Godcraft's Open Video to the IndustrialCraft Development Team!

Quote from MagusUnion

Personally, I think the community is asking too much. IC2, in a sense, is a GIFT to all, yet IC2 is humble enough to allowed alterations, add-ons, even opinions to help this mod out.

Let's keep in mind that it's a far cry from what Flowerchild had for Better Than Wolves, with his tyrannical sense of control of his mod. IC2 is not like that. Hell, even Eloraam is guilty of the same behavior when it comes to cross compatibility and the ability to create power converters (Spoiler Alert: She hates the shit out of them..)

Industrial Craft is nothing like that. It has the greatness of being receptive to the community, but at the same time is reasonable to the people who help develop this mod with their time, talents, and life issues. I think alot of you kids forget the factor that bills, jobs, and obligations have on normal adults, and the fact that all those things take a MUCH GREATER priority over this hobby (Yes, Minecraft modding is a hobby... nothing more...). While mods like Buildcraft and Forestry offer live beta updates via github and jenkins sharing systems, this does NOT make such things a requirement for developing a mod. I do not believe that Industrialcraft should be required to follow with doing this service for this mod, and such obligation limits the freedom and creative power of developers, as now their hobby 'requires something extra out of them...

I think the community is being terribly unfair to IC atm because of the bugs and unsolved issues currently withing the 1.3.2 version of Minecraft, and possibly other forces at working trying to push development faster so that they can get back to 'business as usual'. I think you people need to be reminded that this work is completely volunteer, and that simply Open sourcing the code of IC2 won't make your time schedules run any faster...

The only thing I hope you improve upon is faster bugfix delivery. It's a pain to hear that bugs 'are fixed in an unreleased version'. Beyond that, I think IC2 is doing the best it can do considering the limitations of both time, Minecraft, Java, and plenty of other factors...

Beyond that, I think the community has enough tools to work with as far as implementing their own content and changes. Any remarks claiming that these tools are not in place is purely negligence of said users. If you are that diehard about your idea, fucking write a damn add-on for it...

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The point isn't that we want anyone on the team to work harder, longer, etc. The point is the community wants to be able to help out however they can. Currently there are not a lot of good ways to do that. In fact, using the current systems, anything that might alter the situation, such as posting releases more often, bug testing more, whatever else, these things all require more work by the dev team. What I think is needed is a way to take some of that work off of the dev team's backs, and what better way than to ask the community we have right here? I will admit that i haven't gone mucking around with developing an addon before, so I have no idea how hard it is to write bugfixes with one. Is that really the best solution though? Why have the dev team fixing a bug, while an addon writer fixes the same bug, probably in a hackish way that breaks other things? Wouldn't it be better if the addon writer could fix it properly, and then it became part of IC? That way the fix happens, and the dev team is free to work on something else, maybe even something that they want to work on, instead of constantly rewriting code.

Quote from Veoulux

The point isn't that we want anyone on the team to work harder, longer, etc. The point is the community wants to be able to help out however they can. Currently there are not a lot of good ways to do that. In fact, using the current systems, anything that might alter the situation, such as posting releases more often, bug testing more, whatever else, these things all require more work by the dev team. What I think is needed is a way to take some of that work off of the dev team's backs, and what better way than to ask the community we have right here? I will admit that i haven't gone mucking around with developing an addon before, so I have no idea how hard it is to write bugfixes with one. Is that really the best solution though? Why have the dev team fixing a bug, while an addon writer fixes the same bug, probably in a hackish way that breaks other things? Wouldn't it be better if the addon writer could fix it properly, and then it became part of IC? That way the fix happens, and the dev team is free to work on something else, maybe even something that they want to work on, instead of constantly rewriting code.

Perhaps, but there a quite a few add-on's that offer bug fixes right now. Plus, even if you allow for public bug fixing, it raises the issue of 'rampant bug breaking'...

Think of it this way, if a person developed a fix for a bug, then there is bound to be several who develop the same fix. But while doing so, those other fixes cause additional bugs that 'break code' and create new bugs for the community to fix. Thus, the wild rapid fire of 'fix this' 'debug that' would spiral out-of-control, as many would try to fixed already tamed bugs, and possibly reintroduced new ones thru different, multiple changes to the code that IC is unable to handle...

If you want to help, then try and be patience. Unless you have great coding experience (like Greg or RawCode), you may want to step away from trying to fix IC2 yourself. The team is there, and the team is motivated to fix the problem. Just allow them the space to work and the bug fix versions will come soon...

Quote from MagusUnion

If you want to help, then try and be patience. Unless you have great coding experience (like Greg or RawCode), you may want to step away from trying to fix IC2 yourself. The team is there, and the team is motivated to fix the problem. Just allow them the space to work and the bug fix versions will come soon...

