in mind. I'll try nonetheless the re-creating maps stuff, but if I do find myself incapable of that I'll very gladly come back and pick up some of those tasks you have mentioned. Nice work!
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:41:40 PM
Excellent list.
I've been making an effort to keep stable/testing/war synced as much as possible the last couple of years. The small differences that add up, not the larger features like Sailing. Show Fame has been on all islands' Information pages for a few months now. Information pages should be the same on both stable and testing (advy and nobles still differ) for some months too. All islands do have scrolls; summoning scrolls are only on testing islands (BT, DWI). Only BT has lords acquiring scrolls from discovered witches, autofiring scrolls etc. The new looting is still only on testing.
ah, that's great! in game it felt a little more different - going back and looking at some of my points, I see they've been synced. recently noticed scrolls & looting being different on East, is why that idea jumped out at me.
There's another task that just occurred to me, that is suitable for the more technical non-coder who "wishes they knew how to code"
You can write Codeception Acceptance tasks (http://codeception.com/) against the live site. You would need to set up XAMPP or MAMPP on your computer and learn some very basic tasks to get it to run, and it would be rather slow against a live site rather than local, but you wouldn't need to know anything about the code itself.
Acceptance testing is just like imitating what a user does;
Quote$I = new AcceptanceTester($scenario);
$I->wantTo('ensure that frontpage works');
$I->amOnPage('/');
$I->see('welcome to Battlemaster');
$I->click('login');
they just check that all the pages are really there, you can log in as you should, etc. There's a limit to how much you want to do with your real account, but since all the tests will work for anyone else, it can be the basis of an Acceptance Test Suite the devs can later add to the main testing code base.
If that intrigues you, I or I'm sure some others here could help walk you through the setup & early steps.
Quote from: Vita on April 09, 2016, 03:50:02 AM
There is also updating the wiki manual and help pages. There should be starter material on Helpline Forum (here) threads and the in-game Mentoring Forum threads. I (and other devs) can answer further questions via the same forums.
...
Yeah that would definately help I think.