Something quite wrong about our development team

Content and general development discussion, including quest scripts and server code. TMW Classic is a project comprising the Legacy tmwAthena server & the designated improved engine server based on evolHercules.


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kr0n05931
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Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by kr0n05931 »

I've noticed that the people with git access are all programmers. And out of all of them, the only artist is Crush, who never commits anything art related.

We shouldn't leave the opinions on art to the programmers. Sure, they may not be blind, but if you don't have any art contributions to the game, you really need to keep your mouth shut when it comes to matters of perspective, color, photorealism, etc.

The artists should be committing art and giving the final opinions, not the programmers. I don't like it when I'm told by a person with no artwork-based contributions to the game how I should do things, and they certainly wouldn't like it if I told them that their code sucked, with no prior experience in that language.

Do you see the point of how frustrating this is? Look what happens when programmers take control of the artwork, here. It's utter chaos.

It wasn't until that I got advice from an artist that things got done: here.

Do y'all now see the difference when artists help artists, and programmers don't help artists?

If you don't believe me that programmers leading artists is a bad idea, let's switch the roles of the two. Let's let the programmers with no art experience commit only art, and let's let the artists with no programming experience commit the code. Needless to say, you'll end up with a Chocolate Cupcake product.


The bottom line is that we need more active artists with git access. Reinstate Rotonen's git access, and give it to Fother and Black Don, as well.

By the way, this is offtopic, but how did axltrozz come to get his svn access? He never completed anything, whereas Fother and Black Don have completed vast amounts of artwork, but haven't gotten crap to show respect, or a job well done. :|
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by kr0n05931 »

(10:37:07) Kage_Jittai: Grant-A: did you want to learn C++
(10:37:15) Kage_Jittai: Grant-A: if you want Ill help you
learn it
(10:37:22) Kage_Jittai: so you can become a developer
Clearly, developer is now the same thing as coder. This is not right.


You can post 5 pieces of code, and get git access. However, you can post a multitude of art, and never get Chocolate Cupcake. Not even a job well done. A lack of appreciation such as this can kill artists off quickly. Ever wonder why we have so many programmers, but only a handful of artists? The programmers are worshiped like Gods, but the artists are treated like doormats by the programmers, despite having an equally hard job.


There should be two types of developer: Coder and Artist.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by John P »

How to get and keep artists
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=26396 <-Posted by Ces

I think 2 git-access artists are enough. Need the whole 'singular vision' thing. Though I am shocked to learn that Rotonen does not have git access :/

I am sorry you do not appreciate amateur opinion on art. People that are not talented in any means development still desperately would like to help, and that is how they feel they can do so. Their hearts are in the right place. You can take or leave opinion...

Programmers have that same special attachment to the game that artists do.

I appreciate you very very much by the way ;)
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by kr0n05931 »

John P wrote:I am sorry you do not appreciate amateur opinion on art. People that are not talented in any means development still desperately would like to help, and that is how they feel they can do so. Their hearts are in the right place. You can take or leave opinion...

Programmers have that same special attachment to the game that artists do.
I understand that, but it's different with the developers. Lately, a few of them have been quite condescending.
<Jaxad0127> You need to finish that apple, Len's doesn't fit in.
<Grant-A> Why should I?
<Jaxad0127> Because you owe it to us.
Then later in another channel:
<Grant-A> What do you mean Len's apple is perfect? Jaxad asked me to fix it earlier.
Jaxad0127 slaps Grant-A with sarcasm he doesn't understand.
That is paraphrased, of course, but still.

:(
I appreciate you very very much by the way ;)
Atleast one person appreciates the artists. :?
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Bertram »

Hi there,

As an old TMW dev coming and going through this project from a long time ago,
I hope you'll read my humble opinion about it :mrgreen: .

Well, first of all, I'm also shocked that Rotonen doesn't even has got access in GIT, at least the client data repository.
:arrow: This needs to be done by respect to him, that I agree.
The fact is that I can't myself give access, but has Rotonen asked to get access already? Maybe he simply should if he hasn't. (Once again, I don't know if he has).

