Business grads should be paid to stay OUT of code or design related specs.
Try telling that to a guy with grey hair, who keeps complaining about his VCR./d
In most cases these "mandatory" code reviews turn into farcical meetings where the topic is about how code reviews are a waste of time. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Code reviews can only be a waste of time, if the staff are anal. You have to be willing to give up some privacy to put the software ahead of personal interests. Currently the number one enemy of open source is self importance. Look at your company, and you'll see why! It's not security... it's the damn fools who are afraid to stand up and be recognized for their controbutions, or the guys who are afraid the rest of the staff are copying.
This does not apply in a rich social environment.
If you are lucky enough to find yourself working for a company that permits open source, then you may find yourself walking a short plank to corporate security repromands. Be sure you know the limitations of what can and can not be made public, and where such data can be published, and get it in writing from your boss.
There's more. What the open source movement means to me, is a freedom from reinventing the wheel, with knowledge as a tradeoff. No matter how plain your source is, someone in some place can use it to make themselves look good by copying your style.
Take the open source movement a step further; involve Napster and we have a real use for the technology that has every record label peeved.
Sorcery -- a program for finding source code on the internet.
Spread the love!
/d o0 {somehow I think mp3s would get mixed in with the search}
In most cases these "mandatory" code reviews turn into farcical meetings where the topic is about how code reviews are a waste of time. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Code reviews can only be a waste of time, if the staff are anal. You have to be willing to give up some privacy to put the software ahead of personal interests. Currently the number one enemy of open source is self importance. Look at your company, and you'll see why! It's not security... it's the damn fools who are afraid to stand up and be recognized for their controbutions, or the guys who are afraid the rest of the staff are copying.
This does not apply in a rich social environment.
If you are lucky enough to find yourself working for a company that permits open source, then you may find yourself walking a short plank to corporate security repromands. Be sure you know the limitations of what can and can not be made public, and where such data can be published, and get it in writing from your boss.
There's more. What the open source movement means to me, is a freedom from reinventing the wheel, with knowledge as a tradeoff. No matter how plain your source is, someone in some place can use it to make themselves look good by copying your style.
Take the open source movement a step further; involve Napster and we have a real use for the technology that has every record label peeved.
Sorcery -- a program for finding source code on the internet.
Spread the love!/d o0 {somehow I think mp3s would get mixed in with the search}
Okay I have to agree with most of the following... (however)
With very few exceptions, RTS games are set on a distant planet or postapocalyptic Earth where humans fight for a few scant minerals or against would-be alien overlords. Talk about beating a dead horse until its rib cage collapses; where's the originality, the unique spin? It just isn't there. And though some games, such as Ground Control, follow the lead of games like Myth in terms of how resources are handled, most are simply derivatives of the collect-resources-and-build-factories gameplay model. Borrrring.
***
We tend to remember the creative spins on games a way back when, and we are nostalgic... yet there have been certain innovations that become standards. Rocket Launchers. Health. Ammo.
Standards are useful to predict market trends; they may not brim with creativity, as a side effect.
Publishers who lost their shirts in the coin-slot game biz in the 70's & 80's will all agree that market trends hold importance for anyone who is fronting cash.
All of a sudden, with the advent of floppy disks, the non-commercial games were easily copied and public access was born!
The Jump Man's were all very creative because anyone with the patience to learn the language could produce, and with zero overhead and zero publisher BS.
Retro user games didn't get bogged down in today's market. They were mostly created out of some guy's basement and made zero profit.
Reminisce back to the day when games were fun and computers had about as much power as 1/62.5 of today's calculators. (I saw a pocket organizer with a meg memory last week at Wal-Mart, and my TI-994A had 16K).
Many a great adventure game was cranked out on that old TI, when I was about 11 years old.
Has the word 'retro' suddenly become synonymous to the word 'creative'?
I know/. said your post was nifty, yet it does fall short when you talk about threats to the game industry.
