Godcraft's Open Video to the IndustrialCraft Development Team!

Quote from Alblaka

Of course this will cause some mischief to server owners whose users can't differentiate version(s)

Best solution here would be diligent server owners. Each Jenkins build would have it's own linkable page and a server owner that is doing their job would have a 'mod list' with direct links to each specific versions' page.

By all accounts the video that started this contained a bit of (forgive me, Kane) nerd-rage, and the discussion could have gone much worse if it had been handled differently. My compliments and respect to all parties that constructively contributed to what looks to be the start of a transfusion and rebirth of one of the first and greatest of Minecraft mods.

Thank You.

Just mentioning it, IndustrialCraft was NOT the first mod.
Heck, I even learned how to code the IronFurnace by reading into TehKrush's PlasticCraft. ~ Alb

edit: 'One of...' and still predates most of the major mods and has outlived most of it's peers. You (team) made a good thing here. Proof is in the pudding, so-to-speak.

Quote from Two

There are 3 main branches:
- Experimental: This is where Alblaka (and maybe others) pur in their ideas/major code changes, the "What if?" branch. Only requirement: game must still be playable, as in "doesn't crash too often". Bug-fixes may happen but are not required.
- Development: One a feature or set of features has been accepted, it is put into the development branch. Here all bug-fixes happen and ideas/code might get improved or slightly modified (under the control of Alblaka) with the target to have a fully releasable version in the end. Requirement for all commits is to be compilable and fix bugs/improve code without introducing new bugs.
- Release: Once a development branch has been stabilized enough, it is branched out to a specific release version branch. Once this is done that version is considered released and only bug-fixes that address stability issues may happen to this branch. New features or improvements of existing features do not belong here. There is a minimum delay of 1 month per release, so not every minor change caused server admins the trouble to update.

Actually this isn't the way you should use git, you have a "master" branch which serves as your trunk (ie, all branches merge back here and all releases live here). When you wanna work on something you, as the developer check out your own copy of the repo and work on your code and then submit a pull request when you're done. The project owner (or his delegates) then have to accept the pull requests and handle any merge conflicts. When the project owner is ready to do a release, they "tag" those files in the master branch with a version number which can then be used to que jenkins or whatever build system you're doing to generate a "recommended build".

The key there is that you tag releases, not branch them. You can roll your repo back to tags just like branches but not have to deal with all of the ugly branching :).

Quote from Two

- There should be a standardized way of submitting bugs/requests. The primary focus here is ease of use as I expect more non-technical feedback than actual coders to use it. This doesn't have to be a highly sophisticated tracking tool, even the forum could be a solution, just something that works fine for the task.

Github has a built in issue tracker.

Quote from selurgniman

Actually this isn't the way you should use git

The idea above is actually part of the intention from the author of GIT Linus Torvalds himself, I shamelessly copied that.
In general the main advantage over SVN and other repository systems is that GIT is able to handle branches usually flawlessly. It can switch and merge branches within milliseconds and that gives you the great advantage that you can work with any kind of code state that you have "saved" in a branch at any time.

Imagine the following: you just work on the master branch, commit all stuff there and then you have this idea you really need to try. A few weeks later you realize that this idea isn't going to work and you'd like to undo it, but reverting to the state 2 weeks ago as well will kill several hundred bug-fixes you made on the way. With everything just in the master branch, you'd be lost at this point. Now do the same with 3 branches: master, idea and bugfix. Since your idea hasn't been done yet, it hasn't been committed to the master branch yet, but all bug-fixes have been. The moment you realize your idea isn't going to work, you just delete that branch and there you go. And even if you happen to have it already committed to the master branch previously, you can still pull out the one from 2 weeks ago, re-apply the bug-fix branch and again: there you go. This is the way you should use GIT.

In addition this idea above is actually the result of a 2 years brain-storming and prototyping of several teams in a major company and I can tell you: it does work great if done correctly.

Quote

Github has a built in issue tracker.

Might work, as long as people accept it. The main issue with bug-trackers is that most people just can't figure out how to use it in the first 5 seconds and then just don't. As I expect that many bug-fixes will come from non-technical community members, so people who have no experience in proper bug-handling and reporting, the tool used should take that into account as one of the major points.

