Print

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

[dpwb]

Please, if you don't like the survival simulation of the main game

This right here is what some of you don't seem to grasp. Cataclysm was a cyberpunk/post-apoc kitchen sink roguelike, not a survival sim. It was like that through the entire lifespan of the game, including well into DDA, with only a relative handful of realism fetishists. It only became what it is now because Kevin banned or drove off enough contributors and players who disagreed with him. And please, let's not pretend that forking is trivial. It's a full-time job, potentially for years, doing the work of the entire dev community mostly alone for no pay until you attract enough people for things to stabilize.

People dislike Kevin because he fundamentally altered the nature of the base game to suit his own preferences (i.e. clotheswashing farming tedium simulator 2kcurrentyear) while destroying popular playstyles, and because of his socially oblivious, aggressive, nasty attitude towards anyone that doesn't blindly support everything he does.

We didn't start out at the level of vitriol, Kevin escalated it to this point with his own shitty behavior over the course of years.

This game is not Cataclysm, it is Cataclysm:DDA, Its not a cyberpunk kitchen-sink roguelike, it is what we define it to be, because we are it's creators.
If Kevin wants to have the game his way, thats his perogative, Kevin always had his vision of the game, and he didnt "drive off" contributors or players who disagreed with him, he didnt indulge in "shitty behaviour".
What you are describing, is someone sticking to their guns and their vision of what the game should be, Kevin wants to make something that has realism as a focus, it being his repo and his project, he is free to do that, people are free to stop contributing or stop playing if they disagree with that direction, and some have, thats entirely their right.

Forking is not trivial, you are right, so the options are it seems, a)play the game that people make for you, for free b) take the effort to fork and do it your own way, or c) be insulting and confuse your subjective opinion as the only objective way a game can be developed, and shout loudly about that any chance you get.

Why would you dislike someone who is making the game they want to make? does he owe you something? is he beholden to make the particular game you want to play? There is no obligation for him to continue in the style of the original Cataclysm, at all, this is his game.

THe game did not become what it is today because people were "driven off" or "banned", there are more contributors than ever before, more players than ever before, the current crop of developers all broadly agree with the games direction, Kevin has always had the realism angle as one of the design goals, but the legacy of the original Cataclysm code has taken a long time to shed off, and is still not fully done.

Think of DDA like a mod to cataclysm, like a survival mod for Skyrim, if you dont like it, dont play it, dont insult the developer just because its not to your taste.
Old versions of DDA still exist, and always will, the original Cataclysm still exists, the freedom to fork the game, it being open-source is there for everyone to modify to their hearts content, the only possible reason I can see for your ire, is that you *expect* the developers to keep giving you what you want, and you throw your toys out the pram when they wont.

Im trying to get into your mindset, you dont want to fork it, you dont want to modify it, you ( apparently ) arent just content to play the old versions, you want, and demand, that the game is developed your way, like it is owed to you or something, I really am struggling with that mindset, and its not just in a "oh man, its a shame that C:DDA went that way" its more in a "these devs are idiots, I dislike them, they make stupid decisions, why wont they do what I want?" way, I dont get it, at all.

Of course he changes it to suit his own preferences, I dont see anything wrong with that, thats called having a vision, one of many possible routes the game could make, I could understand someone being *dissappointed* that the game didnt continue in the style of OG Cataclysm, what I cannot understand is the staggering entitlement to *dislike* someone because they want to do things differently, and offer you the fruits of their thousands of hours of labour, for free.

Thats not to say that no criticism is valid, of course criticism is valid, but from a subjective standpoint, that you may *prefer* the kitchen-sink action roguelike game, the vitriol that you display, that you say you didnt start, is a direct response to someone not obeying your particular narrow vision of what you think they should be doing for you.

