Devlog update (2017-06-09) Goodbye

[helloer]

Hello,

I have decided to step down as soldat developer and to leave game for good. The main reason is lack of activity from lead developer which resulted in very slow progress in development.

Initially I wanted to describe in this devlog current state of things and to point out what went wrong but to be honest it wouldn't change anything because falcon just doesn't care.

I really worked hard to deliver 1.8 as you can see below, those are git stats since I joined devteam.

Helloer 281 commits / 54306 insertions(+), 304948 deletions(-), -250642 net
Falcon 83 commits / 2092 insertions(+), 2453 deletions(-), -361 net
Oliver 56 commits / 1841 insertions(+), 1737 deletions(-), 104 net
Fryer 19 commits / 801 insertions(+), 637 deletions(-), 164 net
Shoozza 14 commits / 207 insertions(+), 66 deletions(-), 141 net
Urraka 12 commits / 1363 insertions(+), 1733 deletions(-), -370 net
Mighty 4 commits / 21 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-), 8 net

The last commit was on Mar 1 and I can now say confidently that development of the game is dead.

I would like to thank all my friends from Zabijaka, Rzal and KO servers, it was pleasure to play with you and I hope we will meet IRL one day.

Goodbye

[Akinaro]

Initially I wanted to describe in this devlog current state of things and to point out what went wrong but to be honest it wouldn't change anything because falcon just doesn't care.

Tell us something that we dont know -_-


As for you, I didnt liked your approach in some basic stuff in zabijaka, but as dev I think you where one on that person who new what was doing, didnt give a crap about useless stuff and was a dick in that good way(read: that person who do the job, not spend time whining that its free project and no one love you).


As many times I said that: Soldat after all those years is still toy for bunch of old dicks that threat Soldat as their private playground and as a platform for recall "good old days..."
it will be never proper game if devs will not threat it like that.

Because its a game. Its product for masses, not for bunch of old players that play it because its remind them "good old days".
And as any product, if you want it to exist on market, you need to modify it to fit new times and trends.
You need to work on it taking in to the account voice of all players new and old. And right now Soldat need new players, so it need to fit their needs, so no giving handjob for old players in gathers that get epilepsy whenever you mention word "change", but on pubilc servers... because guess what? everyone started from there.

Also overall background of Soldat licensing is big pile of unknown bullshit that need to be cleaned. Because for past years those small amount of money from registrations instead of going to advertising or helping game in any way... it went where? Not to soldat as we see...

If you really care about game and are sure that you will not manage to finish it, and MM will stop acting like kid that dont want to give up old toy that he didnt use AT ALL for past years: make it public, make it Opensource. Because most of us would rather have bunch of random games on Soldat platform rather than one dying grandpa. Even if code is spaghetti I can bet that in less than month someone with time will make better. 

If there would be clear situation of that, and there would be proper dev team, where few people would be responsible for advertising game and social media of game and their would use those few bucks for advertising game.
And also site and forum would have few ads, there would be paid addons especially for selected users of game and forum, game would have proper donation system that could be used for eg, getting proper programmers with experience that would work on game all the time.


Even if you would spend just few hours per week on it, by that time we waited we should have new version... but we dont have... Soldat devs live in some weird word, all other people, even single devs that work on their own private projects made from scratch can push their projects step by step, get support from fans that they need to fight for... but here... nope.

[machina]

Well, I had somewhat see that coming.

Also overall background of Soldat licensing is big pile of unknown bullshit that need to be cleaned. Because for past years those small amount of money from registrations instead of going to advertising or helping game in any way... it went where? Not to soldat as we see...

If at least devs were promised to get some money once 1.8 with some paid new features were added to Soldat, maybe things would be different. I mean, currently, the whole development is probably like "come, get the glory from developing this epic game you played as a kid but we can't pay you of course". It's obvious, you get tired and inproductive quickly. MM's plan for Soldat is probably like "let's keep it somewhat alive for no cost so the possibility for some registrations stay all time".

Funny fact: Since Shoozza's departure i.e. on June 14, 2016, MM actually posted on this forums once. It was a topic about someone else's game xD

If you really care about game and are sure that you will not manage to finish it, and MM will stop acting like kid that dont want to give up old toy that he didnt use AT ALL for past years: make it public, make it Opensource. Because most of us would rather have bunch of random games on Soldat platform rather than one dying grandpa. Even if code is spaghetti I can bet that in less than month someone with time will make better. 

I doubt this would be a month but with great possibility faster than having an unpaid dev team.

The sad part is that even if 1.8 is released, Soldat doesn't get necessirly any more popular due to the weak advertising.

I recently shifted my interests back to Blizzard titles and I'm okay with it.

Thank you for your work, helloer!

[jrgp]

Before you leave can you release the Linux and Mac builds? Even if they're still CLI only.

It'd be a shame to leave before your biggest legacy got released: cross platform client.

