Where is the development?

[Grizzly]

The new and old devs in this thread have been mentioning that a lot of the time they are busy working fixing back end problems and bugs etc etc. Is this because the gamemode code gets passed around like a porn star in a gang bang. Never in one persons hands for too long so good coding for someone may be totally illegible for another. Therefore a lot of devs (If I am not mistaken) spend a lot of time re-organising and fixing errors made by past devs and yes that is totally fair and it needs to be done. However this just shows years of mistreatment in the gamemodes coding, causing the root of lack in updates as of recent. I think even if the devs are primarily focusing on bug fixes a set in stone road plan that shows where the updates and new content is coming and what it is, will be great even if it takes a while as behind the scenes fixes are top priority.

[Edned]

The new and old devs in this thread have been mentioning that a lot of the time they are busy working fixing back end problems and bugs etc etc. Is this because the gamemode code gets passed around like a porn star in a gang bang. Never in one persons hands for too long so good coding for someone may be totally illegible for another. Therefore a lot of devs (If I am not mistaken) spend a lot of time re-organising and fixing errors made by past devs and yes that is totally fair and it needs to be done. However this just shows years of mistreatment in the gamemodes coding, causing the root of lack in updates as of recent. I think even if the devs are primarily focusing on bug fixes a set in stone road plan that shows where the updates and new content is coming and what it is, will be great even if it takes a while as behind the scenes fixes are top priority.

Yeah, we're ditching the gamemode and breaking this cycle for that reason. Trying to make something with guidance and documents. Of course that doesn't appear in the changelog. Meanwhile we're also trying to fix existing problems.

[De CodeerHeer]

Even though I haven't made "fresh" content for the players to use. I have been extremely busy for the admin side of the community, providing them with a new AdminCP in less than two weeks when the old one was lost with the data. Now I am working mainly on stuff behind the scenes. And projects we eventually roll out to the public. It's not that I am not doing anything.

I like helping the community in the way that I can. Fearless provided me lots of joy back in 2015 when I joined. And I want to help the community in the way that they helped me evolve into who I am. Keep that experience available for the next generation.

[Rylund]

As I am part of the Developers I believe I can give some insights and also counter some of your arguments as some of them are...

To reply to OP, read what I wrote about half a month ago: https://fearlessrp.net/showthread.php?ti...#pid850734


@'Syntax' contributor applications are mainly handled by the Contributor liaison or the SA developer if the contributor liaison is not responding in a timely manner. In your case, Conn actually responded to your application within 5 hours and gave you a task by then, your last task was given 10 days after your application was posted, which you finished the same day, in fact, you finished all tasks same day as you received them. I believe it was shortly after finishing the last task that you deleted your application, which then renders the application as retracted. I believe you messaged Conn after some time asking about the application, I can't exactly tell as your application is still deleted to this day.


Falcon I can only agree with your last post, I personally am not motivated by getting any form of payment, the amount I can make from a gmod community like FL would not be anything compared to what I get for working more hours at my job. About 3 weeks ago I wrote to Divey about the motivation in the team, how we felt like he was not owning up to his promises and such, here you have a small draft from what I said (We had a long discussion forth and back about motivation and activity, perhaps I'll upload the whole conversation)






Dimitris coming with criticism is no way what developers get demotivated by, in fact getting criticism is only healthy and everyone should know that criticism is something you should be able to take. If you want to criticize an update go ahead, however, don't go and throw shit and be like "This update is pure shit, should never have been made", saying something along those lines is just shitting on developers and not what I would call criticism. If you want to get something out of it, perhaps having a different approach would be helpful: "I don't like part XYZ of this update because of ... I believe the update would have been better if it had been approached like ...". That kind of criticism is something that can be used and taken in, we would know how to act on it and know WHY you felt like the update was not in your taste.
An example could be the property system which I made back in the day, people did not like the fact you had to go to an NPC to purchase a property, did we go cry about the fact you didn't like that even though a ton of hours was used on making it? Not exactly, the NPC was removed and the ability to purchase a property at the doors was introduced. (Not by me, but Avgar due to my resignation) The core of the property system was kept as people liked that, but the part people did not enjoy was removed because the community wanted it that way.


