Where is Madmole? Are TFP staying with Unity? Someone fill in a vet who hasn't been here in a while please.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, NewGuy said:

 

You heard it here first! Water pots 12/25/23 or earlier! Thanks for the info leak, Roland.

 

All part of my plan to sell "Coal for Roland's Stocking" at a nice markup!

 

Link to my online store pending announcement that Water Pots have been canceled.

[NewGuy]

19 hours ago, bdubyah said:

He didn't specify which Christmas...

 

Dammit, I forgot how clever and crafty he is.

19 hours ago, Roland said:

 

All part of my plan to sell "Coal for Roland's Stocking" at a nice markup!

 

Link to my online store pending announcement that Water Pots have been canceled.

I've got a truckload of coal already saved up from a lifetime of being an @%$#. Maybe we could be business partners?

[pApA^LeGBa]

21 hours ago, Roland said:

....and now according to this thread, I've just promised that players will definitely be able to get water using a pot before Christmas.

 

I would even bet money that someone on the steam forums will mention that in the future. That´s why i don´t understand when devs even give out vague time frames. It always ends bad if there is just the slightest delay. Even just a day will trigger at least one idiot.

[meilodasreh]

On 10/6/2023 at 11:02 PM, Riamus said:

Besides, as others mentioned, everyone bugs him for estimated dates and when he gives them and they can't make the date, people complain.  It really isn't worth it for him to waste time

If that's the reason I have absolute sympathy for that.

I have quit participating in some other forum too (was a hardware test site where people also could ask for help when they didn't get something to run properly).

Was a cool time and indeed very satisfying for me, when I could figure out the problem and people came back and told "hey thank you that worked out now everything is fine"

But things grew more and more poisonous over time, and often a thread where somebody needed help developed fast into some offtopic controversy between different opinions on how to do stuff. Every time you made a suggestion someone came up with "that's not the way to do it blablabla". 

And also the amount of childish fanboy behaviour grew terribly, that was the worst.

So one day I realized that it wasn't fun anymore, and I was "why am I still doing this, putting my free time into this now mostly annoying "job". 

And so I stopped.

 

And btw I want to express my highest respect for people like @Roland and @meganoth and the other mods.

Thanks for still being here and endure us 🙂

 

 

[Roland]

On 10/7/2023 at 5:00 PM, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

I would even bet money that someone on the steam forums will mention that in the future. That´s why i don´t understand when devs even give out vague time frames. It always ends bad if there is just the slightest delay. Even just a day will trigger at least one idiot.

 

"Triggering idiots 2016 - present" is now on my resume.

[Koishi]

Reading all this i sense a huge disconnect in the team between the programmers/engineers and the artists/designers.  The software side isn't managed properly whether it's lack of a decent lead or in fighting or whatever else.  It's plain as day to anyone whom is into making game systems and happens to read their code.  Implementing new features is going to be very difficult with the current general architecture giving any kind of deadline would be pretty difficult on top that it's normally risky to begin with.  We need a lead engineer to talk on the forums to actually get an idea what's going on much like I stay in contact with the community for my own project, I can actually give mechanical insight and be held accountable for dumb mistakes even if it's an opensource project.  Unless your ideas guy happens to be your lead designer and lead engineer, he's not the reliable source to mention what's going to happen or not.  The entire reason i got into software instead of just game design is because i've realized i want very difficult to achieve things and no one else is going to do it for me, you have to be in the trenches to really gauge the possibilities.  For a project like this the main job of someone who's leading the software team is to understand game systems engineering and general architecture, and two is someone who goes to the lead designer and say "no we can't accomplish this with our current architecture" or "to accomplish your desired X we need Y time to do Z rework"

I'd also like to add that realistically for stuff like this you're better off abstracting away from the backend engine you're using unless there's very good reason not to, even if it's UE, it makes porting easier, makes the API generally more clean and easy to understand, usually helps iteration times to least with statically compiled langs.  A lot of devs are only recently learning the value of this somewhat thanks to unity's situation, though legally speaking if they stick to the version of unity they are using there shouldn't be issue, if there is, well it wouldn't really hold up in court.  Changing ToS for an existing software you already use isn't really supposed to be a thing.  Anyway though to really achieve what they want in the end eventually they are going to need to peal away from unity if they want to "go gold" as they put it.  That's non negotiable.  But it doesn't have to happen off the bat all at once.  It can be a more gradual process if they are determined to stick to the Actor/CS mixed pattern.  And like maybe that'll be sufficient if they don't plan on supporting 10+ playercount servers and more than a few hundred zeds.  You'd ditch this entirely and go data oriented if you were reaching for the multi thousands of zed like NPCs like I am.  Eventually they'll need to rip away from Entity.tick() anyway though and put more and more things in their own game system like a proper product would, it's not just runtime, this is an architectural change which for genres of games like this makes it vastly easier to maintain.  CS/Actor in their more conventional forms where you're not batching such as this game, only really works for very small projects or game jams or such.  It has a very quick time to prototype, with a downward trend in maintainability and thus not just time to add new features or bug fix, but runtime as a whole is a consequence, and adding more features typically harms runtime indirectly sadly.  If you properly batch and take it data oriented least for this genre mix though, there's theoretically an unlimited number of new things you can add without these problems or if there is a limit it's vastly outside the scope of anything any game's ever tried.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Koishi (see edit history)