The game industry is soely made up of publishers.
Don't kid yourself. Developers are nothing in the big picture... they are worker ants, building a small subsection to a giant colony. Their ideas mean nothing. They have substandard communication skills, and even worse business sense.
However...
The publishers are the ones who inflict the public with substandard games. They put out useless crap -- buggy crap, and their advertisements make us buy buy buy!
Why do they do it?
For every one amazing game published, there are over a hundred flops.
Publishers fear failure more than they love games.
Gamers love games more than they fear failure.:)
Why do we buy?
Because they damn well told us to.
They hired a guy who looked like we want to look, dressed like we want to dress and talked like we wish we could and we crave the game of the month.
Remedy?
Developers need to take business classes to get superior games BACK ON THE GODDAMN MARKET.
I would hate to see a prosecutor after my lawyer got thru with him, for charges of downloading warez. Users of warez are exploiting a hole in the general system of computer sales. This is not criminal, and it is falsely being made to look criminal. The current computer software market ecconomy replaces traditional physical market ecconomy with a virtual ecconomy. Buy and sell information, in the form of programs. Do not attempt to get free software, even if you are not breaking the law of supply and demand. You see with software, there is INFINATE SUPPLY, and, if you're lucky, enough demand. The problem with this, is that ecconomy functions on a supply and demand principle that is archaic. This principle needs to adapt now, and that is the only reason ecconomy suffers. Not because some pimple faced geek decides to 'steal' software. The act of stealing has always been 'to transfer illegally', and it has never meant 'to duplicate'. I believe replication can save the world. Why stop at software? Keep learning, keep striving and move forward. Progress is to replicate!!! The industry must adapt and stop putting our children in jail for harmlessly downloading information and programs that may have been hacked by evil doers. Just because my son can get free software, certainly does not mean he is bad. He has to get that software and learn it to compete with other members in his peer group, and if they are getting warez, he must as well, in order to keep a fair playing field. Stop the guys doing the hacks, if you can. Our children are not to blame. The industry needs to adapt to overcome this problem, by changing their ways. Maybe devoting a billion in policing the internet is NOT the answer! Maybe we just need to come up with a sollution that makes EVERYONE happy. What about open source?!?! What about free software for personal use, provided it's main functions are business, and not entertainment?!?! Photoshop should be FREE for students because they require the software to learn how to make graphics for industry. Make up losses by billing heavier on the companies who demand students know the software. Give our children a chance to make a difference. Give us all a chance to make a difference. Let's say I have a device that lets me copy food. Let's call this item a REPLICATOR. Not like Star Trek (but close)... this one is hand held. Let's say I walk into a grocery store and COPY everything in sight. Then I leave. Would you arrest me? Probably. Would I feel guilty? Piss on that! I did NOT HARM ANYONE. I just made a replica of something. No one lost anything, but my sale. Except they say that "oh we lost your sale because you WOULD have bought our product but you STOLE it." SHeah!!! Like I would ever buy Photoshop! Feck that. It's too expensive, and it only applies if I am using it for work, in which case my work bought it and paid to licence it, and it's out of my hands. You know, we should make companies pay for everything and every human should live FREE. Replicaiton should not be made to be an evil because it is the one last technology that can save the human RACE!@!!!!! Just think of how no one would have to starve! Now ask yourself how the industry can adapt to overcome the suddent thrust we are already feeling because of 'illegal' (I still say it's not criminal) replication of software and imagine how you can make it better... how can you change the way things are so that replication is the norm, and nobody suffers because of it. And if you ask me, I'd rather see a suit suffer than some poor Cambodian children... what, because they are not allowed to break a MORALITY and REPLICATE food?!?!?! Pffft. Give me a beer./d
It is said that a dolphin can hear you plot someone's murder.:) Imagine how they would feel being bombarded by military issue sound wavs capable of 2,400bps?!?! Gah! Poor Flipper! *eheheh my hearing aid!!*/d
The military would have to seriously watch security. If it's sound waves, I can hear it. Mind you, those military security codes can reek havoc on even the most nimble h4xx0r!/d
Re:About Quake3's serial numbers....
