Modder666
As one of the few testers who does do his job fairly often (yes, I'm always implementing new Ares features to be safe that they work) I have to say that real life is becoming more of a dominant factor.
- I work two jobs now, so whatever time spent modding isn't done in large blocks. It's generally done within 10 minutes of the time between jobs.
- I'm trying to get out on my own. Moving out is quite a time eater.
- I'm reregistered for college, and thus more of my time will vanish.
- Real life has been throwing a lot of it's heaviest hits at me. Many know of all the crazy events that have happened.
- I can never find anyone willing to load up a testing rulesmd.ini and trying features out online for stability purposes. Who knows how well Ares works online? No real mod that extensively uses the patch have gotten to the online stage.
And then there are other factors, such as:
- Most mods utilizing Ares have much longer development times, generally involving working from the scratch as opposed to the drop-in development when Rock Patch/ NPatch were wout.
- Other modders believe Ares is still too developmental to use, and plan to use it in later years.
- The community is shrinking, and so are the number of active mods.
- The rather professional approach to Ares, the BugTracker, and testing can be quite intimidating to some of those not experienced in the community.
- Some of the community drama has limited some of the support for Ares. Members on PPM may not be quite interested in Ares when they know the developers won't come support them (with the exception of AlexB, who is amazing.
)
EDIT: The line between tester and person-in-wait-of-new-version aren't drawn very clear. Testers and non-testers both can get developmental versions. Why not make those lucrative builds harder to obtain? Limit access of the developmental versions, and I bet those people who use Ares and weren't testers 'all of a sudden' become much more interested in being involved. Another thing that may or may not help would be seeking some hosting offers for mods that use Ares, to help grow more activity here in RenProj. I'd be willing to move if it would mean anything.
So it's two-fold, and often the end of the year tends to be more chaotic in the community due to a lack of free time. I've always noticed winter slowdowns (I'm from the northern hemisphere) and I expected it to impact Ares as well.
- I work two jobs now, so whatever time spent modding isn't done in large blocks. It's generally done within 10 minutes of the time between jobs.
- I'm trying to get out on my own. Moving out is quite a time eater.
- I'm reregistered for college, and thus more of my time will vanish.
- Real life has been throwing a lot of it's heaviest hits at me. Many know of all the crazy events that have happened.
- I can never find anyone willing to load up a testing rulesmd.ini and trying features out online for stability purposes. Who knows how well Ares works online? No real mod that extensively uses the patch have gotten to the online stage.
And then there are other factors, such as:
- Most mods utilizing Ares have much longer development times, generally involving working from the scratch as opposed to the drop-in development when Rock Patch/ NPatch were wout.
- Other modders believe Ares is still too developmental to use, and plan to use it in later years.
- The community is shrinking, and so are the number of active mods.
- The rather professional approach to Ares, the BugTracker, and testing can be quite intimidating to some of those not experienced in the community.
- Some of the community drama has limited some of the support for Ares. Members on PPM may not be quite interested in Ares when they know the developers won't come support them (with the exception of AlexB, who is amazing.
)EDIT: The line between tester and person-in-wait-of-new-version aren't drawn very clear. Testers and non-testers both can get developmental versions. Why not make those lucrative builds harder to obtain? Limit access of the developmental versions, and I bet those people who use Ares and weren't testers 'all of a sudden' become much more interested in being involved. Another thing that may or may not help would be seeking some hosting offers for mods that use Ares, to help grow more activity here in RenProj. I'd be willing to move if it would mean anything.
So it's two-fold, and often the end of the year tends to be more chaotic in the community due to a lack of free time. I've always noticed winter slowdowns (I'm from the northern hemisphere) and I expected it to impact Ares as well.
Leader of Soviet Dawn: Incursion. Representative of the CnC Guild, moderator and PR staff. Go make the Guild alive!