[Foln]

Only a few days ago, over here: http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=56417.msg278382#msg278382 you mentioned working on making Soldat Steam compatible. What happened to that? Does this mean the Steam-plan you mentioned in that post on the SCTFL forums is abandoned as well?

Former Soldat player here, started in like 2004-2005. Sad to see this as this seems to be the actual final death of Soldat now. And that on an official level.


All we can beg/hope for at this point is that you guys just make it open source. As it's been said before: If you care about this game, I don't see how it would be prefered to just leave it to die instead of giving it a possible rebirth by making it open source.

[Savage]

Ye, keep killing your game THD. Thx helloer and wish you good luck. I think it's time to leave...

[machina]

Ye, keep killing your game THD.

They don't even fucking have Soldat listed on their homepage so I'd be far from calling Soldat a THD's game.

[homerofgods]

Thank you for your work Helloer

[gor]

Sad to hear it,thank you for your help.

[Foln]

Ye, keep killing your game THD.

They don't even fucking have Soldat listed on their homepage so I'd be far from calling Soldat a THD's game.

It's just a random potential money-source for MM at this point. He doesn't care about this game anymore. Otherwise it would've been open source by now.

[jrgp]

Ye, keep killing your game THD.

They don't even fucking have Soldat listed on their homepage so I'd be far from calling Soldat a THD's game.

Helloer has done everything he can to distance Soldat from THD and shut out Shoozza.

Me and furai (employees of THD) host and maintain the official soldat sites and these aren't going away.

If helloer leaves it isn't the end of the world for soldat as the other devs are still there, and if not Shoozza isn't completely gone.

[Akinaro]

Helloer has done everything he can to distance Soldat from THD and shut out Shoozza.

Because what THD did to advertise or help Soldat, that being dead or just dying, still have potential and players?
Such simple things like posting game on damn main site is small step to advertise Soldat. But its look like THD dont care, so why we should care?

Even spending damn 15$ per few month on advertising in google ads or any other platform would be good. I spend 10$ per month to advertise few my small projects and it work somehow: I have small number of visits on sites and downloads, but its better than nothing. Soldat have actually better content and history to get even more attention than some crappy personal projects like mine.

If helloer leaves it isn't the end of the world for soldat as the other devs are still there, and if not Shoozza isn't completely gone.

Ok, so tell us where they are? Because we have better chance to see UFO than dev here... and Im talking about spending 1 damn minute to write simple post: Hey! Im alive, I work on really boring coding stuff like <instert here one or two things that you made for past week> Thanks! see you next time!
It is really hard to write something like that? Or its proof that they didnt to anything at all? we need to guess that?

[Blastoize2]

Finish it then leave.

[elMorvano]

54306 insertions(+)

Thats really nice result when the others dont even have 1/5 together of your work. Thats shame for the rest admins. Im not surprised you left it. Anyway Ive got big hope youll stay until 1.8 version. Imagine how big fame youll get if 1.8 will be a nicely version. Maybe we should make a project for collect money (there are special sites for do that) for this new version but firstly we had to see all plans for 1.8 version. Think about it, Im sure players wont leave it easily without help.

This developing shouldnt be only for free

[machina]

Finish it then leave.

If this is a solo task (as it appears to be due to the fact that none of the other devs happened to comment on this topic) then that's not so simple to just "finish it".

[Hubiq]

Ugh bad news. So version 1.8 will be the last version of this game?

[machina]

Ugh bad news. So version 1.8 will be the last version of this game?

More like 1.7.1 xD

Okay, I won't do jokes anymore. I'll try not to. 1.8 has just been postponed to undefined future.

[Blastoize2]

Before you leave can you release the Linux and Mac builds? Even if they're still CLI only.

It'd be a shame to leave before your biggest legacy got released: cross platform client.

Works on penguin under wine. Don't see how is this relevant.

Finish it then leave.

If this is a solo task (as it appears to be due to the fact that none of the other devs happened to comment on this topic) then that's not so simple to just "finish it".

It is simple. But how long will it take that's the question. Non developers can't really help other than just keep positive vibe towards completing 1.8. We'll se what the other devs say. If they say anything.

[jrgp]

Before you leave can you release the Linux and Mac builds? Even if they're still CLI only.

It'd be a shame to leave before your biggest legacy got released: cross platform client.

Works on penguin under wine. Don't see how is this relevant.

Under Linux, Wine support is extremely hit or miss. Some releases it works great, others Access Violations are common. I'd prefer a native release where I don't have to pray for the stars to aline properly for the game to be reliable.

Under Mac, with Wine/Darwine/others, I've never had any success with getting Soldat to work. This is disappointing as 90% of the time I'm using my mac instead of linux box.

As a fellow Linux user, wouldn't you prefer a native build for your OS that you know is going to work 100% of the time? This is the case with KAG and it's great.

[machina]

Finish it then leave.

If this is a solo task (as it appears to be due to the fact that none of the other devs happened to comment on this topic) then that's not so simple to just "finish it".

It is simple.

I didn't know you're so familiarized. If this is so "simple" then possibly you could finish it instead?