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
I'm saying that where there is a will, there is a way. There is no such thing as perfect security and it is a waste of money to keep shelling out cash to waste more money on security. The way I see it, this is one of those freeloader plans. And no I don't go opening anything whatsoever... I'm just saying that it would be EASY to get a legit cdkey if you wanted to.:)/d
Host it on either a mainframe, or on your internet server, using unique logins for everyone on the project, assigning proper permissions based on what each person is going to do.
"What management structures/tools are helpful?"
Visit http://www.download.com and download a schedule program. There are a bunch of other little progs that can help you keep everything going. Also get a text replacer program that does find/replace over a whole directory or more.
"At minimum we'll need a source-code repository and a mailinglist/newsgroup, right?"
Absoloootly. Depending on how limited your budget is, you can host a repository by opening an ftp from your cable-based home pc. I use g6 server, which you can also get from download.com. You can burn off the source code in a dated directory and allow access to your coders so they can download fresh copies.
Each time you compile your code, you can then post updated (and approved) copies to the ftp, so coders can grab them.
"Anything else considered critical?" A web page is pretty critical, or at least you should have a scheduler program running where people can look up what's going on in your project. You can do this using a web format, or you could go all out and code up an ASP web page where users login, set their.plan files (or work logs) and also list what files are in play, and what objective exist upon each file.
"What are some effective control stuctures?"
Schedules are important, email lists will help control things and so will ICQ if you can get people to use it.
You can go really fancy on the SQL or ASP functions if you want, making the whole project keep tabs on everyone. IF you have people upload their work logs or answer questions BEFORE downloading the recent code source, you can force people to do things your way, and collect data from them as you go. It doesn't take too long to do this either, and it can be done in any size shop.
"Who should determine what makes it into an official release?
Beta testers. If you want certain things in, you can say they go, but if you get any serious resistance, you should really focus on clearing the path with revisions.
On early releases, it is the lead coder's decision, but after that, I would reccomend either private or public beta testing to determine what is really necessary.
"Who should be able to add code to the tree?
No one should be able to write to the source. I would have everyone write new code modules and then have one person splice them all together with the old code. IF you have to cut out old stuff, you may just want to go in and decide what goes, and then comment it out for your tests. If it passes, I would still keep the old commented code and list where your changes are in each case.
Only after 'point O' releases, should you be using cleaned out code. ie: keep your backups but move the project to new fresh code bases after you clear bugs and add 1.0 or 2.0...etc features.
"What kinds of resources do we need to commit to this project to make it effective?"
When you have time, you need no money.
"In short, what advice do you have on the mechanics and management of open source projects?"
Stay on top of organization and keep your objectives clear. TOE charts are the best for this, in any language.
Form and function are important, yet function should be the highest on your list.
Keep it simple. Do not do anything you don't have to.
Sometimes it's better to have a clunky program that works than a really fast one that is broken and keeps crashing... but I prefer the latter.:P
You can always fix bugs, but you can't speed up a dead mule in a day.
/d
Re:About Quake3's serial numbers....
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
Geez, all you'd have to do is get an ISO from the net and find a legit password by reading the cdcase at a store near you. This whole cdkey issue is really silly. Companies should come up with a better way to protect games. Anyone who wants to pirate a game will do it, the only real question is: who should suffer? Fact is that no security is PERFECT, which means it's all USELESS. Better to make piracy hard than to lose money tho... so I can see why cdkey servers exist -- until they can be replaced by something better for users who have paid. Keychecks really hamper the game environment. When you get the servers refreshed and you finally connect to a game, if the server quits or has more lag than it did before, you find yourself wasting a lot of time off the playing field./d
Slashdot Mirror
I fully expect to hear about some legal or moral action group against the use of Doom with digital cameras.