That's pretty much my policy on this, I'm in no rush to update to 1.3.2 due to Redpower not being updated and Buildcraft being in beta (and if Greg is to be believed, world crashing). Personally I would rather see the devs take their time and put out a high quality product rather than a bunch of products that are essentially the same thing but with something fixed here or something slightly changed there.

Quote from MagusUnion

Plus, even if you allow for public bug fixing, it raises the issue of 'rampant bug breaking'...

Think of it this way, if a person developed a fix for a bug, then there is bound to be several who develop the same fix. But while doing so, those other fixes cause additional bugs that 'break code' and create new bugs for the community to fix. Thus, the wild rapid fire of 'fix this' 'debug that' would spiral out-of-control, as many would try to fixed already tamed bugs, and possibly reintroduced new ones thru different, multiple changes to the code that IC is unable to handle...

Not an issue if the code repository is set up with proper permissions. I suspect what you're imagining is an anarchy in which the whole world could write changes to the master code, but that's just not how an open source project works. It can easily be set up so that only Alblaka, Player, and whoever else they choose have write access, and anyone else has to submit their changes for review and approval. They effectively end up with a lot of free labor and just have to sign off on the changes after considering the impacts to the project as a whole. This provides a channel for folks like Greg, Raw, CPW, or whoever to submit their changes to the IC2 core.

Quote from Mariner

Not an issue if the code repository is set up with proper permissions. I suspect what you're imagining is an anarchy in which the whole world could write changes to the master code, but that's just not how an open source project works. It can easily be set up so that only Alblaka, Player, and whoever else they choose have write access, and anyone else has to submit their changes for review and approval. They effectively end up with a lot of free labor and just have to sign off on the changes after considering the impacts to the project as a whole. This provides a channel for folks like Greg, Raw, CPW, or whoever to submit their changes to the IC2 core.

Took the words right out of my mouth. There are tons of coding projects built around multiple people working on the same code, and this seems to work for them. The tools exist to do this, the question isn't feasibility, but if it is the correct option for industrial craft. With the option of pulling the code to work on it, and then submitting a push request it allows the IC team at least as much control as now with addons, and provides a better way to fix bugs. The only technical problem left that MagusUnion mentioned is that one bug fix might cause other bugs, but that is an issue no matter what. It's part of developing code, and the process of fixing things can only be improved by multiple people looking at the code with different perspectives.

Quote from Mariner

It can easily be set up so that only Alblaka, Player, and whoever else they choose have write access, and anyone else has to submit their changes for review and approval.

But this is already in place atm with the currently selected team. And no, I don't think that name list should be expanded, mostly due to how hard it would be to keep base with every single new developer. While some may think that being a 'cool IC2 dev' would be a fun opportunity, I don't think that those people grasp the responsibility that comes with that title. And while there are those with the good intentions of trying to bugfix IC2, I don't think that they would limit themselves to just that once they can keep submitting code and such to be implemented...

I think that at a minimum
A: Alblaka needs to communicate with his community more. Forum posts, front page posts, ect ect. even if it's just "Sorry, 1.0.6 is broke, working on it" every week or so.

B: You need to let players play broken versions. Have it only available on the forums, and make us install it by overwriting files in the released version of ic2, similar to how jeb_ does pre-releases. That allows the more advanced and intelligent users have the latest version (where all the bugs we're reporting are supposedly "fixed"), while preventing stupid people from posting known bugs.

C: Have a centralised, official location where we can see the known bugs. that is, bugs that alblaka and co. have officially acknowledged exists.

D: Get help. Get more coders, get more beta testers (or just impliment B). Grab the people from the best of the IC2 addons and have them work for you. give them the more menial jobs, freeing yourself to develop all new features

My two cents. going back to lurking now.

Quote from MagusUnion

But this is already in place atm with the currently selected team. And no, I don't think that name list should be expanded, mostly due to how hard it would be to keep base with every single new developer. While some may think that being a 'cool IC2 dev' would be a fun opportunity, I don't think that those people grasp the responsibility that comes with that title. And while there are those with the good intentions of trying to bugfix IC2, I don't think that they would limit themselves to just that once they can keep submitting code and such to be implemented...

Unfortunately, no, this is not really in place. There isn't a good way that I am aware of for someone to look at the code, fix bugs in a decent way, and then submit those changes to the dev team. If people tried using the current system to do what something like a jenkins system can do, then you are correct, the dev team wouldn't get anything done because they would have to manually approve and reintegrate any fixes. I still don't know that you are grasping how these systems actually work. The current dev team would have final say on any changes, and the build system gives a good summary of the changes if people use it right. If someone starts making changes without documentation, you ban them from the project and ignore future requests from them. They could decide only to accept bug fixes, addons could still be used for any new content. They get hours worth of work from community members doing bug fixes for a low amount of time it takes to setup and maintain a build system.

