v1.13 is dead, or isn’t it?

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.

What’s coming next?

With the New Inventory being released with 2085 and JA2 1.13 hitting some kind of a milestone, one might ask what else is down the road to keep us excited when playing v1.13.

While the 2085 release primarily focused on bug fixing and incorporating the New Inventory system, this time there is quite a lot of new stuff going on lately. If you check Bear’s Pit you’ll notice a couple of things that are worked on in public. So let’s have a look at these.

The most impressive feature in the pipeline surely is the multiplayer modification. Don’t quote me on this, but IIRC the multiplayer extension will be the key enhancement for the next big release. This project is in beta currently, so chances are pretty good that we are going to see something final in the not-too-distant future. Development builds are randomly available which means you already have the chance to try it out.  This is promising a whole lot of fun.

Then there is something for the modders out there: prof.dat externalization. Not only is this the task to XMLify yet another binary data but to break all the hard-coded structures in behind. From what you can read in the hot discussed thread the project seems well on track and first results in the shape of a couple of screenshots are already available. This one will be highly appreciated among modders since it has been demanded for a long time already and really adds value to the game when it comes to moddability.

Another big hit for the modders might be the development going by the name “Laptop files section” which describes pretty well what it is all about. There is not a whole lot said about it yet, but externalizing the file items in the laptop will come in handy for the modders. Let’s see how this continues and what creative people will use it for.

The next one aimed at modders is the airport externalization. This one would remove several restrictions for airport maps. Often requested and to some extend finished the undertaking seems quite dead now judged by the forum thread. The code however continues to live in a SVN branch which is kept up-to-date with the trunk continuously. Hopefully, it makes it into the next major update.

The last one in the queue is the Big Maps project, which allows one to create tactical maps of virtually unlimited size. I’m not sure about its progress, though. As far as I understand they have an editor supporting larger maps but only some alphas of the actual game. Definitely an interesting project nonetheless.

What I can see is that finally there are some serious attempts to address at least a few of countless issues modders struggle with. This change in development – if it is one – will increase v1.13’s attractiveness for mods and make it more of the platform it always wanted to be. Carry on, v1.13, we are watching you!

Mission accomplished

Wish we could say that regarding 1.13 at some point. But what is its “mission” anyway? In fact there is nothing like a mission or a primary goal to aim at. At least since it isn’t a platform anymore.

The greatest strength of the v1.13 project is that virtually anyone can contribute anything. If you wanted to get your idea into 1.13 you’d just present it to the community at the forums. If they liked it you’d be halfway there. This is what makes 1.13 a community-driven project. There is no master plan but rather the community chooses from what is offered. You plainly cannot predict how 1.13 will develop since another bomb might hit at anytime. Remember when back in 2005 the focus was on externalizing stuff and nobody talked about something like a new inventory system? Things change continuously.

Thus the project’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Because there so many different additions worked on important things get out of sight or even lost completely. There are too many people working on different things or too few people working on the same things so that real progress is prevented. As usual the features that suffer the most are those which would enhance moddability. These have a too low CAF (community acceptance factor) because their value doesn’t pay off immediately for the average player. Basically the more popular a feature is the more it’s useless in terms of moddability. Cp. NIV.

Maybe we all would be better off if contributors set up a roadmap, joined forces and worked on some really consistent features. But probably they will just continue constraining themselves to their own business.