I'd like to release Tremulous 1.2

[Ender]

Well, I've been coding a lot lately for Tremulous. You can check out my progress at http://stfu-ender.tiddlyspot.com/ where I show some of the modifications I'm making. They're mostly server-side, for now. Tremulous 1.1.0 has been out for almost 2 years now. Think about all of the changes that have been made. The stock client doesn't have GUID support or web redirect downloads. The server side has so many modifications there is a massive patch tracker to track everything that you can add on to it. This sort of thing should stop. It just shows that plenty of coding work has been done, but that the development team isn't keeping up.

As such, I want to release Tremulous 1.2. In discussing this with some people I respect at my blog at http://dretchstorm.com/blog/479 it's been mentioned to me that I should really discuss this with the currently development team. I would really like to avoid fracturing the Tremulous community or starting a war or what have you. But, I've searched the Tremulous site and I can't seem to find a mailing list for the developers or any sort of contact information. As far as I can tell, official development is winding down on Tremulous, which is disappointing. The community deserves to have Tremulous 1.2 released.

The reason I've come here to post is twofold. First, I'd like to find out what the general opinion of the tremulous community is. I'm not proposing that 1.2 be fraught with game changes - I don't want to create a Trem X. What I want to create is a point release that adds in what the vast majority of experienced players have already added: backport client functionality and updated server features. I want to get us out of the backport mire.

Second, I had originally intended to release 1.2 by myself, since I didn't think it was likely I could get a hold of any developers. After thinking about it some more, I realized that I had a responsibility to the original developers to try. You put a lot of work into this code, work you didn't get anything for, and I respect that. I would love to work with you on this to get it done in an efficient, timely, and intelligent way. That said, if you don't want to work with me, I'll release 1.2 by myself. The code is GPL'd, the graphics are CC'd, I can create a derivative work.

So, community, if you're interested I will be posting development information at my Tiddlywiki above. Please reply to this post with any comments, positive or negative. As it's been said, Tremulous 1.2 is imminent.

[+ OPTIMUS +]

contact the developers very fast while you can still help them so you don't have to do things what are already done :-)

[EDIT]: Private Message here is an option. Sometimes i see Timbo logged in.

[Shadowgandor]

I agree with Optimus, you should try getting in the trem dev team. Judging from what you've done (I'm no expert), you seem to have the skills to do so.

[Ender]

contact the developers very fast while you can still help them so you don't have to do things what are already done :-)

[EDIT]: Private Message here is an option. Sometimes i see Timbo logged in.

What do you mean by 'while you can still help them'? Is something going on that I don't know about...like an actual 1.2 release?

I wouldn't mind getting on the Tremulous dev team, it would make things easier. The big question is 'why hasn't there been a release in 2 years?' There's been plenty of development. I'm concerned that there isn't a good reason, that development has just sort of died. I know that SVN updates are being made at the rate of about 1 every 2-3 days, which is pretty good, but the Tremulous.net website is extremely quiet for such an active community.

[CreatureofHell]

Try talking to them on IRC. They are usually there so you might be in luck.

[mana]

Sometimes a fork helps people to actually wake up ]:-) 

Thank you for your initiative.

[kevlarman]

The big question is 'why hasn't there been a release in 2 years?'

because it's not done yet, i'm not sure if norf is happy with balance yet, there are new models to be added, maps have to be recompiled (trivial but you can't do this), new maps that you don't have access to at all, new huds, etc. if it was as simple as committing the mgdev changesets to svn and wrapping it up it would have been done already.

[Lava Croft]

Hey Ender, did the thought ever occur to you that Tremulous 1.2 might just not be finished yet? And don't you think that releasing a next version of an application on which it's creators are still working is a tad devoid of any respect?

PS: You do know there already is an Ender in the Quake community, right?

[Atom Eve]

[khalsa]

1 - You are not the *real* ender
2 - Judging from this post, and your post on other forums, this is not Tremulous 1.2, this would be a Fork
2.a. - Go fork yourself
3 - The real 1.2 is under active development, you are just to stupid/young/insolent to see that
4 - 2 years is not that long, I believe the 1.1 release took around 6.
5 - You obviously don't know or don't care to know the implications of what you're are purporting to do. I hope you are rich!