[Maharin]

If I'm reading this thread correctly then the next TFP game will be entirely made by Roland using the Notreal engine and mostly be about pots in their various sizes and uses.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Maharin said:

If I'm reading this thread correctly then the next TFP game will be entirely made by Roland using the Notreal engine and mostly be about pots in their various sizes and uses.

 

I've binged the Barbie movie ten times so far writing down as much source material as I can. The next TFP game may or may not benefit from my work but I've definitely come to the conclusion that a movie co-staring Margot Robbie and Gal Gidot could be about anything and I just wouldn't care.

 

Wait...pots?

 

6 hours ago, Koishi said:

Reading all this i sense a huge disconnect in the team between the programmers/engineers and the artists/designers.

 

We are not weak-minded fools. Your Jedi mind tricks will not work on us.

[Koishi]

I'm sorry where is all this coming from?  Is there context am missing?

[Koishi]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Trying to figure out how to reply without quoting am sorry for that >.<  Look i realize I'm autistic as @%$# and I'm guessing you've been eating @%$# in general in the past.  I'd like to open up and honestly talk with ya 1 to 1 if you'd be ok with that.  Or in a public space whichever's more comfortable.  But somewhere that's a bit easier to dialog about and clear misunderstandings.  I can admit i'm a @%$#up a fair bit of the time but I do mean well and wish to actually contribute something and perhaps not as great as it could be there's probably something I can offer to the developers which is why am trying to make a bit of noise in the forums as of recent.  I did ask about you and someone mentioned you were a developer I think.  I've no idea how true that is but even regardless i can imagine you probably eat a lot of @%$# and might just be wary.  Please.  I can use critique for my social behavior i know it sucks, am really mostly wanting honest constructive dialog.

[Maharin]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

Wait...pots?

 

You know... cooking, chamber, telephone infrastructure, etc.

[Roland]

5 hours ago, Koishi said:

Trying to figure out how to reply without quoting am sorry for that >.<  Look i realize I'm autistic as @%$# and I'm guessing you've been eating @%$# in general in the past.  I'd like to open up and honestly talk with ya 1 to 1 if you'd be ok with that.  Or in a public space whichever's more comfortable.  But somewhere that's a bit easier to dialog about and clear misunderstandings.  I can admit i'm a @%$#up a fair bit of the time but I do mean well and wish to actually contribute something and perhaps not as great as it could be there's probably something I can offer to the developers which is why am trying to make a bit of noise in the forums as of recent.  I did ask about you and someone mentioned you were a developer I think.  I've no idea how true that is but even regardless i can imagine you probably eat a lot of @%$# and might just be wary.  Please.  I can use critique for my social behavior i know it sucks, am really mostly wanting honest constructive dialog.

 

No, it's all good. I was making a Star Wars reference joke based on your use of the word "sense". The TFP work environment is not anywhere close to the toxicity you are surmising.

 

The developers, artists, programmers, and QA staff are all very friendly, helpful, and collaborative with each other, and are in daily communication with each other on both business matters and fun outside-the-scope-of-work matters. Nobody is eating even a little bit of @%$#. Your attempt to analyze the inner-workings of TFP based on a thread full of posts by people not associated with TFP did make me smile and I suspect that you are projecting at least some of your own workplace experience/conditions into your view of what it must be like behind the scenes at TFP.

 

And I've never been hesitant about speaking my mind here on the forums...haha

 

Even if there were the problems you suspected, the owners would be more likely to seek help from professional consultants to improve the workplace culture than to comb the public forum of fans of their zombie game for advice. As a high school teacher, I work a lot with autistic folks and typically they just need to know when they've overstepped the bounds of appropriate social behavior or misunderstood subtle sarcastic humor as sincere earnest dialogue. I appreciate where you are coming from in your desire to help in any way possible but it isn't an appropriate gesture and it's not even necessary.

