On Ares, Probabilities, the Future and the State of the Community

[Renegade]

Except you completely misunderstood me. They laugh at Ares because modding is a hobby, and the Ares development treats it like a job. They're not gonna bother with Ares because it's not a fun process;

No, it doesn't.
Ares development treats a giant-ass software project involving reverse-engineering, deciphering a comment-less, nameless API, converting it into usable C++ headers, and then injecting code back into that mess as what it is: A fucking complicated software project.

Ares development doesn't treat YR modding as anything, because Ares development isn't YR modding.
This may surprise you, but we don't just extract rules.ini from the exe, re-write it, and inject it back in. It's a bit more complicated than that.

So if the reason the community has no interest in Ares is honestly that they don't grasp that writing Ares and modding YR are two different things requiring two different approaches, then that only underlines previously made points.

And if you think it could be done better, and other exe-modifying projects are good examples of that: See both D's example of source loss, and my quote from VK.
Or, you know...see how many of these projects are still around and making meaningful progress.

This is a serious issue, though: If the community is not going to support Ares because it actually takes work to achieve something, we should settle that right now. Because that will never, ever change.

incomplete feedback is often dealt with harshly

Well, duh. I mean, look at you right there: On one hand, you complain about the lack of features of Ares compared to NPatch, you complain about lack of feedback from the developers, you complain about how hard the process is, and on the other hand, you complain when we expect the necessary information to actually do anything.

The perfect example of this kind of shit is feature filing: Filing a feature correctly is fucking simple - you set the category to "Feature Request", you set the severity to "feature", and because you obviously can't reproduce something that doesn't exist, you set the reproducibility to "N/A".
...I had to sit down thrice and write code on the tracker to finally stop people from incorrectly filing features.

Why the fuck would we happily and cheerily accept submissions of any kind, if it's quite obvious the submitter cares so little that he can't even be bothered to do the slightest bit of work?
Somebody expects me to invest a week of my spare time to implement his favorite feature, yet can't even be arsed to set one little input field from "always" to "N/A"?
And you expect me not to be annoyed by that?
Sorry for being human.

And if you think this is just one those cases were we take things too seriously: Ask reaperrr, who went through the tracker during DFD, and found a good dozen features who weren't even being considered, simply because some moron filed them wrong and they never appeared in the filters.

Seriously, do you have any idea how ridiculous this is? You complain about the lack of features and the supposed instability, and then complain about the fact that we dislike it when we don't get enough information to do anything about it?

Should we just cast a spell, sacrifice a goat, and then God reads the mind of the submitter and conjures up the code?

It doesn't work that way.

and big community requests often never seem to get any feedback from developers (in the case of air guard mode and custom palettes for animations).

Alright, what kind of "feedback" would you have liked on #349?
"We hereby acknowledge that we are not completely blind, and, as we developed ICS and this issue consistently popped up at the top of the list we were developing, we kinda noticed it existed."?
For fuck's sake!
The thing has an ACS score of 59, almost three dozen supporters, was judged upon thrice during DFD, and referenced a dozen times over.
Of course we fucking realize it exists.

So what do you want us to post in the comments?
"Hi."?

Plus, you know, this is the part where the not-redneck-approach comes in:
Issue statuses don't magically change on their own.
If a feature request is set to "acknowledged", that's not solar winds flipping bits on the database server - that's a developer -gasp!- acknowledging the request.
Given that unfeasible and undesirable requests get closed, what exactly does that tell you?

Also, quite frankly, had you actually read the DFD-related material, you would know that the primary reason for the DFDs was the fact that there were too many feature requests for us to wade through alone, and that we asked the community for help with that.

Which, you know, explains why we don't post in every single comment thread.
But hey, who cares for long-known, multiple-times-discussed details?
Clearly we should post on every single of our 1300+ issues every day, no matter if there's anything useful to say or any reason to post at all.

So yeah. If you want specific feedback on a specific issue, say so.
If all you want is "hi, I'm a developer and I've seen your request" - tough luck. Status: Acknowledged will have to suffice.


That all being said, I spot my own avatar on #349 at least 4 times, so I really don't know what you want there.

It's not hard to find examples of this, the bug tracker is open to the public and the massive arguments that have occurred, on occasion, over them because someone merely stated a bad idea.

Bullshit. Examples?

There are exactly two reasons arguments happen:

• the developers point out it's a bad idea and the submitter doesn't want to accept that, leading to resistance
  
• the request isn't 100% bad or unreasonable, but there is disagreement about the priority it should take or its implementation
  

I don't remember a single instance where a developer or the community simply pointed out something was a bad idea, gave an explanation, the submitter understood, and then there were fights anyway.
It just doesn't happen.

Arguments only happen when the submitter or the supporters disagree that something is a bad idea, and we're not in control of that.

