How might one volunteer in BM? (Besides Coding)

[Noone you know]

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

[D'Espana]

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 

[Noone you know]

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 :-)

[D'Espana]

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?

[Noone you know]

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.

[Constantine]

What is this? Sailing coming to other isles? Who said that?

[D'Espana]

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?

[Noone you know]

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.

[D'Espana]

I was talking about this post from Anaris, it's in your own thread proposing the "Volunteer Tasks" stuff in the Development forum.

There'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.

[Noone you know]

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.

[Anaris]

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.

[Noone you know]

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.

[Anaris]

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.

[Shulee]

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.

[D'Espana]

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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.

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.

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?