I also agree that Black Don and Fother J deserve GIT access to the client data repository. They've made great art content, but again, it's my own humble opinion, and again, I don't even know if they simply asked for it...

Now for the 'devs rule the mana world' subject. It's all a question of history:
- The first submitters to the project were all developers. The website, the first server, the first arts were all followed by them, and then the community grew up, and roles slowly had to be split up between art, other game content and code devs.
- Now about the fact that developers are condescending. Please, you told it yourself, maybe a few of them were sometimes.
I don't know anything about Jaxad or Kage personality, but again, you quoted to or three sentences form irc as evidence. That's at least bad journalism without any context. And as for myself, I saw their work just the past few weeks, and they're giving their best.

Ah, and once again, the one deciding about art and code dev access are Bjorn, Platyna, and Elven. And I know they aren't to prove themselves as administrators. I also know that Rotonen and them can speak freely, that's why I think Rotonen doesn't even care about access because he knows his opinion is heard, sooner or later.

Remember, we're all in the same team.

Now, without any further admitted complains, I agree about the fact art has got limited access.

Here is a proposal, made from your opinion, which I think is true about access, and Rotonen's own proposal:

- Create a main Forum thread about art, with read access only to non-art users. There, art makers will be able to speak to each other without the pain of ungraceful comments from trolling or unpolite people.
-> The person deserving this access are, (I may forget somebody): Rotonen, Black Don, Fother J, AxlTroll, Jetryl, and you Krono.

- Create mantis access to art people who haven't, at least to upload comment and art piece candidates.

- Give GIT access to client data to Rotonen, and the ones worthy based on a common decision, reflecting the Mantis access, so that art can be task-oriented.

The ones deserving access to one thing or another will always have to ask for it first of all, as devs do for git and mantis access, etc...

I hope this make thing clearer.

Regards,
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Turmfalke »

http://gitorious.org/tmwart would be the better repository I think.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Bertram »

I agree Turmfalke.

Then, the content managers should take the relay to put things into the client data.

But here is the main question, who has been set to be a content manager?
I see at least Rotonen, but are there other people taking care about inserting content and making balancing?

Have a nice day.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Turmfalke »

Jax, Kage and Fate
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Rotonen »

I have not and never will handle practical level administrational tasks in regard of repositories -> no access to me, thank you.

The bigger problem here is that who gets to decide what goes in the game. Currently people just pick stuff they see fit to go into the game the players see. I've wanted to form a committee with weekly meetings for this but it never caught on and the initiative has since been mostly forgotten. Mostly my propositions are seen as too organized and tying down with positions and almost corporate schemes of management. This might be overkill for our project, I admit.

I see myself as the gardener of the art project (for TMWServ), not the person developing the current pseudo content we have. For the current content out there as we speak there has never been any proper quality control. Our project has never really had defined authority over things.

I admit that if it would go through me to the game, there would be about 5% of the stuff there currently is in the game.

Also you're forgetting Len from the list of pixel art savvy people.

Ultimately we're building a world here from my perspective. We've so far progressed about 0% of that goal in the past 5 years. Why? We got stuck on the backstory and the world never got defined properly. At least there is hope on the horizon for a change.

So, from my point of view:

1) Define the world
2) Define the tilesets we need to portray this (landscape, towns, cities, caves, everything)
3) Briefly conceptualize what these should look like without getting stuck on details
4) Pixel the world

That should cover the tileset work and that is the route I've always wanted to take, but it has failed due to a lot of factors (and sometimes just plain old me).

As for monster development for this, I'd like to get simple food network plans for each area (plant - herbivore - carnivore). This was started in 2005 but has died since.

Let's lock our target and make our life a lot easier than the current stumbling in the dark.

