Where is the development?

[Falcon]

I'll quote my resignation;

"The Developers are a blessing to this community and the root of their demotivation is totally understandable...The work of a Developer is by far the fundamental building block of a community and sometimes it seems that they are underappreciated...by the playerbase"

The Developers can make updates as much as they want and I agree the pay is a nice new incentive; however, any time there is a new update a large section of the community go up in arms over it; and surprisingly that's not going to motivate them much is it?

Motivation itself is a hard thing to come by, especially in a community where no incentive is given to those who spent their free time working on updates. In my opinion, a developer for a community such as this should not rely on monetary incentive, only interest. Developers are of course a hard thing to come by, and because of this, we've seen many come and go. One thing that really bothers me about this situation is the lack of transparency and initiative. Other Garry's Mod communities are flourishing in this department, such as Limelight. Limelight, although not as popular as it once was, had a steady and interesting scheme when it came to development and updates. Take the meth update for example. Although it was released almost immediately after the FL-LL split, it kept players hooked for weeks, myself included. I recall I would dedicate hours in finding ways to make the best batch of meth with the lowest input of effort and hours. Things like this, which give players incentive to become better and hone their skills are what we need. Not new models and new props. These are useless except for the occasional build, which I doubt is even commonplace, at least to the extent at which it was in the past. Many people say that success is made by looking to the future, but in this instance, I think success can be learned from the past. Major updates that allow players to dedicate their time in creating something that carries personal and possibly monetary incentive is what updates should be striving for. Developers don't have to make it from scratch, there is a script store there for a reason. Hundreds of Garry's Mod servers use these scripts and show promise when it comes to updates, while FL is left in the dark ages with developers who don't know what the community wants or needs. It's not a problem with developers specifically, it is a problem with what is being developed and how it impacts player activity and interest. The main point is that updates should gravitate towards community interests and progression, rather than material and monetary wastes.

[Dimitris]

I'll quote my resignation;

"The Developers are a blessing to this community and the root of their demotivation is totally understandable...The work of a Developer is by far the fundamental building block of a community and sometimes it seems that they are underappreciated...by the playerbase"

The Developers can make updates as much as they want and I agree the pay is a nice new incentive; however, any time there is a new update a large section of the community go up in arms over it; and surprisingly that's not going to motivate them much is it?

The community will always voice their opinion. If I like an update I will give a big thumbs up to the devs. However if I happen not to like a specific update I will also speak against it. I am tired of hearing the same excuse, that's hoe the community has been since for ever. Not everybody will like an update, people have to learn to take criticism.

[Byra]

The community will always voice their opinion. If I like an update I will give a big thumbs up to the devs. However if I happen not to like a specific update I will also speak against it. I am tired of hearing the same excuse, that's hoe the community has been since for ever. Not everybody will like an update, people have to learn to take criticism.

Literally this, also what's the point in keeping that rank if you're demotivated and not willing to put any work in or don't have time...etc., there's an option for you to resign so we can look for other developers that are willing to spend their time on developing the community. You're always saying that this is a voluntary job, and we don't expect you to bring major updates every single week or maybe even month. However, if you're not doing anything over months (not even a minor update), and if it is taking you more than 3 months to come together and talk about a contributor application, maybe it is best for you to resign. That's just like being an extremely inactive staff member. The administrator job is voluntary too but if one of them were to be inactive for that many amount of time, he would be demoted straight ahead. What's the difference now?
I would be defending you if it has only been a month because it is a harder and a specific job to do, as I also experienced developing a community. But come on dude, not a single update other than bug fixes for 3 months. If you're really not willing to put some effort, just resign so it would be better.

Also, to the ones that are asking what's the benefit for the community for them to resign, at least maybe the others will organize a meeting quicker so they will be able to hire new contributors and continue the development cycle, or maybe our owner will see we need developers and maybe start paying them or change the broken system.

[John Jong]

I'll quote my resignation;

"The Developers are a blessing to this community and the root of their demotivation is totally understandable...The work of a Developer is by far the fundamental building block of a community and sometimes it seems that they are underappreciated...by the playerbase"

The Developers can make updates as much as they want and I agree the pay is a nice new incentive; however, any time there is a new update a large section of the community go up in arms over it; and surprisingly that's not going to motivate them much is it?

