Roadmap

[duz]

I have noticed that one thing could improve the Soldat development. It's not about devs being lazy or dumb or no people to post good feedback. What I think that we're facing for years is the lack of communication between devs and community. Nowadays I can see Soldat being developed by people that were just players in the past and some of the updates comes by the feedback of players that are outside the dev team at the moment.

Why some things like HUD, maps and other things does not comes out? I know that the Soldat devs are hardworking and they could easily or not implement some things that were suggested by our community. That's why we should find methods to keep the feedback being posted and both sides attracted to do what they have to do and don't stop this connection.

My opinion and I said the same thing on Akinaro's topic other day is that is just a lack of communication between us.
When a suggestion is useless, like adding new weapons (at least now), you see fast answers about it: We are not planning new weapons for now. Period.
When you see a good suggestion being posted, there's tons of lines and no conclusive answer from the dev team.

Sometimes sounds like devs are waiting for the final code (ofc not, but sounds like). I had this opinion when I suggested some visual changes for the weapons menu and F1. I was like: Oh, what should I do now? I can't go so far, I'm not a very good designer, I'm just posting a suggestion, It's far I can get... and the topic dies right after cuz there's no final words from the dev team. What they are expecting? I don't really know. Wasn't a good idea? I doubt cuz most people liked. So...?!?!?!?!?! Should I keep improving my suggestion? Should I learn coding and give you the code? Should I pay someone to code the menu? Should I pay a designer for it? Should I pay devs to use my suggestion?

But this is just a chapter. I saw this happening a lot on HUD topics, maps etc. And most of time sounds like an unknown perspective of the dev team about it. They gonna use the suggestion or not? I'm showing how we feel.

You discourages people to post feedback.
That's what is happening. It's not about devs not working on fixes, features, maps etc. It's about the waste of good suggestions.

Assuming that the dev team liked some of the ideas posted before, one of my suggestions to fix it is:
Let them work with a horizon. Without dates to release something, just give people the perspective that you gonna use their suggestions (FOR SURE) and you're just waiting them to keep working on it a bit more.
Knowing that sometimes the players can't go so far with it and it's time to intercept. Grab the idea and say: ok, time to improve ur idea by ourself, adapting/adjusting to the game limitations/gameplay etc, lets do it! Or post: Hey, nice idea but we haven't time/effort/anything to do it (now or later).

A public topic with the roadmap/development/ToDo list would be good too, but a post from the dev team at each good suggestion topic indicating the possibility to add the suggestion is enough.

[homerofgods]

If you ask me..
I think that we have plenty of good suggestions allready out there. The problem is that there is not enough manpower to code them.
When you say ''devs'' this and ''devs that, you realise it's just Shoozza you talk about? There is no other developer and he has to manage everything about anything in soldat. Urraka is doing massive work on renderer code now but he is limited to this.

[duz]

If you ask me..
I think that we have plenty of good suggestions allready out there. The problem is that there is not enough manpower to code them.
When you say ''devs'' this and ''devs that, you realise it's just Shoozza you talk about? There is no other developer and he has to manage everything about anything in soldat. Urraka is doing massive work on renderer code now but he is limited to this.

I don't know who do what, who chooses the maps remakes (good question) etc. This was never transparent, at least to me. All I know is that he's the main programmer. In years I saw people entering and leaving the team. Now looks that PerroAzul is working on something, but I'm not close to the "dev team", so I don't know. I'm here for years and I don't know. Now imagine new players that comes here few times only.

If it's just Shoozza, the post is directed to him.

[Shoozza]

First of all, thanks for posting this!

The mockups for the f1 menu (and other ui elements) were great. (I saved them on my pc).
But I cannot tell people anything about if or when such suggestions will arrive in Soldat.

I normally don't give out a long term roadmap because it never works out and people will be disappointed or angry because of this.
There is an internal outdated one which i update from time to time but we currently plan as we go.

As for deadlines: We are currently trying deadlines. We didn't have any before and it resulted in very long delays.

So what about the ingame ui: Will there be a better one? Yes but I don't know when exactly.

