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Author Topic: Improving Online Dominion  (Read 52196 times)

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gkrieg13

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #50 on: October 19, 2015, 06:42:03 pm »
+2

Man, all I want is a game that does not lag and adventures would be nice

that is clearly too much to ask for
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Witherweaver

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #51 on: October 19, 2015, 07:40:11 pm »
+1

I want a game that offers a handshake and a kiss.
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werothegreat

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #52 on: October 19, 2015, 07:49:58 pm »
+1

I want a game that offers a handshake and a kiss.

There's a name for those kinds of games.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #53 on: October 19, 2015, 08:02:46 pm »
+7

I want a game that offers a handshake and a kiss.

There's a name for those kinds of games.

.... Making "Fun"?
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #54 on: October 20, 2015, 12:45:56 am »
+13

Let's assume that MF's developers are completely incompetent and that we are entitled to a better gaming experience than what they offer.
If it's not just one guy then it could be a decent guy and two awful guys or whatever - they're each their own person.

I think obv. they are not completely incompetent. They have basically blown it one way, that's right, I can get it down to one thing. That one thing is speed. What they have is fine for some point along the journey from nothing to the perfect program; it's just taken too long to get here.

I don't know how many man-hours Dominion gets per week, or whatever else. At one point somebody (supposed to be working on Dominion for MF) wasn't doing anything and was fired or some such; I'm not digging up the exact story because I probably shouldn't tell it. But you know. I can believe there's some of that, and some "we have to spend our time on these hidden pictures programs that pay the bills." Still, progress has been too slow.

The only way we have of playing Dominion Online rests with Making Fun, and that will not change unless something big and unforseen happens.
I'm not sure that's true (maybe there's a Vassal version or something), but it's certainly the intention.

At this point Jay and I have to, while desperately trying not to be affected by the sunk cost fallacy, consider where we are and how best to get where we want to be. Despite the slow progress - and believe me Jay is not impressed - we don't see how to do better.

The MF Dominion client has been improving, and it still is being developed so it will continue to improve.
Yes, it's continuing to improve, which is crucial; again the issue from my perspective is entirely one of speed.

Wait a tick, shouldn't we have a voice in this? Yeah actually we should.
I'm not sure what this voice is supposed to accomplish or can hope to accomplish, that it isn't already accomplishing.

(fact: stuff that gets spit out of a decompiler does not resemble the code MF writes, and is not grounds to criticize their design or anything else about them).
That's partially right, partially wrong. Some things that look bad because it's decompiled might not look bad in the actual code; e.g., Jeff said the "if (x == 0)" ahead of multiplying x was there because there was commented-out debugging code that was supposed to be skipped (but wait, if it's only needed for debugging, why not tie it to the debugging and thus comment it out at the same time?). Other things that look bad are bad, they are not the decompiler giving the programmers a bad name.

The threads in here (the Dominion Online sub-board) have become so toxic, I'm seeing a side of people I used to have respect for that makes me want to have nothing to do with them.
Well I don't know your specific examples, but it feels a lot less bad to me than when I quit the forums.

Do we want to burn the bridge we have with MF, to throw away our chance to have our voice heard and to have features added that will make us happy?
I'm not sure there's even a way to do this. MF will consider you as people; if f.ds makes a big anti-MF statement and then Kirian posts some feature requests, they're not going to say "no way, you're one of those f.ds guys." If they somehow became career-suicide-insanely spiteful, they would still need to answer to me and Jay or be done.

The dll patch is getting in the way of making Dominion Online a better experience.
I don't see how this is possible. It means a few people who might complain about something might instead not bother, they've got a fix. But plenty of people don't have the patch and will complain about whatever it is; the complaining will get done for sure.

Did anyone out there ask MF if they could contribute in a constructive way towards Online Dominion by asking if MF would make a public-facing API or log file interface or something so that the changes made by the dll patch would be scalable, sustainable, etc? This would be a much better solution: something a lot more like Salvager, only still compatible with MF's continued development of their product.
I don't think MF will be interested in that in the short term, nor should they be; whatever man-hours they have for Dominion, man, let them spend them on the actual work. It's potentially something to bring up in the long term.

The logs are already public, if you know how to get at them, which I posted somewhere.
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #55 on: October 20, 2015, 12:55:45 am »
+1

Of course it's a total waste of time—all of life is, including the ten thousands of hours we collectively spend playing Dominion. But what a marvelous waste it all is!
I don't think is an accurate perspective. There's no universal context in which something can be judged to be a waste of time or not. Within smaller contexts, many things are not wastes of time, even time-wasting activities.

