Is TripleA finally dead

LaFayette

It just seems to me that development is going one way, towards the release of 2.7, full steam ahead

Yes, why should we do anything else? All efforts become available in future releases & future releases are blocked right now. The best thing to do is get 2.7 out so we can have peoples work see the light of day. I don't see anything unreasonable here.

regardless of what tester might say may be broken.

There is a triage process. The goal is to be sure that 2.7 is no worse than 2.5. It does matter what the issue is. It's a bad idea when you try to boil the ocean.

FWIW, 2.7 will be the last release on our "old release model". After 2.7, every update is going to be a release. Development is a lot more difficult bouncing between 2.5 and 2.7, so being on the newer version will make things just a lot easier. Any patch fixes are going to be a lot faster, they'll be released immediately.

The idea is to not boil the ocean... Get 2.7 to at least be no worse than 2.5 and working. Then from there we can do the patch fixes in a rapid manner, releasing them as soon as they are available. Again, the goal is not to fix everything single thing right now otherwise we'll get nothing released.

There is a cost in our current configuration as well. By popular demand we have 2.7 bots running, 2.7 costs about $15/month right now. Having two sets of deployed applications, managing the legacy 2.5 stuff is all time consuming. 2.5 is really hard to manage right now, it's holding us back on some really important security patches.. The database version that 2.5 uses is so old, it's hard to even find - let alone get running...

@beelee asked if there was a way to have maps still center on a player's capital when technologies and/or politics are turn off in the options settings. ... This issue was tag as a problem, and after further discussions @frigoref made a correction. A month later the correction was broken. It has been pointed out numerous times yet still reminds busted.

That issue has been on my radar. It's sounds like a regression and something worth trying to fix. One thing that does not help is lumping multiple problems in long issue statements.

I've been personally focused on working on the server side components. We need the server side stuff to be done, and nobody else is willing/wanting/able to work on that. My thought is to finish that out, after which if the issue of not centering has not yet been fixed by someone else, then I'll look into that issue then. It's simply a matter of priorities, it's a priority, but behind the server side work for me (which fully blocks 2.7, the server stuff must be done)

Developers are not listening when testers find problems.

I don't like that perception. But, it's your perception and I can't tell you that you must feel otherwise. I feel like the issue is more, I'm just not responding to everything right away. I spend a lot of time responding to many threads, sometimes so much so that I'll spend literally 3 hours just responding to everyone, get nothing actually done, then a few weeks later need to respond about why things are still not done, still broken, etc..

Overall, really trying to bucket things into 3 lists:

must-fix or else 2.7 cannot be released
fix as soon as 2.7 is released
important fixes, things that have been lingering and are higher up on the list.

Whether something lands in list #2 or #3 does not mean that fix is never going to happen. For example, if I could do one fix every day - if we need 5 fixes and then 2.7 would be launched at the end of the week. Though, if we could do the two must-fix issues, then 2.7 is launched on Tuesday, then bug fixes will land and be released every following day. It's the same amount of time overall, but in the latter case 2.7 is launched, a bunch of other things become easier, we start saving money, we start the user migration, and we still will get the same fixes on the same schedule. Now, in reality, it is sometimes a week or two before I get a block of 4 hours where I"m able and willing to do TripleA coding. So it's more one fix per week or month. In which case a launch that is 2 months out vs 5 months is a big difference.

So, the cut-throat prioritization of 2.7 is just triage. It does not mean we're moving things to a "never fix" list. Time is finite and zero-sum, just a question of what to do first and then what next.

Another issue this one regarding "Not Enough Resources. My suggestions for this issue were to change the message type since this error should not be a game breaker and have a discussion about how to convert the problem by the rules. The message was not changed, no discussion about the root problem

Except, the error was breaking to the game. The game continued, but in an abnormal state. You may recall there were a number of other issues that cropped up, those were seemingly related. Just because the game continues, does not mean it is healthy. The error pop-up was actually being triggered thousands of times per minute, just those other errors were masked as we only show the same pop-up just once. Simply changing the messaging type would not resolve that the error aborted a bunch of code execution that needed to happen.

