Re: [Wesnoth-dev] The problem with Knalgans....

[James Spencer]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 20:44:49 -0600, Richard Kettering
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Feb 28, 2005, at 5:41 PM, James Spencer wrote:
> 
> >> For campaign purposes, and for those of us who have always wanted a
> >> balanceable classic era, the dwarves need this unit.
> >>
> >
> > This begs the question(s):
> > -What campaign would that be?
> 
> Several that have not been written.
-That is what the wiki, forums, and campaign server are for. Barring
catasophic falures we archive things for 'our glorious future' pretty
well.

> Several that have.  I could see
> him being used as one of the dwarf leaders in any of the existing
> campaigns, instead of the same-old-dwarf-lord that everyone uses
> because we don't have anything else.
-That's about as specific as a magic 8 ball.

>"Build it and they will come."
-Yes. That's why I came, but this is what the wiki, forum, and
campaign server are for. (And what they were for for the first 4/5ths
of the sceanarios in my campaign-- Actually there was no campaign
server then. I did OK.)

> Our number 1 problem is in getting art. 
-The number one problem is with getting 'unsexy art' & artists who
decide to stay despite the ordeal of the forums (they've gotten better
of late).

> A lot of people can build
> custom units, but few of them are well drawn, and even fewer have good
> animations.
-Then they don't go into mainline. Simple.

> I think we should plug in most things with decent art that
> don't conflict with our fantasy world.  Unless the unit branches from
> an existing unit - I say we "include" it with a palatable set of stats.
> By this, I mean that we put it into the game files, but not
> necessarily into any of the campaigns or multiplayer eras.
-I once had this thought. "The if it looks good & fits why should't it
go in?" Here's why not:

Herding Cats Type Problems:
- Who determines it fits with Wesnoth?
- Who determines what looks good (Without some for of final
arbitration by Dave every time)?
- Is it worth the effort to figure this out? (No, IMHO.)

Technical Problems:
- They have to be maintained for the life of Wesnoth.
- It makes Wesnoth bigger

'Community Relations' Type Problems:
- We have a glut of units, well drawn and otherwise. Who wants to play
bad guy for the hundreds of requests we'll get.
- We lose the most simple policy tool we have for ever saying 'no' to
any new unit that looks even semi 'OK' on the forums. You can see this
with the push for level 4 units on the forums here:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4801 While we should
always reserve the right to deviate from our 'general rules' it is a
good thing that 'general rules' exist, and that they are coherent.

> These units, just like freim's new desert tiles, are materials to build
> things from.  They were not made in response to need, they were made to
> pre-empt need.  Wesnoth worked just fine with sand being used to
> represent desert.  No one NEEDED desert.
-Geography to Units is as fair as apples to oranges. We don't exactly
have a glut of terrain art.
-A fair share of 'wacky' terrain ideas have been bounced as well (12
types of underwater terrain, and an overly convoluted # of underground
terrains if I recall)
- I needed the Tropical portions of desert and have posts to this
effect that span many months.

> Metaphorically speaking, if making wesnoth games, both multiplayer and
> single player, is making a cloth, Dave et al. have provided the loom,
> and freim and I are spinning and dyeing the thread.
> If you give us a little bit of free reign, we will provide you with a
> wonderful library of readymade art and units.  Please don't restrict
> us.
- Nobody restricts anybody. We go above & beyond to preserve the
fruits of this community already. Forums, Wiki, & Campaign server.
 
> Without this - we have a few problems, many of them psychological.  In
> many situations, campaign designers do not even consider making new
> units - their art skills, and free time, are such that they do not even
> entertain the possibility.  On one occasion, Gafgarion was in such a
> situation, needing some enemy for the player to combat on an island.
> He thought to use the thieves, which had been created for a similar
> purpose (material to build campaigns out of), and then realized, quite
> happily, that I had made the mermen, which fit the situation much
> better, and made for a much less redundant game.  In an message he sent
> me, he seemed very thankful, and made it clear that he would not have
> considered creating units himself.
-I consider myself to be psychologically sound, thanks for the concern :)
-This still isn't reason why every well drawn unit must go into
mainline. It's nice that nice people do nice things for other people.
I have historically relied upon that. Once again, forums, wiki,
campaign server.

> A unit like the dwarven runemaster does not necessarily need to be
> recruitable in multiplayer.  However, as I said before, he would make a
> cracking good GENERIC campaign hero - one that could be used in many
> different campaigns, and thus merits being in the basic unit tree.  I
> would replace the existing, and terrible-looking runemaster with him.
- Then include him with the generic campaign on the campaign server,
and update the lone (SINGULAR) special unit that is in the CVS tree.
Forums, Wiki, Campaign Server.