(Now that we did offtopic in GFX dev, let's do that properly, eh?)
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Jaxad0127 »

@kr0n05931: How many times do I have to say that I'm not going to comment on art any more before you stop dragging me through all of this again? Once again, stop badgering me to get the situation changed. I have no power. Bjørn does.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Bertram »

Rotonen,

I'm so glad to get your point about all this:
Rotonen wrote: I've wanted to form a committee with weekly meetings for this but it never caught on and the initiative has since been mostly forgotten. Mostly my propositions are seen as too organized and tying down with positions and almost corporate schemes of management. This might be overkill for our project, I admit.
:arrow: I thought this was instanced a lot of time ago...
Mostly for now, I would say that art committees would just help to get informed of what is being done.
To welcome newcomers, ...
Rotonen wrote: So, from my point of view:

1) Define the world
2) Define the tilesets we need to portray this (landscape, towns, cities, caves, everything)
3) Briefly conceptualize what these should look like without getting stuck on details
4) Pixel the world
:arrow: That would be the case in real good project with people paid for working on it :lol:
1) Define the world
:arrow: Here are the known links about it:
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Backstory
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Geography
...
What is left to be defined, precised, completed? Maybe, we can come to a compromise by defining
precisely one region at a time, and treat regions like GFX: [WIP], [FND], ...

2) Define the tilesets we need to portray...
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Geography
This page provides the main island with terrain type. I think it can easily extended to tell which tilesets you need.

3) Briefly conceptualize what these should look like without getting stuck on details
:arrow: That's the bad part. There must be conceptual things around there, but they need to be gathered in these pages, completed and improved. What do you think about it?

4) Pixel the world
:!: That's what everybody is doing without (usually) have a look at the first three steps... That I agree.

I would add a point myself taken from different threads:
0) Add all the needed actions to the playerset. That would define much more clearly the equipment set (That's obvious). And I know it's one of your priority, upon which I agree.

Now, about world making objectives, I would like to tell you a few things about it:
1. I think that someone has to push the main decisions on about what is to be done in priority concerning art making, what is to be accepted or rejected, and I think that the one who decide should be the Art Head, I mean it should be you, because someone must do it, and you're clearly the one having a precise opinion upon how to do it.

2. Secondly, you need at least Mantis access to get the GFX pixeling be task-oriented, to provide feedback, reject or accept GFX/SFX/Concept/... submittings by setting issues to confirmed or closed, etc...

3. Art maker must have forum part where they will be able to put projects peacefully, without neither trolling, nor bad comments. And where you'll have also to decide who can enter, and who cannot.
then, you should organize your art's heaven forum reflecting the point you want to develop with clear priorities...

Everybody must find me very directive :wink: . Anyway, that's my thought about it.

Regards,
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Rotonen »

Bertram wrote:
Rotonen wrote:I've wanted to form a committee with weekly meetings for this but it never caught on and the initiative has since been mostly forgotten. Mostly my propositions are seen as too organized and tying down with positions and almost corporate schemes of management. This might be overkill for our project, I admit.
:arrow: I thought this was instanced a lot of time ago...
Mostly for now, I would say that art committees would just help to get informed of what is being done.
To welcome newcomers, ...
Yes, having a clear view of what exactly is going on helps both contributors and management stay both focused and motivated.
Bertram wrote:1) Define the world
:arrow: Here are the known links about it:
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Backstory
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Geography
...
What is left to be defined, precised, completed? Maybe, we can come to a compromise by defining
precisely one region at a time, and treat regions like GFX: [WIP], [FND], ...
From the viewing point of designing landscape, not much. From the viewing point of designing cities and equipment: culture. As in what countries are out there.