@ Alblaka
Rejecting community help as you doing over manymany versions is not good, actually ifs FUCKING FRUSTRATING when *you* ignore community bugreport or fixes and release mod with SAME FUCKING BUGS.
After some instances of this your wont have any community fixes, just like decompilation patches died.

No source? ah yes, it cost me 40 minutes per version to manually setup everything, not too much, but still i can use this time on blackjack and hookers or fixing another bug or my own hobby.
Also dont expect any "passing around guru" who will fix random bugs inside your code without posting source on github.

no hotfixes - !!!ITS DAMN HAYO FUN TO KEEP CRASHING QUANTUM HELMET IN CODE AND GRAVEYARDING THREAD WITH FIX TO IT HAYO!!!
or LETS NINJA FIX MOD WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE
or LETS DEFINE BUG AS FEATURE AND FIX NEXT VERSION ANYWAY
or LETS TELL EVERYONE THAT BUG IS FIXED BUT WONT POST FIX FOR 2 MONTH

you completely dont understant what opensource is, this is not option for unlimited amount of users to steal your precious;
this is option for you to use unlimited workforce to develop your mod, and only you will have power to choose what fixes to accept

BUT if you continue what you doing currently opernsource platform will cause mod highjack, rejecting community fixes will lead to situation, when forks are better then base and users will switch from slow updating buggy base version to some fork, that accept community input, dont ignore bug reports and provide hotfixes.

I'm only going to say this once, 1.3 Release is one of the buggiest releases in a while, the only reason the base version of Minecraft works properly is because the official team knew it was coming for quite some time, and took the old server and attached an autologin hook to the client. Forge itself seems to have more issues than IC2 does right now because they had to makes 2 builds into 1. The only 2 bugs I know of right now in IC2 are the cable ends have some funky physics and update issues and Storage blocks redstone not working, and I can't say for sure that either of those isn't some broken forge code in the background instead of an actually IC2 bug.

As far as I know IC2 is one of the only Forge mods of any note that went ahead and did a full "stable" release. Redpower 2 - In Development, EE2(EE3) - In Development, Buildcraft - Pre-Release, Thaumcraft 3 - In Development.

Notice the similarities there, the only one not still stuck in Universal Forge hell has the biggest development team related to Minecraft besides Forge and well Minecraft.

Give them a while and all the minor things should clear out like Baton Rouge 4 days after Mardi Gras.

Personally, I think that people like Kane and the other flamers and hatemongers on this thread need to just sit back, chill, go to a spa, go take a relaxing stroll, or something. This is just to ridiculous, you people are getting this upset over a game. You are acting like 1st graders fighting over crayons, no worse, I've seen better behaved 1st graders. You're like that third period that a girl goes through; enough times that your sick and tired of it but such little understanding of why. You have to realize that not everybody is an average obese American that doesn't mind the thought of dying in front of a computer. (I am a overweight American so don't you even flame me on that) Give some common respect to the dev-team and Alblaka.

Alblaka, as my first post I'd like to thank you for your and your dev-team's work on this mod. I'd also like to say that I agree with you that making this opensource would be making an open sore for you somewhere down the line. It is in your best interest to keep this accomplished mod code to the team that is working on it.
However, there must be made a middle path. At the point at which I believe this has come, it is my opinion that there (if to be good relations between you and your mod's users) must be some allowances toward more updated posts. Personally, I am fine with that update being about Hatsune Miku or your E-Book decisions and information about your book. But there must also be updates stating the nature of the current state of development on IC2.
I believe that if you do in fact have PR personnel that you should, indeed, look for better staffing in that position. PR meaning public relations, you should not have needed to concern yourself with this matter your PR staff should have monitored this and coordinated with you on a reply rather than you having to take time out of your day to end up hearing such hurtful bull ka-ka as what was stated in the video concerning your works of literary art.
To sum up...
1.) Do not make IC2 opensource (it causes opensores)
2.) Do update more and release development statuses about what is currently being focused on.
3.) Reconsider your staffing as far as PR is concerned. If you do not have PR staff, get appropriate people to take the spot (not devs or testers but dedicated PR staff)
4.) Have a great weekend.

I am wondering how making it open source would make things difficult. I understand that Alblaka is reluctant to do that because he is attached to the mod, since he has put so much work into it. That is fine and not what I am questioning here. Some people here seem to think there are technical drawbacks to making it opensource. I am genuinely curious, what are the drawbacks? What could or will happen to make it a bad thing, and how can we fix said issues? Saying it's bad doesn't help. Saying it's bad because of X reason, and we can do Y thing to fix it is awesome.