What I want to do better is gather feedback from the community so we know what to work on next, with voting and maybe an "accepted" state for feedback.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/Feedback%20Compost%202.5.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2394029/Screenshots/Feedback%20Compost%204.png

[duz]

Looks awesome.

Yeah. This thing of not knowing what you are doing with the game is painful for who's suggesting.
Thank you for the answer.

[Akinaro]

To be honest I would like to know how many people actually work on Soldat now... or its some Secret-Service/CIA/FBI stuff and people just dont want to be on official list because they afraid that they would get beaten on street when they go to shop for milk?
And not only it would clarified a bit situation on specific part of soldat(we could understand why that part is going slow), but we could actually scream at this person instead of Shoozza Because now he get all the beating

Its of course joke, but it would be nice to see who is active in what part of soldat development.

And fallowing duz idea, it would be nice if someone from from dev team would eg. Choose and gather suggestions from forum that he/they like(maps, interface concepts, gameplay ideas etc) put that in separate threat and ask: "Hey! we like this and this idea, you like it? Tell us about it, and we will probably add it!".
Its not like it would take that much time, few days and you list is ready. And it would be probably better that inventing wheel from scratch.


Of course taking in to the account that there isn't too much active users, and half of people Playing now Soldat dont care/dont know about forum. It would be still messy threat, but at least we would see what devs like and can do, and what they dont like and cant make now.


Also to Devs.
It would be nice if you would be not afraid of saying "this suck, we not interested in it"

Im seriously, because checking random topics in suggestion/map section most of you are like: "we dont know... maybe..." And half of people still live in believing that their idea would be implemented even if its not gonna be, and they gonna repeat it over and over.
Part of being good for other is to be able to say simple: "NO, we not interested" 

[Shoozza]

I updated the list of active and inactive developers on the exit tab. Everyone inactive went into the manual.
So for 1.7.0a2 there were only 2 developers active (did some work)
Hint it's 2 people.

Urraka is very active atm (opengl graphics part), I'm not so much (installer, netcode, setting up devs).
ExHunter tries is working on stuff (Scripting) but didn't finish anything for the upcoming build yet.
jrgp helped with one fix in last build but wasn't around since then.

The people from the community working on graphics and maps are very active (L[one]R, MrBungle, daaw and less regularly others)
evhO worked on the translations iirc.

Please don't beat anyone

A few days ago i started a list for community feedback on what to do and evhO edited it a bit here a screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/Axk55wE.png

I try to be more clear with replies in the future, let's see how it works out.

[Akinaro]

Thats what we wanted!(in some way) Nice priority list
It should be definitely pined in dev log section.


But first what I saw:
-Portability(Operating System)
I seriously though for 1 second that is about mobile system... Seriously... I was scared for one second(I hope I dont need to tell why its stupid idea?).

-Integrate Demo Player
I really like to mention that we should SERIOUSLY stop calling it demo, and just call it "Replay/Match or something like that... Its really confusing in some way to still call it "demo"

-Remove BoomHeadshoot sound
Noooo... Why???

-Improve Start-up Video
Seriously consider REMOVING IT, No one watch that, and its doesnt encourage to play in any way... its first option that most of people disable when installing Soldat.


Rest is just like most of people though and I dont see the reason to change priority of anything else.
I would like to see how its gonna end in the future

[MrHamsTR]

-Remove BoomHeadshoot sound
Noooo... Why???

Why you want to remove boomheadshoot sound?
It is cool ingame

[CCalp]

I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to start discussing about these list items in this thread, but since you've already started, I will continue...

-Remove BoomHeadshoot sound
Noooo... Why???

I think you should be able to choose whether you want it to be enabled or not, just as with the other two sound effects you can switch off/on in the settings.

-Improve Start-up Video
Seriously consider REMOVING IT, No one watch that, and its doesnt encourage to play in any way... its first option that most of people disable when installing Soldat.

I was the one who suggested improving it, but I think you actually made a good point there. Completely removing it isn't a bad idea.