It would be more important than the paper vs. bidet battle of the late 20's.
Business grads should be paid to stay OUT of code or design related specs. Try telling that to a guy with grey hair, who keeps complaining about his VCR. /d
This is blackmail fodder.
Support people tend to be less experienced than key people on a project.
Oh!!! Those nasty conventions!
At work here, I came up with a file-save convention for finding data, back when WinDoze 3.1 was the business standard (if that was ever true).
WinDoze came out with a find-text-in-file function and that put my setup to shame!
My point is: standardization takes time, which can be a waste when a better approach is adopted.
Code reviews can only be a waste of time, if the staff are anal. You have to be willing to give up some privacy to put the software ahead of personal interests. Currently the number one enemy of open source is self importance. Look at your company, and you'll see why! It's not security... it's the damn fools who are afraid to stand up and be recognized for their controbutions, or the guys who are afraid the rest of the staff are copying.
This does not apply in a rich social environment.
If you are lucky enough to find yourself working for a company that permits open source, then you may find yourself walking a short plank to corporate security repromands. Be sure you know the limitations of what can and can not be made public, and where such data can be published, and get it in writing from your boss.
There's more. What the open source movement means to me, is a freedom from reinventing the wheel, with knowledge as a tradeoff. No matter how plain your source is, someone in some place can use it to make themselves look good by copying your style.
Take the open source movement a step further; involve Napster and we have a real use for the technology that has every record label peeved.
Sorcery -- a program for finding source code on the internet.
Spread the love!
In most cases these "mandatory" code reviews turn into farcical meetings where the topic is about how code reviews are a waste of time. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Code reviews can only be a waste of time, if the staff are anal. You have to be willing to give up some privacy to put the software ahead of personal interests. Currently the number one enemy of open source is self importance. Look at your company, and you'll see why! It's not security... it's the damn fools who are afraid to stand up and be recognized for their controbutions, or the guys who are afraid the rest of the staff are copying. This does not apply in a rich social environment. If you are lucky enough to find yourself working for a company that permits open source, then you may find yourself walking a short plank to corporate security repromands. Be sure you know the limitations of what can and can not be made public, and where such data can be published, and get it in writing from your boss. There's more. What the open source movement means to me, is a freedom from reinventing the wheel, with knowledge as a tradeoff. No matter how plain your source is, someone in some place can use it to make themselves look good by copying your style. Take the open source movement a step further; involve Napster and we have a real use for the technology that has every record label peeved. Sorcery -- a program for finding source code on the internet. Spread the love! /d o0 {somehow I think mp3s would get mixed in with the search}
With very few exceptions, RTS games are set on a distant planet or postapocalyptic Earth where humans fight for a few scant minerals or against would-be alien overlords. Talk about beating a dead horse until its rib cage collapses; where's the originality, the unique spin? It just isn't there. And though some games, such as Ground Control, follow the lead of games like Myth in terms of how resources are handled, most are simply derivatives of the collect-resources-and-build-factories gameplay model. Borrrring.
***
We tend to remember the creative spins on games a way back when, and we are nostalgic... yet there have been certain innovations that become standards. Rocket Launchers. Health. Ammo.
Standards are useful to predict market trends; they may not brim with creativity, as a side effect.
Publishers who lost their shirts in the coin-slot game biz in the 70's & 80's will all agree that market trends hold importance for anyone who is fronting cash.
All of a sudden, with the advent of floppy disks, the non-commercial games were easily copied and public access was born! The Jump Man's were all very creative because anyone with the patience to learn the language could produce, and with zero overhead and zero publisher BS.
Retro user games didn't get bogged down in today's market. They were mostly created out of some guy's basement and made zero profit.
Reminisce back to the day when games were fun and computers had about as much power as 1/62.5 of today's calculators. (I saw a pocket organizer with a meg memory last week at Wal-Mart, and my TI-994A had 16K).