Your point about getting negative response to an update clearly shows that maybe what they created isn't that good, wasnt needed or not what the community wants. This criticism is good for developers as it shows hmm maybe that wasnt good, how can I improve from this to get better and show them what I can do instead of crawling in their mums basements and crying "oh Dimitris didn't like my update mommy please come kiss my ass and tell me I did good!!!" no, in life you will get negative criticism yes some maybe harsh and uncalled for but all criticism is good if you know how to process it and not sit and dwell on negative feedback. What I would personally like to see personally is a refresh where devs all go back down to contributor and will have to work their way back up towards dev Connbob could stay as dev to watch over as it would make no sense as there wouldn't be any devs to re-promote them.

I am going to go through the list of devs and give a few words about them.
Awestruck: Havent seen an update since he rejoined used to work on the bot until arny took over and left now its broken and doesn't work.
Broccoli: your a good dev however I haven't seen much from you since returning
"CodeKnight"/Mavis/Codedbrain: stop changing your name, yes you have put some work in but I want to see some fresh content not oh yes bug fix.
Conn: well not much from you either but whatever I suppose your busy doing SA shit whatever you even do in that role is beyond me.
DarkN00b: made a few models and is literally kept on for if they ever need a model made its a shame really.
Edned: bug fixer meh
Rylund/Snowred: done a few bug fixes meh
Tomo: does a few web things hasn't done much in ages.


Contributors (basically gfx artists at this point):
Envy: good gfx artist havent seen much though
Jim: haven't seen anything
Richie: not very good at gfx your loading screen concept was awful in my opinion, literally made a banner for the event coords isn't hard changing the color on photoshop and changing an emoji.

Semi rant over. 
tl;dr devs please just become more active and Divey restructure dev team and demote them if they arent active.

[Dimitris]

I'll quote my resignation;

"The Developers are a blessing to this community and the root of their demotivation is totally understandable...The work of a Developer is by far the fundamental building block of a community and sometimes it seems that they are underappreciated...by the playerbase"

The Developers can make updates as much as they want and I agree the pay is a nice new incentive; however, any time there is a new update a large section of the community go up in arms over it; and surprisingly that's not going to motivate them much is it?

Your point about getting negative response to an update clearly shows that maybe what they created isn't that good, wasnt needed or not what the community wants. This criticism is good for developers as it shows hmm maybe that wasnt good, how can I improve from this to get better and show them what I can do instead of crawling in their mums basements and crying "oh Dimitris didn't like my update mommy please come kiss my ass and tell me I did good!!!" no, in life you will get negative criticism yes some maybe harsh and uncalled for but all criticism is good if you know how to process it and not sit and dwell on negative feedback. What I would personally like to see personally is a refresh where devs all go back down to contributor and will have to work their way back up towards dev Connbob could stay as dev to watch over as it would make no sense as there wouldn't be any devs to re-promote them.

I am going to go through the list of devs and give a few words about them.
Awestruck: Havent seen an update since he rejoined used to work on the bot until arny took over and left now its broken and doesn't work.
Broccoli: your a good dev however I haven't seen much from you since returning
"CodeKnight"/Mavis/Codedbrain: stop changing your name, yes you have put some work in but I want to see some fresh content not oh yes bug fix.
Conn: well not much from you either but whatever I suppose your busy doing SA shit whatever you even do in that role is beyond me.
DarkN00b: made a few models and is literally kept on for if they ever need a model made its a shame really.
Edned: bug fixer meh
Rylund/Snowred: done a few bug fixes meh
Tomo: does a few web things hasn't done much in ages.


Contributors (basically gfx artists at this point):
Envy: good gfx artist havent seen much though
Jim: haven't seen anything
Richie: not very good at gfx your loading screen concept was awful in my opinion, literally made a banner for the event coords isn't hard changing the color on photoshop and changing an emoji.

Semi rant over. 
tl;dr devs please just become more active and Divey restructure dev team and demote them if they arent active.

Hit the nail in the coffin, I cant ass lick all devs and say all updates they release at good if they are actually not.

[Jimmy The]

I'll quote my resignation;

"The Developers are a blessing to this community and the root of their demotivation is totally understandable...The work of a Developer is by far the fundamental building block of a community and sometimes it seems that they are underappreciated...by the playerbase"

The Developers can make updates as much as they want and I agree the pay is a nice new incentive; however, any time there is a new update a large section of the community go up in arms over it; and surprisingly that's not going to motivate them much is it?