That said, Good luck!

Khalsa

[Ender]

The big question is 'why hasn't there been a release in 2 years?'

because it's not done yet, i'm not sure if norf is happy with balance yet, there are new models to be added, maps have to be recompiled (trivial but you can't do this), new maps that you don't have access to at all, new huds, etc. if it was as simple as committing the mgdev changesets to svn and wrapping it up it would have been done already.

It sounds to me like there is work going on. That's wonderful. I kind of figured there was. But, there is very little transparency as to what work is going on, and that sort of thing causes a hemorrhage in the community. We need to know what is happening and what needs to be done before a release is made. It gives people hope. Telling us "it'll be ready when we say it is" is only a tad less insulting than saying "yeah, well, I'm going to make my own changes and release it myself".

As for all of the new models, either add them and be done with it or continue working on them and exclude them from the next release until they are ready. Release early, release often.

Why would the maps need to be recompiled? I haven't suggested a change to the mapping format.

And yes, it IS as easy as committing the changes to the SVN and wrapping it all up. That's what an SVN is for. You make changes, you commit them, you decide one is stable enough to release and you tag it as a release. You then build it on all of the applicable platforms and release. Viola.

[Lava Croft]

I don't think you are in the position to tell anyone what they should do. Good luck with your forking of Tremulous, but do not call it Tremulous 1.2.

[Ender]

Hey Ender, did the thought ever occur to you that Tremulous 1.2 might just not be finished yet? And don't you think that releasing a next version of an application on which it's creators are still working is a tad devoid of any respect?

PS: You do know there already is an Ender in the Quake community, right?

Of course it occurred to me that 1.2 might not be finished yet. It hasn't been finished yet for 2 years. It's a 0.1 version change, one would think that it could have been done over a year ago, when the backport was first introduced.

And yes, I do think that what I'm proposing is a tad devoid of respect. But then, that's why I came to the forum in an effort to contact the devs and see what they have to say on the matter. I wanted to show them some respect. They deserve respect. They've put a lot of work into this. I said as much in my original post. The lack of respect comes in the massive deluge of posts and questions about Tremulous 1.2 and the dev's corresponding lack of information about where it is at. That sort of behavior is understandable, they aren't getting paid by any of us, but no, it doesn't warrant respect.

[Rocinante]

Release early, release often.

Yes, because that model works so well for EA...

[Ender]

1 - You are not the *real* ender
2 - Judging from this post, and your post on other forums, this is not Tremulous 1.2, this would be a Fork
2.a. - Go fork yourself
3 - The real 1.2 is under active development, you are just to stupid/young/insolent to see that
4 - 2 years is not that long, I believe the 1.1 release took around 6.
5 - You obviously don't know or don't care to know the implications of what you're are purporting to do. I hope you are rich!

That said, Good luck!

Khalsa

1 - The *real* Ender is a character from a book. A fictional book.
2 - You may call it what you wish. As may I.
3 - I can see that it is under development, thank you. Let me know when it will be released. Or the criteria for release. Or the planned feature set. Or what work is currently being done on it. Or even a list of people who are working on it right now.
4 - 2 years isn't that long, you're right. And 111 source code patches in a patch tracker aren't very many. And 200 source code revisions since the last release isn't that many. It's only 1/4 of the revisions that were made since the SVN were started. And 15 news posts since the standalone client was release is plenty to keep a community going over such a short time.
5 - I don't know the implications of what I'm purporting to do. Enlighten me. That's what this post is about.

[Atom Eve]

On further review, I absolutely support you wasting your time on this idea 120%. God speed, Ender!

[David]

Come to IRC so we can properly explain why this is a stupid thing to do.
Also, your not making any friends by spurning the normal rules of social interaction that govern such things.

[tuple]

That said, if you don't want to work with me, I'll release 1.2 by myself. The code is GPL'd, the graphics are CC'd, I can create a derivative work.

