constructive critique on the development process

[eNTi]

Which would be? I mean you wrote about decals in the creeper cave but... what glitches are we talking about?

Really? Again? Here? If I have to. Just off the top of my head:

1. Firemob projectiles hitting even though the clearly flew past you,
2. Firemob projectiles completely invisble,
3. Firemob damage registering in sudden bursts and sometimes not at all. It's quite erratic behavior without any discernible pattern,
4. Firemob summons spawning inside structures hitting you through walls,
5. Firemob "rays" not doing damage on certain occasions. Seems to be a los issue if you kite around edges of mountains,
6. Mob damage through objects... Maybe bounding box issues... but this happens in different scenarios: Sometimes when hitting some mob and hiding behind an edge the projecitles will still hit you THROUGH that edge. Sometimes not. Maybe related issue to 7.
7. Visibly connecting projectiles/rays not doing damage or NOT connecting projectiles/rays doing damage: So this seem to happen sometimes when los to the center of the bounding box is lost or regained in a short period of time,
8. You can target mobs only if you have LOS to the center of their bounding box

I'm sure that's far for everything I've encountered during my hunting times and this is probably true for many or all other mobs. After a few hours hunting a few days ago I had the same experiences. So nothing changed.

Mind you these are issues that are as old as Neocron itself... this isn't even mentioning the things that can happen during zoning, especially if you are flying. Yes those are a big part of hunting too.

[Hell-demon]

I think a focus on end game content is crucial. Currently most of it is grind and has faults. Yes, new players need stuff but they also need more after the tutorial after you stop holding their hand. Also bare in mind we veterans never had a good newbie leveling area, but we still got by and reached the end game, and that was with the help of experienced players. These same veterans have now left because the current game and end content is broken or boring.

What have these two things got to do with each other? Us oldies had to get by and learn by talking to other older more informed players. It created a strong community and the players who had been here longer also had tradeskills and other skills to help us newbies progress. An NPC will stunt some involvement with the real players. But also you need the old players, you need to bring them back and get them involved again. They up the population, they add skills to the economy and they take newbies under their wing far better than any tutorial.

You need content to bring the old players back. They wont come back for a newbie experience - been there done that. They will come back with balance and end game content, which even the newbies will come to enjoy in time.

New players are good, but so are the old. Both are a priority. Us loyal veterans have stuck by and have more to give, but we need balancing and changes to facilitate us.

I'm sorry if I have come across as cynical and frustrated, but I feel like we keep hitting a brick wall with communication. The first post to this thread makes so much sense now.

There is too much vagueness.

Still I have no idea what will happen with the test server, balance progress and even a vague sense of when any of this will be implemented. Will we see anything new this year?

The situation is temperamental and really what should unite us is a clear goal we can all achieve.

An open question to you all: What do you want to happen with Neocron's development?

[Xortag]

The test server contain basically the things that are intended to be on Titan and to find issues we did not encountered or get the last feedback before they getting hot. It's the last staging point in the chain. When we develop things and changes, we have 2 internal test servers connected to our repositorys. If changes work and cause no problems there, they are going into are more restrictive internal test server, meant for shipping.

Due to the age of NC, we going to deal with a lot handmade changes and merging, since there is no universal "save project" button. An Example: If i want to change a faction decal on plaza 1, i have to deal with a file that also contain NPCs, Spawns, Sounds, Navray Points etc., things that other team member work on.

There is no auto merging of all thoose stuff and require us to be very careful. Zoltan wrote a suite that are about to handle all of this, basically a editor for everyone of the team. It handles a lot of changes that we had to lay our hands on before. But it's far from beeing complete and some team members still writing modules of it to handle more aspects of the game, like missions. So it's often still about waiting for changes of another team member before you can go with your aspect of changes.

Another example the internal tool helped with are textures. They where stored in a single file with all their attributes. To add a new texture, you had to find a free ID (within a few thousand) to use, write down the exact path and attributes. Now it's a GUI showing you images of every texture and with the ability to do all the changes with a single click. The preview also helps all team members who just need a arrow for a mission location and want to have a look over every arrow available.