Kevin didn't escalate anything, although he can be abrupt and brusque, imagine you are making a game you want to make, you host it on github, its your baby, you then invite people to contribute on it, they start telling you that you should change x and y, you dont want to, you think you want to continue in your original vision.
These people then continue to get more agitated, they demand you change, and acquiesce to their demands, you refuse.
People then get angry, insult you, the other week someone was spamming threads on Reddit telling Kevin to kill himself, for example, they refuse to back down and accept their contributions might not be a good fit to the game as it is designed.
They then throw tantrums, Kevin  starts retreating to a space of being curt and not giving his emotional time to deal with that.
Future queries about him changing his vision just get a short " no" or "not happening"
People criticizing his work get ignored, people who try and drum up fake controversies and take up development time with needless drama get banned -

People who dislike the games direction then call him toxic and shitty.

, I should point out, I can only recall a handful of contributors who have been banned, and looking through the github history of why, I can certainly see some reasons for why they were justified.
There is not this exodus of contributors due to his behaviour that you think there was
- when I first started, I did consider him brusque and a bit rude, but I see why that is now, and if I didnt agree with this design decisions, you know what id do? id stop contributing, I wouldnt demand change and throw tantrums, and neither of us would be in the wrong for sticking to our guns.


This all comes from a place of obscene entitlement. Please examine what you are saying, someone is making a project in their free time, to make a game they want to play, anybody else who enjoys it is a bonus, if its not for you anymore, then its not for you anymore, we do not owe you anything, and we are not wrong or stupid or "dense fucks" as you called me, to not choose the direction you think it should go in.

Heres a question, if you *did* make a fork of DDA, to suit your particular tastes, would you then be obligated to keep everyone happy who enjoyed DDA? Id imagine not, you would have made the fork specifically *because* you disagreed with DDAs decision, ergo, you would make it the way you want.

What if someone started insulting you and saying you need to make your fork more realistic, what would you say to them?

This is the same situation, there is no obligation for the original Cataclysm design to continue into someone elses project.

[Robsoie]

Instead of forking and going the same way as in the past forks with lack of devs, leading to too much work for a single guy, leading to project being abandoned is it actually possible to use the mod system of CDDA to recreate the original Cataclysm gameplay and content ?
Or are there too many game systems hardcoded that can't be modified with the mod system ?

If it's possible this would be the better solution then, this way as a mod it would have nothing to do with any direction or decision of CDDA itself and could be developped independantly without any impact on other people enjoyment of the default CDDA.
Now if too much is hardcoded , i guess out of a fork it's hopeless, and with how much work it is to maintain a fork without additional coders it's hopeless anyways.

[Rince Wind]

Can't you just still play the original?

[Eschar]

Maybe they want to have some advantages of the modern UI. I dunno, just a guess.

[Erk]

Instead of forking and going the same way as in the past forks with lack of devs, leading to too much work for a single guy, leading to project being abandoned is it actually possible to use the mod system of CDDA to recreate the original Cataclysm gameplay and content ?
Or are there too many game systems hardcoded that can't be modified with the mod system ?

If it's possible this would be the better solution then, this way as a mod it would have nothing to do with any direction or decision of CDDA itself and could be developped independantly without any impact on other people enjoyment of the default CDDA.
Now if too much is hardcoded , i guess out of a fork it's hopeless, and with how much work it is to maintain a fork without additional coders it's hopeless anyways.

The exact gameplay? No, probably not. If you wanted the exact gameplay, you could load up the original though. A similar game with several changes you didn't like removed, but taking advantage of improvements? Yes. You'd even be allowed to integrate code support for it, as demonstrated with magiclysm. That's what both Aftershock and Bright Nights were meant to be, but neither are being maintained (and we merged them together when Aftershock was abandoned so as not to have two unmaintained similar projects). Someone who wanted to do this would be quite welcome in the main project; there's certainly a niche for a cyberpunk near future game like the original cataclysm, it's just not what we're making in the core game.

[Robsoie]

Ah now that's interesting ,as this could keep devs inside of the project instead of them leaving for disagreeing with the main direction.

[dpwb]

Ah now that's interesting ,as this could keep devs inside of the project instead of them leaving for disagreeing with the main direction.