[Koishi]

17 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

No, it's all good. I was making a Star Wars reference joke based on your use of the word "sense". The TFP work environment is not anywhere close to the toxicity you are surmising.

 

The developers, artists, programmers, and QA staff are all very friendly, helpful, and collaborative with each other, and are in daily communication with each other on both business matters and fun outside-the-scope-of-work matters. Nobody is eating even a little bit of @%$#. Your attempt to analyze the inner-workings of TFP based on a thread full of posts by people not associated with TFP did make me smile and I suspect that you are projecting at least some of your own workplace experience/conditions into your view of what it must be like behind the scenes at TFP.

 

And I've never been hesitant about speaking my mind here on the forums...haha

 

Even if there were the problems you suspected, the owners would be more likely to seek help from professional consultants to improve the workplace culture than to comb the public forum of fans of their zombie game for advice. As a high school teacher, I work a lot with autistic folks and typically they just need to know when they've overstepped the bounds of appropriate social behavior or misunderstood subtle sarcastic humor as sincere earnest dialogue. I appreciate where you are coming from in your desire to help in any way possible but it isn't an appropriate gesture and it's not even necessary.

To be honest I'd be surprised if that's correct considering it's been ten years and on the front of actually getting anything done it's been extremely difficult.  Handling that and not being stressed would be impressive.  But to clarify my skill set it's game systems engineering and i've yet to see an ambitious project like this be taken with grace, everyone on the software side alone would normally be arguing since at least in the non AAA space you have a majority of game programmers obsessed with doing OOP everything to the extreme almost to the obsession of uncle bob, there's nothing in this game that's been batched yet so far that i've seen in the code base.  Which is the direct cause of slow dev times and runtimes.  I'm not joking that doing that alone would multiply productivity by probably about 5x, if the architecture was actually planned and had it's metal tested ground up (though to be fair it's late for that now) it could easily be double that.   It's just very hard to find anyone whom understands this and isn't working at say blizzard.  Usually when I bring this up to other indie game programmers the common response is to resort to belittlement, no kind of dialog what so ever.  AAA companies will never seriously risk or innovate least not at large scale it's up to the indies and medium sized companies to actually take up the mantle.  I do very much wish to get into contact with the team working on this and exchange perspectives.  I should've done so a couple years ago but only now actually have an opensource project to actually demonstrate the experience and points I have to make.

[YourMirror]

4 minutes ago, Koishi said:

To be honest I'd be surprised if that's correct considering it's been ten years and on the front of actually getting anything done it's been extremely difficult.  Handling that and not being stressed would be impressive.  But to clarify my skill set it's game systems engineering and i've yet to see an ambitious project like this be taken with grace, everyone on the software side alone would normally be arguing since at least in the non AAA space you have a majority of game programmers obsessed with doing OOP everything to the extreme almost to the obsession of uncle bob, there's nothing in this game that's been batched yet so far that i've seen in the code base.  Which is the direct cause of slow dev times and runtimes.  I'm not joking that doing that alone would multiply productivity by probably about 5x, if the architecture was actually planned and had it's metal tested ground up (though to be fair it's late for that now) it could easily be double that.   It's just very hard to find anyone whom understands this and isn't working at say blizzard.  Usually when I bring this up to other indie game programmers the common response is to resort to belittlement, no kind of dialog what so ever.  AAA companies will never seriously risk or innovate least not at large scale it's up to the indies and medium sized companies to actually take up the mantle.  I do very much wish to get into contact with the team working on this and exchange perspectives.  I should've done so a couple years ago but only now actually have an opensource project to actually demonstrate the experience and points I have to make.

In language you understand best: No is no.

[Koishi]

Just now, YourMirror said:

In language you understand best: No is no.

No what and why?

[YourMirror]

3 minutes ago, Koishi said:

No what and why?

I translated Roland's somewhat long post for ya. You missed the part where its stated: "No help is needed" "When help IS needed, a professional consultant will be hired, not some forum guy".

 

So the answer to your question if you can help (in any way) is no. And since i know autism, i'll stress to you: No is no.

[Koishi]

25 minutes ago, YourMirror said:

I translated Roland's somewhat long post for ya. You missed the part where its stated: "No help is needed" "When help IS needed, a professional consultant will be hired, not some forum guy".

 

So the answer to your question if you can help (in any way) is no. And since i know autism, i'll stress to you: No is no.