John P is the author here. So far we have a collection of ideas and at least I'm rather clueless about which of those to combine into something sensible and usable for long term development and expansion.
Bertram wrote:2) Define the tilesets we need to portray...
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Geography
This page provides the main island with terrain type. I think it can easily extended to tell which tilesets you need.
Provided we are going to use the map in question. For me that map does not tie to anything. Sure we can just take a map and go with it, at this point it does not really hurt as long as we get the job done.
Bertram wrote:3) Briefly conceptualize what these should look like without getting stuck on details
:arrow: That's the bad part. There must be conceptual things around there, but they need to be gathered in these pages, completed and improved. What do you think about it?
The historical problem here was that our backstory artists kept on a multi-directional tug-of-war about the backstory so the conceptual artists got fed up with it and left. Also there was a lot of frustration from the pixel artists choosing to ignore both the conceptual art and direction and just doing things on their own. This resulted in for example the desert (for which I had art done in 2004-2005, but which is now heavily invalidated by the shifted backstory).
Bertram wrote:I would add a point myself taken from different threads:
0) Add all the needed actions to the playerset. That would define much more clearly the equipment set (That's obvious). And I know it's one of your priority, upon which I agree.
We have Fother working on that, but in the current environment he is too afraid to post any progress publicly to avoid being chewed by the community.
Bertram wrote:Now, about world making objectives, I would like to tell you a few things about it:
1. I think that someone has to push the main decisions on about what is to be done in priority concerning art making, what is to be accepted or rejected, and I think that the one who decide should be the Art Head, I mean it should be you, because someone must do it, and you're clearly the one having a precise opinion upon how to do it.
I would let this be for the current server and just sensibly build up the TMWServ content, starting up from the tutorial island. We're planning on controlledly releasing content for TMWServ with level caps bit-by-bit so this is the approach I'm recommending. Much less work than trying to salvage the eAthena based effort which has no long term future to begin with. It has done a good job of attracting testers for the client technology.

I've lately been interested in organization again due to TMWServ looming closer (or so they tell me).
Bertram wrote: 2. Secondly, you need at least Mantis access to get the GFX pixeling be task-oriented, to provide feedback, reject or accept GFX/SFX/Concept/... submittings by setting issues to confirmed or closed, etc...
AFAIK I have that. The trick is in getting non-technical artists to go along with it. Mostly they cannot be arsed with it and see it as administrational overhead which has nothing to do with them. For this we need someone to act in-between and I don't have the time to run after every single piece of art. Wombat so far has offered to act as something of sorts to fit the role.
Bertram wrote: 3. Art maker must have forum part where they will be able to put projects peacefully, without neither trolling, nor bad comments. And where you'll have also to decide who can enter, and who cannot.
then, you should organize your art's heaven forum reflecting the point you want to develop with clear priorities...
With this I agree. Perhaps a sub-forum of GFX dev to which only a selected few can post, but everyone can read it? (At the moment about 70% of the time I spend on TMW is spent deleting posts from GFX dev. I do spend 10h+ weekly trying to provide a platform on which to build, so it is getting very tiring. Also if I'm not there to moderate for a while, things usually go haywire.)
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Black Don »

I have never asked for or wanted git access. People show me respect by how they treat me when they talk to me. I have not read this thread expect for the first post because it used my name. Please refrain from using my name to further any personal agenda's in the future as I find this very distasteful and rude to do with out asking for the said persons permission first.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by kr0n05931 »

So far, I rather like what Bertram and Rotonen have been conversing about. This still doesn't resolve the fact that all of the people with upper-level access to art are programmers, though. The TMWart repository is simply a place to store .xcfs and unfinished art. It doesn't really have any connection to the game. Is there a way that artists could be given access to specifically the graphics part of the tmwdata repository, without access to the other parts?

@Jaxad0127: That still doesn't exclude your extremely rude and condescending behavior from the past. If you truly didn't want anything to do with it, you wouldn't have said anything "sarcastically" in the past.

@Black Don: I'm sorry you feel that way, but I was just recognizing you as a great artist and a very active person in the project. It was only a nomination, you didn't have to take it. Also, I didn't even mention myself as a nominee in the topic. How would that be furthering my own agenda? The purpose of this topic was to figure out a way to better the management structure of The Mana World in the terms of art, and also to illustrate some of the attitudes of the developers.

@Bertram: There's not really much else to be said about those quotes. That's really all the context there was.
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Re: Something quite wrong about our development team

Post by Black Don »

ahhh ... any time you go and say how you think things can be done better would be "promoting your agenda". And I not sure you have given any proof of what Crush has done wrong. As for not committing anything new, I guess we could ignore all the work he did on the Grave Yard tile set.
As for my experiences with Crush I would have to say that he is the person who has given me the most helpful advice to making my art look better and improve my skills over the time I have been here.
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