TripleA development
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@panther said in TripleA development:
I share your worries.
I don't even know what is the full list of main developers, meaning persons which are able to merge requests at will and operate the lobby and such.
AFAIK @LaFayette @redrum @ssoloff and @RoiEX . Anyone else?
I am thinking of forking this part of the discussion to a new topic. Anyone has a good title?
"The future of TripleA" came to my mind - too pathetic IMHO.I'm still around and play TripleA but haven't been doing any active development for a while now. I come around the forum a bit.
The best way to see who the active developers are besides who posts here in the forum is to look at the github repo and probably check the latest pull requests: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
TripleA Developer with a Passion for AI: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/105/ai-development-discussion-and-feedback
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Thank you, but that is part of the problem. Those who we know having merging abilities, have not appeared for quite some time.
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@redrum said in TripleA development:
The best way to see who the active developers are besides who posts here in the forum is to look at the github repo and probably check the latest pull requests: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
I see that DanVanAtta & Frigoref have been active within the past month. My activity is also listed, but I am only a MapAdmin and not general developer.
My initial concern was that a major bug is not being fixed in 2.6, while development seems to be continuing.
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It makes it impossible to have a mod which has multiple maps.
"Mods" were removed in 2.5 or even earlier IIRC. This is not new to 2.6. Frankly I think that might have happened as soon as we moved maps to github, which would be around 4 years ago now. New to 2.6 - 2.6 does not currently support map-skins.
Are you referring to something else perhaps given the support for map-mods was removed so long ago?
It looks like the only remaining main developer active left has been @LaFayette, and this means TripleA is going to freeze any time he way walk away.
It's been a risky situation for a long time. Combine this with a codebase that is so dirty and bloated that it takes 5x longer than reasonable to do the simplest of tasks, there is not much joy in that. It is not fun where every update has caused multiple bugs to boot and even then takes many days when it should take just several hours. This is not conducive to having developers love this project. To solve this, there are some major projects we can do, but the easiest and fastest way is to rip out unused or hardly ever used features.
With all that said, I had to step back and conserve my time for the last few weeks. I was just too stretched thin between everything. Responding to forums takes several hours, reviewing PRs takes several hours per PR, and coding efforts require an additional absurd amount of time. To avoid getting sucked in, I had to step away for a bit.
I do wonder how we can get TripleA to be more distributed and find it so it can be more appealing for others to contribute. Without a nice major project, most are probably not going to be interested. Most major projects are likely to take longer than anyone would realize and second probably requires more refactoring/cleaning up code than anyone realizes or would want to do. I don't have any good answers here.
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I would like 2.6 to be released, as @LaFayette you have spent months working on it. Add in support for Map Tags, then stop development on this version.
Then collect as many devs that are willing and break 2.6 apart, pick up the bits you all like and put it back together to produce version 3.
Version 3.0 will not have anything new over 2.6 but then in future the devs will have a codebase they like.
The promise of a new codebase might tempt past devs to rejoin the team?
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For 3.0 (or 2.7) to be worthwihile contributing to (more than the occasional bug fix) I need more than that: A shared vision where the game engine should develop to, a plan how to modernize technology wise, and a concept how to attract more developers.
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I find that TripleA is a fairly mature product. I can take any Axis & Allies style game and turn into a playable mod with decent AI. We don't need a big road map for the future.
@LaFayette I have not tried multiple map mods for years, so I am not sure when they became unsupported. A bigger issue is that you can no longer just reference the map from another mod.
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Check
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2794/triplea-3-0-design-proposal-discussion?page=1We don't need a big road map for the future.
If we are content with essentially nothing further happening in TripleA, which might not be that unreasonable, then yeah, no road map needed. If we are going to coordinate efforts and avoid devs from undoing each others work as we rewrite the core of the engine, then we do need a plan. We also need a plan I believe to actually turn the code base around. We've been cleaning it up for years, we successfully rewrote the lobby to good effect, though the core game engine has a myriad of issues that make development not really feasible for a number of topics.
We do want to reduce our cost of running TripleA, we can do that with a number of projects we have set. Fixing save game compatibility would go a long way to being able to introduce new features. Further, there are a number of crashes and bugs that hit users on a pretty frequent basis. For example games being lost when bots crash. Save-game file corruption. There are more things that would be great to fix, like laggy network play when not the host. With a core re-write we should be able to really boost the performance of the AI player, and last we could more feasibly improve the look and feel of the game so it's not quite so ugly in places. All this requires something of a road map.
More on this point, I started doing development for TripleA when it was the case that you could no longer start a game in the lobby by simply waiting an hour. It was the case that some nights it was impossible to find a game. I believe the community is slowly contracting. Without intervention this would continue. All in all, a code base that is too crufty to reasonably fix, a shrinking user community; this is how software projects slowly fade out and die.
@LaFayette I have not tried multiple map mods for years, so I am not sure when they became unsupported. A bigger issue is that you can no longer just reference the map from another mod.
Then yes, the mod support was dropped I think in 2.3 or 2.2, it was around 2018 when that happened. Instead, just copy/paste the original map assets into that mod or move the mod XML to the core map. Either way maps are more isolated and changes (ignoring skins) become much easier to track. Without that, any change to a map could break countless unknown mods (which probably happened when World at War was updated).