So yeah.
If you want to keep your claim of "massive arguments [...] because someone merely stated a bad idea" up, feel free to provide actual evidence - especially since you claim "It's not hard to find examples of this".
We can then discuss those curious instances.

And in my personal stance between the battlefield, Ares development can be complicated at times. I can't test Chrono Prisons because I have no fucking clue how they were implemented. Sure, there's an Abductor= tag for weapons but what else is needed?

"Added INI parsing for Abductor=(true|false) for issue #680; not hooked up to anything yet."
"I did just commit an implementation for Abductor=(true|false) on WeaponTypes"
"So go get your build and test the shit out of Abductor=(true|false) on WeaponTypes!"

Yes, I can totally see how difficult it is to figure out which flags are relevant to Chrono Prison testing and how to use them.

I could make reference to the whole 70% issue here again, but I think it's obvious on its own.

Had I any time between jobs, I would have asked on the Bug Tracker. However, this was more testing in a 5 minute period and I realized half of the things implemented in Ares aren't really explained well when they're in development.

What do you want to know that's not explained?

Oh, right, I'm sorry, I forgot - I'm not allowed to bitch about crappy feedback, and instead have to use my mind-reading powers to figure out what you want.

For instance, I remember testing the radar jammer feature with no real idea on how to implement it on a unit until Reaperrr posted the tag after delving into the .dll with a Resource Editor.

Yes, that's a cute little populist example, only conveniently leaving out the following insignificant details:

1. That was one time I accidentally forgot to mention the flag name in the commit message. It's not like I simply committed with no explanation and then expected anyone to guess the flag, I just forgot to mention the damn flag name - once.
   
2. I actually learned from that experience and made damn sure to mention the Chrono Prison's flag name often enough. So it's not like this is a continuous issue, as you try to imply, it was one time, and it was a valuable lesson.
   
3. Lastly, your sad little implication of how the evil developers left you hanging and it took reaperrr's initiative to figure out the flag name is complete bullshit.
   Yes, reaperrr did seek out the flag name, and I'm thankful for that, but it's not like you were neglected for days and reaperrr was forced to do that to enable any kind of progress at all.
   
   I committed at 7 in the morning, forgot to mention the flag, returned at 8 in the evening, saw the question, and saw reaperrr's answer.
   So had it not been for reaperrr, you would have been information-less for a little over 13 hours. Boohoo. Sucks, wasn't intended, but half a day without a flag name certainly doesn't equal a continuous lack of documentation over the entire course of development.
   
   To be honest, at this point, I'm beginning to wonder if you're intentionally blurring the facts.
   

This is the kind of attitude that detracts people from using Ares. When you have lead developers insulting people for their preference over how they want to enjoy their hobby, why should they bother coming to something like Ares? The attitude that "we're better than VK at coding because we have about the same attitude but an injection system" isn't really what people want to see.

WEEEEEOH WEEEEEOH WEEEEEOH WEEEEEOH WEEEEEOH WEE---
Oh, sorry - that was my strawman alert.

I'll be happy to discuss this point with you when you start accurately representing what I said - namely, that I talked about our development practices, and not their enjoyment of their hobbies, and that I never claimed to be better than VK at coding, nor that said non-existent claim would be because we use an injection system, which makes so little sense, it is a mystery how you even thought that would be a good claim to make up.

So yeah. Go back, accurately tackle my stance, and we can discuss this further.

And at PPM, native English speakers have had issues understanding the "comprehensive" documentation. At times, I've even had difficulties determining exactly what I'm supposed to do due to the language usage in the documentation.

So where are the bug reports? Where are the people at forums we actually frequent telling us this? Where are the proposed fixes? Where are the native English speakers offering to help?

Oh, right - the community doesn't work. It just bitches behind people's backs and expects them to recognize issues through mind reading and fix them without proper feedback.

I keep forgetting that.

Let's not also forget that not everyone who mods speaks perfect fluent English, and the level of proficiency needed to use the documentation can be quite intimidating.

Yes, I can see how utterly complicated it is to comprehend a paragraph like

[Unit]â–ºSpotlight.StartHeight= (integer - leptons)
Specifies the number of leptons above the ground at which the spotlight will be generated. Defaults to 250.

Clearly the facts that this flag goes on a unit, sets the starting height for a spotlight, that said starting height is given in leptons above the ground, and that the default is 250, are barely comprehensible, and I needed an advanced degree in English to parse that.

Again, examples? Bug reports? Suggestions for improvement?
This is exactly shit I was talking about.

You complain that we treat a lack of feedback harshly.
Yet you sit here, complain about an issue with the documentation, and don't give me the information I need to fix it!

What do you expect me to do now? Randomly change sentences in the documentation, in the hopes that the community stops writing complaints I never saw the in the first place?

I am here. I am ready and willing to fix the issue.
You won't let me.

Which of us is the problem?