I dont get it!

[prsm]

I was talking to another player today and i had a moment!

We have heard for years that we need to develop a new game because
development cant continue on this server. For 4 years we have seen little to
nothing here for this reason!

Jesusalva comes a long, we have new hats, new bosses, new content.

What Jesusalva did is brought new players and old players back. Also lots
of new content. He seems to do stuff no one else can do.

Am I wrong? I just don't get it!

Prsm

[Livio]

We have heard for years that we need to develop a new game because
development cant continue on this server.

TMW Legacy is running on tmwAthena written with almost no comprehensible documentation and is not maintainable. Probably o11c was the only one capable of reading the code he written and his japanese comments on it.

For 4 years we have seen little to
nothing here for this reason!

I've seen people moving and playing on TMW2 (hercules)...
I've seen Micksha making graphics on new server...
Maybe there's something else I'm not aware of.

Jesusalva comes a long, we have new hats, new bosses, new content.
What Jesusalva did is brought new players and old players back. Also lots
of new content. He seems to do stuff no one else can do.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20943&hilit=mage#p160433
Why do we need to vote?
Changing magic offensive spells is a bit troublesome. Making so with an item, even more so.
I'll kinda hack the magic code! So only one spell will be boosted by this item.

More magic spells hacked = more mess, less stable code, more work, more time spent, and so on.
Why not more wands?
Wands code is too complex for my taste.

Jesusalva probably hasn't developed important parts of the server code itself but he worked on other files that the server will execute. Think of those like text documents not the text editor software itself.
He is the admin so I believe that he can direct the entire project with a good degree of freedom for what I know about him and TMw itself.
For what I've managed to understand many developers were mostly workers when Jesusalva should be a student right now. Spare time apart the pandemic lead him to get stuck at home and gave him the opportunity to have time to spend improving TMW Legacy instead of TMW2.
Gumi is rarely appearing lately so I guess that he is probably busy with completing the merge process into rEvolt server.
But I may be wrong. Probably his reply will follow with more accurate details about it.

[WildX]

Jesusalva is the one who keeps giving very good reasons why TMWA is not viable to introduce new features. All we can do is patch things up and introduce, as you said, a bunch of new items. This is not great long-term. New hats will get boring as they have in the past.

Talk to Jesusalva about it. I think there is more than enough discussion around here on why TMWA is outdated and why we need a new server. I think that repeating this stuff again and again won't change the minds of people who have already decided they are not going to change their mind.

P.S.
Also, especially out of respect for all the hard work that has been put towards developing a new server I think it benefits no one to keep advocating stagnation.

[tomminator]

You can look at the old server like it is your grandpa's old car. It still runs reliable but slow and don't take those corners to fast! The brakes and suspension will break if you do!

You can keep driving this car, but adding new stuff like a fancy air conditioning or automatic headlights are nearly impossible to add. Oh and take care to not overload the electric system!

So every developer knew this and said, well it might be a better idea to invest my time in this brand new car!

Then Jesusalva found some new tires in his basement. This will improve my grandpa's old car! and it only takes so much time to put them on!

Oh and these old spray paint cans, they will patch up all these rusty spots! I can skip some sleep for that!

And that's how the old server got some new content.

Of course it helps that Jesusalva basically doesn't sleep

[jesusalva]

Of course it helps that Jesusalva basically doesn't sleep

Hey, I take at least 4 or 5 naps with almost 2 hours in each during the whole day!
(rounded up, of course)

TMW Legacy is running on tmwAthena written with almost no comprehensible documentation and is not maintainable. Probably o11c was the only one capable of reading the code he written and his japanese comments on it.

(I suspect the japanese comments are from the original eAthena, so I can't even say if the comments make any sense at all, given they probably were written prior to 2005)

For what I've managed to understand many developers were mostly workers when Jesusalva should be a student right now. Spare time apart the pandemic lead him to get stuck at home and gave him the opportunity to have time to spend improving TMW Legacy instead of TMW2.

Don't tell people my secrets
(My uni decided to halt entirely its activities so I'm pretty much on an extended vacations, that too.)



Anyway, it is essentially everything everyone said. I liked a lot toams' example, I believe it pictures the situation pretty well.