Road block example:

For the black tree issues on the test server the blocker is the following. When Zoltan added the changes to the engine that handle RGBA/ABGR conversions every old texture that got it's transparency from a 1bit index in a bitmap palette, where skipped. So far, so good, let's re-store all alpha channels to DXT3. Now comes the struggle, since a lot of tools use the game engine to preview or make changes too, they no longer worked with DXT3 formats. Ok, we fixed that too. Now the tool that handles the final actor baking wasn't able to make changes to the final actor file but rather had to use the original 3d software file to create a new actor. It also wasn't able to handle certain new texture sizes. Zoltan again wrote a small tool to just handle the texture switch within an actor file and it worked like a charm. Previewing thoose changes on our internal test server showed up, that billboard textures (textures that are just a image of the model for distance rendering) mixed up with the normal leaf or bark textures. Now Maxjagg writes the last pieces to fix thoose thing in our internal editor.

That was just a view from the graphic part, but im sure Zoltan or Bifrost can tell you the same storys that they are facing with balancing or other aspects of the game.

[OFT]

I appreciate that some posters are really riding hard for results here. But as of yesterday I read what I consider to be a great answer from every NST person who's responded in this thread. My expectations are exceeded! It may not be enough info for everyone, but I think it was a great update. Fascinating to hear more about what everyone is working on.

Is it possible Triv could throw a couple paragraphs together once per month about what the current "thing" is that everyone is working on? A few sentences.

Things I DONT care about hearing and why:
1.) Real-time list of bugs being worked out. Because I'll wait for the patch notes and trust that NST volunteers are dabbling in their free time as they want to and are available.

2.) Worrying about which things are being prioritized. Because everything needs work. Just the noob experience won't change the entire game, and neither will just adding end game content. No single thing that "should be worked on first" is going to change the game if it is worked on second. Just like it took a few patches and some fixes to get to this point.

There are people (sometimes a single person) working volunteering on as many major areas of the game as possible. Hopefully this will slowly open more areas to work on in the future. I am glad someone is volunteering their time to it once in a while.

3.) Hearing about deadlines from a niche volunteer group. If I am the only person who cares enough and has the skills enough to volunteer my time on something, then the rest of the world can wait for me to get around to it because the rest of my life must be in balance before I can even attempt my volunteerism/hobby. The NST is no different than any other volunteer group coming together to do what they like. They are even trying to grow the team, but the rest of us lack the combination of skills or free time to help fill a couple positions.

Things I DO appreciate hearing about:
1.) "Ran into a show-stopping issue, so thinking about making a tool that will fix it."
2.) "Progress is slow. Changing X keeps changing Y and Z. Anyone know about W?"
3.) "Would really like to see the last of X finished next.
4.) "Holy fuck, it actually turned out looking really, really good! *picture of Xortag's fucking awesome text windows*
5.) "That thing that turned out looking good needs tested. Specifically X and Y."

This kind of list or paragraph is quick and real, and may not reveal any progress at all in it. Because progress reports are presented to bosses or shareholders by people who get paid and have deadlines... not by volunteers trying to keep a game breathing as one of their many hobbies.

Love the updates from the team in here - Zoltan, Baldur about noob content, Xortag about the new chat windows, Triv for revealing the info about Titan/Vedeena and the rest of his engagement with us in this shitshow that we all love so much. Gold mine of awesomeness indeed.

[Hell-demon]

Good to finally get more in-depth responses. I think what is key here is how to deliver this information.

*More liberal use of the anouncement board

*Perhaps a weekly post if possible on changes and progress

*Better use of social media i.e using twitter and facebook to broadcast the need for volunteers but also the specific task required of them with details, like some jobs posted here and on other boards.

Momentum is building up again it seems, but the buzz and hype need to be kept generated. We all have to do our part to try and keep neocron's activity pulsing otherwise people will assume the game is dead.

Far from it, but from an outsiders point of view they may be unaware that this game is still be developed with more content on the way.

I'm hoping that in a few weeks time the momentum and impetus is still here. It would be tragic if a month or two down the line things go quiet and we are left asking for updates, trying to get answers and ultimately leaving the game thinking nothing new is coming. We know that isn't the case now but we need assurances that a game we all enjoy will continue to improve.

[TychoAvalon]

...
Entirely new blood has a few reasons to get stuck and then turned off from Neocron, being a lone and the less than ideal new player experience. Baldur and Xanthos (our Content Development chaps) are working on improvements to Area MC5 to prepare today's fresh blood a little more for Neocron's steep learning curve by explaining certain things way better through new missions.

[/QUOTE]

The biggest reason I've seen over my 9 years playing the newbies bail on us is the lack of proper game documentation.
In-game or out---it's just flat MIA.

[Doc Holliday]

I have a lot i want to suggest/add but no time to do so. Gonna sit down and put pen to paper on this stuff tonight. Found my way back here again and read this thread with great interest.