Your point about getting negative response to an update clearly shows that maybe what they created isn't that good, wasnt needed or not what the community wants. This criticism is good for developers as it shows hmm maybe that wasnt good, how can I improve from this to get better and show them what I can do instead of crawling in their mums basements and crying "oh Dimitris didn't like my update mommy please come kiss my ass and tell me I did good!!!" no, in life you will get negative criticism yes some maybe harsh and uncalled for but all criticism is good if you know how to process it and not sit and dwell on negative feedback. What I would personally like to see personally is a refresh where devs all go back down to contributor and will have to work their way back up towards dev Connbob could stay as dev to watch over as it would make no sense as there wouldn't be any devs to re-promote them.

I am going to go through the list of devs and give a few words about them.
Awestruck: Havent seen an update since he rejoined used to work on the bot until arny took over and left now its broken and doesn't work.
Broccoli: your a good dev however I haven't seen much from you since returning
"CodeKnight"/Mavis/Codedbrain: stop changing your name, yes you have put some work in but I want to see some fresh content not oh yes bug fix.
Conn: well not much from you either but whatever I suppose your busy doing SA shit whatever you even do in that role is beyond me.
DarkN00b: made a few models and is literally kept on for if they ever need a model made its a shame really.
Edned: bug fixer meh
Rylund/Snowred: done a few bug fixes meh
Tomo: does a few web things hasn't done much in ages.


Contributors (basically gfx artists at this point):
Envy: good gfx artist havent seen much though
Jim: haven't seen anything
Richie: not very good at gfx your loading screen concept was awful in my opinion, literally made a banner for the event coords isn't hard changing the color on photoshop and changing an emoji.

Semi rant over. 
tl;dr devs please just become more active and Divey restructure dev team and demote them if they arent active.

Exactly that, dev team should be making shit which the community want and will help FL.
Stop making shit you want for.your own personal gain and you won't get backlash.
TBH Devs are just using the 'backlash' as a shit excuse as they cannot be fucked to make anything.


Shame the FL team don't give a fuck about FL anymore. Literally I had more hope when SoulRipper was an owner.

[Yonno]

And this is exactly why y'all dont even deserve their effort.

[Alphaverse]

To say "negative responses" to updates demotivates developers is neither right or wrong. If it is just "Your update is shit" eithout anything else it isn't very motivating. If you state why you think like this it is something good and will help devs to get better and learn.

But all the "motivation" stuff is not a reason. If you have no motivation then just leave please.

The reason that I stopped working as Contributor two times was either that some things were said and in the end different things were wanted from me I wasnt expecting because the agreements were different or just the feeling of not getting treated the same way...

What really IS demotivating is to be a part of a team that is working against each other or to spend hours and weeks working on bigger updates and see other people getting promoted who did a few bug fixes and you still would need to do more..

Or another thing that made me leave: You wouldn't get told if you did something wrong or anything bad was noticed.. When I was leaving I got told they wanted to demote me anyway because soo many bad stuff was noticed.. But I never knew about a lot or even the thought of a demotion..

So yes please Divey change the structure of the dev team,the attitude, the public appearance and the internal information flow..

[Arkten]

Sure, I might be a bit biased having been part of the dev team, but that is due to a different understanding of FL development than most of the players. First off, I would like to appreciate these new discussion threads, Falcon. I think there can never be anything wrong with talking about what is going on with the community, even if it reverts back to unfortunately old, but still existing, issues. With that being said, I personally cannot blame the devs too harshly.

We currently have a very strong team that is diverse in skills and we have never had a better development process than now (assuming it hasnt changed from when i resigned :p). Yes, it isn't really motivating to see players constantly bash the hard work put into the updates, but I can also agree that the dev team should be (and trust me, it is) able to take criticism. However, for a long time the tone of said "criticism" has been going against the devs personally rather than an objective look of what can be improved. Personal harassment or plain insults are not going to keep anyone motivated to do what they currently do. However, as you already said, pointing out what could be improved is an integral part to developing on anything, really. And the devs do appreciate constructive criticism. Just please refrain from bullshitting others. Remember, they all do this for free whilst having job or going to uni/school. Sure they could be paid, but that would probably hurt the creativity as now devs can go out for what they can get paid the most.

