@vishnou00: I know how your smiley is meant, but I said it consciously this time, responding to a partly rhetorical question. My "Absolutely not!" actually meant: "Yes, what you did was correct!"
vishnou00 wrote:
I disagree. That cost (in coding time & efforts) is already paid nearly in full to be modular. The biggest turn-around time will be at the game design level (for a game design decision).
Well, the rule you are disagreeing to is lectured at every basic software engineering lesson. When you realize a mistake while you are still planning you can fairly easily correct your plans. When the coding has already been 100% done (the other extreme) and when you (or your customer) start using the product, you find out that the basic idea is wrong and you have to revamp the whole concept (followed by a completely new coding), then the costs are exorbitant (because the lion's share of the work you have invested was in vain).
vishnou00 wrote:
So, if there is a revision of a past game design decision, it will be mainly the game design people that will pay the cost to correct them.
No. Once the design people have done their work and come up with a revamped design, the programmers have to code everything again. Since the design (e.g. the concept) is totally different, they will usually not be able to re-use the old code (although they may be able to re-use the artwork). After that, you will have new alpha and beta phases to find the new bugs, since new code means new bugs, and the bug fixing of the old code is wasted work. If you change the design, you have to give up most of the subsequent work that has been done, rolling back your project to the end of the design phase (when no coding has yet been done).
In your subsequent argumentation, you are mixing this up with community relationship, but that is a different subject.
vishnou00 wrote:
I don't know for you, but it is the design process I enjoy, more than the prospect of playing "the game of my dreams".
Well, I do admit that I actually desire to play the game.
I agree that the design process is fun in itself, but I do not think we need occupational therapy in which we invest tons of work, only to discard it afterwards and start over. Work is only fun if you see progress, not if you do it the Sisyphus way:
vishnou00 wrote:
Merriam-Webster is you friend.
Thank you for the useful link. So far, I have only used these two distionaries:
http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/
http://dict.leo.org/?searchLoc=0&relink ... ed&lang=en
vishnou00 wrote:
Moo3 did something like this, for both techs and buildings. For me, the messages just kinda became background noise....
Because MoO3 swamps you with countless technologies and reports. Patch 1.2.5 allows you to remove those messages from the sitrep, so the background noise is gone, but when you take a look at one of your planets, then you will see all the buildings and have the feeling you are looking at a certain planet, not at a standard planet that looks just like the ones in your other systems. As I mentioned before, MoO3 lacks a beautiful display of the planet surface though.
Aquitaine wrote:
This is where we disagree. You think I swept away discussion?
No (wrong assumption
), I did not say that. I believe you swept away
the outcome of the discussion; making an uncommented decision in favor of pooled production although (as discussion and corresponding thoughts had deepened) the tide was just turning against it.
Aquitaine wrote:
The point of the public review is not to argue something until everyone is convinced of it or until every single criticism of an argument is addressed, which seems to be what you want.
Another wrong assumption. (Sorry for dwelling upon this, but you were so eager to impute me making false assumptions that I could not refrain from giving you a dose of your own medicine.) I only criticized that the decision did not seem to take into account the course the discussion had taken. As your own counting shows, opinions were split about this, and even some proposers had become... pensive.
You reacted by just stating the decision: We will have pool production, period. In such a discordant situation, I would have expected a short explanation why you decided this way, as well as explaining how you plan on dealing with the problems that have been pointed out against pool production.
Aquitaine wrote:
You can say this about anything you don't like. "Any time you make a decision that affects a large part of the game, the whole project is based on that decision, making your decision that much worse." This is a fallacy of circular logic. "You are wrong because you are wrong."
You should have read what I answered to when I wrote the text you quoted. I was not saying that important decisions may not be made because in the end they might turn out to be wrong. I was responding to drek, who said it did not really matter which way we go, because the other way could quickly be modded in if we found that we had chosen the wrong one. (drek was apparently implying that decision was not of much importance for this reason.) So my point was that the decision was important, and should not be made lightly. (Assumption disclaimer: I am not saying you made the decision lightly. I just responded to what drek said.)
Aquitaine wrote:
Let me get this straight: You are saying that, if you don't understand the system, it's my fault for not pointing you to the fifty pages of discussion and explanation?
I was not talking about all related discussion when I said what you declared "false assumptions". I was just referring to small passages of text that
you wrote and that I quoted. What you are saying is just as if I asked you how you could get to the wrong assumptions I marked above, having read all those 50 pages. But these 50 pages have nothing to do with assumptions what you (or I) mean.
Aquitaine wrote:
Decisions do not need to be unanimous. The public review offered by the FreeOrion developers is a courtesy to the community because we recognize that we are a community-based project and without a lot of links to that community, this project would die.
So when the bank robber threatens the clerk with a gun, and the threatened clerk fills the money into the bag, then the clerk is doing the robber a courtesy? This parallel is inappropiate? Only at first sight. The clerk has the options either to fill in the money, or to die. As you just stated yourself, you have the options to work with the community or have your project die. While (unlike the robber) the community is not actively threatening you, the result is the same. You rely on the community. On this background I regard it as overbearing to call your cooperation a "courtesy".
Aquitaine wrote:
But do not mistake our willingness to embrace the community on discussions like this (and our gratitude to the community for doing so) for a democracy. That it ain't.
And that it must not be. Every election shows us that people are foolish. Such a project needs hierarchical leadership with an experienced leader. I totally agree with you there. What I was criticizing was lack of transparency with your decision, and missing information how you plan on dealing with the described problems.
On the other hand, while the decision is not with the public, the community must be allowed to discuss a decision - even if it was not theirs, and even if it has already been made. Nobody forces you to participate in such a discussion, or obey any outcomes. Discussion can always lead to insight. Of course if you make a wrong design decision, then later it can become obvious that it was possible to foresee the mistake, that it was named and described in advance. I can understand that you feel uncomfortable with that prospect, so you would rather degrade this to "Rant&Rave". But that is the fate of a leader.
I mean, the General Discussion forum is not bursting with new threads. Why should it not be allowed to discuss an important decision that has been made?