In general, when you can say some concept applies to everything, you've blown it on your concept; you'll get more value from words if you shift your concept so it does not apply to everything. And people tend to do this; they understand that a bad movie is a waste of time in a way that a good movie is not, and so on.
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #56 on: October 20, 2015, 01:04:13 am »
+3

We've spent pages of posts complaining about MF's software engineering process that we know absolutely nothing about. We've spent pages of posts complaining about MF's source code that we know absolutely nothing about
This is an absurd claim. We know plenty about their software engineering process by just looking at what they've produced: a bug-ridden rewrite that has been in development way longer than it should have. We don't need the source to know things are bad.
In the article you link to, the author is fond of absolute statements that help make a point more forcefully, but in fact underneath that he is saying, code that is working well probably should not be rewritten from scratch. Not that you should never rewrite working code, nor that you should probably not rewrite code that isn't working. He cites all the bug fixes and knowledge that went into the code being rewritten; he is only talking about code that actually has those fixes and that knowledge.

Obviously sometimes it is 100% the move to rewrite something from scratch. Usually, and ideally, that code never made it out.

We can argue about how good the Goko code was (and not just be guessing, since some of it was public), but it had significant issues, and was built to do something no longer wanted (support arbitrary new games). I do not fault MF at all for deciding to rewrite it from scratch.
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #57 on: October 20, 2015, 01:09:34 am »
+2

To make another attempt at reconciliation: you're more than welcome to resume posting in my thread, though I'm personally not interested in legal considerations and to the extent that there is stuff you'd still like to add on the matter, it's better to discuss that in a separate thread (taking into account Donald's excellent response explaining why any legal action from MF would be extremely unlikely).

It's OK when DXV talks about the legal considerations in your thread because that's what you wanted to hear. You kicked me out because I said something you didn't like. If I'm wrong, prove it.
Well that's probably partly true, but I mean, I'm me. I was going to get to articulate a popular opinion for sure.

Companies do not tend to get mad at fans who make mods, because that would be nuts and bad for business; note the lack of lawsuits over Salvager. I did not present the most basic or complete argument; I presented the argument that had the most chance of ending that line of reasoning.
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #58 on: October 20, 2015, 01:15:47 am »
+2

Also, I think it's highly unlikely that the patch slowed down improvements of the NF client. I don't believe the ioption to turn off animations was implemented so quickly after the patch was released is a coincidence.

In fairness, I'm totally willing to believe it was a coincidence. It was on their list and they got around to it.
I think there's no chance whatsoever that there's any connection. I personally told Jeff that that patch existed, and he said he'd already announced it in the MF forums as something coming in 2.0.43.

Then he read that thread and pointed out some of the incorrect assumptions about what the actual code looked like, based on the decompiled code.
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SCSN

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #59 on: October 20, 2015, 04:23:51 am »
0

Did Jeff share any thoughts on inserting the "JackOfAllTrades" -> "Jack of All Trades" replacement line into the general log coloring function?

I hope he blamed it on that guy they fired—it's certainly what I would do and at least somewhat more believable than "the decompiler made it up".
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #60 on: October 20, 2015, 06:08:55 am »
+6

Did Jeff share any thoughts on inserting the "JackOfAllTrades" -> "Jack of All Trades" replacement line into the general log coloring function?
No, he didn't say anything about that, or my concern about using strings where enums are what you mean. He just made a few comments. I reported the bugs; he worked out that Possession was consistently misspelled (by an English-not-first-language person, yes you are Dutch and can scoff at that). He noted that the variable you called "white" they called something like "color." He remembered you from when David decided not to read these forums anymore.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #61 on: October 20, 2015, 06:24:48 am »
0

Haha, glad to hear the love is mutual. I hope David is still enjoying those TV shows of his that make him oblivious to  their software's defects. There's some really captivating stuff out there these days, so I can't entirely fault him.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #62 on: October 20, 2015, 07:00:38 am »
+2

I think obv. they are not completely incompetent. They have basically blown it one way, that's right, I can get it down to one thing. That one thing is speed. What they have is fine for some point along the journey from nothing to the perfect program; it's just taken too long to get here.

