TripleA development
-
@panther Who is lead programmer on TripleA now? Dan Van Atta does not seem to be active anymore.
Although I have been posting to the repository in a 2.6-compatible way, I don't like some of the changes that had been made. Maybe we should go back to the last stable version of 2.5 and continue from there.
-
@rogercooper said in Unable to download maps in 2.6.535:
@panther Who is lead programmer on TripleA now? Dan Van Atta does not seem to be active anymore.
I notice him appearing on this forum from time to time. I am not aware that he gave this role to someone else or that someone else claimed to take this role over.
Although I have been posting to the repository in a 2.6-compatible way, I don't like some of the changes that had been made. Maybe we should go back to the last stable version of 2.5 and continue from there.
Not being a developer myself (not having any programming skills) I woud really be interested to hear what you mean.
Maybe open a separate topic. I am sure that would bring development back a bit closer to the user base. -
@panther When I first installed 2.6, it deleted many of my files. I was able to restore them, but upgrades should not delete mods.
2.6 deprecated the mapName and notes properties in the XML. Instead notes are handled through a separate file while all the files for a map must be in the mod's folder. It does not allow mod to reference the map for another mod, resulting in needless duplication. It makes it impossible to have a mod which has multiple maps.
For a couple of months, the prerelease version has been unable to download mods on its own. The issue has been ignored while new prereleases continue to issue.
-
@panther TripleA is in a rather risky situation since some time. 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. Of course, being an open source project, anyone can clone the repository somewhere else and retake from there, but this may not happen in years.
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.
Who knows if we are already drifting on a ship without a skipper...
-
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. -
@panther I think RoiEX has seniority now with Dan taking an extended break
-
@beelee said in Unable to download maps in 2.6.535:
@panther I think RoiEX has seniority now with Dan taking an extended break
He hasn't been online for two months, unfortunately.
I just noticed that you, @beelee, have merging-privileges at the repository.
Are you a coder / software developer? -
@panther no Dan just did that so i can merge peoples maps. I don't do any other stuff.
Roi was on a week or so ago talking to frigoref ? about translating the code into German. That's where I saw them say Dan was on break -
@panther I am thinking of forking this part of the discussion to a new topic. Anyone has a good title?
„Restructuring TripleA development“ would be honest
-
Thank you. I'll do it now. I just will choose a more generic title - just to prevent from illustrating a possible result - before a discussion has taken place.
I still hope that one of the "current" developers will join the discussion.
-
For now, I have given up 2.6 and have gone back 2.5. It is noticeably faster to load.
-
@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
-
Thank you, but that is part of the problem. Those who we know having merging abilities, have not appeared for quite some time.
-
@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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
@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