@'JohnJong' For the first part of your message, read my reply to Dimitris, pretty much the same situation.
While you've given a comment about Developers, I can tell you that you don't have the full picture of what is going on, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame for that. How should you know what is going on behind the scenes if we never communicate to you, I can't exactly say what other developers are working on as it is their own choice to do so if they want to.
Awestruck: Got a job to take care of, other than that I am not too sure.
Broccoli: Not too sure, been working on Contra update.
CodeKnight: CodeKnight got a work to take care of, and on top of this he also got someone to take care of when he comes home from work. Despite this, CodeKnight is currently working on something behind the scenes, I can't reveal this as it is not my project and thus not my area to talk about.
He also made an AWESOME new AdminCP where both Admins and Developers can do things. This is something that should have been done ages ago, but we never really had any good web developers. - One more thing you will not hear about, it just improves the workflow of admins & developers.
Conn: Conn has been busy finishing some school work lately, on top of this he is quite busy in real life as it is right now with something else.
DarkN00b: Disappeared from the face of the earth
Rylund(me): I personally study full time and have a work part-time to pay for my bills, I am home for a couple of hours a day in the periods where I have school and work. The reason you've not seen that much to me is due to my exam period (May & June) and then I've mainly done Bug fixes and exploit fixes in end-June/July.
I did suggest doing a huge update internally, this project has been canceled though, I'll write a bit about it further down.
Edned: Got a job to take care of, on top of this he is also studying.
Saying Edned did small fixes is not true, he has been managing the servers, done a ton of work behind the scenes by improving the security and backend of FL dedicated / website. Not exactly doing nothing as you claim.
Tomo: Not exactly a developer, his focus should be more of the admin side of things as Conn is the main supervising Developer. But to keep this on topic of inactivity, Tomo is also quite busy by having a full-time job.


Alphaverse I can only agree with what you say, if contributors are not treated equally I can understand why people like you would not be motivated. I can't really speak from personal experience as I've never been a contributor.
It is key to get informed of both good and bads, everyone who has had a job would probably know this. Getting a high-five when you did something exceptional is a powerful and cheap motivator, at the same time it is also perfectly fine to talk with people about what they could have done better. Communication is key.


Arkten Bullseye, you have been here and you know exactly what is going on (At least until you left)
The gamemode is shit and outdated and is filled with things that do exactly the same thing, plus things that are awful for performance.

Spoiler: lol

player.GetBySteamID() anyone??

So now that I've given a short reply to pretty much every point in this thread, I might as well give an insight into what is happening behind the scenes and why it seems like nothing is going on. We were working on a huge project by deciding to recode the whole gamemode where we would develop it after set standards and have all code reviewed by multiple developers to ensure quality. On top of this everything would have been documented to make it easier for future developers to pick up the gamemode and develop something for it. How big is this project exactly? Considering our current gamemode got 130 000 lines of code in .lua files, I'd say it is quite a huge project to take on. 
So what is the status of this project? We've pretty much put the project on hold due to the people working on this project feeling unappreciated and getting shit on for the time we spend on the project. The nail in the coffin? The last planned meeting we had, Divey was the one to say we should have the meeting and he came 45 minutes late to the meeting while being in Minecraft/having tea. As soon as he came into the meeting he decided to cancel the meeting because we were only a few developers there (mind you, all developers working on this project was present). We decided it was not worth to continue if that is how we are going to approach it, we've not had a meeting since that.

For people interested, I sent Divey this message after the whole situation explained above:

Spoiler: Message

I recently suggested a complete overhaul of the vehicle system which would hugely improve the performance on the server while adding a ton of features to our current vehicle system. Before working on this update, I required that payment would be necessary to get the update, mostly because Divey in his To Owner thread said he would begin paying developers, but also the fact that I had to outsource a developer with more experience within a specific part of the update. Considering the amount of work, the price was actually quite low, however, Divey was not willing to pay the amount required, hence the update was canceled. After some time he came back and said he would now be willing to pay the amount that I listed for the update. I am now unable to get the third party to agree to work on it for the price, as he also feels shat on now.