Maybe you have access to something I don't, but what does this even mean? Is it taking too long for your liking? Is it taking too long for Joe F.DSGuy's liking? Man, that one isn't hard to do; I know at least 55% of us have a shrine in our bedrooms for isotropic, counting the number of days since she passed (RIP?) and that includes the whole Goko thing. Is there a schedule that they are woefully behind? Who made that schedule? What was it based on? Did they ever promise us anything by a specific date? Is this being measured in calendar days or engineer-hours? What about that guy who got fired? Can we actually blame the people who are still there, trying to clean up that mess? What was the impact of that? What units is that in?

Before these questions are answered, it's only whining about how we want what we think we're entitled to. As someone who deals with answering and asking these questions as a professional, I hope you can understand how people on the internet who just want to whine because it feels good don't quite measure up to my expectations, and how I would hope they have the same expectations as I do so that what they are whining about is actually worth reading. I mean, I always feel better when I whine that way...


Wait a tick, shouldn't we have a voice in this? Yeah actually we should.
I'm not sure what this voice is supposed to accomplish or can hope to accomplish, that it isn't already accomplishing.

I guess it would be nice if people from MF could just read these forums, see constructive comments about what people want to see, and then know what those meant? I guess that's hopeless at this point?


[...] Other things that look bad are bad, they are not the decompiler giving the programmers a bad name.

Maybe you've seen some source code, I'm pretty sure nobody else on these forums has. It's an unfinished product, isn't it? I mean, even if there was some legitimately bad practice that made it into a release, isn't the correct response to be like "hey, I found something in your code, you should probably fix that" instead of "ZOMG THEY'RE ALL IDIOTS LOLOL I COULD DO A BETTER JOB #ISOWASBETTER"? One of those things makes everyone's life better, the other makes us look like a bunch of jerks. Why are we attempting to justify the jerky one? I don't get it.


The threads in here (the Dominion Online sub-board) have become so toxic, I'm seeing a side of people I used to have respect for that makes me want to have nothing to do with them.
Well I don't know your specific examples, but it feels a lot less bad to me than when I quit the forums.

Umm, well sure we feel differently about how bad it is. OK we're allowed to do that. But I don't know if I should point to specific posts. Would that be rude? I bet you I could find 55 posts that are nothing but people being toxic. Umm, in the absence of finding and linking those posts, let's just say that you can look in the last several pages of the "Latest Release" thread, and there's a lot of them in SCSN's patch thread, and the "Open Beta Ending Soon" thread (funny story, instead of typing "Ending" I typed "Engine" the first time. Lol.) Usually the worst posts are the ones with the most upvotes.


Did anyone out there ask MF if they could contribute in a constructive way towards Online Dominion by asking if MF would make a public-facing API or log file interface or something so that the changes made by the dll patch would be scalable, sustainable, etc? This would be a much better solution: something a lot more like Salvager, only still compatible with MF's continued development of their product.
I don't think MF will be interested in that in the short term, nor should they be; whatever man-hours they have for Dominion, man, let them spend them on the actual work. It's potentially something to bring up in the long term.

The logs are already public, if you know how to get at them, which I posted somewhere.

Umm, are you talking about game logs, or logs of things that are happening in the software? If it's the second one and those already exist, then why aren't we just using those instead of patching their dll?
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #63 on: October 20, 2015, 07:48:38 am »
+8

I think obv. they are not completely incompetent. They have basically blown it one way, that's right, I can get it down to one thing. That one thing is speed. What they have is fine for some point along the journey from nothing to the perfect program; it's just taken too long to get here.

Maybe you have access to something I don't, but what does this even mean? Is it taking too long for your liking?
Too long for me dude. I can't speak for you or whoever.

There's no question of "entitlement" from my perspective. Team RGG and DXV are looking to have a sufficiently-finished program up. Team MF is trying to be successful; they took on a project that has to be successful or they've thrown away money. It's a licensor / licensee situation. It's not that I'm "entitled" to better sub-licenses; it's that I should try to avoid poor sub-licensing situations.

I had lunch with some Funsockets guys in October 2011. I had lunch with some Making Fun guys in March 2014.

I don't think I have words harsh enough to adequately express how long it's taken. Maybe there's something in Yaghan. Wait I can try understatement. It has taken too long for my liking.

I guess it would be nice if people from MF could just read these forums, see constructive comments about what people want to see, and then know what those meant? I guess that's hopeless at this point?
Well Jeff just read a thread, but yes, and fortunately it's not so bad. They read their forums and you can post whatever stuff there. If other people aren't doing that, someone can summarize stuff posted here if they feel like it. And I read these forums and post there and email them.

