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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

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I hope I'm not offending anyone here; trust me, that's definitely NOT my intention. I'd just like to express a concern of mine: I've been back to Xenocide after a sort of intervening absense for about two months now, and during this time I've noticed that the project is making virtually no progress whatsoever. Please don't assume I'm just complaining - I'm honestly just worried about this wonderful community effort. I'd hate to see all this hard work go to waste. I was quite saddened to see UFO: Alien Invasion lose its steam, and I was disturbed to see a similar trend here.

 

Before duty called about a year ago, I was an active member of the Creative Text Department, and I loved every second of it. With my unexcused absense, my demotion (I guess that's an appropriate way to put it) makes sense - completely understandable. I can understand how real life can get in the way of such a labor of love, and this is usually a very busy time of the year for most of us, but I'd just like to say that I'm more than willing to help in any way I can. This is a great effort and I'd love to be able to contribute again.

 

Oh, and let me know if I put this in the wrong place. ^_^

Edited by The Master Maniac
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This is a great effort and I'd love to be able to contribute again.

If this is an application, this is the wrong place... ^_^

No, honestly, If you would like to re-join CTD, please, just PM me, and I'm pretty sure we can "arrange sth"... B)

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There is some perceived "frozen" status from the non programmers arround that is really hurting the advance in CTD, Art and Sound. However, the programming team is very alive and making great progress in the stackless branch, the thing is that because they use IRC to communicate and arrange things it is for them a waste of time to post all those discussions on the Xenocide Forums; that in itself is a major cause of the "lack" of posts in the Xenocide Forums.

 

That would more or less give you and everybody a hint of the wrongness of that perceived status. The best way to track progress is to be notified in realtime of the Commits in the repository (that is how I track) or to be online in the irc.freenode.org #Xenocide channel.

 

Hope that gives you a basic idea of what is going on. BTW just as a side note, latest released build was 728 and the one before 653... If we would have to issue a release today that would be 1194 to be exact.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Edited by red knight
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There is some perceived "frozen" status from the non programmers arround that is really hurting the advance in CTD, Art and Sound. However, the programming team is very alive and making great progress in the stackless branch, the thing is that because they use IRC to communicate and arrange things it is for them a waste of time to post all those discussions on the Xenocide Forums; that in itself is a major cause of the "lack" of posts in the Xenocide Forums.

 

That would more or less give you and everybody a hint of the wrongness of that perceived status. The best way to track progress is to be notified in  realtime of the Commits in the repository (that is how I track) or to be online in the irc.freenode.org #Xenocide channel.

 

Hope that gives you a basic idea of what is going on. BTW just as a side note, latest released build was 728 and the one before 653... If we would have to issue a release today that would be 1194 to be exact.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

 

This is true with the Art department as well, the main communication doesn't happen on the forums, it's instant messaging mostly. The only problem with this is only Vaaish knows if there's any true progress happening. I'm still working...not at an incredibly fast pace mind you, but working all the same.

 

I might be naive on the subject, but has anyone heard of Basecamp? And secondly and most importantly is it free :) ? I think that something like that would be good because you could actively track progress along all departments at the same time.

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I might be naive on the subject, but has anyone heard of Basecamp? And secondly and most importantly is it free  :) ? I think that something like that would be good because you could actively track progress along all departments at the same time.

Well, actuall we do have sth. like this. The bugtracker - if used, allows a pretty good overview of the progress made. Point is: Noone uses it.

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So rises a question: Why?

 

Personally, I don't use it because no-one else does. It isn't updated or maintained, so I'll be the only one checking my changes anyway :(

 

In addition, I guess most people will become active once again during summer.

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Because mainly noone elses is using it... We tryed countless of times to force people to use it to no avail. What can I say, it is frustrating to impose a development process and then noone cares about it.

 

It is the same old thing as someone takes a task but it is not able to estimate a commitment to when it will be done, or at least if they cannot make it post or let someone know that it wont be finish at the time... I tried to do that with Google Calendar, and counted another failed attempt.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Edited by red knight
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Thats what the bug tracker is for? OMFG I thought it was programming use only, as in bugs in code. I don't consider my art to have bugs :D

 

well...maybe we should use it?

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Guest Azrael
There is some perceived "frozen" status from the non programmers arround that is really hurting the advance in CTD, Art and Sound. However, the programming team is very alive and making great progress in the stackless branch, the thing is that because they use IRC to communicate and arrange things it is for them a waste of time to post all those discussions on the Xenocide Forums; that in itself is a major cause of the "lack" of posts in the Xenocide Forums.

