Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Toady One]

The latest API/DLL thread is here, and it links to an earlier one.  It's not going to happen in the short term.

[Tormy]

quote:Originally posted by Teldin:
<STRONG>If I were making $1000-$3000 a month purely off programming I think I wouldn't mind if it felt like a job or not.      

..but back to the topic. It would be cool if Toady would accept some help. Its pretty understandable if he wont, but it would speed up the development a lot [I guess].

[ November 20, 2007: Message edited by: Tormy ]

[sphr]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>
but it would speed up the development a lot [I guess].

[ November 20, 2007: Message edited by: Tormy ]</STRONG>

Tot I had to say something.  Although I feel that speeding up dev is fine, but maintaining the quality and style while speeding up is very hard, from my own experience.  Sort if ironic that I'm defending Toady's position, with myself asking to help in the first place, but I'm merely speaking from the point of a coder.  That and my personal wishes are two matters.

Besides, I personally don't think it is a good idea to put work and play together too much.  There is something like play and you "happen" to make money along the way.  But I see "work" as something that you sometimes have to give in against your own wishes.  in other words, you don't really have the full choice.  Life being a pro software dev is not all roses.  There are times that you really like your work... but there are bad times too.  Almost certainly, all the "bad" times got to deal with .... people .... LOL

[Shades]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>
I know that I make much more than 3000/month with poker.
</STRONG>

Yer, a professional programmer can make a lot more than $3000/month, but this is something he wants to do so it's easy to understand the lower income. Also as the game gets more popular hopefully there will be more donations.

[keturn]

I can see this is kind of a touchy subject, so I'm going to have to hold my tongue a bit.  But I can't entirely, because I place much more importance on this than any issue of pathfinding or z-axis siege engines or the aerodynamics of skeletal creatures.

This is a wonderful user community: actively helpful forums, people happy to document the project on the wiki, plenty of active third-party projects in the form of data mods, graphic work, and the quite impressive DFMA.  I know software developers who would give their own right eye for a community this vibrant.  It's an incredibly valuable resource.

I guess it's like getting migrants.  Many of us feel that seven dwarves is plenty to manage, and that figuring out how to keep any more than that from being something other than a drain on the booze supply changes the game.  But if you're successful, you get this wave of twenty migrants and you have to decide if you're going to leave them outside as sacrifices to the Giant Eagle gods, or take them in and find them work to do.

Now, some of the dwarves that migrate to your fortress don't contribute much.  Maybe they came because they simply didn't have a place where they fit in in the mountainhomes.  But a look at sphr's profile says he's no maggot milker or animal dissector, he's a professional codecrafter with a specilization in 3D visualization, motivated, organized, and only grumbles mildly at having to refactor code.

Is that really a resource you can afford to just throw away?

[valcon]

Yeah, Keturn, it is.  I throw skilled and equipped laborers into carp pits all the time if for no other reason than to watch them scream.  The decision is toady's though, not the communities, and a few people in here are being disrespectful of someone they know nothing about.  No sense in that, really.

[Frobozz]

quote:<STRONG>Is that really a resource you can afford to just throw away?</STRONG>

You can if the skills are of no real use. Fancy graphics are nice and all but gameplay is what formed this community. I'm sure a good chunk are more than willing to put up with ASCII graphics until gameplay is entirely implemented. And maybe even some who are happy with ASCII and don't require fancy graphics to be content with a game. I'm sure all of us could name a few games that focused on 3D to the point of crippling the game and making it not worth playing.

The two skills I see that would be pretty handy at this point are porting the game and optimizing it. I can understand keeping the code to himself - I'd probably do the same if I were him. But I wouldn't turn down an opportunity to converse with another skilled programmer over possible changes - especially if they were related to things I have no knowledge of (Toady already admitted to me he doesn't know where to start with multithreading).

[SquashMonster]

Putting in graphics code is something a second programmer can do easily. Optimization is not.  Optimization requires changing little bits of code all over the place, and in gameplay-related areas.  That means a coder dedicated to it will step on Toady's toes.  Porting is a little tricky, as the areas that need editing for ports are input (user and file) and output (visual and file).  The file portion may get in Toady's way, though to a lesser extent.

A graphics programmer, on the other hand, should largely be only looking at the visual output portion of the code. This means he is only going to be in Toady's way if Toady needs to change something with the visuals, which seems much less likely.

I think bringing in another programmer could be a good idea for a short project like adding graphics or doing a port.  If it works out well, we all win, and perhaps the extra programmer can be given a new project.  If it fails, we probably never hear from the person again.

I would volunteer, myself, but my specialty is game programming and design.  See aforementioned bit about not wanting extra programmers to get in Toady's way.

[ November 23, 2007: Message edited by: SquashMonster ]

[Capntastic]

I don't think it's an issue of useful talent or not.   It's an issue of Toady wanting to maintain supreme control over this divine task of his.

[Black Line]

Well you could try to work with this guy but im not sure if he needs help. His game is going shareware soon.
http://www.datarealms.com/

[xaque]

This conversation reminds me of a story from "The Tao of Programming":

A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements document for the new application. The manager asked the master "How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"

"It will take one year," said the master promptly.

"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it take if I assign ten programmers to it?"

The master programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."

"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"

The master programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be completed," he said.

[sphr]

quote:Originally posted by xaque:
<STRONG>This conversation reminds me of a story from "The Tao of Programming":</STRONG>

lol, no offence and not related to the rest of the thread at large (why is it still alive? coz replies like this very one kept it so... :p ) , but from this quote here (and I do know where it came from), it may shows that you don't really know what it is talking about...  basically, it's making fun of management who thinks that software development is some labour work that scales monotonically with manpower.  As a matter of fact, software engineering is design work.  Just imagine  100 architects trying to design a house and you can sort of get what happened.  But that doesn't really mean "the fewer the better"

[mattmoss]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>
Hehe, I wonder how much the pro programmers can make / month.
</STRONG>

Here is the programmer portion of the 2006 Game Developer's salary survey.

For a new programmer, it's on average a little over US$50K / yr, while across all experiences, it's over US$80K.

[mickel]

Yeah, I've been dreaming of lending a hand on a project like this for ages. Especially such an awe-inspiring ("awesome" sounds kinda bland) game as this. Being a game developer is pretty much my dream job... but I also understand that this is Toady and TT's thing.

Oh, well. I'll have to settle for enjoying what comes out of it - which isn't exactly disappointing - and flattering myself with thinking some of my ideas inspire the project.  

[DJ]

If you just want to burn some extra coding energy, Wesnoth is a great open-source TBS.