Maybe you've seen some source code, I'm pretty sure nobody else on these forums has. It's an unfinished product, isn't it? I mean, even if there was some legitimately bad practice that made it into a release, isn't the correct response to be like "hey, I found something in your code, you should probably fix that" instead of "ZOMG THEY'RE ALL IDIOTS LOLOL I COULD DO A BETTER JOB #ISOWASBETTER"? One of those things makes everyone's life better, the other makes us look like a bunch of jerks. Why are we attempting to justify the jerky one? I don't get it.
1) no amount of being unfinished excuses bad programming! I have seen only whatever tiny fragments that were posted (this time; I saw some Goko code previously). Some stuff was the decompiler; some wasn't. There was nothing unclear about it. An explanation of good programming is beyond the scope here.
2) I did tell them about the things that were pointed out that looked like bugs. I snapped into action; no point not fixing bugs.

Usually the worst posts are the ones with the most upvotes.
So that's the secret. Sweet.

Umm, are you talking about game logs, or logs of things that are happening in the software? If it's the second one and those already exist, then why aren't we just using those instead of patching their dll?
Game logs. I thought you were referring to those, since some people want them to uh get stats from them. I don't know what you mean about other logs, but, useful or not, whatever it is isn't available.
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AdamH

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #64 on: October 20, 2015, 08:06:18 am »
0

1) no amount of being unfinished excuses bad programming! I have seen only whatever tiny fragments that were posted (this time; I saw some Goko code previously). Some stuff was the decompiler; some wasn't. There was nothing unclear about it. An explanation of good programming is beyond the scope here.
2) I did tell them about the things that were pointed out that looked like bugs. I snapped into action; no point not fixing bugs.

You are the hero Gotham needs, something not deserves? I never saw that movie. Obviously if everybody was just like Donald X. the world would be a much better place <3. Ahem. Moving on.

But that first point, like, that contradicts itself. How can you say that something is bad programming without saying what good programming is? The only things I've seen posted here that look like things that actually need fixed are extremely minor issues. Like, one-line fixes. It's not perfect, but we're taking things that can easily happen, aren't that awful, and are easy to fix, and we're blowing it up and saying these people are completely incompetent at their job. Not only is that incorrect, but it makes us look really bad for no actual benefit whatsoever.


Umm, are you talking about game logs, or logs of things that are happening in the software? If it's the second one and those already exist, then why aren't we just using those instead of patching their dll?
Game logs. I thought you were referring to those, since some people want them to uh get stats from them. I don't know what you mean about other logs, but, useful or not, whatever it is isn't available.

OK then, I was originally talking about the second thing. Then my point is that instead of just patching their dll, maybe someone could have asked MF "hey, I want to write an extension or whatever for your software and having some internal log files that output X, Y, and Z would help. I'd also like a config file that lets me modify A, B, and C if you don't want to make a user interface for it". This is an actual solution that's elegant and scalable, but we were so busy complaining that we convinced ourselves they would never do something like this or that they were too incompetent to do so, neither of which we have actual reasons to believe.
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Donald X.

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #65 on: October 20, 2015, 08:20:42 am »
0

You are the hero Gotham needs, something not deserves? I never saw that movie. Obviously if everybody was just like Donald X. the world would be a much better place <3. Ahem. Moving on.
It's fun to be subtle, but I have no idea what you are attempting to communicate here or how it relates to what I said. You said the bugs should be reported, I said they were. It's data, not meant to suggest any personality on my part.

But that first point, like, that contradicts itself. How can you say that something is bad programming without saying what good programming is?
It's simply beyond the scope. I don't have the time to teach a programming class right now. I don't need to convince you of anything badly enough to talk at length about programming. Say what you mean! That's the 4-word version.

This is an actual solution that's elegant and scalable, but we were so busy complaining that we convinced ourselves they would never do something like this or that they were too incompetent to do so, neither of which we have actual reasons to believe.
Again it does not make sense to have them spend time now on making tools for other people to do programming they could be doing instead.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #66 on: October 20, 2015, 08:24:41 am »
0

You are the hero Gotham needs, something not deserves? I never saw that movie. Obviously if everybody was just like Donald X. the world would be a much better place <3. Ahem. Moving on.
It's fun to be subtle, but I have no idea what you are attempting to communicate here or how it relates to what I said. You said the bugs should be reported, I said they were. It's data, not meant to suggest any personality on my part.

