The state of ORPG
Posted by snowdog on 2009-07-30 02:59
As I have just resurfaced after a multi-year sabbatical away from ORPG I decided to take a few days to catch back up on the projects progress by going back though the forums, bug reports, code change logs, etc. I also dropped back in on some ORPG servers and had chats with the server ops [admins] as well as got a general feel from the community at large by asking a couple dozen players [under different types of games systems and on different servers] what they thought about ORPG. Honestly, I was mostly trying to decide if I really want to come "back" or if it was perhaps time to throw in with some other project instead. I'll be forthright with the dev team... I've not really decided to stay or vanish (again) at this point, that will be largely up to what I see in the coming weeks.
The project leader in me seems to always get the better of me however so I want to bring to you folks what I see and the impression I've obtained from the ORPG community (both present users and even some that have moved away from ORPG for their gaming needs). Please be aware this post is NOT an attack of any kind against any of you or your code or ideas. I know each of you has poured a tremendous number of hours (sweat, tears, and probably some blood too) into this project in the same way I have in years past. This post is purely for the betterment of ORPG as a project.
1) First and foremost I have a major concern with what appears to be a split in an already small (lets be honest.. tiny) developer community. Parallel development of the same software is... (again no attack intented).. completely inane. The use of Mecurial, IMO, is detrimental to the development of ORPG as the development patterns it promotes actually seem to encourage project forking which is something a small dev community really needs to avoid at all costs. Only a strongly connected and highly cooperative development team would be able to use these patterns and still maintain the overall integrity and focus of a centralized code base that (again IMO) is required for a long term open source project like ORPG. While clearly ORPG and "Traipse" have currently are parallel projects I fail to see the reasoning (apart from perhaps dev team discord) for Traipse at all. [Again... not an attack... simply referencing Traipse because it came second.]
2) Second, and probably the most disturbing to me, is what appears to be almost open hostility between developers in plain view of the community [ie. on public ORPG forums]. This greatly troubles me, and as I've come to find out from some of the general ORPG users I've talked to over the last couple days, it is something the community at large is aware of. Developing software like ORPG is more than just simply coding a new feature or making sure your next release doesn't have a major bug in it. ORPG is a community based software, and whether you're aware of it or not that community's confidence in the end product does matter. When there is obvious discord between developers it leaves a sour taste in the users mouths and it does, even if only in a small way, affect their confidence in the product particularly in their willingness to accept new versions. There is a certain level of user to dev PR that needs to occur. The users need to feel the devs are on top of things, responsive to the users needs, and (most important) extremely competent (if only in appearance).
Another important point is an existing development community that is either undergoing power struggles between devs or other discord does not draw new developers. New developers either choose not to participate outright or will quickly be put out by trying to 'not step on anyones toes'. Either way, strife within the dev team will result in a smaller team that doesn't grow.
3) This brings me to my third point, one that comes from the community at large. The general consensus is... ORPG is very stable and useable. The biggest complaint overall had to do with the recent problems surrounding the meta server but I think that issue has already been addressed. It's expected that not being able to connect to servers would be the biggest ticket problem. As always there was the usual amount of moaning about the map [but that has always been there]. However there is still a heavy undercurrent of resistance to new version adoption. Over half the players and most of the server admins I spoke with said they were running previous versions of the app. And a good deal of those spoke of rolling back to previous versions. I'm going to surmise this is why DJ's concept/plans for the new updater included the feature to install previous versions at user request and why the recent push towards pre-release testing. When speaking to some old gaming buddies I dug up a good deal of them have moved to other tools for their gaming needs. MapTool (java based graphics heavy open source project) being one that several unrelated people said they were now using. I downloaded it and tried it out its current version, its as slow and clunky as I remembered it being years ago, but it does 'look' great. Those same people said they choose MapTools simply because it was easier to run [referring primarily to getting a new user into their game] however all of them said if ORPG's problems were ironed out they would likely switch back [due to sluggish performance of MapTool and its limited chat features (primarily graphics based app)]
From what I've been able to determine is that the lack of new version adoption of based primarily on fear. Fear that is based on the fact the the general ORPG users doesn't trust the ORPG devs. They [the users] think you [the devs] will 'break' their ORPG on every release. I'm sure the all of you are at least aware of this condition already even if it's remained unspoken. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not attacking anyone, just stating what the community appears to be feeling. I know a lot of times (at least in the past) ORPG has fell victim to changes in wxPython releases as well as the Python itself, and save for removing dependence on these projects these complications will continue to be an issue. Probably a good 10% - 20% of the "you broke my ORPG" can be attributed to the user not having the right version of Py or wxPy installed.
So there you have it. That's what I see as the state of ORPG right now.
I humbly submit the following solution paths:
A) that this dev team needs to refocus some priorities and better coordinate its efforts to the overall benefit of the ORPG project.
B) more care be taken to maintain good PR between devs and users to help build user confidence and grow the community
C) ORPG development should be re-unified and development efforts be directed unilaterally with continued/additional emphasis on pre-testing and versional stability
The project leader in me seems to always get the better of me however so I want to bring to you folks what I see and the impression I've obtained from the ORPG community (both present users and even some that have moved away from ORPG for their gaming needs). Please be aware this post is NOT an attack of any kind against any of you or your code or ideas. I know each of you has poured a tremendous number of hours (sweat, tears, and probably some blood too) into this project in the same way I have in years past. This post is purely for the betterment of ORPG as a project.