I have some bonafide suggestions (literally fell asleep last night thinking about it all and woke up an hour later with some major thoughts popping in my head) to help things a little, hopefully from all aspects and elements of the game and community.

I will report back.

[William Antrim]

You guys ought to think about submitting your resumes/CV's to the NST and list all of the things in there that you think you can do and are good at and then let them see if any of those skills are required to further develop NC.

Some people in the past volunteered for lots of reasons, some I am sure just to have a nosey look around the GM side of the house and see if they could spawn stuff for their mates...

However - demanding all of this information from the NST without actually having any real idea about what YOU can do to contribute may be a pointless exercise. If you havent got the skills to understand what they are going through then you are taking up their time responding to posts that wont get fixed anyway.

It might just be an idea for everyone here who has a vested interest to post up their own skill set (in a thread or a pm or a NST application) and take things from there. It is one thing to ask for information from someone on a project, it is another entirely to go and stick your neck on the line to actually help.

All of us can write posts on here blaming eachother, arguing and flaming but all it does is take up time for people to read and reply when they could employ their time elsewhere.

If you think there are problems with the game make new threads about them - I see the term "core" game used in the last 2 pages but then I see 3 different opinions on what that "core" game is. Understand the difference between opinions and facts please guys. You have got more information in this thread than 2 years worth of waiting for info, dont ruin that by getting irate at a lack of context.

[Doc Holliday]

Ok so was gonna post a lot of whats been discussed here http://forum.neocron-game.com/showth...perience/page1 and look at new ways to tackle this age old problem.

I think this is something the people in this thread could and should look to contribute and get behind and actively support. I would like to ask for some official response from my post in the thread as i have some very solid ideas going forward along with whats already been said but don't want to start a gargantuan task for it to come to no avail.

I think if we the community were able to actually get stuck in to a project like mentioned then it might help stir up the motivation to get this show rolling once again. A fresh influx of ideas and maybe a spark or two of momentum and who knows what could happen.

Please please someone in the support team have a read of it all and most importantly can you answer the question of just how feasible is it to alter mob spawns in a zone. I mean permanently because a lot of what i want to suggest will hinge upon this being doable or not. the rest i will open up in to after. If it can be done easily and without too much aggro (pun intended ) then I think we as a community should look to get this world mapped out and get some ideas in properly about what and where. Reply in the thread also or pm i will check for both.

[eNTi]

If you think there are problems with the game make new threads about them

What is the point... really? I think there probably are an average of 3 threads for each problem buried in either the Bugs or Brainport forums already.

Without us bitching an whining this thread would have never gotten to the information density it has. So you can dismiss it as entitled bile spewing all you want without exactly that the forum would just be... dead, like the last few years. Maybe that would "help" the NST more than reading through 100 post and getting depressed. Sometimes this is necessary to get a new perspective on what you are doing with your time or what the community is really thinking and cares about. There will always be different opinions - DUH - that doesn't mean we should just shut up. The dev team sure will be interested to know that there are still people out there who actively care about the game's state. At least I hope so.

[William Antrim]

Making a point is one thing. Labouring it is another.

What can you offer the team enti? Everyone here can bitch and moan but what else can you bring to the table to help the nst?

[eNTi]

Making a point is one thing. Labouring it is another.

What can you offer the team enti? Everyone here can bitch and moan but what else can you bring to the table to help the nst?

You mean like anything else but all the bug reports I've made and ideas I've posted in the brain port? I've offered them to look at their asp.net mvc website and I do know a bit about C coding although not nearly enough about C++ I guess.

[Doc Holliday]

Making a point is one thing. Labouring it is another.

What can you offer the team enti? Everyone here can bitch and moan but what else can you bring to the table to help the nst?

A glass half empty or a glass half full. I dont agree with everything he said in the thread but he made some valid points all the same.

[Hell-demon]

Agreed.

As much as it is admirable that a small team of volunteers is keeping an mmo up and running for free it also the reason it is hardly done, because it's insane. The amount of upkeep and problems means that the team will struggle and the cracks are showing.

We need to band together but we aren't going to be much help without proper guidance and a lot more communication and transparancy from the team.

[William Antrim]

Transparency is the key. It is the most important thing because honestly everything else is just pixels and dreams until some proper communication is forthcoming.

In the meantime all we can do is - well, nothing really. Nobody can help if they dont know how they can help.

.... that gave me an idea for a thread....