(For curiosity, the thief path core in rEvolt is already available for testing; Along some basic faction stuff. Talk to Henry in Artis' hideout to begin.)
(Protip: There are two ways to invade the Archives)

[jak1]

thats true, & evol2 is based on eAthena, just ~2million commits later, and can get keept upToDate in just one pull and maybe some hpm changes in case we need it.
so the base is more a "we dont need to develop on it alone" & "we have players they are younger then the base of eAthena"
& we have much more possibilitys on the base herc/evol2 currently is, and in future its almost all possible

[Matt]

eAthena was supposed to be interim solution until, back then, tmwServ is finished

eAthena going strong for 16 years

[Hello=)]

TMW Legacy is running on tmwAthena written with almost no comprehensible documentation and is not maintainable. Probably o11c was the only one capable of reading the code he written and his japanese comments on it.

o11c did a lot of strange or even arcane things. But japanese comments weren't his . They come from original eAthena code . What o11c did is: he refactored code. Meanwhile he has been inclined on his own personal efficiency as coder so badly he did it in very high-profile C++. There is joke about C++ every coder speaks own C++; o11c been so inclined he ended up using strange approaches and C++ dialect nobody wants to deal with. I can't judge if it helped o11c's efficiency, but after years passed I think I can draw conclusion it prevented others from understanding code. One have to be more or less become o11c to deal with it reasonably. I guess it isn't easiest feat around though and so far it haven't really worked.

I would agree original eAthena code has been bugged crap, but at least it has been simple C that uses no high-profile arcane tricks or something. So others stood chance to understand it. Well, o11c got fed up with it in the middle - so TMWA is a funny mess of both that C, japanese comments, now also mixed up high-profile o11c's C++ to make it even more fun. On side note, try smth akin to rot13 on nickname (except offset is 1 rather than 13)... well, it can shed at least some light... (being goddamn efficient coder != success of beginnings and project it seems)

[Ledmitz]

My problem has never been changing servers. It's been losing things and time. Maybe only some of it will be lost in the end. I've been looking for an excuse to say this publicly though... I can be a pain in people's neck sometimes, but most always it's just for the game and players. Jesusalva knows this too well, I'm sorry to say, but he listens and has even either fixed or mostly fixed many things. I'll not forget his welcoming nature on IRC, nor his helpfulness when I have a question (that he doesn't forget to get back to ... lol). I do know the server needs to changed for performance reasons and that maps and mobs need not be exactly the same as now, but ought to be familiar and I think that will be the case from the little that I saw. I did try to logon to the Hercules test server for TMW last night, as Tezer431 suggested, but couldn't get on. I'll try again soon. As for this old car, Jes did a great job of keeping it rolling and I probably wouldn't be here if he hadn't reached out. (Ledmitz imagines many devs and even Jesusalva smacking the back of Jesusalva's head)

[prsm]

You can look at the old server like it is your grandpa's old car. It still runs reliable but slow and don't take those corners to fast! The brakes and suspension will break if you do!

You can keep driving this car, but adding new stuff like a fancy air conditioning or automatic headlights are nearly impossible to add. Oh and take care to not overload the electric system!

So every developer knew this and said, well it might be a better idea to invest my time in this brand new car!

Then Jesusalva found some new tires in his basement. This will improve my grandpa's old car! and it only takes so much time to put them on!

Oh and these old spray paint cans, they will patch up all these rusty spots! I can skip some sleep for that!

And that's how the old server got some new content.

Of course it helps that Jesusalva basically doesn't sleep

I like this quote the best, and i gave it time to soak in!

Grandpas car is getting old, and he drove me to the store to buy stuff in that car.
I bought clothes and furniture and books and we had great memories.

I get its time to get rid of that car, its old, I get that. But why do i have to get rid
of everything i bought in grandpas car? Its time for a new car, I understand!
But what i bought when i was in grandpas car has nothing to do with grandpas car!

That's my point!

Prsm

[Livio]

I like this quote the best, and i gave it time to soak in!

Tomminator gained 5000 EXP!

I get its time to get rid of that car, its old, I get that.

It's old, unsafe and costs too much to maintain. Try to get that too.

But what i bought when i was in grandpas car has nothing to do with grandpas car!

Unless is giving unnecessary weight and doesn't found room inside the new car you cannot take it in.
By the way I believe that someone is trying to work on that too but it requires time.
The usual story of few amateur mechanics working on designing a car being not paid nor endorsed from bigger manufacturers...

I bought clothes and furniture and books and we had great memories.

Yeah, I hope that 2018 will come back... Or a better year for you that lived that car more than me.
Still, I don't care if I lose what we bought with grandpa's car.
Nothing will make me lose memories of those great days.

[EJlol]

The thing is, all these things you bought have something to do with the car . The old car wasn't that big, and to make sure the furniture fitted inside we measured the car, measured the car doors, and bought one that fitted inside perfectly. If we had bought different furniture it wouldn't have fitted inside, and we wouldn't be able to transport it. By measuring exactly we even bought De Nachtwacht.

Now we are at the point that we are transferring the items to the new car. And even though the new car is bigger, the shape of the car is different, the chairs are bigger and more comfortable, etc. But these same chairs are in the way of putting back the furniture! We have to retrofit all the items we have. With De Nachtwacht we have the choice of either start a completely new painting, or well, take a knife and cut it . With most thing we have chosen to cut it to fit, and then extend it again by making new parts of the painting. We will have De Nachtwacht, and even though some parts are missing, we will make sure it will be better than ever when it is inside the new car!