Well, looking at the video and then this forum thread, I have noticed a few things.

Firstly, there are communication issues, the dev team have accepted this. Can we stop arguing about this 'you should tell us what is going on', it has been acknowleadged and will be probably be resolved at some point in the future

Secondly, some people relly like throwing insults and bringing in stuff that isn't relly, in my mind, relavant to the discussion, which basically boils down to communication, bugfixes, and many people focusing entirely on the quantumsuit. there are other issues raised, but they are the ones I'm concerned with.

So about qsuits and the actual content of the mod. It's true that IC isn't the only mod that adds machinery and energy systems. It also does not have as much content as the many of the others. However it was one of the first, and for a long time it added and did things no other mod did, and things that were in other mods, were availible better in IC. Since other mods, like BC and RP have had vefry fast development, aided by forge and also mod authors being prepared to work together.

Now even though IC has in some ways been left behind, it still adds new features that amaze me, like the recent nuclear overhaul. And it always has been, and probably always will be the mod that defines my approach to the game. it serves as a backbone, it has stuff you can make very early on in the game, like the iron furnace, but also has high tech stuff like the mass fab, nuclear reactor and so on. most other tech mods, like RB and BC are often only worth paying much attention to once you have a decent base lots of resources and want to start building a big factory or automated systems. Also, many of the mods lose their shine a little once IC leaves the picture. what good is a refining center using BC when the total of processing is feeding coal and ore to a line of furnaces.

For a long time IC set the standard. I still remember the switch from IC to IC2. I was amazed, much of the new content I had though was simply not possible in minecraft without making it incompatibel with every other mod ever made, yet there it was. So ok, development migh not be going at the same pace as other mods like BC, but without indusdrialcraft minecraft sems, well, dull.

I have great respect for you Alblaka, take it at your own pace. but please, keep the mod alive.

Generally people have simular ideas - bugs and fails are SO annoying, that people made themselves forget about IC being not opensource and IC development being strictly controlled.
IF so many people forgot about natural limits, it is worth to try to let them HELP. I don't mean turning IC into BC-style, but probably extension of dev team. Community consists of 90% of non-coders. Just let 10% help you.

First IC2 is a great Mod and is a Core Part of my server.

Second I Have not updated my production server yet to 106. This is partially due to IC2 bugs but also due to RP2 Not updated yet. It is running on my test server and awaiting a stable release.

Alblaka, sorry I think you’re Catch 22 on this one. If you wait till all bugs are fixed then you have people complaining it’s taking too long. On the other hand you rush to release and some bugs make it through and people complain its buggy. In the end it’s your mod and unless people are paying you for it then they have no right telling you what to do with it.

I think IC2 should not go open source, unless that is the way you want it to be. Linus’ Law was disproved by Glass, so the argument that more people equal less bugs is not valid. Some kind of structured bug tracker may not be a bad idea but I think the people working on the code should be handpicked as they have been. Adding a few beyond the needs of the programming may not be a bad idea as people do have real lives (or at least most of us do)

Linus' law – "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

IC2 is much better off closed source. It's your project, and if you want it to be closed source, it should be. When you make something open source it doesn't magically get turned into an amazing piece of work. In fact, in many situations (especially if you've been pushed into releasing it as open source) it may reduce your want to program it, resulting in desertion of the mod (or a slow down caused by insufficient resources atleast). Also, besides, we can post compiled IC2 code in the Addons section (I believe?) so if we ever want to do something we can just decompile it (anyone who can do something useful with the code should know how to do this), implement the changes and reupload it.

TL;DR if you are going to move towards open source please don't go GPL (it massively reduces what you can do with the code, for example, even if the Forge development team wanted to have Forge in Vanilla (and Jeb wanted to include it) they can't, because of licensing issues). Just release the source (with the current license, ie you can modify it but only reupload to the addons section without prior permission). Also a decent (public) bug tracker would be nice.