He didn't exactly understand the kind of help am offering and to be fair i probably didn't spell it out.  Essentially i cam to the forums to ask what's in this thread. 
I'd like to chip in help on the architecture side of things without anything in return except maybe some vague credit if possible.  I've been here since alpha 8 the pacing and runtime have both been so problematic that most their past unmet goals are a direct result of the architecture (which is easy to improve a great fair bit).  They aren't in the mood to hire, i'm not in the mood to work for money for various personal reasons, but I do have a skillset to offer which should generally chill out the fanbase and make everything easier for everyone.  If nothing else, at the very least, if i can talk to the lead engineer whom is responsible for the architecture and saying no to design decisions, I can share non 7d2d code specific advice and general experiences and articles that would fix this up extremely quick.  Practically in an alpha it'd be an immediate improvement with less work per proceeding alpha.

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Koishi (see edit history)

[YourMirror]

16 minutes ago, Koishi said:

He didn't exactly understand the kind of help am offering and to be fair i probably didn't spell it out.  Essentially i cam to the forums to ask what's in this thread. 
I'd like to chip in help on the architecture side of things without anything in return except maybe some vague credit if possible.  I've been here since alpha 8 the pacing and runtime have both been so problematic that most their past unmet goals are a direct result of this.  They aren't in the mood to hire, i'm not in the mood to work for money for various personal reasons, but I do have a skillset to offer which should generally chill out the fanbase and make everything easier for everyone.

 

I'll repeat. For autists that works best. No is no. Doesn't matter how many threads you create. We had a lot of "those" already. They all got shown the door. Just trust in the professionalism of TFP and more so trust Roland saying there is no "beef or negativity" within the team. You were argueing it directly. Just don't.

[Koishi]

Just now, YourMirror said:

I'll repeat. For autists that works best. No is no. Doesn't matter how many threads you create. We had a lot of "those" already. They all got shown the door. Just trust in the professionalism of TFP and more so trust Roland saying there is no "beef or negativity" within the team. You were argueing it directly. Just don't.

Arguing no but I was genuinely surprised/impressed.  But what do you mean by "those" threads though?  There's some things the company does right but there's a lot they do wrong which isn't a bad thing.  Everyone's going to @%$# up.  A professional software engineer doesn't close themselves off  from another engineer offering perspective.  That entirely goes against our professionalism.  It's not even like it would be problematic from a contractual point to at least dialog about general architecture.  it's casual.  A lot of us do this and are supposed to be doing it constantly to improve ourselves and one another.  If we don't do this the industry as a whole dies.  I don't want to be the only one here exploring bleeding edge solutions entirely alone because everyone else has a stick up their ass to actually be a proper human being.  From an architectural standpoint I can say factually no this isn't professionally done, but that's not their fault unless it's intentional.

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, Koishi said:

I'd like to chip in help on the architecture side of things without anything in return except maybe some vague credit if possible.

 

2 hours ago, Koishi said:

That entirely goes against our professionalism. 

 

I'm sorry if I'll sound a bit blunt, but there's no "professionalism" if you're not being paid.

I would never, ever, give my professional help away for free.

The only exception could be charity or something like that.

 

Let the professionals do their job, and you keep doing yours.

This is not a scientific community or a social project or an open source software.

This game is developed by professionals to earn money, and, as icing on the cake, maybe have also some fun.  

[Roland]

Has everything been perfect? No.

Is everyone who originally started with the team still with the team? No.

 

But...there is no dysfunction to the point of requiring outside help for fixes. Even if there were, this would not be the place to look for that help.

 

Why then has it taken 10 years? The simple answer is that they set their sights higher than they originally thought they could. This isn't scope creep per se but more redefining the standard and quality of the product they want to put out. The delay has not been due to infighting and schizms amongst the team members. It has been due to wanting the title to be more towards the AAA end of the spectrum than it is towards the indie end of the spectrum.

[Koishi]

This doesn't make any sense to me.  AAA software devs (even outside games) aren't this shut in they openly communicate all the time because that's the way we grow over 90% of the time.  Because go figure software in all fields is actually yes a science.  Regardless if you're in a closed sourced project or not.  Architecture and ideas aren't under lock and key as intellectual property that's not how we operate.  It benefits literally no one.  I'll gladly bring in multiple folks from that domain to make a point.  Hell even blizzard of all companies openly encourages this even so far as to do video lectures on the architectural backends they implement because they know it benefits them in the long run.  The only reason you'd not do this is if you have something shady to hide.  I refuse this as an excuse.  If you actually talk to anyone competent in the field they know better.  These kinds of things are general ideas, not something copyrightable or in any way involved with contractual work.  Actually to clarify I can see extremely clearly what you all need is a simple game systems engineer that actually knows what they are doing.  The problem is that finding them will require you to search about more, probably AAA companies and try to offer a competing salary (they go for well over 100k USD annually each), they will not be as apt to just come to you for multiple reasons.  1 You're not a big title AAA studio with any kind of reputation which would attract them which is a suck because the problems being worked on are difficult and would require one.  And 2 I've seen the job offers put out for lead engineer ect however many months ago that was.  You're advertising for engine specific workers when it doesn't mean a thing to someone that's actually competent enough to fix the architectural issues since really the important fundamentals which are more important and take longer than a week to catch up to is the actual bread and butter.  When the job requirements involve UE/Unity experience that's an automatic red flag.  It shows whoever put up the job offers didn't know what they were doing, and believe me there's tons of work to go around they aren't desperate.  Though to be fair I don't recall a job offer specifically geared towards "game systems engineers" since am sure that's a job title most hardly anyone knows about whom isn't in touch with AAA.  But this is the skillset exactly needed.  Now regardless that far as this project goes.  It could actually bounce back in a year or two max without much issue if whoever the lead programmer/engineer was would do some reading on specific subjects,  If you mention these it should be enough a starting point.

