a reply

[TreeBearded]

Thanks for the peeps that gave encouragement, if so slightly, to get more involved with the creative process of the game. With that said I will take a quote and give my goodbyes.


If you dislike the drake graphics, your choices are 1] grow out of the nostalgia bias, or 2] stop playing. This is not a democracy, we who do all the work to create the game, have absolute power over what goes in it. Live with it

guess I have no option....great game, wonderful job.

"So long and thanks for all the fish." - Douglas Adams

[Sapient]

So you want to take over art direction of Wesnoth after contributing 0.00 hours of artwork? Giving the developers this type of ultimatum "change it or I leave" is just not how free open source development works, sorry. And I'm sorry you felt insulted, but I feel this is far more insulting to make these kinds of ridiculous ultimatums.

It is ridiculous because even if we did shape the development of Wesnoth by a few player's tastes just to keep them playing the game, then what happens when the next group of player's demands different? It is insulting because you are implying that the developers' time and effort and experience means nothing next to your personal preference.

If you want to stop playing over a artwork decision, then that is your choice. However, I do not approve of the way you are turning it into a personal attack against the quoted individual.

[Velensk]

Good bye.

[Hulavuta]

If I'm not mistaken, he's leaving because he dislikes new sprites? Here's a solution: 1)Don't play with Drake 2)SWITCH THE SPRITES!!! 3)Stay on yer 1.6 (I've never played 1.6 so I don't know how good/bad it is) 4) Get used to it like everyone else.

No offense, but this is pretty childish of you. How old are you? I am 13, still considered a child, and I got over it pretty quickly.

[Jetrel]

Thanks for the peeps that gave encouragement, if so slightly, to get more involved with the creative process of the game. With that said I will take a quote and give my goodbyes.

This is not a democracy, we who do all the work to create the game, have absolute power over what goes in it. Live with it

"to get involved in the creative process" By which you mean, "telling us what to do".

It might be shocking (to you), but honestly, "peanut gallery" suggestions do nothing to help us make the game, and in fact, are actually rather insulting, as you're implying that we're too dumb to do our job right. Ideas are not our bottleneck. Acting on them, is. The only help to our project that is worth anything, and which gives anyone any say, is actually making art/code for the game.

Thus, consensus is hardest to achieve in technical questions that are simple to understand and easy to have an opinion about, and in "soft" topics such as organization, publicity, funding, etc. People can participate in those arguments forever, because there are no qualifications necessary for doing so, no clear ways to decide (even afterward) if a decision was right or wrong, and because simply outwaiting other discussants is sometimes a successful tactic.

The principle that the amount of discussion is inversely proportional to the complexity of the topic has been around for a long time, and is known informally as the Bikeshed Effect. Here is Poul-Henning Kamp's explanation of it, from a now-famous post made to BSD developers:

It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960'ies, called "Parkinson's Law", which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management.

[...]

In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the age of the book.

Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions.

Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here.

In Denmark we call it "setting your fingerprint". It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and say "There! I did that." It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just think about footsteps in wet cement.

(His complete post is very much worth reading, too. See Appendix C)

Anyone who's ever taken regular part in group decision-making will recognize what Kamp is talking about. However, it is usually impossible to persuade everyone to avoid painting bikesheds. The best you can do is point out that the phenomenon exists, when you see it happening, and persuade the senior developers—the people whose posts carry the most weight—to drop their paintbrushes early, so at least they're not contributing to the noise. Bikeshed painting parties will never go away entirely, but you can make them shorter and less frequent by spreading an awareness of the phenomenon in the project's culture.

Or you can do what we do - which is, tell people who are trying "to get involved", yet whom have nothing to actually give us, to piss off. Please take your sense of entitlement, and your opinion, and keep them to yourself. We're not interested, and we owe you nothing.

[booner]

Did not thespaceinvader make the sensible suggestion that, "you're welcome to download the old graphics from SVN, which are still floating about in the 1.6 branch, and put them back yourself... it should not cause OOS problems if you *only* change artwork and animations, so it is a viable option."???

That seems like a viable compromise to this issue.

Now that I think of it, I think I'll search around for some Smurff graphics to replace that faction with the little legs.

[thespaceinvader]

O noes.

Bye then.

Locked.