Also Kane, when I first started watching your Godcraft videos (back before the whitelist even) I enjoyed your videos very much. And I still enjoy the occasional one. But the fact is, you are very rude sometimes. You insult mod authors, players on your server, viewers of our videos, et cetera. And then the next video you'll be defending them. You fail to see that what you want, you want for yourself. Which is fine, I think that is a global phenomenon. But the issue is, you fail to see what other people want for themselves. Alblaka wants this project for himself, and he started it, he coded. So making a video about him being selfish (let us face it, that is what that video was made for) and you being some selfless person who just wants it for the people is rude.

Quote from imer

Shouldn't take too long to set one up..

I've so far only really worked with mantis, are there any other good/better bts out there i should know about?

*looks at alb* (tell me and i'll do that)

Ideally it would be a website, reports could be created. People could reply to the reports, once it is verified as a bug a dev/tester could "elevate" it to the current bugs section. Here it would remain, with the devs providing feedback until it is solved. At which point it would be moved to the archive section. Oh and the submit form would have a required text and tick box. "Please enter the 3 characters that appears when you press F3 under the "IC2 version" title" and "I confirm I have searched for this bug, and found no existing report." The read out from the IC2 version would just be a random set of capital letters, the form would only submit if the string matched the one packaged in the latest version.

But any thing better organized than the current forum would be nice. For the devs, the reports should be listed by the date they were created, old to new.

Also a nice analogy. Why don't you make your server public (as in no whitelist at all)? It's perfectly possible, but it will take a lot more work on your behalf (managing the server, taking grief requests) and while you're at it make the map downloadable. Put it under the GPL license, oh and drop the mod team. They are killing your server.

Now, imagine you had built every piece of your server yourself, by hand. Now you understand what you are asking Alblaka to do.

Oh and by the way, that was such a personal attack on Alblaka and his dev team. Stop acting like its just your opinion on IC2. Also, here are some things I've noticed about Godcraft:
- You tend to ditch people and ideas. GC City could have been amazing, but instead you pulled out support said it was boring on the forums and created a new server (which died within a few weeks).
- Godcraft hardly updates quickly either. Your industrial server took 2 months to update to 1.2.5 (4 seeing as the transition to 1.2.5 from 1.2.4 was pretty minor).
- Oh and lets face it. Judging by the content on GodCraft's channel you would be the first one to come out complaining how you felt everything was rushed and Alblaka needs to take his time, et cetera if Alblaka made a quick and dirty patch like some modders tend to.
Oh and yes, if that attack seems personal I should point out this is my honest opinion. I didn't like it, so I shut up about it. But if your going to come out and throw dirt at my favorite mod/mod team then to bad.

As things start to get mixed up, I created a post on how to do this open source in the suggestion board: The IC² might go open source brainstorming thread.

Quote from bbqroast

-snip-

wtfbbqroast?.. We've moved past the hate and anger stage. You just pooped all over what was turning out to be a somewhat civil discussion. I mean, a tl;dr in the middle of a post? (or was that a tl;dr that was /longer/ than the post?) Then when replying to a small snip you go off again totally unrelated to the quoted reply. Just sayin', might want to check some of that indignation at the door- won't get very far in life lugging that with you everywhere you go. Even Alblaka is being cooler about it than you are, and he was the one attacked.

Quote from Two

As things start to get mixed up, I created a post on how to do this open source in the suggestion board: The IC² might go open source brainstorming thread.

Um... not needed? Alblaka has already addressed the situation with what he thinks an acceptable course might be. besides... IC2 isn't going open-source, IC2 is going 'less-restrictive-better-public-access-to-updates-source'.

Alblaka has made his semi-final comments on the situation, the only think left is to sit back and give him a chance to get with Richard, Featnuri and Player to internally plan their next moves.

Quote from Saul_Goode

Alblaka has made his semi-final comments on the situation, the only think left is to sit back and give him a chance to get with Richard, Featnuri and Player to internally plan their next moves.

Yes, he said:

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My current 3 issues are:
-I've got no clue of the technical implementation of the two things mentioned above.
-I could neither reach Player nor Richard so far.
-Actually I'm supposed to be learning instead of typing this '

So in short: he has some clear ideas, but no idea how to implement them properly nor the time to actually do this. So I took the liberty to start a brainstorming thread on this to for once flesh out that idea a bit (it's always the details that hurt in the end) and for second come with some solutions or people to stand up and say "I'll do this for you".