Well, if that isn't a big FUCK YOU to the people who are working on tremulous as we speak, I don't know what is.

Perhaps if you investigated things in the tremulous community instead of your blog, you would find developers.  Lets see, before today, your last post was in May of 2007.  Don't recall ever seeing you on IRC.  I don't see an ender in bugzilla or the MG patch tracker.  It seems that you have done very little to aid tremulous development.  Really nice that you can take it all over though.

Incidently, the problem isn't a lack or transparency.  I've known %95 of this stuff just by paying attention.  No, the problem is that noone who bitches about how information needs to be collated is willing to do just that.  Welcome to a poor open source project.  You wanna make a fork?  Get ready to do all of that and a million other things.

In cause you are wondering about the caustic nature of these responses, the way to find this information is not by announcing a fork and telling all the present devs to go fuck themselves.

[Ender]

Release early, release often.

Yes, because that model works so well for EA...

...and Linus Torvalds, whose software is universally panned and ridiculed for being such an utter failure.

http://www.firstmonday.org/ISSUES/issue3_3/raymond/index.html

[Rocinante]

Release early, release often.

Yes, because that model works so well for EA...

...and Linus Torvalds, whose software is universally panned and ridiculed for being such an utter failure.
http://www.firstmonday.org/ISSUES/issue3_3/raymond/index.html

Bahahahahaha

Sorry.. ESR != "Universal" by any stretch of the imagination.

[Lava Croft]

Release early, release often.

Yes, because that model works so well for EA...

...and Linus Torvalds, whose software is universally panned and ridiculed for being such an utter failure.

http://www.firstmonday.org/ISSUES/issue3_3/raymond/index.html

I think you just dismissed yourself.

[Ender]

That said, if you don't want to work with me, I'll release 1.2 by myself. The code is GPL'd, the graphics are CC'd, I can create a derivative work.

Well, if that isn't a big FUCK YOU to the people who are working on tremulous as we speak, I don't know what is.

Perhaps if you investigated things in the tremulous community instead of your blog, you would find developers.  Lets see, before today, your last post was in May of 2007.  Don't recall ever seeing you on IRC.  I don't see an ender in bugzilla or the MG patch tracker.  It seems that you have done very little to aid tremulous development.  Really nice that you can take it all over though.

Incidently, the problem isn't a lack or transparency.  I've known %95 of this stuff just by paying attention.  No, the problem is that noone who bitches about how information needs to be collated is willing to do just that.  Welcome to a poor open source project.  You wanna make a fork?  Get ready to do all of that and a million other things.

In cause you are wondering about the caustic nature of these responses, the way to find this information is not by announcing a fork and telling all the present devs to go fuck themselves.

Thanks tuple, you have a good point. You're right, I haven't posted much here, I haven't been to the IRC. And I should have been much gentler about how I posted here. I didn't intend to send a 'Fuck you' to all the devs, or the community as a whole. I was under the impression that the forums here had degenerated to the point where most posts were infantile and the forums weren't worth reading. I wasn't sure how my original post would be received, but after seeing how vehemently most people here are defending the devs, it tells me that I really missed something. I just didn't know where to look. Thanks for enlightening me.

I'll get on the IRC when I have time and talk this over with some people. I'm perfectly willing to be the one who collates the information about development. While I may (obviously) lack tact, I like to think I'm a pretty good communicator. In the end, I'd really just like to help the community. I had no idea that the community was as strong as it evidently is. I was hoping with this post to rally people around a new release since I had thought that the devs had more or less left the project. I had only intended to take over development if it was evident that no one else is controlling development. Looks like I was wrong about that.

To the devs: Sorry about the 'fuck you'-style post. I want to help. Honestly. If you're out there, I'd like to work with you. My original issue was that I was concerned there weren't any devs, or that they were adamantly neglecting the community.

[Lava Croft]

I don't think anyone wants to work with you after this showcase of stupidity. You might be better off creating your own fork of Tremulous.

[EDIT] typo-day-today

[Odin]

I made you this T-Shirt!