Anyhow, the key issue is not the devs or the development process, it is the underlying foundation: The gamemode.
I have said it multiple times and I can only repeat myself. The gamemode is horrible to work with. There exists no documentation on how it works or what functions do, which global vars exists, which systems can do what. Every dev has to learn that for themselves. Yes, some can pass down knowledge to others, but even that is not guaranteed to be working. Devs in the past just added on top of this pile in whatever way they saw fit, not having code simplicity, readibility or any kind of documentation in general in the mind. The gamemode has gotten so complex, that even if you just wanna change the color of a job (which should be a one-liner), chances are you will break something else along with it.

Let me make this more clear: NOBODY KNOWS HOW THE GAMEMODE WORKS! IT JUST WORKS!

There is no structure at all and blindly adding updates on top of it will not make it better. It will make it even harder to develop in the future, it will become unmaintable, unstable, crash more often, have FPS issues due to bottlenecks that can't be found and all kinds of technical horror scenarios. The team first needs to restructure this from scratch. However, that will bring a lot of changes that the team and not even the players can fully agree on, when asked. It will also take a lot of time to develop something comparable to what we have now. The devs are afraid of pissing too many players of because in the end you, the players, are the ones playing whatever the devs coded. They do want to keep your opinion in mind, but not everything can be decided that way (either due to technical limitations or because it would make the game unbalanced). I believe at this point they should just go with whatever they find most beneficial and not care about the players too much. Don't shy away from drastic changes and keep a neutral eye on the gamemode. Don't do changes (or not do changes) because you think you will not like the outcome, when it infact can be very beneficial to the gamemode (I'm looking at you, temporary inventory <.<).

How the team sorts this mess out has been the top priority for a couple months and it probably will still be. Unfortunately it will not be a fancy big update, but they have to fix the errors that were made in the past. Not by this dev team, but by previous developers.

To the dev team itself: I do not think a bit of transparency will hurt. I really liked the idea of the roadmap. It kept a vague deadline to things to make sure the project won't vanish into oblivion. It also gave the players a feel of what they can expect. You could also be a bit more active on the teasers, but then again: What is there to tease on backend changes for non-tech-savvy people? Then there is the changelog. Please keep in mind that, even though you might not see a lot of changes, there are hidden entries for devs/admins-only due to security concerns. Also the team has vastly different areas of development which can only be satisfied by some, but never all devs.



Awestruck: Fair enough, do not actually know what he is up to :p

Broccoli: Working on his own, to create updates to keep you entertained while the rest sort out the gamemode issues

Codeknight: Great web dev. Has been revamping the infrastructure of the website to current standards. Much needed

Conn: Does not do much coding, but is the only superdev. He single-handedly has to coordinate the entire dev team and make sure they are not going off-topic with their ideas too much. Much needed since Divey, Tomo and Fultz do not have a sufficient knowledge of development.

DarkN00b: Only modeller we have. Is not much needed recently because most problems (if not all) are code-based. Can;t afford to lose him though in the case we need fresh models.

Edned: Same as Codeknight.

Rylund: Working hard at the backend side of things. Practically manages the new GM project (don't know the team's current progress)

Tomo: Same as Broccoli.



I hope I will not get flamed by the team for this type of "transparency". Keep in mind, I currently do not know what they are up to, I can only tell stories from back when I was a dev. Though I hope it will make it easier for people to understand what the dev team means to FL and why it is needed.

Megapost off



TL;DR: Don't give devs too much shit. They do the best they can, but have to fix many backend errors that were made by previous devs in the past, hence no shiny new updates.

[Edned]

I don't ever mean to sound like a braggy dick and haven't really mentioned this before but if it wasn't for me and Conn there would be no FL history, no previous player data, no forums and no setup like the one we have now. I had left FL for 2 years at the time but still had a place in my head for the community and its history so wanted to of course help out. We worked solidly (with almost no sleep) for 4 days bringing us back and recovering to where we used to be for the sake of the community. I work hours every week fixing stuff that nobody sees behind the scenes and all the devs ever get is a load of shit and "wHeRe'S THe dEVELOpmEnT".

We work hard, and unpaid for the community. I've never asked for a penny. Some developers have been offered some payments for larger projects but that's different and I won't disclose anyone because it's not my place to do so. There's no "cool club" or anything of the sort. We may have titles that sound like we're employees but we're community members here for the community. When people are abusive and knock you down all the time, is it any wonder why we lose motivation to provide new cooler shit for people to enjoy?

We want to make this place great for everyone and I've never felt like I've put any sub-par work in. Anyway, that's my two cents.