While driving the old car we also collected many books. These books contains the player data. The new bookcase in our new car sadly also has a slightly different size and the problem is that we can't retrofit the books. We have to buy new books, and copy the pages of the old book on the pages of the new books. Since the page size is different, we have to carefully rewrite these by hand. Some sentences are moved to the next page to make sure it fits, sometimes it is easier to just rewrite the sentence. It's hard and difficult work, but we are trying our best to copy the pages. The point that I want to make here, we can't just photo scan/copy these books in, and print new ones, we really have to do work to make sure everything fits.

While reading the old books we also noticed some oil stains. It seems like the old car was leaking oil somewhere! (imbalanced game, bugs*, etc) Passengers used some books, and while using them, the oil leaked on some of the pages, making some of the pages unreadable. After using the books the passengers carefully put the books back, as instructed, but these stained pages dripped oil, and touched the other books too making them stained too (trading)! In short, these books are tainted. Most books have these oil stains, some only a few pages, some are completely soaked in it. Now we have a choice of buying new books and start over (as intended ~15 years ago), buy new books and write the most important pages in it, or buy new books, write everything in it including all these dirty oil stains! As you may imagine copying oil stains is quite hard. Even when do our best, the stains will still be a little bit different. It is impossible to get exactly the same oil stain. And you could ask yourself, do you want to have a dirty book? Do we want these oil stains? If we keep these, then the new books that we buy later will be stained by it too! To make sure the new car doesn't become dirty 'the best option' is actually by not bringing any books at all. And that includes your favorite book... ('the bes option' as in to keep the car clean, not as in what all the passengers want).

Simply said we try to bring everyone's favorite book, even if it has some oil stains, but we do have to rip out the worst parts. Partly because of the oil stains, and partly cause the new book wouldn't fit the new bookcase otherwise.

-- not really relevant to anything, just me being old: --
*Before when we just bought the car ~15 years ago, no one checked whether their hands were clean or had oil on it(abusing bugs), as we knew it was an old car, and we really didn't care, as we were saving up for the new car anyway. And with only the few books we had, the idea was to buy just new books... During that time there were even passengers (*cough* me */cough* just dipping their books in the oilcan...(Arrow machine gun, casino coins abuse, etc). At some point we had 'too many' passengers aboard and we started checking whether their hands were clean, and whether they were behaving well (GMs). Most of these old oil stains have been cleaned up during these years, but when we an oil stain we never can be certain who made the oilstain or where it came from... We thought it would be a short ride with the old car, but it became 15 years, and we got different insights what to do with the old books.

[WildX]

Following the great analogy, and it terms of player experience: you're finally buying a new car! Grandpa's car is still full of those beloved memories and you have enough space to keep it in your garage and go back to it whenever you want, but do you really want to take your new car and have its interior redone with scraps from the old one? Filling it with all the clutter of it? No! You want to enjoy that new car smell, experience the new leather seats, hear the crisp sound of the new horn. New friends who have never even seen Granpa's old car might want to ride in your new car that they've heard so much about. They may not be impressed if your new car has been modeled to look, feel and smell EXACTLY like that other old car in your garage.

[jak1]

ok, thats sounds more 'Roleplay' then we ever had inGame
clear: the reason to not get any items/lvl/quests/... for me is:

1. you miss features to your current lvl
2. some items are questbound, and you miss this quests
3. you are bored, and leave the new server

if the base would be 1/1, then it would make sense to get this items/lvl... and 'just' add new stuff, but most quests and features are different.

[Ledmitz]

When dealing with a game, I think it's best to be creative in finding solutions to problems. The solution should be in-game whenever possible so if items change, there should be a reason in the story line that the player can accept. When GP exploits of the past were found, really expensive items were created to give the player something to buy that was different. Although this means the player can have an item no one else has, it doesn't mean it has to give them an edge in the game. Those unique items are what players fight to get.

The Banshee machine-gun has to change, sure, but maybe the banshee spirit is no longer as strong as it was because of other factors. If you look up banshee on wiki, you see banshees are kin to particular families. If the originating family lost power by either dwindling in numbers, fast or slow, then there is at least a reason that it happened.

I've mentioned the Setzer bothered me different times for many reasons, like how it's made, what is added to it, it's final weight and why was it ever faster than bare hands without at least giving a magical explanation.
In short, the players need an in-game reason as to why Grandpa needs a new car or even why we can't stop at that same store to shop anymore.
I think Jesusalva and others have a few tricks up their sleeve for this, but IDK the final result, but story line is huge in getting the player's acceptance.