 

That would more or less give you and everybody a hint of the wrongness of that perceived status. The best way to track progress is to be notified in  realtime of the Commits in the repository (that is how I track) or to be online in the irc.freenode.org #Xenocide channel.

 

Hope that gives you a basic idea of what is going on. BTW just as a side note, latest released build was 728 and the one before 653... If we would have to issue a release today that would be 1194 to be exact.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

 

This is true with the Art department as well, the main communication doesn't happen on the forums, it's instant messaging mostly. The only problem with this is only Vaaish knows if there's any true progress happening. I'm still working...not at an incredibly fast pace mind you, but working all the same.

 

I might be naive on the subject, but has anyone heard of Basecamp? And secondly and most importantly is it free :) ? I think that something like that would be good because you could actively track progress along all departments at the same time.

Well, if there is actually any progress in Art, it'd be nice if someone from said department posted some about it, like, say, a pic, a render, a love-letter :)

 

edit: I have proposed this idea way too many times but here it goes again, integrating a chat feature into Xenocide would, I believe, help people communicate better, there are tons of free options out there, like phpfreechat, which is very simple to install and setup. Using IRC is just not that good idea.

Edited by Azrael
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Well, if there is actually any progress in Art, it'd be nice if someone from said department posted some about it, like, say, a pic, a render, a love-letter :)

 

 

I posted the terror ship a few weeks ago, and I just about have the battle ship finished up. Here's a little preview:

 

Besides artists need their privacy and solitude to create anything worthy, at least that's what I hear ;)

 

battleship3front.jpg

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Guest Azrael
Well, if there is actually any progress in Art, it'd be nice if someone from said department posted some about it, like, say, a pic, a render, a love-letter :)

 

 

I posted the terror ship a few weeks ago, and I just about have the battle ship finished up. Here's a little preview:

 

Besides artists need their privacy and solitude to create anything worthy, at least that's what I hear ;)

 

post-5250-1148689276_thumb.jpg

My point is that not rarely models get completed and no one bothers to post a single renders for the non-artists to see, that is not completely harmless to project morale, as some people think.

Nice work on the battleship, btw :)

Edited by Azrael
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I think, for the project's well being, instant publification is necessary (or at least with a little lag) It's a big motivation factor as well as between depts as between dept members. Also, it attracts new and better recruits at a faster rate.

 

I tought up a system a while ago which I'm not going into details to. Mainly it's a website (public) with a development portal behind (private) depending on 1 database and therefor being updated instantly. The idea behind it is that everything is centralized into 1 big dynamic and interactive whole. I think that's the way to go. It's easy to create (easier than most of you think) and the ROI is good on large term.

 

Btw, what Red Knight mentioned, I was not setting up an audio company at all. I've been applicating for jobs. And yes, I'm hired at a big webdesign company as IT Consultant. It's a hybrid job. You help to develop the websites while you also go to the client to discuss it.

 

 

Great going on that 3d model! Keep up the good work.

 

 

greets,

 

Thomas

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Thats what the bug tracker is for?  OMFG I thought it was programming use only, as in bugs in code. I don't consider my art to have bugs  :D

 

well...maybe we should use it?

Well, yes, that's what it's for. You can start right on using it! :) You'll just have to get Vaaish to add the Battleship task and assign it to you. (I don't want to mess with "his" section :) ) Make yourself familiar with the Tracker. As you can see, there are plenty of creative texts listed, and naturally, those don't have "bugs" too. But the Bugtracker allows the one assigned to a task to give an estimate of the percent completed on his task, as well the opportunity to document the time spent, and the estimated time for his work. Actually it's a very powerful tool - if we all would just start using it.

 

Edit: You don't even have an account! OMG Fast! get one, PM Red Knight to give you developer status, use it! :)

Edited by Mad
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  • 3 weeks later...

Those of you who dont know programming have to understand that this is a BIG (and I mean really BIG) project. Xenocide, as planned and when completed, will be on par with a commercial game. A commercial game, during developement, will have a large staff of programmers (never mind the rest of the folks working on it) spending, on average, much more than 40 hours per week working specificlally on it.

 

The programming department is the prime mover in a project like this. We have a dedicated core of very talented programmers working on this but one must remember they have lives too. Real life has things that MUST be addressed first before Xenocide. This project is going to take a while folk and that's that.

 

If you take time to look, you'll notice in all the "when is this gonna be done" threads there are no such posts made by people who know how to program; there's a reason for that.

 

It'll happen when it happens. If you want to speed things along, learn C++ and give us a call.

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