How might one volunteer in BM? (Besides Coding)

[Anaris]

Anaris, is there something you think that us non-coders can help you with?

There is, and I've created a thread for it in the appropriate place.

[D'Espana]

There is, and I've created a thread for it 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?

[Anaris]

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 maps—including the ones that are currently sunk, though they'd be lower priority.

[D'Espana]

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 maps—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! 

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.

[Vita`]

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.

[Noone you know]

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. 

[Noone you know]

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.

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.

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?

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.

[Vita`]

Excellent list.

- 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.

[D'Espana]

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!

[Noone you know]

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.

[Noone you know]

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;

  $I = new AcceptanceTester($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.

[Wimpie]

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.