1) First and foremost I have a major concern with what appears to be a split in an already small (lets be honest.. tiny) developer community. Parallel development of the same software is... (again no attack intented).. completely inane. The use of Mecurial, IMO, is detrimental to the development of ORPG as the development patterns it promotes actually seem to encourage project forking which is something a small dev community really needs to avoid at all costs. Only a strongly connected and highly cooperative development team would be able to use these patterns and still maintain the overall integrity and focus of a centralized code base that (again IMO) is required for a long term open source project like ORPG. While clearly ORPG and "Traipse" have currently are parallel projects I fail to see the reasoning (apart from perhaps dev team discord) for Traipse at all. [Again... not an attack... simply referencing Traipse because it came second.]
2) Second, and probably the most disturbing to me, is what appears to be almost open hostility between developers in plain view of the community [ie. on public ORPG forums]. This greatly troubles me, and as I've come to find out from some of the general ORPG users I've talked to over the last couple days, it is something the community at large is aware of. Developing software like ORPG is more than just simply coding a new feature or making sure your next release doesn't have a major bug in it. ORPG is a community based software, and whether you're aware of it or not that community's confidence in the end product does matter. When there is obvious discord between developers it leaves a sour taste in the users mouths and it does, even if only in a small way, affect their confidence in the product particularly in their willingness to accept new versions. There is a certain level of user to dev PR that needs to occur. The users need to feel the devs are on top of things, responsive to the users needs, and (most important) extremely competent (if only in appearance).
Another important point is an existing development community that is either undergoing power struggles between devs or other discord does not draw new developers. New developers either choose not to participate outright or will quickly be put out by trying to 'not step on anyones toes'. Either way, strife within the dev team will result in a smaller team that doesn't grow.
3) This brings me to my third point, one that comes from the community at large. The general consensus is... ORPG is very stable and useable. The biggest complaint overall had to do with the recent problems surrounding the meta server but I think that issue has already been addressed. It's expected that not being able to connect to servers would be the biggest ticket problem. As always there was the usual amount of moaning about the map [but that has always been there]. However there is still a heavy undercurrent of resistance to new version adoption. Over half the players and most of the server admins I spoke with said they were running previous versions of the app. And a good deal of those spoke of rolling back to previous versions. I'm going to surmise this is why DJ's concept/plans for the new updater included the feature to install previous versions at user request and why the recent push towards pre-release testing. When speaking to some old gaming buddies I dug up a good deal of them have moved to other tools for their gaming needs. MapTool (java based graphics heavy open source project) being one that several unrelated people said they were now using. I downloaded it and tried it out its current version, its as slow and clunky as I remembered it being years ago, but it does 'look' great. Those same people said they choose MapTools simply because it was easier to run [referring primarily to getting a new user into their game] however all of them said if ORPG's problems were ironed out they would likely switch back [due to sluggish performance of MapTool and its limited chat features (primarily graphics based app)]
From what I've been able to determine is that the lack of new version adoption of based primarily on fear. Fear that is based on the fact the the general ORPG users doesn't trust the ORPG devs. They [the users] think you [the devs] will 'break' their ORPG on every release. I'm sure the all of you are at least aware of this condition already even if it's remained unspoken. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not attacking anyone, just stating what the community appears to be feeling. I know a lot of times (at least in the past) ORPG has fell victim to changes in wxPython releases as well as the Python itself, and save for removing dependence on these projects these complications will continue to be an issue. Probably a good 10% - 20% of the "you broke my ORPG" can be attributed to the user not having the right version of Py or wxPy installed.
So there you have it. That's what I see as the state of ORPG right now.
I humbly submit the following solution paths:
A) that this dev team needs to refocus some priorities and better coordinate its efforts to the overall benefit of the ORPG project.
B) more care be taken to maintain good PR between devs and users to help build user confidence and grow the community
C) ORPG development should be re-unified and development efforts be directed unilaterally with continued/additional emphasis on pre-testing and versional stability
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3 Comments
By Digitalxero on 2009-07-30 03:16
Yes this is why I have pushed hard the pre-release testing and push towards detailing release procedures and an update system that is not antagonistic toward the user (which the updater in 1.7.5+ is) and does not require an multiple manual and error prone steps by a developer to create an update.
By sirebral on 2009-07-30 03:52
I am glad you said all these things though, snowdog. I totally agree with you, that is what the community appears to be feeling. C) is not going to happen though. Users should be encouraged to fork more and develop more to advance the software faster. Also, when I get my updater window completed users will be able to find the repo they want, update the mercurial content from that trac, and then update their software to whatever revision they want.
By davidbyron on 2009-08-02 03:49
"_I’m going to surmise this is why DJ’s concept/plans for the new updater included the feature to install previous versions at user request_"
Actually no. I asked for that feature to make users more confident in openrpg upgrades. The idea is that if a user knows they can whip back and forth easily and without fuss or problems they have nothing to lose by giving the new version a try. Bugs in a release are much less of an issue if users can say "well this sucks so until you get that fixed I'm going to revert to version X.Y.Z (which will take me all of 3 seconds)"
re. MapTools. I like their product and have it installed as I do several other competitor products; always keep checking out the competition. I had a thread on KloogeWerks at RPG tools forum. Happy to point these tools out to folks as I believe OpenRPG beats them but can learn from them too. Also for some users MapTools is genuinely better. if you have a very artistic DM with time to make neat graphics you want to show them off with a map orientated tool. 80% of OpenRPG users don't use the maps -- I am told -- actually do you have any handle on what features are used in what numbers because that data is really useful and I don't have any idea.
I've been trying to get the "help desk" at the RPG forum working so users get feedback very quickly. Hopefully that visibility will give people confidence and make them feel better about the devs even if they ultimately go away unhappy. We are solving peoples issues the great majority of the time though. It's a good source of feedback for me. I don't have that go on the servers and chat with people time though. Frankly that is something we need so I am very happy you took time to do that.