> Additionally, from there, one can have a much easier time verifying if
> the unit does indeed improve the game by being in multiplayer.  Instead
> of standing around speculating on it theoretically, we can verify it
> experimentally.
-One can and should have this time with copy & paste as well.
-Richard, my experience with your units entering the game has been
mixed: Your 'Grand Marshal' interfered with the ending of TRoW (I
wound up ifdefing around him). You neglected to obsolete to old
Merfolk & Nagas, or update Scenarios or Eras for them. You also failed
to update the Trident for them. Your new fireball halo broke the
Drakes halos, you also neglected to remove all instances of the old
fireball. IT IS YOUR JOB TO FULLY INTEGRATE YOUR WORK TO THE BEST OF
YOUR ABILITY. IT SHOULD NOT BE MY JOB TO STOP DOING THINGS THAT I
ENJOY DOING BECAUSE YOU NEGLECTED TO COMPLETE YOUR JOB. I SHOULD NOT
BE FORCED OUT OF A SENSE OF OBLIGATION TO MAINTAINING MINIMAL QUALITY
STANDARDS AND A DESIRE 'TO SEE THINGS WORK' TO DO OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK.
If your job has an impact on the work of others its you your job to
find this out, and at least notify these 'others'. When you commit a
change it is your job to follow through and propagate the change all
of the way through the CVS tree. The WML in CVS is not binary, it is
your job to 'find' (hint) the effects of your work before you commit
it.

So please don't try to tell me that this is a QA drive... The best was
to maintain quality it to keep extra stuff out. Evey byte of data is
another opportunity for a bug.

> Possible disadvantages I would like to pre-emptively debunk:
> Data Bloat:  This is deeply eclipsed by other things, such as campaign
> pictures, music, and lack of compression (pngcrush/advpng-style
> compression).
> Remember, these are only unit images.  All of those elf graphics I just
> updated - a whopping 110+ images, and most of the elves in the game,
> amounted to the size of just one HttT campaign story picture.
> Unit Bloat:  They can't really clog the unit tree if they aren't
> recruitable - the only thing they will clog is the website which lists
> the standard units in the game.
- Indeed there are plenty of things that are technically possible.
That doesn't make them 'good'.
- Hmm, you forgot #MB^x = # bugs & that this stuff must be maintained forever.
- I only like preemption in 2.4 series kernels.

> On Feb 28, 2005, at 5:41 PM, James Spencer wrote:
> > -So you intend to include units to balance all of the races in
> > 'classic'?
> 
> Absolutely.
-If you intended to balance all of the races in 'classic' why did you
neglect to mention this earlier? Where are the rest of the proposals?

> Another mindset problem is that multiplayer revolves around default,
> and that other eras are a sub/superset of the units used there.
-Yes, yes, yes... Disparaging everybody else's mindset again... I
assure you I can both vote in & die for the country I live in, and can
engage in stable adult relationships.

> If we bothered to go to all of this trouble to make a system for multiple
> eras, then we should use them in a meaningful way.
-Some would say they are...

> There is nothing wrong with having a unit that is present in Classic,
> but not present in Default.  IIRC, currently, no such units exist, and
> I believe this is due to the above philosophy - people view Classic as
> a subset of Default, even though no one explicitly stated it had to be.
>   I know following such mathematical structures is pleasing to our
> logic-oriented minds (I have seen this dangerous tendency in myself, at
> times), but as Dave has said, there is no reason to establish such
> *implicit* rules - rules that people follow for no reason other than
> that is has always been done that way.  After a while, these rules get
> canonized by someone, and are followed explicitly, but the fact remains
> that there is no reason for them.
-I said this earlier: We should always reserve the right to break our
informal rules. That being said, we should have good reasons to do
so... or at least reasons most of us are comfortable in justifying. If
we casually break our informal rules we rapidly wind up with no rules.

> This is a dangerous thing, because it is needlessly limiting, and it is
> quite eerily reminiscent of the typical "authoritarian" mindset - doing
> things for no reason other than that they have been done that way.  If
> anyone should natively resist such tendencies, it should be a group of
> open-source zealots like us.  =)  Come on, guys...
-Pleas for false democracy, and of false populism, hold little weight
in a merit driven benevolent (if informal & pleasant) dictatorship.

I'm calling 'bullshit' on this entire email. Admit it, this unit line
is / was a shiny new toy. You liked it, and you thought it should go
in. That's not a good enough reason for me, any other 'dedicated role'
developer, or you, to 'commit' a unit, let alone a line of units. So
instead of expressing a reason you express a philosophy.

When you type / press 'commit' you commit the rest of the developers
to a certain level of public solidarity... I've bitten my tongue on
this enough in the past. Given the number of units that I've dragged
into this game nobody has the right to say that I'm conservative on
these issues... But, to be frank, a fair number of these recent
additions ranged from: 'hard to justify' to 'bite my tongue in
public', with the sole justification that they're very pretty.

The bulk of your last mail had little to with the unit in question and
had more to do with unit acceptance policies for units in CVS. If
these policies change, that's fine, otherwise the shiny pretty things
that currently serve no current purpose should probably find their way
to the forum, wiki, or campaign server.