Some thoughts on the unsorted items:
- Move time counter from F1 menu to interface -> IMHO that should be at least mid-priority. You could also think about displaying time counter permanently if that could be done quicker.
- Update Soldat homepage -> if making a trailer for homepage is mid-priority, this item should be as well. The website is THE resource which will give new players a first impression of the game, and let's face it: The current homepage is more than in need of improvement. Also, what about the translations which you can choose at the very top of the homepage? Some of them are not available but still eligible (e.g. Spanish), others send you to other websites (like French or Turkish) and still others have been translated partly (e.g. Brazil or Norwegian). IMHO it's really important to improve that. If we don't have people who want to do the translations or it's simply too much effort for the website administrator to implement new translations, then you should simply disable the option to choose a translation. Imagine you are a French, visit this homepage for the first time, see that you can choose this homepage to be displayed in your mother tongue and then are sent to this website: http://www.soldat2d.fr/ ...

A general thought on your priority list: When I work on big projects which need such a long to-do list, I don't just work through the list sorted by priority. Instead I also take the needed effort into account. So if there is an item of low-priority which can be done really quick, I first do that instead of doing a mid-priority item I would have to spend lots of time for. I am pretty sure this way is still discussable and not perfect, either. But in this way you can avoid situations like the following: You first want to fix the eats and improve netcode since it's high priority. However, it might take you months or even years (since it has not been possible to fix them yet?), so you will be occupied with this single tasks for a long period. In this time you could do several smaller items of lower priority, like improving GUI, integrate SSCC, cleaning up config etc., which could - taken together - improve the game more than one high-priority item.
The trickiest thing about this method is creating a kind of formula which tells you which item you should do next: Since priority and effort are two different things, you will have to assess which value should be put on these two criteria.
As I said, this method definitely is discussable. I don't expect you to go with it in future, but I felt like sharing that with you.

[DarkCrusade]

@CCalp: You can use standardised time management techniques and apply them to your programming as well. The below matrix is a very simple but effective one:

[Shoozza]

Btw the list is by community members and I didn't set the priorities. It is the reflection of what the community thinks should be done not the developers.

[CCalp]

@CCalp: You can use standardised time management techniques and apply them to your programming as well. The below matrix is a very simple but effective one:

Ye I know that technique, but it does not take the needed effort into account.

Btw the list is by community members and I didn't set the priorities. It is the reflection of what the community thinks should be done not the developers.

Is a scenery replace for re-making maps really considered high priority by the community?

[homerofgods]

Thx for caring about the list. Let me explain this in a little more detail

Shoozza initially made the list just to make me and RealBook shut the hell up.
But we realised that the comunity were in need of some sort of feedback on their suggestion, and an insurence that it won't be totally forgotten. We actually never had a real suggestions list before, and good ideas have been lost in time since the beginning of soldat.

This is how it started:
RealBook was complaining an awful lot about Shoozza not fixing netcode, and even though he was rude a hyena, he got a point.
Since Shoozza is just one person, and can't do everything, we need to find out what's top priority and start with that.
Since Urraka allready did alot of visual improvements me and RealBook agreed that the top priority cases for the competative players are: 1. Netcode 2. Anticheat 3. WM
Shoozza then gave us the list to pour all our ideas onto, so that instead of Shoozza having to remember all the stuff people suggest it can just be added to the list.

@CCalp You suggest that devs (Shoozza) work on smaller changes instead of time consuming tasks, but we have done that for a long time now and we never do the important ones that way. Fixing visuals was important and just look at how theese big changes really does an impact.
I want Shoozza to start working on Netcode, and don't stop doing that until it's done, all the other things should wait. There are many bugs in the bugtracker wich is caused by bad netcode, so doing this one big change will fix alot of small ones aswell.
If we do get more developers to work on soldat they can by all means start doing less important, less time consuming stuff, as long as one active developer stay on the important changes.

I haven't had the time to change the suggestions priority much, so it's still pretty random. And it doesn't make much difference where I put stuff since devs decide priority anyway

What you can do, if you want, is hl me in irc with your suggestion, or add my name somewhere  when you make a suggestion in forums, and I will remember to add it to the list.
Other than that I add stuff there from time to time whenever I get an idea or see someone talking about 'how things should be'.