The message was not changed, no discussion about the root problem

There was quite a bit of discussion around the root problem. There were two:
(1) An AI only trigger was not firing, which meant that we were subtracting PUs from zero
(2) The code threw a hard error whenever PUs would go negative.

The problem #2 is a design flaw. It means you can't have a trigger that simply says "subtract 1000 PUs each turn". The fact any map worked with a trigger like that was happenstance. Initially all countries have plenty of PUs, but you could easily run into an error late game when a country has 4 PUs, just a couple territories, and we try to subtract 5. So, #2 is a design flaw..

(1) is still an open issue and is being considered a 2.7 release blocker... I don't know what more you would want other than for that to be considered a top priority and a regression. Though.. it does look like the 2.7 AI only triggers are really a new feature, so I'm not sure if we really should delay 2.7 for something that did not even exist in 2.5.

spent 4 hours on a Saturday looking at that issue instead of doing anything else in my life. It's heartening to now be told that clearly IDGF.

Do you know how many hours I've spent on this problem?

I don't. But I am not accusing you of not caring. I was accused of not giving a fuck and being on a power trip. I stated the 4 hours to indicate how much effort this all takes. Which is also why I've tried to make it so we can be more efficient in how we handle and communicate about issues. So, that means, not having issues where there is 3000 words of text to read before you can even start programming. The goal is one bug per issue, one clear definition of what that bug is, how to recreate it (spelled out very precisely so there is no question what the problem is, it can be obvious to one person when looking at a problem, but not obvious to another when they read), and all in all issues that can be split out and delegated and not require the core maintainers to do everything.

Did you ever consider changing the message type, as I suggested even in your PR?

Yes, I think I have responded 3 or 4 times now why changing the message type is not a fix. The fix was to remove the error entirely. The game engine was going out of its way to crash the current thread when PUs would go negative. The game engine did not account for a trigger that subtracts a fixed amount of PUs every turn. That situation should just be normal game operation..

The warning does not mess up game execution and is posted in the TripleA error log file. Also, because execution is not hurt, the other, removed/re-added her, error does not fire and this issue does not continue to show. A little time and effort, but, as you clearly stated YDGF!

Okay, if we were to change the explicit exception into a warning message, why should a user care? What is the user to do to fix this? How can a map maker fix this problem? Why should one country see this issue every turn? The warning message says, "if this problem happens frequently and you cannot fix it, please report it". Since a person cannot fix it, and it would happen frequently, then we are telling the user to report the problem. That does not seem like a fix. The 'warning' messages are meant to be more things that are map problems rather than engine problems.

Bottom line, why should this even be a "problem?" I know the background around such a check was actually to try and detect bugs that did things like subtract PUs twice. Those checks to try and detect bugs were themselves buggy, as it did not account for triggers that subtract PUs.

I'm going to stop here. When things are broken, like the centering problem, and not quickly corrected. When suggestions and ideas are ignored that may help. I'm the one that feels like he's PITW.

So.. in the last few months I had to do some overtime work and have been worried about my job. If I do a 60 hour work week, and then work a Saturday, and simply don't respond to TripleA for two weeks - it's not an "ignored" due to maliciousness, just more lack of time. I try to pick and choose where I respond and other things inevitably fall through the cracks. I spent a lot of December getting the servers into shape, about 90 hours in December, and you're seriously yelling at me about "map centering" not getting a quick fix (from me)? I think we're all trying pretty hard, and it's all labor intensive. Let's cut each other some slack.

LaFayette

@johnnycat you raise good questions:

Is the answer time and programmers? Or just programmers or just time?
Or management ?
Does it come down to Money? If the answers are: yes, no, maybe, and only on weekends, how could I and others help?

Time and programmers is the biggest need. Every bug fix and issue probably takes 2 to 16 hours to fix. This is the biggest gap. Further, TripleA is a larger code base that is very brittle. Making that codebase be easier to work with would help.

Money is useful for keeping the servers running and paying the monthly bills. As much as I would love to be payed for TripleA work, paying any type of reasonable developer wage becomes way too much very quickly.

Additional management would be helpful. Getting issues sorted, cleanly stated, boiled down to a bare minimum would all be helpful.