[tuple]

Fair warning, you'll probably catch all sorts of hell in IRC if these posts are any indication 
Persistence does pay off though

Incidently, the forums can be very infantile and not worth reading but irc is only infantile :p

Ok ok, its often not worth reading as well, but I promise to cut down on my blathering! :>

I'LL NEVAR CUT DOWN ON TEH SMILEYS THOUGH!! 

irc.freenode.net

Main channel is #tremulous
The dev channel is #tremulous-dev
A bunch of the source surfers hang out in #mercenariesguild
There are probably lots of other channels where you can find useful info.

There is a lot of the tremulous community that isn't readily apparent.  You may even find some funnies



edit: crap, I put freenet.net instead of freenode

[Ender]

Lol, Odin, nice. I'm impressed, I didn't realize a bunch of MG guys hung out around here. Cool. You guys all deserve a ton of respect, your Patch Tracker is awesome, and your website is pretty good to boot.

Fair warning, you'll probably catch all sorts of hell in IRC if these posts are any indication 
Persistence does pay off though

Incidently, the forums can be very infantile and not worth reading but irc is only infantile :p

Ok ok, its often not worth reading as well, but I promise to cut down on my blathering! :>

I'LL NEVAR CUT DOWN ON TEH SMILEYS THOUGH!! 

irc.freenet.net

Main channel is #tremulous
The dev channel is #tremulous-dev
A bunch of the source surfers hang out in #mercenariesguild
There are probably lots of other channels where you can find useful info.

There is a lot of the tremulous community that isn't readily apparent.  You may even find some funnies

Thanks tuple - so far my exposure to the Tremulous community has been primarily in Dretch*Storm, which I've loved. Reading some of the posts at this forum made it look like it was mostly new players who are looking for a good community but may or may not have a lot of savvy, and old players who are cranky and like to create flamewars. I should emphasize some because after I read just a few of the recent topics, I didn't really want to take the time to read more. And I read the rant at http://www.mercenariesguild.net/component/option,com_myblog/Itemid,18/lang,en/ by khalsa, which didn't fill me with much hope. It's a very pleasant surprise to see that I should have given this forum much more of a chance - there's a lot of good people here.

I'll try to hang out in the IRC more so I can talk to some more people. I had geared myself up for a hostile code takeover, thinking that the only reason MG hadn't done it was because they're polite. Looks like that was the wrong attitude. Time to do some more research on what is really going on out there...

[Stannum]

Pfft. We'll just one-up you and release 1.3! HA! Take that!

[benmachine]

tuple: chat.freenode.net :>

Ender: it's pretty clear from this thread, and everything I've heard, that you haven't got the support of the community. As a result, I think calling your release Tremulous 1.2, especially given how much people have been waiting for the official release, will only cause you and us problems. That's my opinion.

If you want to help out with MG development, come to our forum. If you want to help in other ways, fix some bugs.

If you want to create your own fork or mod, I've no objection to that. But don't make it try to appear 'official', because that's just deceptive.

I feel the need to mention, as well, that I think you've responded pretty well to us, and I applaud the attitude of your words.

[Ender]

Stannum: LOL! Fine, I'll release version infinity. Squared.

tuple: chat.freenode.net :>
Ender: it's pretty clear from this thread, and everything I've heard, that you haven't got the support of the community. As a result, I think calling your release Tremulous 1.2, especially given how much people have been waiting for the official release, will only cause you and us problems. That's my opinion.

If you want to help out with MG development, come to our forum. If you want to help in other ways, fix some bugs.

If you want to create your own fork or mod, I've no objection to that. But don't make it try to appear 'official', because that's just deceptive.

I feel the need to mention, as well, that I think you've responded pretty well to us, and I applaud the attitude of your words.

Thanks, honestly I didn't want to come off as an ass, which apparently I did. Oh well, live and learn. Then get Luvs. So I hear.

You're right about the community support. I'll make a concerted effort to go legit - we'll hope that contrary to what Lava Croft has said, they'll be forgiving . I'll look into the bug fixing, and the MG forum, thanks.

[Lava Croft]

Yes, I would also like to applaud Ender for taking on all the replies with such grace. I know I wouldn't have...