Where is the progress? Is there any progress? Little things have changed since the last major release in April. Sure, there is the usual fixing a bug here, tweaking something there. But apart from that both the forums and the repository log aren’t featuring any serious improvements to be in the pipeline.
The discussion about a milestone is now called “Stable Modding Platform” and there even is a dedicated official forum in the 1.13 section over at Bear’s Pit. “Finally”, one might think, but if you take a deeper look you’ll notice how vacant it is. Some half-baked ideas, a call out to all the programmers to join, that’s it. The feature request forum however is busy as always…
“We don’t have enough coders”, they say. “And those who are still active do what they like to do – not what should be done”, they say. Seems that by definition things that should be done never actually get done if anything is done at all. “We can’t force the coders to do anything. We are thankful that they spend their precious spare time contributing something at all”, they say.
They are right. Of course they can’t force anyone into anything. Of course the coders prefer feeding sweeties to the community instead of investing less glorious code into the long run. This describes pretty much how additions find their way into 1.13. Make something the community can see – let it be a bloated new inventory or some hilarious description boxes, anything will do – and they’ll love it. Love you.
You know what? The community sucks.
The community successfully prevents any real improvements. That’s how they got educated. There has never been a leader who drives 1.13 into one particular direction. A decider who separates reasonable ideas from all the bullshit. A visionary who knows the value of a moddable platform. There were people who constantly voiced their opinion. Who didn’t remain mute about the evolution of 1.13. But they were unheard over all the yelling by the masses which demanded that 1.13 produces yet another pointless feature. This is how we got to what we have today.
Because no one was inspirational enough to make the community accept less glittering advancements. If that had been the case I’m sure there would have been coders who’d have enjoyed implementing those things in question.
I tend to doubt that the 1.13 project can regain the fire of the early days before it lost all its potential at some point. Maybe it’s okay to call 1.13 officially failed.
November 25, 2008 at 5:51 |
If it weren’t for mods like Urban Chaos, Diedriana Lives, Vengence, SOG69, NightOps, and numerous others, the community would not have thrived as long as it did. And just maybe, Madd Mugsy wouldn’t have spent the time he spent beginning this project. Who knows how it could have gone.
I think eventually, the community will die down, tired of Arulco, tired of the ported wildfire maps, and ported UC maps, and they will leave 1.13 for greener pastures. Legion2 looks promising if they can ever finish the thing. New Caledonia looked wonderful too, the visual effects they pulled off in their maps look great. Granted, both are based off of 1.13’s code, so without it, they wouldn’t even be works in progress most likely.
Eventually, it’s inevitable though, the only voices to be heard will be those of modders, and then maybe things will head that direction. Maybe not. I’m not quite personally done with JA2 development, but the time I spend on it will mostly be towards my own mod and not the main SVN branch. And I’m using the 1.13 code as a base. I think any mods at this point should have a developer on board or they’re missing out on a ton of potential, whether they use the 1.13 code or not.
In the end, regardless of what 1.13 is, or was, or will be, one thing is definitely certain:
I most likely wouldn’t be replying to the article you didn’t type up about a game we no longer play if there hadn’t been a 1.13 in the first place.
November 25, 2008 at 5:57 |
(Can’t Edit and hit submit too soon)
Given all that 1.13 has acheived, I couldn’t ever call it a failure in any aspect. Then again I’m biased.
November 25, 2008 at 15:07 |
We are both biased then. That post was driven by pure disappointment. I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that my definition of what 1.13 should be doesn’t conform to reality anymore. If it ever has.
Yes, there are mods based on 1.13 in the works (the team I’m with has quite recently made the switch to 1.13 code). But all this reminds me of the post source code release / pre-1.13 era when several modding groups emerged, but most of the projects died sooner or later (two among those which I was involved in). Lesson learned was it is too hard for lone fighters to get anything done. Then out of nowhere 1.13 popped up and experienced a synergy which I haven’t seen in the JA2 world anytime before. Suddenly things considered to be impossible became real. I regret when I think of all the things that possibly could be done but were not.
Anyway, now everything splits up again into individual modding folks. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. This had to happen but I had wished 1.13 could have been brought even farther towards the modding platform we all would like to see.
Well, maybe the parallels continue and at some point in the future they will join forces together again…
November 25, 2008 at 20:45 |
It’s not likely that 1.13 will ever really be a “stable” modding platform. I beleive it will always be a moving target. Eventually more moddability will be added, and it might suprise everyone, but it will still be a moving target, and I think that will always be a huge problem.
Hopefully things like loss of backwards map compatability and broken editors will be a thing of the past. Unless I’m mistaken, I beleive the editor has been fixed now, but that’s still only a small step in the right direction.
Some good externalizations and mod-friendly features have just been completely blown off. Like the externalized airports and BR delivery locations, and the big-maps project. There was just a complete lack of support from the community so a deaf ear was turned towards those projects. That’s one of the things that really aggrivates me, but then again, I actually do have the power to change that, I just don’t have the desire, or motivation to do so, and therefore I have no right to complain.
I haven’t actively worked on the project in about a year now. My last changes were to re-balance the mobile militia and that was done around the end of 2007.
December 6, 2008 at 10:06 |
well, as a non modder and someone who has kept revisiting JA2 since its launch, i would just like to say that to my non expert eyes 1.13 is great – so thanks to all that were (are?) involved