On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.

On 2017-03-16 10:45, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
IMHO....It needs enough of a revamp, that it gets released as DS 2. Don't mean to knock Medusa...but the development world is leaving it behind. Ive been playing around with the assets in Unreal Engine 4.15. DS needs a facelift, and it doesnt have a dev team. At least not an active one. Any admins that pop in never show their faces. Sometimes see a moderator, but they usually seem afk.
The license is pretty wide open though...just sayin'.
It needs a facelift.
It needs a more user-friendly engine (that will allow a wider range of contributors).
It needs the older metaverse, with split resources (giving planets a purpose again).
It needs fewer ships. At least until (if) a player base materializes.
It needs ways to earn minor amounts of game credits. (Incentive)
It needs missions.
It needs the user-purchased AI to be non-random and orderable.
It needs a mobile platform!
It needs planteary defenses reworked. (honestly, the whole build system is antiquated, limited, and needs a thorough revamp)

I'd love to help with any of this, but I don't code. The problems aren't environmental or modeling. Textures aren't going to fix the low population. If it were UE4, I'm all over it. But...its Medusa....I mean....im just sitting here trying to think what the code would look like for me to simply take a pen and stab myself in the eye...and....yeah, no C++/C#/Lua for me. I am not a math person...
But the Blueprint system in UE...now that is simply freaking brilliant!

On 2017-03-16 00:23, Daisy wrote:

Quote: On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote: Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.

It probably would have been better to make the source accessible when there were still people playing this and some probably willing to pitch in. I can understand the security concerns of it being an MMO, if that was something holding it up.

There's a few changes I want to go over in the code, but to what end?
What would we have to do to bring people back to this game, to make it interesting and worth playing again?

On 2017-03-20 08:50, Pantheon wrote:

Quote: On 2017-03-16 00:23, Daisy wrote: Quote: On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote: Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies. It probably would have been better to make the source accessible when there were still people playing this and some probably willing to pitch in. I can understand the security concerns of it being an MMO, if that was something holding it up. There's a few changes I want to go over in the code, but to what end? What would we have to do to bring people back to this game, to make it interesting and worth playing again?

Problem with that mentality is that it was easily accessible to those who proved their ability to work on the game. 90% of those who did, disappeared when they first set eyes on the task realized.

Being open source now or 3 years ago would have made little difference - there are very few people with the skill set, time, and as Ken alluded to, the mental ability to work on a project this size (it's all well conceptualizing something in a small program, with a project this size that often involves delving into many, many systems and changing them to support what you have in mind - it can be very daunting, even to those in the field).

It's easy for someone to have the idea, but implementing it requires you to go through a mental checklist that is not only daunting, but extremely time consuming. Things like performance for the client or server, how will you add new, or change existing systems so that performance is maintained or not adversely effected? What numbers have you chosen for this new thing, and why? Do they balance out? Is there a runaway somewhere? There are hours of testing ahead for this alone, and that's not even going into the number crunching in spreadsheets, let alone the very basic math to support those numbers. Then there's a bugs, because there always are. Things like syncing between client and server, making sure key objects are updated as regularly as they need to be - but how often is that?

You see, like many before me, you, and most people here have come to realize, is that wanting to do X,Y, and Z for a game is always easier said than done. Once you come to understand the task ahead of you, and the multitude of downfalls for it (time, money, etc), your want to do such a thing wains.

Being open source doesn't fix any of that, sadly.

On 2017-03-17 17:43, kenetiks wrote:

Quote: On 2017-03-16 10:45, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote: IMHO....It needs enough of a revamp, that it gets released as DS 2. Don't mean to knock Medusa...but the development world is leaving it behind. Ive been playing around with the assets in Unreal Engine 4.15. DS needs a facelift, and it doesnt have a dev team. At least not an active one. Any admins that pop in never show their faces. Sometimes see a moderator, but they usually seem afk. The license is pretty wide open though...just sayin'. It needs a facelift. It needs a more user-friendly engine (that will allow a wider range of contributors). It needs the older metaverse, with split resources (giving planets a purpose again). It needs fewer ships. At least until (if) a player base materializes. It needs ways to earn minor amounts of game credits. (Incentive) It needs missions. It needs the user-purchased AI to be non-random and orderable. It needs a mobile platform! It needs planteary defenses reworked. (honestly, the whole build system is antiquated, limited, and needs a thorough revamp) I'd love to help with any of this, but I don't code. The problems aren't environmental or modeling. Textures aren't going to fix the low population. If it were UE4, I'm all over it. But...its Medusa....I mean....im just sitting here trying to think what the code would look like for me to simply take a pen and stab myself in the eye...and....yeah, no C++/C#/Lua for me. I am not a math person... But the Blueprint system in UE...now that is simply freaking brilliant!

Many moons ago, when DS still had a stable player base, I had envisioned the game I wanted to play. This game was only tangentially related to DS itself. During this period, DS's player base also contained quite a few gifted people who had dev skills, and I don't mean DS devs themselves, these were just players. I had discussed the game I had in mind and several people jumped on board with the idea. We got as far as some Alpha models, and I had licensed a game engine and had started the long process of modifying the codebase.

Coding is not quite as daunting as people often make it out to be. It does however, require certain mental abilities. You have to be able to conceptualize things that don't really exist. This ability to think in the abstract is fairly paramount to the ability to program, especially in object oriented programming.

Don't get me wrong, I am not in any sense saying that I am anything other than a novice. But I would say that one of the more difficult aspects of programming isn't the syntax, it's remembering and being able to recall thousands of functions, their usages and parameters at will. In php, a fairly loose language, I write most of my scripts barely using any of the thousands of native functions, or the functions added by the framework I use to build applications with. Truly advanced programmers' code is a site to behold in itself.

On 2017-05-12 13:32, lilFrigate (Marys Soldier) wrote:
The game was called 'void of darkness' was for sale on gamers gate and desura.

On 2017-05-13 03:05, Talien wrote:
My only issues are balance issues, more specifically how some things always seemed to get nerfed immediately while they weren't really needed (followed by people quitting), and how some others don't get touched for a long time when they should have (followed by more people quitting), and that isn't even something that's a programming issue.

Basically, if it was me I'd say trying to keep a few people happy drove away many others and killed it for everyone else.

On 2017-05-13 03:05, Talien wrote:
I mean ship editing is easy, even I can do that. System editing.....I wouldn't really call it easy, but as long as you can work with and remember coordinates you can do it with notepad.