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@lafayette would keeping 2.5 as a stable and have 2.6 plus be possible for a side by side ? Rip out triplea for the rewrite, which would take years, but keep the stauts quo going, so to speak
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How far is 2.6 from completion?
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@lafayette said in TripleA development:
To solve this, there are some major projects we can do, but the easiest and fastest way is to rip out unused or hardly ever used features.
So @RogerCooper made a good point about triplea currently "being" a mature project at this point. I wonder if 2.5 stable should be set aside and only have critical updates such as :
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3124/nodebb-1-17-and-later-breaks-pbf-compatibility/11
added when necessary and then 2.6 and future new stuff could be added in the above quote.Basically 2.5 is a stopping point. Do the rip and tear and make a newer and better triplea. Hopefully less frustrating for developers and encouraging new people to contribute, while still keeping the current game going.
I'm gonna ping you guys, what does @RaiNova @frigoref @RoiEX @djabwana @ssoloff @redrum @tvleavitt hmm ... guess idk his. W/e missing some others too.
For non Develop type coder people @Panther @TheDog @Cernel @RogerCooper @wc_sumpton @ubernaut @SilverBullet think ?
Apologies to the main users I've missed, but all should chime in anyway
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@beelee I think that is good idea. 2.5 stable only receives critical fixes. 2.6 has ripped out unused features or hardly used features. This is where developers, like myself, who want to contribute to the project can come in to help and not be burdened by possibly affecting the outdated features or designs of the older code base.
I would suggest that you start with no backward compatibility between save games of 2.5 and 2.6 until you can prove that the fixes to the current game save corruption issues will allow that compatibility to be honored.
A clean break also gives the team a chance to reexamine some of the design choices for how maps are created and consumed by the software. Major changes might have to be made over slow deprecation of tags/files. A conversion tool for map makers would help to take the sting out of the change.
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@magicstyck right on Yea idk if I explained it that well but current prereleases seem to be putting bandaids on the existing stable. My understanding is that if you fix this, it could mess up y, that could mess x and t and then that could ...
Anyway, making it not attractive to work on.
Just call Triplea done and basically start over. tic tac mode if needed
Just a thought not a critcism or a bad one anyways lol
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@magicstyck How important is backwards compatibility with saved games? I would expect to play a given game through with the same version. Backwards compatibility with mods is more of an issue.
If someone has the time, skills and energy to restart from scratch, I would be supportive. Especially if a new effort had substantial compatibility with existing mods.
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@beelee not sure i can give an opinion unless i know what those "unused features" actually are.
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@beelee said in TripleA development:
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For non Develop type coder people ... think ?I would agree of course.
My current problem is that I simply do not understand 2.6.
Until 2.5 stable it was sort of easy to me to follow development. I understood many of the pull requests, I understood improvements of rules compatibility, I understood UI improvements.
With 2.6 I somehow got lost. Most of the pull requests became sort of cryptic and not understandable to me. I saw some fixes with to me unclear consequences regarding game play (such as rules compatibility for example). As far as I understand it the reason might be that 2.6 development started to have a somehow different approach. Also it might be caused in my person, of course, as I am getting older and maybe my understanding of current programming decreases.
I am somehow afraid that - in case 2.6 would be released "soon" - who will care to transport the "news" to the users? Currently the users do not seem to have the highest priority. As some really disturbing issues don't get resolved. In the past I have in most cases been able to help users out of trouble.
Currently - when it comes to unresolved issues or 2.6-issues - I - in many cases - can only point to the Github issue cue - where most of the issues get hidden in the mass. Who is going to help me with user support?Again - this is not a complaint from my side. There are only a few active people who care. Our time is limited, our priorities are different.
This is again just another description of my worries, of my feeling concerning the status-quo.This is why I would definitely vote for 'optimizing' or 'repairing' the current stable.
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@beelee Do the rip and tear and make a newer and better triplea.
@LaFayette How much work would that be? How would we get the developers invest their time?
@ all: How much should a rewrite still be a tribute to Axis & Allies?
- Would you require all variations of sub vs. destroyer/fighter?
- Must the game engine support turning a damaged unit into an infrastructure unit that is than converted to a winner's unit of the initial type (that's how BC270 Wars handles walls)?
- Must the UI still imitate the battle board of the board game or would zooming into the battle territory be near enough to A&A?
- Would we again have Napoleonic Empires without Napoleon?
- Would you be keen on better music/sound effects?
- Should the game engine support parallel playing?
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@rainova
The initial rewrite must be able to read most of the current crop of maps/scenarios, otherwise their will be no maps/scenarios to play.Initially no extra functionality should be added to the rewrite as that will just add to the development and testing time.
Subsequent versions can add functionality.
The devs should design the new version with the future direction in mind.
Just my 2 cents. -
@thedog the rewrite/new stuff should be independent of what is now. What is right now should be kept the way it is and people can continue to play for as long as there is enough interest and a couple hundred bucks a year to keep it going.
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@beelee I agree we should get the open issues under control. I've started a thread dedicated to that.
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