He has some valid points. Don't know why he soloed IC2 out, I think its in a whole lot better
shape than Red Power 2 or a Forge/Bukkit Port. Also the publicity of the whole thing is
unnecessary... But as a server owner I can understand the frustration of non-communication.

But I digress, as I came far to late to say anything.. I love IC2

Consumes too much energy..
Still use
Still use
Still use

I only need to say that the video owner couldn't do any better to seem a jackass and sound like one, so don't get offended by it, there are always haters.

This mod is awesome, don't let anybody tell you the opposite!
I would like to state that IC2 sure has a lot of silent players (that don't have an account on this forum) like me that love and play this mod.

Don't know how you manage your coding team (note that i'm a game programmer too) but small builds including no features (or some :P) and some bug fixes won't do any harm if you can manage to do them in a painless way.
Keep up the good work!

since i can't play without RP2 anyway i'm totally satisfied with the current release

Quote from ArsenicAlchemist

I believe that if you do in fact have PR personnel that you should, indeed, look for better staffing in that position. PR meaning public relations, you should not have needed to concern yourself with this matter your PR staff should have monitored this and coordinated with you on a reply rather than you having to take time out of your day to end up hearing such hurtful bull ka-ka as what was stated in the video concerning your works of literary art.

i thought the same thing when i read that they have PR staff. it means you should already have people who know what the community wants poking you with a stick about the IC2 development till you give them a half asleep "waaah i don't feel like coding anything right now, gimme a beer and bug richard" and they post something like "Due to personal issues Alblaka can't really invest much time for the development of IC2, but Richard is working on it."
that's how the system works!!!

nobody can demand that you write a hotfix RIGHT NOW! (that's just unthankful for a free service), but i can agree that at least telling us if you're working on it and we can expect something within a reasonable time frame or that you don't feel like fixing that for now would allow us to plan our projects accordingly. if i know there will be a fix i just continue as planned but if i know there isn't anything to expect for the next half a year i accept the challenge and try to circumvent the problem.

I'm honestly baffled by your response abla, you certainly have grown over time and are able to look behind the whole emotional thing. Thumbs up for that, its a hard thing to do.

Your sensible reasoning for why you want to take your time at the moment to think about it, makes perfectly sense also.

When you said this is the only thing you've achieved so far (in that size at least), thats something we all should keep in mind. IC is one of the best Mods in Minecraft, people will be talking about IC when it comes to Minecraft, its a part of gaming history... in short, the thing is huge. Its not easy to make decisions in regards of that lighthanded. We consumers tend to forget that, this is Albla's lifetime chance where he actually had/has a huge impact on many many peoples live.

Your Mod has been a great source of joy for me and my friends for a veeeeerrry long time so far, and i hope it continues to.

Quote from Zackey_TNT

na the Dev Team is Just To Lazy To Do Anything I Mean ONE LINE OF CODE Could Fix The E-net Bug Act... Anyway i think That You Are Right and I also Want To Thank RawCode for not being a lazy a** Hole And Fixings The Bugs (even If RAM Leeks) Atlest he Tryed And For The Dev Team? TOO FKING Lines Of Code Can Fix All This Mess Even If one Needed Is Not There You Cant Say You Cant Put too Lines Of Code To Fix It. The Dev Team are Just Trolls who Want To Make A Mod Without The Hard Work Needed And They Would More Likey Right Now As I Chat Be Playing Minecraft And Useing A Fix That They Dont Want To Give Out Me And My Sever Players Would Like a Fix For Wireless Wires And Over Powered Bugs That Make it That Much More Fun For Grefers all Over The Place.if this could be fixed with 1 min of your time would you?

Don't You Hate When People Type Like This?
You pointed out that RAM can leak with Rawcode's simple fixes, you don't seem to be a programmer, how the hell can you possibly know how many lines of code are needed to fix that major glitch without even minor performance issues?

Quote

The Dev Team are Just Trolls who Want To Make A Mod Without The Hard Work Needed And They Would More Likey Right Now As I Chat Be Playing Minecraft And Useing A Fix That They Dont Want To Give Out Me

It's statements like this that make me wish this thread was bannable, 9/11 was an inside job wasn't it? There is no conspiracy, the devs are not sitting on their asses playing a version with the bugs fixed and just thinking "lol, I love watching the community rant while we keep this to ourselves"

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I also Want To Thank RawCode for not being a lazy a** Hole And Fixings The Bugs

I seriously think this thread should be bannable, you basically insulted the entire developer team with that one statement, do you have anywhere near the skill level required to code something like IC2? If you answered no to that question (if you answered yes, you lied) then maybe you should think about how without them IC2 wouldn't even exist in the first place