I am not writing this to shit on Divey, but I believe that you should get the full picture as to why things are as they are. We as developers do this to help the community, but if we are just going to get shit for absolutely anything we do, why should we spend our time on doing stuff? I know for a fact multiple developers are on the verge of resigning as it is simply not enjoyable to be working like this, I am one of those.

[Divey]

So now that I've given a short reply to pretty much every point in this thread, I might as well give an insight into what is happening behind the scenes and why it seems like nothing is going on. We were working on a huge project by deciding to recode the whole gamemode where we would develop it after set standards and have all code reviewed by multiple developers to ensure quality. On top of this everything would have been documented to make it easier for future developers to pick up the gamemode and develop something for it. How big is this project exactly? Considering our current gamemode got 130 000 lines of code in .lua files, I'd say it is quite a huge project to take on. 
So what is the status of this project? We've pretty much put the project on hold due to the people working on this project feeling unappreciated and getting shit on for the time we spend on the project. The nail in the coffin? The last planned meeting we had, Divey was the one to say we should have the meeting and he came 45 minutes late to the meeting while being in Minecraft/having tea. As soon as he came into the meeting he decided to cancel the meeting because we were only a few developers there (mind you, all developers working on this project was present). We decided it was not worth to continue if that is how we are going to approach it, we've not had a meeting since that.

For people interested, I sent Divey this message after the whole situation explained above:

Spoiler: Message

I recently suggested a complete overhaul of the vehicle system which would hugely improve the performance on the server while adding a ton of features to our current vehicle system. Before working on this update, I required that payment would be necessary to get the update, mostly because Divey in his To Owner thread said he would begin paying developers, but also the fact that I had to outsource a developer with more experience within a specific part of the update. Considering the amount of work, the price was actually quite low, however, Divey was not willing to pay the amount required, hence the update was canceled. After some time he came back and said he would now be willing to pay the amount that I listed for the update. I am now unable to get the third party to agree to work on it for the price, as he also feels shat on now.


I am not writing this to shit on Divey, but I believe that you should get the full picture as to why things are as they are. We as developers do this to help the community, but if we are just going to get shit for absolutely anything we do, why should we spend our time on doing stuff? I know for a fact multiple developers are on the verge of resigning as it is simply not enjoyable to be working like this, I am one of those.

I would have appreciated a pm, but I'll make a statement on the forums considering it is now on there.
Snow has made a lot of good points in the statement, however the lesser half I have to reply to.

The lack of appreciation was never something anyone had raised an issue with up until this point. There was an open dialogue and for a large portion of the project it was put on hold due to you being busy with college and others having several commitments in their real life. I recall speaking to Conn on several occasions about wanting to wait for another meeting (to which we had several beforehand) in order to fully decide what we wanted to do moving forward. When it came to the meeting you referred to, I tried to organised it a week before, putting out polls for a date we could go to. A date was not officially set and on the day of the meeting the meeting was organised. I did not see the message about the meeting and after I realized you were talking I joined the voice channel after you had been in it for 30 minutes and expressed that I was eating my dinner and that I did not see the message (I was not playing Minecraft as many would like to believe).



After joining it was full of admins discussing rule changes among other things. I stated that I felt that we should have more of the staff here if we're going to make decisions and left and said we could have one another time. I even expressed to you that if we are to have a meeting, it should be officially organised days before it actually takes place - As you agreed with me:



After all this I was informed by Conn that the Developers felt as though we would be better of working on making the current game mode cleaner, rather than create one from scratch - As Arkten has originally tried to do before resigning.

After the conversation we had about motivation, I had stopped playing Minecraft for a time and put my effort into FL - showing my presence which was noted by yourself and others (I had only taken a 2 week break). You had discussed a vehicle overall and talked about money. I had messaged Conn about the prices and offered you a price close to what he thought was reasonable. After offering you the amount you had explained that it was not a fair price and to reconsider. I had then asked Avgar what he thought of the price and after several questions towards you, you had cancelled the project. You asked for $300 and I wanted to get more information on the project before I agreed to pay the fee. Of course I wasn't going to blindly state 'Of course, here's your $300'. Despite this, on the very same day I had spoken to you, I had actually stated that I would pay the $300, now that I have a better understanding of the project:



(Please note, what was not mentioned - he wanted to sell the project onto the GModstore as well for a cheaper price, however it would be coded differently to fit with DarkRP - Hence why I was asking questions to get a better understanding of the comparison between the amount of work needed for the GModstore version and the CityRP version)



After the message was sent you hadn't replied, so I decided to issue the same statement:



Overall, I'm sad you decided to make a statement against me when this all seems like a large misunderstanding. I know it's not an attack and I know we both want what's best for FL - but I felt as though it was unfair to leave certain facts out, hence why I made this post. I hope moving forward that we can have more of an open dialogue which eachother as a team and work forward in what our needs are and to allow each other to enhance our understandings so we can move FL forward not only in future updates but also in a kind and pleasant working environment.

[Jan]

Man I’ve always had respect for you and still do Rylund/SnowredWolf.

What a damn shame to see the clueless fools above you act like they know a thing.

Keep up the realness, if it doesn’t work out within FL give them the middle finger and do your own thing. Respect.

[Broccoli]

From my perspective, I've been working on the contraband update as a side project that was to be overshadowed by other developers work. I was going to work on it here and there and release it quietly but after a bunch of developers resignations, cancelled projects and such it seems like everyone was relying on me to release this update as Fearless' "Big Update" which put all the pressure on me (or so it felt like). My once little project had now turned into the Half Life 3 of updates where I'm having to put more effort and thinking into it than I had originally anticipated as it has been dragged out for so long and so hyped up that I don't want to disappoint the community.

Adding onto that, the database wipe we encountered really set things back. Not from a programming perspective but from a management one as all the information I had posted regarding the update and all the ideas had been wiped.

I plan within this week to release a thread about the update to get discussions and share my progress so stay tuned

[Pollux]

-snip-

-snip-

It was a fair price for what he was offering, currently FL uses a mix of VCmod and the gamemodes vehicle stuff which is a mess and isn't fit for what the community wants. We've had to deny so many suggestions in the past due to them not being possible with VCmod (DRM means hardly anything is possible) or how the gamemode currently handles vehicles (don't even get me started on that). From my understanding you said you'd rather buy it on gmodstore (the base system) as your reply to his offer, which is strangely excluded from the screenshots you provided. That also makes me wonder what else you decided to conveniently exclude to make snowred seem like the bad person here? It feels like you're trying to make it seem like he wanted 300 to make a gmodstore addon which we all know isn't true at all.

Back to the actual topic though, it's quite upsetting to see these issues pop up and then for you to put them down as if it's an overreaction. It isn't even the first time this has happened from you and I doubt it'll be the last either at this point. Back when I resigned after you got owner you told me that you were willing to prioritise development over anything else and you stated it being the most important thing you need, what happened to that? You promised to not get too involved in things and let "management" deal with issues together, yet it seems like Conn is the only one who has been carrying his own weight and then some? You've repeatedly shown in the past that you're not the best at managing development, work with Conn more as he understands that side of things. You didn't know if 300 was a fair price to pay snowred for that much work and I don't expect you to know as you're not a developer, did you ask Conn for his input at all?

You managed to somehow recover after you got owner and built up a new development team on a bunch of promises, you won't get another chance like that again. Please take their concerns seriously and talk to them as they're all you have left. No one here is saying you can't ever do anything that isn't FL related again, however you need to understand a lot of things are relying on you. Soul gave up owner as he realised FL needs someone more active than him, you can't just sit back like he did and expect it all to work out in the end. I'm not trying to just bash you either, just I feel like you work best from "harsh" criticism sometimes and you need to realise that you are going to run out of chances soon. Please prove me wrong and come back from all of this, make me seem like an idiot for resigning after you got owner and for posting this as that is pretty much all I want.

[Divey]

-snip-

-snip-

It was a fair price for what he was offering, currently FL uses a mix of VCmod and the gamemodes vehicle stuff which is a mess and isn't fit for what the community wants. We've had to deny so many suggestions in the past due to them not being possible with VCmod (DRM means hardly anything is possible) or how the gamemode currently handles vehicles (don't even get me started on that). From my understanding you said you'd rather buy it on gmodstore (the base system) as your reply to his offer, which is strangely excluded from the screenshots you provided. That also makes me wonder what else you decided to conveniently exclude to make snowred seem like the bad person here? It feels like you're trying to make it seem like he wanted 300 to make a gmodstore addon which we all know isn't true at all.