"Batching/Batch processing"
"Existence based processing"
"Structure of arrays"
"DOD"  //just learning it helps doesn't need to be obsessed over the goal is to break away from excessive OOP and get back to fundamentals
"Every single possible alternative to over inheritance style code that CS/Actor tends to beget (which is factually used way too much, though a little may be fine)
^ https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html

"Do a little exploring with the ECS pattern or something akin to enforce ideas of batch processing and maintainability just for practice"
^ decent resource that is the backbone of my own work though of course my needs vary slightly:

32 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

 

 

I'm sorry if I'll sound a bit blunt, but there's no "professionalism" if you're not being paid.

I would never, ever, give my professional help away for free.

The only exception could be charity or something like that.

 

Let the professionals do their job, and you keep doing yours.

This is not a scientific community or a social project or an open source software.

This game is developed by professionals to earn money, and, as icing on the cake, maybe have also some fun.  

I will not relent on trying to get the engineer's attention absolutely anyway possible am just trying to be polite about it first and get the rest of everyone else comfortable before barging into one of their DMs.  We know what our NDAs are we can talk like grown ups and even then the NDA isn't a thing to care for nor hold folks accountable for especially on a product that's already released.  I learn, I test, I share ideas, and I teach.  As a lot of us do.  I do this with indies and AAA devs alike regardless how closed a project is or how much they want to think of themselves as professionals, it makes no bloody sense.

I might be a bit harsh here and maybe I deserve some hell but whatever I'll roll with the consequences.  If this game doesn't take some help in this specific but super crucial department in some way shape or form, it will "never" go gold.  It doesn't take a genius it just takes a little interest in doing things better, a little pointer here and there especially over general concepts, a desire to learn, and just a little bit of time really at least to get started and start seeing vast improvements, pretty much within the first year.  I tried all the same stuff you and countless others have tried but eventually got lucky, found some interesting articles, got tired of the usual mess things turned into following basically the same code styles to similar extremes, and grew my skillset.  I hope the engineers aren't of this mindset because if they are that's an absolute disgrace to the entirety of all the game dev community.  And by the way.  Whoever was trying to implement that UtilityAI backend that was partially visible least conceptually in A16, give that dude some praise.  That's actually thinking outside the box a bit.  You don't have to confirm it to me just praise the dude that's one of the few intelligent things i've seen browsing the source.  I don't know why the idea was scrapped.  But I hope whoever was exploring it wasn't discouraged from doing so.

Ah crap, if that last post went through, I'm sorry, i read Jost's post and thought it was ronalds post.  So i incorectly assumed it was him being like that  I guess that exposes a bit of my pent up frustration though.

[Roland]

d'oh....

 

No means no.

[Koishi]

I mistakenly thought the other dude responding was you responding for some reason crap.  Am sorry for that.  But it's fine I'll just get a hold of them directly.

Now that aside that was a fairly honest response it was and even still is aiming too high least for the current skillset.  Yeah it's kinda in the domain of AAA devs least usually but all that's required is really just one guy with a gentle push in the right direction.  It wouldn't take no time to actually rectify all the major problems and even potentially go gold if that push was given.  Without it though it'll be literally impossible no matter how much time is spent which is the depressing part.  I can pass out a few articles and keywords to look up and that's really all that's needed if the person actually cares about his work.  1 year is all that'd take to see fairly decent benefit.  If that timeframe isn't too long to care, then it's inexcusable.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Koishi (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Koishi said:

Without it though it'll be literally impossible no matter how much time is spent which is the depressing part.

 

You would have to explain that. There have been games released in all kinds of states. As there is no legally enforcable right for correctness of a software a company only has to provide all the features it advertises. So how is it **literally impossible** ?