Well theres little danger of that with the current devs, we're all in broad agreement with the main direction.

The main reason we accept a more sci-fi mod into the fold and encourage people contributing to it, is that then hopefully we get less noise and complaining, because then we can point to that and say "play that mod", instead of people demanding we change what we are doing.

[Soadreqm]

Instead of forking and going the same way as in the past forks with lack of devs, leading to too much work for a single guy, leading to project being abandoned is it actually possible to use the mod system of CDDA to recreate the original Cataclysm gameplay and content ?
Or are there too many game systems hardcoded that can't be modified with the mod system ?

If it's possible this would be the better solution then, this way as a mod it would have nothing to do with any direction or decision of CDDA itself and could be developped independantly without any impact on other people enjoyment of the default CDDA.
Now if too much is hardcoded , i guess out of a fork it's hopeless, and with how much work it is to maintain a fork without additional coders it's hopeless anyways.

Whales made the original Cataclysm by himself. If you don't feel like putting in the effort, that's fine, but there's nothing hopeless about it.
Also, I don't think making drastic gameplay changes by editing the json files would necessarily be any easier than just editing the code. Sure, you wouldn't need to recompile the game to test it, but major changes are still going to be a lot of work, no matter the language.

[Erk]

Ah now that's interesting ,as this could keep devs inside of the project instead of them leaving for disagreeing with the main direction.

You guys keep bringing that up as if it's a major risk... the newest devs have been here over a year now, and most quite a lot longer. We became devs because we like the game Kevin wants to make and we also want to see it made. It's not like he has some kind of psionic sway over us.

[Robsoie]

I think it's always a risk when coding capable contributors are a finite ressource and are lost to forks and the resulting burn out, Coolthulhu by example had been active for 3 or 4 years contributing before being bothered enough with the disagreements to start his fork with all the concepts/ideas that were disagreed with by the other devs, with of course solo maintenance of a fork leading to too much work and so leaving.

If those disagreements could have instead be possible to get implemented through the mod system instead of working around hardcoded stuff, maybe he wouldn't have burned himself out with the forking (+ probably no other contributors didn't helped) and he would still contribute.

Oh and it's not a finger pointing to some devs or specific individual by the way as it's understandable that people disagree in a project or have different idea on which direction it must take, it's pointing that mods are good and can potentially settle things before they get heated.

[Erk]

Don't forget there is generally a lifespan to contributors. I have no intention of playing and developing cataclysm for the rest of my life.

[Robsoie]

I see you forgot to read the lines in very small fonts on the account creating page

[Erk]

Damn, they always get me in the fine print. Well, apparently if I leave I owe Kevin my firstborn, so I guess I'll wait for when he's a teenager.

[Eschar]

Damn, they always get me in the fine print. Well, apparently if I leave I owe Kevin my firstborn, so I guess I'll wait for when he's a teenager.

You're expected to train your firstborn in the art of C++ as well, so that the project doesn't lose net contributors if you leave. Eventually, there will be ancient lines of contributors, with warring dynasties shifting in allegiance day by day.

"Your father's brackets ... an elegant weapon from a more civilized age."

[Kaitol]

The thing is, it isn't really Kevin's repository. He's like the fourth person in control of it. It was handed to him by the last guy because he was longest-standing active contributor.

The problem is, if Kevin wanted to change the game so drastically, why didn't he make his own fork in the early days? Why did he wait, and cooperate with the several previous owners and the community's vision of the game for YEARS until he was finally handed control, and then make his drastic changes and sudden complete shift of gameplay priorities?

If kevin wanted it to be his own game, then he should have made his own fork rather than working on the community version for years. It isn't his game, it's the game of everyone who contributed to it, it is the community's game. He was handed control of the GitHub and everything else with the understanding that he appreciated that and intended to continue in the same vein with an open, friendly, community-oriented project. And the fact that he now treats it like it's his own sole property and work is one of the big strikes against him.