Many a great adventure game was cranked out on that old TI, when I was about 11 years old.
Has the word 'retro' suddenly become synonymous to the word 'creative'?
Heaven's to Betsy, Irene, what a dreadful idea!
The game industry is soely made up of publishers.
Don't kid yourself. Developers are nothing in the big picture... they are worker ants, building a small subsection to a giant colony. Their ideas mean nothing. They have substandard communication skills, and even worse business sense.
However...
The publishers are the ones who inflict the public with substandard games. They put out useless crap -- buggy crap, and their advertisements make us buy buy buy!
Why do they do it?
For every one amazing game published, there are over a hundred flops.
Publishers fear failure more than they love games.
Gamers love games more than they fear failure. :)
Why do we buy?
Because they damn well told us to.
They hired a guy who looked like we want to look, dressed like we want to dress and talked like we wish we could and we crave the game of the month.
Remedy?
Developers need to take business classes to get superior games BACK ON THE GODDAMN MARKET.
I would hate to see a prosecutor after my lawyer got thru with him, for charges of downloading warez. Users of warez are exploiting a hole in the general system of computer sales. This is not criminal, and it is falsely being made to look criminal. The current computer software market ecconomy replaces traditional physical market ecconomy with a virtual ecconomy. Buy and sell information, in the form of programs. Do not attempt to get free software, even if you are not breaking the law of supply and demand. You see with software, there is INFINATE SUPPLY, and, if you're lucky, enough demand. The problem with this, is that ecconomy functions on a supply and demand principle that is archaic. This principle needs to adapt now, and that is the only reason ecconomy suffers. Not because some pimple faced geek decides to 'steal' software. The act of stealing has always been 'to transfer illegally', and it has never meant 'to duplicate'. I believe replication can save the world. Why stop at software? Keep learning, keep striving and move forward. Progress is to replicate!!! The industry must adapt and stop putting our children in jail for harmlessly downloading information and programs that may have been hacked by evil doers. Just because my son can get free software, certainly does not mean he is bad. He has to get that software and learn it to compete with other members in his peer group, and if they are getting warez, he must as well, in order to keep a fair playing field. Stop the guys doing the hacks, if you can. Our children are not to blame. The industry needs to adapt to overcome this problem, by changing their ways. Maybe devoting a billion in policing the internet is NOT the answer! Maybe we just need to come up with a sollution that makes EVERYONE happy. What about open source?!?! What about free software for personal use, provided it's main functions are business, and not entertainment?!?! Photoshop should be FREE for students because they require the software to learn how to make graphics for industry. Make up losses by billing heavier on the companies who demand students know the software. Give our children a chance to make a difference. Give us all a chance to make a difference. Let's say I have a device that lets me copy food. Let's call this item a REPLICATOR. Not like Star Trek (but close)... this one is hand held. Let's say I walk into a grocery store and COPY everything in sight. Then I leave. Would you arrest me? Probably. Would I feel guilty? Piss on that! I did NOT HARM ANYONE. I just made a replica of something. No one lost anything, but my sale. Except they say that "oh we lost your sale because you WOULD have bought our product but you STOLE it." SHeah!!! Like I would ever buy Photoshop! Feck that. It's too expensive, and it only applies if I am using it for work, in which case my work bought it and paid to licence it, and it's out of my hands. You know, we should make companies pay for everything and every human should live FREE. Replicaiton should not be made to be an evil because it is the one last technology that can save the human RACE!@!!!!! Just think of how no one would have to starve! Now ask yourself how the industry can adapt to overcome the suddent thrust we are already feeling because of 'illegal' (I still say it's not criminal) replication of software and imagine how you can make it better... how can you change the way things are so that replication is the norm, and nobody suffers because of it. And if you ask me, I'd rather see a suit suffer than some poor Cambodian children... what, because they are not allowed to break a MORALITY and REPLICATE food?!?!?! Pffft. Give me a beer. /d
It is said that a dolphin can hear you plot someone's murder. :) Imagine how they would feel being bombarded by military issue sound wavs capable of 2,400bps?!?! Gah! Poor Flipper! *eheheh my hearing aid!!* /d
The military would have to seriously watch security. If it's sound waves, I can hear it. Mind you, those military security codes can reek havoc on even the most nimble h4xx0r! /d
I'm saying that where there is a will, there is a way. There is no such thing as perfect security and it is a waste of money to keep shelling out cash to waste more money on security. The way I see it, this is one of those freeloader plans. And no I don't go opening anything whatsoever... I'm just saying that it would be EASY to get a legit cdkey if you wanted to. :) /d
Host it on either a mainframe, or on your internet server, using unique logins for everyone on the project, assigning proper permissions based on what each person is going to do.