Back to the actual topic though, it's quite upsetting to see these issues pop up and then for you to put them down as if it's an overreaction. It isn't even the first time this has happened from you and I doubt it'll be the last either at this point. Back when I resigned after you got owner you told me that you were willing to prioritise development over anything else and you stated it being the most important thing you need, what happened to that? You promised to not get too involved in things and let "management" deal with issues together, yet it seems like Conn is the only one who has been carrying his own weight and then some? You've repeatedly shown in the past that you're not the best at managing development, work with Conn more as he understands that side of things. You didn't know if 300 was a fair price to pay snowred for that much work and I don't expect you to know as you're not a developer, did you ask Conn for his input at all?

You managed to somehow recover after you got owner and built up a new development team on a bunch of promises, you won't get another chance like that again. Please take their concerns seriously and talk to them as they're all you have left. No one here is saying you can't ever do anything that isn't FL related again, however you need to understand a lot of things are relying on you. Soul gave up owner as he realised FL needs someone more active than him, you can't just sit back like he did and expect it all to work out in the end. I'm not trying to just bash you either, just I feel like you work best from "harsh" criticism sometimes and you need to realise that you are going to run out of chances soon. Please prove me wrong and come back from all of this, make me seem like an idiot for resigning after you got owner and for posting this as that is pretty much all I want.

Completely agree! Hence why the offer is still there for the update at the original asking price

What I said to Snowred (after speaking with Avgar) was that I wanted to buy the base system for the same price he was asking for on the gmodstore - I wasn't trying to hide that, that's on my post (the screenshot with the highlighted text on it)  Snowred is in no way a bad person, I didn't want to make a public post nor did I really want this situation to be made public when we could have just spoken about it in more detail (we had already spoken about it prior but clearly not enough). But I understand why he would make the post, devs are demotivated and they get a bulk of hate from the community because of lack of updates which may not necessarily be their fault. Snow is one of the most talented members on our team at the moment and I appreciate him everyday for coming back and all the work he has done since (hence why I gave him his vet tags after being unbanned).

I don't think it's an overreaction, I simply believe it's a misunderstanding from both sides. I completely understand why my comments may have come across to Snow and maybe others as demeaning and under appreciative, which is something I have stated to Snow and others before (some of this is seen in my screenshots provided on my original post). And I stick by the fact that Development is the number 1 thing FL needs and will always be my number 1 priority. As much as I am sorry to Snow for comments I have made which made him and Lightbeer feel underappreciated, again - $300 is a large sum of money and as such, of course I wanted to make sure I fully understood the update before I agreed to it, I even made it clear I was open to it and obviously tried to resolve it once it had gone pear shaped.

Conn is the head of Development and I always go to him for Development related issues, he is amazing at taking a lead of the dev team and it's great to have someone in Development in an SA role, hence why I wanted a Dev to take upon the role. Unfortunately, the SA team have been had personal commitments so more of the work between the general management has fallen on me and Conn recently - which is perhaps why Conn may be feeling not only demotivated but also why he hasn't been able to spend as much time on the Dev side of things as he initially may of wanted (I know he's got a lot of things going on in his real life as well). As for the input, I stated in my original post 'I had messaged Conn about the prices and offered you a price close to what he thought was reasonable. After offering you the amount you had explained that it was not a fair price and to reconsider.'



I appreciate you taking the time to write this up anyway Pollux, I completely agree and really do value the current team we have. I think we have the best Development team we've had in a long time (missing you and Arny of course ahaha) and we definitely need to utilise this. Overall, I'm disheartened by nothing else but the fact that some Developers are feeling demotivated and unappreciated because of me. It shouldn't have to take an open post from a Developer for that to happen. As I said prior, Snow and I, among with other Devs have had conversations about motivation before and I believe we are getting there - but perhaps more work needs to be done

[Yonno]

Kiss and make up, yeah?