older stuff resurrection

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darkwraith007
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Joined: December 6th, 2006, 2:27 am
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older stuff resurrection

Post by darkwraith007 »

Hello to all, a small suggestion.

I'd like to have an "Extras" scenario perhaps with all the old and removed maps from mainline campaigns, updated for v1.2.x
This way, we won't miss out on the old stuff in our frenzy to "update" all the time.

Perhaps also an online viewable archive of the old portraits/artwork in early versions of Wesnoth so that we maintain a sort of "history" and people can see how far its progressed.

Same with music/sounds. Online archive of the old stuff but formatted for easy navigation.

Just some thoughts.
Till then.
Soliton
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Post by Soliton »

http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/

If we remove stuff from mainline it's for a reason. You're welcome to maintain map packs with older revisions of maps on the add-ons server of course.
"If gameplay requires it, they can be made to live on Venus." -- scott
Dave
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Post by Dave »

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when he has nothing left to add, but when he has nothing left to take away."

In making a good product, one will generally reject over 90% of possible content, simply because it is deemed of insufficient quality to include. i don't think anyone wants to spend time cataloging every piece of content that we end up removing as we strive to make the best game we can.

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
darkwraith007
Posts: 40
Joined: December 6th, 2006, 2:27 am
Location: USA

agreed...

Post by darkwraith007 »

Ok, thanks for the responses.

I'll download and archive the old versions of Wesnoth so that at least I can play some stuff that isn't compatible with newer versions.

It just seems frustrating for some people to have the user-created content be broken every few months. Kinda discourages me, at least, from making content unless I'm willing to maintain it and learn WML in the process. That'll be on my todo list though.

Till then.
Glowing Fish
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Post by Glowing Fish »

I do agree that it would be hard to keep everything, but I have been curious for a while about what a sprite collection would look like. I think it would be fascinating to see Wesnoth art evolve.
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Eleazar
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Re: agreed...

Post by Eleazar »

darkwraith007 wrote:It just seems frustrating for some people to have the user-created content be broken every few months. Kinda discourages me, at least, from making content unless I'm willing to maintain it and learn WML in the process. That'll be on my todo list though.
Anything done for 1.0.x should be eternally compatible with 1.0.x.
Anything done for 1.2.x should be eternally compatible with 1.2.x
1.3.x is a development version and compatibility will break, for many things more than once.

You shouldn't feel compelled to make your content work with 1.3.x. It's the bleeding edge, not for general consumption.

I understand your frustration, but i believe the community would be more annoyed if we did not release anything until we had 2.0 done 3-5 years from now. It's a necessary result of our volunteer-driven process. Development is generally slower than i might be for a commercial product.
Feel free to PM me if you start a new terrain oriented thread. It's easy for me to miss them among all the other art threads.
-> What i might be working on
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Viliam
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Post by Viliam »

Writing for the development version is almost guaranteed to be frustrating. Therefore... now, write for the version 1.2. When the 1.3 line will achieve "feature freeze", switch to 1.3 (1.4) version.
darkwraith007
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Joined: December 6th, 2006, 2:27 am
Location: USA

understood

Post by darkwraith007 »

Thanks for the tips, guys. At least now I won't have to worry so much about breaking things due to very frequent updates (frequent at least, IMHO). I'm still (slowly) working on various things, including Portable Wesnoth, optimized of course, and my "allies don't help you at all" hack/patch/diversion.

I just have some thoughts...below.

I know its important to release stuff but having a new version come out every month or so (even if it is 1.2.x, with x being a number higher) kinda has everyone playing catchup to keep up with the changes, however minor they might be.

Perhaps, if focus on bug-fixes were done and were somewhat completed before adding in new features, then that way it would be easier to debug as something that broke or became buggy because of a recently added feature rather then a hunt-n-peck method that seems to be employed currently.

A disclaimer, but I haven't exactly worked extensively doing QA or anything, just that it would seem logical to come out with something somewhat polished and relatively bug-free, then make it even MORE bug-free as much as possible, then add in one feature at a time and fix any new bugs that may occur, cause then you know what causes the bugs much of the time (the new feature or an indirect result of adding it).

Thanks for the feedback.
Till then.
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ivanovic
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Re: understood

Post by ivanovic »

@darkwraith007
Sorry, but why shall we really slowdown the develprocess? People who want to work on the code itself should always get the svn and not rely onto some possibly outdated files from a release.
* Fixing all bugs before implementing a single extra feature is impossible, too, just have a look at the bugtracker to get an idea about this (current status: 168 bugs, 213 feature requests, 5 patches). Many of these bugs we can't reproduce ourselves, so how should we get the info on how to fix them when the user submitting it does not react?
* There is a simple saying "release early, release often". It is better to have many smaller releases so that stuff gets tested and we get reports about new bugs. This way the later stable releases will be a lot more stable. For these we do have a feature freeze. Eg for 1.2 we had 5 month (!!!) only for bugfixes on the 1.2 branch before releasing the first new stable version. Still beside fixing bugs in 1.2 we also did implement some smaller new features in trunk.
* This is an open project. We can't force anyone to do anything. So if people want to only implement new features we can't make them fix bugs instead.
* If you want to help, get the svn and create patches that you submit to patches.wesnoth.org. This way your changes might directly get into the rep. IMO it is better to have "portability improvements" directly in the rep instead of only on some "outside" area. Since Wesnoth is under the GPL you would have to publish your exact changes anyway, so why not go for a chance to have them included in mainline?
* Campaign designers are recommended to stay with a stable version until we freeze the API/WML to prepare for a stable release. We do have some reasons for such a devision in stable and development and we will break compatibility in the devel version every now and then.
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