"What management structures/tools are helpful?"
Visit http://www.download.com and download a schedule program. There are a bunch of other little progs that can help you keep everything going. Also get a text replacer program that does find/replace over a whole directory or more.
"At minimum we'll need a source-code repository and a mailinglist/newsgroup, right?"
Absoloootly. Depending on how limited your budget is, you can host a repository by opening an ftp from your cable-based home pc. I use g6 server, which you can also get from download.com. You can burn off the source code in a dated directory and allow access to your coders so they can download fresh copies.
Each time you compile your code, you can then post updated (and approved) copies to the ftp, so coders can grab them.
"Anything else considered critical?" A web page is pretty critical, or at least you should have a scheduler program running where people can look up what's going on in your project. You can do this using a web format, or you could go all out and code up an ASP web page where users login, set their .plan files (or work logs) and also list what files are in play, and what objective exist upon each file.
"What are some effective control stuctures?"
Schedules are important, email lists will help control things and so will ICQ if you can get people to use it.
You can go really fancy on the SQL or ASP functions if you want, making the whole project keep tabs on everyone. IF you have people upload their work logs or answer questions BEFORE downloading the recent code source, you can force people to do things your way, and collect data from them as you go. It doesn't take too long to do this either, and it can be done in any size shop.
"Who should determine what makes it into an official release?
Beta testers. If you want certain things in, you can say they go, but if you get any serious resistance, you should really focus on clearing the path with revisions.
On early releases, it is the lead coder's decision, but after that, I would reccomend either private or public beta testing to determine what is really necessary.
"Who should be able to add code to the tree?
No one should be able to write to the source. I would have everyone write new code modules and then have one person splice them all together with the old code. IF you have to cut out old stuff, you may just want to go in and decide what goes, and then comment it out for your tests. If it passes, I would still keep the old commented code and list where your changes are in each case.
Only after 'point O' releases, should you be using cleaned out code. ie: keep your backups but move the project to new fresh code bases after you clear bugs and add 1.0 or 2.0...etc features.
"What kinds of resources do we need to commit to this project to make it effective?"
When you have time, you need no money.
"In short, what advice do you have on the mechanics and management of open source projects?"
Stay on top of organization and keep your objectives clear. TOE charts are the best for this, in any language.
Form and function are important, yet function should be the highest on your list.
Keep it simple. Do not do anything you don't have to.
Sometimes it's better to have a clunky program that works than a really fast one that is broken and keeps crashing... but I prefer the latter. :P
You can always fix bugs, but you can't speed up a dead mule in a day.
Geez, all you'd have to do is get an ISO from the net and find a legit password by reading the cdcase at a store near you. This whole cdkey issue is really silly. Companies should come up with a better way to protect games. Anyone who wants to pirate a game will do it, the only real question is: who should suffer? Fact is that no security is PERFECT, which means it's all USELESS. Better to make piracy hard than to lose money tho... so I can see why cdkey servers exist -- until they can be replaced by something better for users who have paid. Keychecks really hamper the game environment. When you get the servers refreshed and you finally connect to a game, if the server quits or has more lag than it did before, you find yourself wasting a lot of time off the playing field. /d