Imo it is only fair that if we ask Alblkaka to go open source, that we help him on that.

Quote from Two

Imo it is only fair that if we ask Alblkaka to go open source, that we help him on that.

First off. Can you please provide me with a quote where Alblaka says IC2 is going open-source? The most recent post where Alblaka addresses the topic simply states 'creating a semi-public source hub, permitting 'trusted' (aka invited) persons to submit code changes (which then need approval) sounds reasonable'. Semi-Public is not open-source, 'trusted' (aka invited) is not open-source.

Other than that- Alblaka, Richard, Featnuri and Player have shown themselves to be rather intelligent individuals. If they were able to figure out how to mod minecraft then I'm sure they can figure out how to set up an auto-build system. No matter how many offers of assistance they get, plans are still going to be made by the 'core devs', and the ball isn't going to get rolling until they have a chance to assess and plan amongst themselves.

In essence this thread has done all it can do, it shook things up and shifted some gears. yay.

All I'm saying is that until the core devs decide how far they want to go with this then there isn't a whole lot we can brainstorm about. Unless Alblaka makes the decision to go completely-totally-and-truly open-source then there is no real reason to continue talking about Github unless we expect Alblaka to spend $100 a year to use Github as a private repo.

We got what we wanted. The devs are 'awake' so to speak. Now might be a good time to let them wake up a bit, instead of hovering around them babbling about all the awesome things we're going to get done today and rudely pulling the drapes back to let the day in. Just sayin... let `em have a few minutes of sitting on the side of the bed and starting at the floor.

Al will not go full blow open-source, from a post he said he will only invite "Trusted" people to see the source code to help him with bugs:

Quote

Additionally, the idea of creating a semi-public source hub, permitting 'trusted' (aka invited) persons to submit code changes (which then need approval) sounds reasonable to me. In best case, this will cause the bugfixing rate to reach new highs, whilst giving us devs more time to work on actual new content.

Quote from FenixR

Al will not go full blow open-source, from a post he said he will only invite "Trusted" people to see the source code to help him with bugs:

It seems more like he's saying he'll create a viewable source release and then allow trusted users to submit the code changes. But then he did say semi public so maybe only trusted users will be able to see the code...

Quote from Saul_Goode

Other than that- Alblaka, Richard, Featnuri and Player have shown themselves to be rather intelligent individuals. If they were able to figure out how to mod minecraft then I'm sure they can figure out how to set up an auto-build system.

Just imagine for a second that one of the devs is coming home from work wasted and only wants to spent some quality time with his girlfriend or the TV (whatever is available) and not setup servers, maintain code or a community. I have no doubt that they are capable of doing that, but setting up all that stuff primarily takes time. And that is why I said: if we ask them to do that, it is only fair if we assist them.

My idea on a brainstorming was not to tell them how to do the entire open-source thing properly, but to give them ideas on what can be done. You for example mentioned a good point, that bying a GITHub space costs 100$ a year, so who is going to pay that? Are there free/cheaper alternatives? These and many other details are things that we, the community, can brainstorm about and in the end present the IC team a set of options to choose from (or ignore all if they choose to), so they do not have to take the time to do that brainstorming. In addition there is a good chance that someone from the community knows a solution that none of the current dev team knows about, so providing that idea as a possible solution might solve some issues the team alone wouldn't have been able to solve in such a good way.

As I wrote in my recent post: only the IC team decides the way to go, however giving ideas and ready-to-be-used solutions will take a lot of time off their head and in general make the whole thing a lot easier for everyone. It has been very kind of Alblaka to give into the wishes of the community to such an extend and I figure it would be kind of rude if that community now just sits and waits for them to do all the work.

I heard you can have free private repository for up to 5 people on bitbucket.
But I don't see why having public repository on GitHub can be problem. It's not like anyone can write in it, it is only "public" for reading. It does not even require you to license it under any "free" license.

But it will let anyone (with programming skill) find a bug, write a patch and then Alblaka or some other core IC2 maintainer can add that patch to code with one click.