The Epic Failure of Neocron via NST

**Zoltan** · 25-09-19, 12:22

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

**Lykos** · 25-09-19, 17:21

Originally Posted by Zoltan

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

I miss Farril so much, people don't realize just what he did for us. When I was on the team, I remember he wrote a tool to roll patches so we could start pushing updates to the game as soon as we got the green light, and before we had the source code. Also before we had access to the source he fixed a casting bug using a hex editor. He loved Neocron.

Shame on people for shitting on such a good developer. At this point, I wonder if the community deserves Neocron at all anymore.

**Therenall** · 25-09-19, 22:08

Originally Posted by Zoltan

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

So I'm going to chime in here.

I 100% agree with this. Frankly, one of the reasons I'm away from working on this so much is because of a lack of motivation. I spend 9 hours a day at work (8 hours + 1 hour lunch.) Sometimes more if we have a big project we're deploying or finishing. I come home, I have maybe 4 or 5 hours depending on how late I want to stay up. Of course some of that time I spend doing other stuff, like making dinner, store, etc.

I'm now presented with a choice:

I can play some games with some friends of mine, or hang out with my family
Or, I can work on this game (from the NCC side of course) and progress.

My day job is software development, sysadmin, and networking. So I'm already kind of tired of it when I get home. Neocron is... interesting to work on. And by interesting, I mean a frustrating pain in the ass. Then to stack on top of it the toxic self-entitled trolls in the community.

I'll let you guess which one I do. Now I can't speak 100% for Wizard on our team, but I know it's at least a similar situation from his perspective as well. We get asked all the time about netcode, sarcastic and condescending comments about it (and other things.) You want to know where netcode is guys? Well, it's playing POE league, because he pretty much got sick of dealing with this toxic shit early on. He mostly works on the game for his enjoyment and the challenge. And the same pretty much goes for me.

Now, I'm not saying the entire community is this way, but it's been our experience that they have been some of the most vocal. Especially on Discord. It's pretty demotivating.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not quitting. Wizard hasn't quit. Lykos hasn't quit, nor anyone else on our team. We work on it as we want to. Things are progressing. We aren't as loud about it, and we aren't very fast. I'm simply saying our motivation is hurt when the community side of it is full of such toxic entitled crap. So progress slows, because we're not paid to work on this, or put up with this. I'll go through periods where I game for a while in my free time, and I'll go through periods where I work on this for a few months on end and do no gaming. That's how it's been for a while.

And a note on balance: Balance changes are fun. At least on NCC, Like AgentKane said, it's not just a matter of manipulating some server side text files. There is a TON of crap in the source code that's done through hard-coded magic numbers with absolutely no documentation. It's split between many locations / systems in the source. We have Zodiac on our team who spent a week or more figuring out how all the armor math worked together with the files, incoming damage, buffs, etc, and re-balancing it to add a PA slot, and make it work with hit zones properly. It's not as easy as just "Oh yeah we'll just change this one number here and it's good." You change something by a little, and suddenly it's had a drastic effect because, after an hour of debugging the source to find out why, you find a spot in the source dividing it by 8 then somewhere else multiplying it by 1.2235512 * techlevel. Why 8? Why 1.12235512? No idea. You just have to work out the math and figure out what it's trying to accomplish. Keep in mind, this isn't a real example, and in actuality it's more complex. I don't know how it is on NST, but that's some insight into how it is on ours.

**Zoltan** · 26-09-19, 18:49

Originally Posted by Therenall

It's not as easy as just "Oh yeah we'll just change this one number here and it's good." You change something by a little, and suddenly it's had a drastic effect because, after an hour of debugging the source to find out why, you find a spot in the source dividing it by 8 then somewhere else multiplying it by 1.2235512 * techlevel. Why 8? Why 1.12235512? No idea. You just have to work out the math and figure out what it's trying to accomplish. Keep in mind, this isn't a real example, and in actuality it's more complex. I don't know how it is on NST, but that's some insight into how it is on ours.

Exactly this. Don't forget about the "if (randomVariable == magicValue) { somePreviouslyRandomlyCalcuatedResult *= moreRandomlyGeneratedStuff + SomeShitFromDefs + SomeClassSpecificShit + SomeWorldSpecificShit * 0.1337f / SomeShitThatisSetByAAdefineAndJustActiveWhenTheBuildIsAServerBuild; }" and yeah.. these codelines are somewhere in 35k line methods full of c&p'd codeparts.

**Lykos** · 26-09-19, 19:13

Originally Posted by Zoltan

Exactly this. Don't forget about the "if (randomVariable == magicValue) { somePreviouslyRandomlyCalcuatedResult *= moreRandomlyGeneratedStuff + SomeShitFromDefs + SomeClassSpecificShit + SomeWorldSpecificShit * 0.1337f / SomeShitThatisSetByAAdefineAndJustActiveWhenTheBuildIsAServerBuild; }" and yeah.. these codelines are somewhere in 35k line methods full of c&p'd codeparts.

I've never seen a more accurate representation of the NC source code in my life.

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

Neocron.

**Nidhogg** · 26-09-19, 23:53

Originally Posted by Lykos

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

Explains why I can never get a date; wrong socks.

**Bifrost** · 27-09-19, 15:03

Originally Posted by Lykos

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

I've been enlightened. That explains why I don't get on with the NC code. Clearly not my type....

**Lykos** · 30-09-19, 15:44

Originally Posted by Bifrost

I've been enlightened. That explains why I don't get on with the NC code. Clearly not my type....

Thanks! I'm here all week

Thread: The Epic Failure of Neocron via NST

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

Hybrid View

Posting Permissions