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[Greiger]

Maybe you are talking to the hat.  Is the hat male?

[Sheb]

Well, in french it is.

[Retropunch]

I really do hope things become more stable in terms of development. As fun as CataDDA is, the sheer variation in quality, vanity additions and general lack of focus stops me from taking it seriously.

[Tawa]

There are a few great bits in the game, like the description for the FOODCO Kitchen Buddy (and its sheer existence), the Hitchhiker and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cataclysm, and the vehicle system (W00T for death cars with spikes welded onto the end!) However, there are some crappier bits too; there are a lot of heavily misspelled items and things in the game that I can't think of off the top of my head.

[Retropunch]

For me it's just that it seems to lack any real, forward development and is instead just heaps of user made content, most of which is only so-so. It grates on me because when the project initially started out it had heaps of promise and seemed to be going along at a great pace, but it instead got clogged up with buggy systems and junk.

Very enjoyable for a quick play now and again, but I really wish they'd get a small dedicated team and then just accept well put together additions (ala DCSS) rather than just massively open source.

Plus they really, really messed up the kickstarter big time. That was seriously uncool (regardless of the reasons behind it) and the general community over there is pretty awful.

[Girlinhat]

Well, in french it is.

Well, my ancestry is vaguely French.

Anyways, the use of 'proper' is more akin to 'normal'.  Like the way your grandma will say 'You're dating this girl and living with her at the same time?  That ain't proper!"

[Aseaheru]

It would be nice if they had someone go through and clean up, I agree.

[Girlinhat]

Sometimes the game does feel as if it's a normal roguelike with free modding capability, but that every mod is added to vanilla automatically, resulting in some weirdness.

However, watching the game develop for years, I've taken more of the stance of 'no longer a game, but a simulator'.  There's a few items to look for, like utility vests and zweihanders, but for the most part, it's becoming more and more like "I need to accomplish x, what do I have nearby that can do so?"  Instead of regular game progression, like say, Terraria, where you find copper, iron, silver, gold, etc, in clear tiers and have something concrete to go for, in Cata it turns into much more "you're dropped here, now survive" and if you can think of something, it's probably possible.

So it's less "all this varied content is cluttering the game" and more into "all this content is helping to fill in the missing bits to this weird simulator more complete".

[Retropunch]

So it's less "all this varied content is cluttering the game" and more into "all this content is helping to fill in the missing bits to this weird simulator more complete".

I agree up to a point, but the content varies wildly in it's consistency, and most of it is just clutter and vanity stuff. That mixed with absolutely zero balance and a lot of buggy systems makes it, to me, unplayable for any length of time (although I do enjoy it in short bursts!).

I really, really wish they would just do a content freeze for a version while they fix a ton of bugs and clean it up a bit. If they managed that I think they'd see a massive change in peoples attitudes and willingness to contribute to the game.

[Greiger]

There are content freezes occasionally, and there is a list of issues to be fixed before stable.  The trouble appears to be as much getting people to fix those issues.  As far as I know nobody is getting paid for this (except the guy working on z-levels who might qualify for the bounty on it, but even then the bounty is for z-levels, not general bugs) and people are working on what they feel like working on and or what they are comfortable working on.

One of the issues on that list was being able to deconstruct broken robots.  Since I know the jsons but can barely even read C, let alone code in it I tried to tackle that.  It turned out to be using some system in the code to generate the broken robots instead of them being an actual item, so nothing I did worked.   I ended up splitting the massive recipe json file up instead because it pissed me off and submitted that instead.   While I figure it was an improvement it wasn't on the list of stuff that needed done.

Perhaps if it was possible to set up a bounty for every bug fixed?  But that would require other questions like how much should each bug be worth, should bugs introduced in code you submitted count? Should simple syntax errors or formatting count?  And where would the money come from?  Is there any left over from the kickstarter that isn't already set up as a bounty?  Even if there is some left over what about after that runs out?

[Retropunch]

There are minor content freezes before new 'stable' versions, but it's a rather short time and doesn't seem to fix the problem. Bug bounties can work, but as you say, there are a lot of problems with it and I doubt they'll have much left as I think a lot of it disappeared.
 
I don't really agree with the argument that people won't do anything if they can't add their own stuff/work on exactly what they want. It's an argument I've heard repeated at the DDA boards and it seems a bit of a strange one. I mean it's basically saying 'It's better to have a game full of junk than not have junk in the game atall!' which makes no sense. I get that development would be slower in some ways, but I really don't think that matters when you've got such a content-full game as it is now. You've got pretty much every item you can imagine, and it's now just variations of common items.

