Teerin's Transparency (Tuesday?) Thread

[Teerin]

So, I'll keep this fairly straightforward. Once a week, I'll post something about what we're doing, how we're doing, or what we need. It'll usually be a separate thread from this, but I'll link them here for potentially disastrous productive, meaningful discussion. No, I won't take requests, merely suggestions, and please keep in mind that I'm doing this in my free time. We all are.

Here is the first week's publication: Development Team Structure

Enjoy.


^ Salvaged post from when the forums went kaput. Old comments may be found here for a short period of time. Kudos to @TheJarl for his post that told me how to recover this.

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"You see what your knowledge tells you you're seeing. ... how, what you think the universe is, and how you react to that in everything you do, depends on what you know. And when that knowledge changes, for you, the universe changes. And that is as true for the whole of society as that is for the individual. We all are what we know, today. What we knew yesterday, was different; and so were we."
- James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

[Teerin]

Later today, I might post a new thing, since the dev team structure is old news. Gotta figure out what, though.

Also, I'll directly quote these two old comments to re-clarify the mining situation:

Could you add some info about how mining and economy is dealt with as well?

Mining in particular seems to be a contentious one seeing as the ore prices are severside and in the admin's ballcourt, while field configuration is clientside and very much appears to be a Dev function.

Some formal clarification on how things actually work would be much appreciated seeing as currently people get sent on wild goose chases back and forth between both.

Mining is primarily handled by the System Modification Developers. Since is currently rather busy, would be good to approach on matters of mining.

Economy is done separately, and as mentioned in that thread, is handled by .

Thanks for asking, Jammi. It was a good question

[Teerin]

So, the post I had prepared for yesterday is still in the drafting stage, and will have to wait until next week. Meanwhile, I'll make a simple post here for this week.

"What can I do to help?"
"Do you need more devs?"

People seem to ask a lot if we need more people to make progress go faster. As far as Storyline, Infocards, and Effects (EDIT: Danny says we need more effects people now) go, we're fine. A few more people willing to learn how to modify systems would be great, as would someone who understands FL's economy. PvP Balancers and independent ship modelers would be excellent to have, and we're currently working on a list of models that we actually need (as oppose to people making new stuff randomly). Oh, and of course, does anyone know a lot of C++ or C? Because FLHook is based off of that ...

Basic candidate qualifications
- Minimal bias, and/or the ability to shelve bias (note: awareness =/= bias)
- Willingness to work outside of their local region(s)
- Having people skills. Patience, politeness, etc.
- Basic competency in your job
- Ability to admit mistakes made, and willing to be wrong / see the other side in an argument
- Being organized, dependable, trustworthy, and able to take orders

If you think you have those, great. But if you don't show it well, it'll hard for us to know. Not all are absolutely required, although they're all good to have.

"How do I start work?"

Well, if you're looking to help out one of the six aforementioned positions (systems, effects, PvP, economy, models, FLHook), it's best to get in contact with a relevant developer and/or post your work in Mod Dev Requests (if you want something), Mod Content Submissions (if you have something), Mod General Discussion (to discuss an idea), or in the Developers Forum (if it doesn't go elsewhere).

Player Requests is NOT for Development related posts.

After you've spoken to a dev or three and shown us some of you work, we'll likely begin discussing whether to add you to the dev team. If we do, yay; if not, don't take offense to our decision. Also note that there are a handful of people who currently do minor or part time dev work without having gold user names.

Feel free to ask questions, make comments, point out errors in this post, provide constructive criticism, reply with interest, start working on something, continue browsing the forums, vote for Richard Nixon, conspire with friends, or give thanks for the time we spend. Keep in mind, we're busy people. Your consideration here is much appreciated.

[Teerin]

Posted a model guidelines thread for this week. Wanted ships are included at the bottom.

Leave comments here.

[Kauket]

I wonder if we're able to submit sketch designs/mainly for modeller inspiration and then have a 'response' thread with a model - and not literal 3d models 'sketches'?

say, post 1, shows sketches for ideas
another guy comes posting in, post 2, their modelled ship inspired from it

cause I always see the problem of the person spending a lot of time on a model, only for it to be rejected after spending so much time creating the model, the materials, etc. which only demotivates the modeller, and wastes their time.

also would be nice to seperate the 'wanted' between the 'done' and 'remodel' into their own list, should it get any larger
eg:

wanted

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remodel/replacement

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awaiting implementation

[Sciamach]

I don't mean to start a trend here but can we have someone take a serious look at the Outcast Capital line?

Please?

Just about every model present from cruiser and above is either worthless with several glaring issues, and where the model itself wasn't lazy, light, gun, and engine hardpoints seem even more haphazardly thrown on. I know this is less of a modeling issue but I've got about 2/3 people that are talking about possibly remodeling the Ranseur because of how bad it is. If I can coordinate that particular facade and get an improved models with suggested hardpoints, could these issues finally be fixed?

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[Oldum]

After @Durandal changing your nombers to this :

Ballpark Polycount Numbers
- Fighters (LF, HF, VHF, SHF), Bombers, & Freighters (≤ 650 cargo): ~2,000 to ~3,000 polygons
- Transports, Liners, & Gunboats: ~3,000 to ~5,000 polygons
- Destroyers, Cruisers, Battlecruisers: ~5,000 to ~8,000 polygons
- Battleships, Dreadnoughts, Carriers: ~8,000 to ~12,000 polygons

I'd like to know how do you guys plan to make a 5k transport and a GB , not to mention liners from the same polycount ? I dunno if you was what I cooked in teh back yards for OSC , but 2 of those are already 10.5k poly , and I still felt I didn't make then detailed enough. Thank god I stopped there.
Also, could you explane why we are still playing with these extra low poly models ? Cause I've been lurking around the internet and saw 140k poly models being handled my Freelancer engine pretty well. So unless you are assuming everyone is playing on toasters from 1980's, could you tell me ? Serriously, I'm curious.

[Karst]

Since this thread is about transparency, I guess I may as well ask here.
I'd like to know what happened to the mining fixes that were originally submitted in August, and corrected a few times to account for mod changes.

From what Vipex told me, they had to check if there's any errors or problems in the files.
Now I understand that of course, but I can't imagine it would take more than half an hour or so to do so.
Certainly not several months.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's frustrated with stuff like Uncut Diamonds having been buffed for well over a year now.

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[Mao]

CR already had a Battleship (Kronos) but they changed back to Zephyr because the Carrier was more suitable to their doctrine. What changed? Why is an exiled minor nation in need of a Battleship again after only a few years since they scrapped the Kronoses? I imagine this is a request from the official faction. Was there any RP prior to this?

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[Moberg]

I'm currently in the middle of reworking mining routes and field distribution, which is going to solve a number of problems. And yes, checking it can take more than half an hour if you don't want to miss the majority of potential issues, which I'd like to avoid.

This is obviously going to take a while. Remember that Echo only recently handed the job over to me, and getting up-to-date configs from the server for a better overview sadly took quite a while.
So just display enough patience. It's done when it's done. Nothing will change that.

Luckily, it's the only Disco-related thing I'm working on at the moment besides the guide, so that'll help with the speed.

Since this thread is about transparency, I guess I may as well ask here.
I'd like to know what happened to the mining fixes that were originally submitted in August, and corrected a few times to account for mod changes.

From what Vipex told me, they had to check if there's any errors or problems in the files.
Now I understand that of course, but I can't imagine it would take more than half an hour or so to do so.
Certainly not several months.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's frustrated with stuff like Uncut Diamonds having been buffed for well over a year now.