Don't get me wrong, it's great work, I just think that the DCSS way of development (even if I disagree with most of the changes/direction it's going in) is the best way of dealing with open source development

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Since no one is "working" on it bugs don't get fixed. Every one currently developing it is doing it to add or fix what they find interesting and sadly a lot of the bugs fall under the category of tedious.

[Angle]

I can't get the linux versions to run on my xubuntu because all of the libraries have the wrong names. I have them installed, it just can't use them cause they're labelled different.

[azmodean]

I really do hope things become more stable in terms of development. As fun as CataDDA is, the sheer variation in quality, vanity additions and general lack of focus stops me from taking it seriously.

That's ok, the feeling is mutual binky... I mean Retropunch

There are a few great bits in the game, like the description for the FOODCO Kitchen Buddy (and its sheer existence), the Hitchhiker and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cataclysm, and the vehicle system (W00T for death cars with spikes welded onto the end!) However, there are some crappier bits too; there are a lot of heavily misspelled items and things in the game that I can't think of off the top of my head.

I'm torn, I'm glad the good things are more memorable than the bad, but if you could remember the typos I could go fix them in about 10 seconds

Sometimes the game does feel as if it's a normal roguelike with free modding capability, but that every mod is added to vanilla automatically, resulting in some weirdness.

However, watching the game develop for years, I've taken more of the stance of 'no longer a game, but a simulator'.  There's a few items to look for, like utility vests and zweihanders, but for the most part, it's becoming more and more like "I need to accomplish x, what do I have nearby that can do so?"  Instead of regular game progression, like say, Terraria, where you find copper, iron, silver, gold, etc, in clear tiers and have something concrete to go for, in Cata it turns into much more "you're dropped here, now survive" and if you can think of something, it's probably possible.

So it's less "all this varied content is cluttering the game" and more into "all this content is helping to fill in the missing bits to this weird simulator more complete".

I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me ;_;
That's exactly how it's supposed to work.

I really, really wish they would just do a content freeze for a version while they fix a ton of bugs and clean it up a bit. If they managed that I think they'd see a massive change in peoples attitudes and willingness to contribute to the game.

Content freeze, I just don't get that.  "no you can't contribute, come back in a few months, maybe".  It just doesn't make any sense.  I guess the fact that I know most of the people contributing content aren't up to fixing bugs biases me, but then again I tell people this and they just ignore it.  A CONTENT FREEZE WOULD NOT ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENT.

You DO have a point in that it's been too long since a release, which was due to a series of life issues for me (all good-to-neutral, but sapped my ability to do a release).
We're rolling toward a release now, which means there are a list of (currently) 46 showstopper bugs https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues?milestone=8&state=open which have to be addressed.  Once that list gets small enough, we do a feature and string freeze and hammer out the rest to make the release as stable as possible.
If a bug that bothers you isn't on the list, let us know and we'll add it.  If you don't, you get to live with it for another release cycle.

There are content freezes occasionally, and there is a list of issues to be fixed before stable.  The trouble appears to be as much getting people to fix those issues.

Uh, past a certain point, people either switch to bugfixing or there's no release.  If we release with a major bug it's because we don't know about it, not because nobody felt like working on it.

As far as I know nobody is getting paid for this (except the guy working on z-levels who might qualify for the bounty on it, but even then the bounty is for z-levels, not general bugs)

Correct, the z-level issues have bounties, that's the only way to get a payout from the Kickstarter now.

One of the issues on that list was being able to deconstruct broken robots.  Since I know the jsons but can barely even read C, let alone code in it I tried to tackle that.  It turned out to be using some system in the code to generate the broken robots instead of them being an actual item, so nothing I did worked.   I ended up splitting the massive recipe json file up instead because it pissed me off and submitted that instead.   While I figure it was an improvement it wasn't on the list of stuff that needed done.

Which is an example of the system working, you'd be amazed how often people just step forward with contributions we really need.

Perhaps if it was possible to set up a bounty for every bug fixed?  But that would require other questions like how much should each bug be worth, should bugs introduced in code you submitted count? Should simple syntax errors or formatting count?  And where would the money come from?  Is there any left over from the kickstarter that isn't already set up as a bounty?  Even if there is some left over what about after that runs out?

There is not, any future bounties will be funded directly, take a look at bountysource

Since no one is "working" on it bugs don't get fixed. Every one currently developing it is doing it to add or fix what they find interesting and sadly a lot of the bugs fall under the category of tedious.

Funny, the hundreds of closed bugs disagree with you

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Yes my hyperbole was quite incorrect if assumed to be a definitive statement rather then an exaggeration of the facts. In reality I should have said something more along the lines of "The bugs which are tedious tend to get fixed slower as the people who contribute tend to be focused on things they personally want.". It (and I am being serious for this sentence) is entirely my fault to assume that my tone would be transferred with so few lines.