My fanboy is just showing, that's all...
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #67 on: October 20, 2015, 08:54:41 am »
+18

I'd also like a config file that lets me modify A, B, and C if you don't want to make a user interface for it". This is an actual solution that's elegant and scalable, but we were so busy complaining that we convinced ourselves they would never do something like this or that they were too incompetent to do so, neither of which we have actual reasons to believe.

I don't know why you're making this assumption, but this was literally my first suggestion to Jeff when I started talking about the animations & delays. "How about you put all the delays in a config file and let us play with it for a while until we think it's right and then suggest that back to you". And like most suggestions I made to Jeff, he said it was an interesting idea. And like all suggestions I made to him, nothing actually happened.

I honestly don't get why you think the whole of f.ds is just complaining. I started to complain after trying out everything you're suggesting now, and noticing that didn't work. I'm not at all complaining because I like complaining, because in fact I don't.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #68 on: October 20, 2015, 08:58:20 am »
+5

Before these questions are answered, it's only whining about how we want what we think we're entitled to. As someone who deals with answering and asking these questions as a professional, I hope you can understand how people on the internet who just want to whine because it feels good don't quite measure up to my expectations, and how I would hope they have the same expectations as I do so that what they are whining about is actually worth reading. I mean, I always feel better when I whine that way...

Man, I don't think this is about entitlement.  That's a big straw man.  It's about, hey, this is a product and it's supposed to be good, because when you do something, you do it right.  Moreover, we want to use the product, and there isn't an alternative. 
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #69 on: October 20, 2015, 09:22:39 am »
+2

I haven't said much about this topic, but I'd rather put my faith in MF making some good progress in the coming months now that Goko has shut down than jump straight to the Salvager-like that in an ideal world shouldn't be needed in the first place.

I've seen them make progress in the client across the patches. I guess some of you, notably Donald, find the progress not fast enough. Fair enough.

With regards to the difference between changing a .dll file and changing client-side code on a browser like Salvager did, there is no meaningful difference in this case because Salvager ended up adding major functionality like automatch that goes beyond cosmetic changes. Though patching someone else's .dll files is something that isn't normally recommended? Modifying HTML/JavaScript/CSS client side is one of the things browsers were designed to allow and encourage to some extent.

From my perspective I don't have grounds to say MF's staff is incompetent, but if they are understaffed then that's going to have a negative effect on Dominion Online no matter how good they are. The codebase is surely larger than what Dougz had to deal with when maintaining Isotropic.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2015, 09:25:10 am by markusin »
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #70 on: October 20, 2015, 11:14:37 am »
+1

The codebase is surely larger than what Dougz had to deal with when maintaining Isotropic.

Maybe because of the need for a shop and campaign, and a bunch of bad practice.

I hope you're not one of those people that assumes wrapping a prettier GUI around something immediately makes it exponentially more difficult to maintain.  Well, maybe it is if you have animations colliding with eachother but that'd be their own foot they shot prioritizing a feature few want or need.
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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #71 on: October 20, 2015, 11:21:43 am »
+3

I hope you're not one of those people that assumes wrapping a prettier GUI around something immediately makes it exponentially more difficult to maintain.  Well, maybe it is if you have animations colliding with eachother but that'd be their own foot they shot prioritizing a feature few want or need.

I think you'd be surprised how many people that play Dominion want animations. Like, my guess is that the number is over 90%, and that's a conservative guess. Also, do you really expect Dominion with no animations to take off as a game people want to watch on stream? I've talked to a lot of people (a few on this forums like funkdoc, even) who have a TON of experience streaming games. They know what people want to see and they know the biggest obstacles ahead of Dominion. If we had a good, pretty client, it would go a long way towards increasing the game's popularity.
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popsofctown

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #72 on: October 20, 2015, 11:36:46 am »
0

I wanted to type "some people want and nobody needs", but maybe there's someone out there with a visual disability where they can't see the cards well without animations, so I averaged it out, and then that's what you got.
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markusin

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #73 on: October 20, 2015, 11:59:50 am »
0

The codebase is surely larger than what Dougz had to deal with when maintaining Isotropic.

Maybe because of the need for a shop and campaign, and a bunch of bad practice.

I hope you're not one of those people that assumes wrapping a prettier GUI around something immediately makes it exponentially more difficult to maintain.  Well, maybe it is if you have animations colliding with eachother but that'd be their own foot they shot prioritizing a feature few want or need.

It's not (or shouldn't be) exponentially more difficult to maintain something with a prettified GUI than something that doesn't, but if you expect to be making lots of changes to the GUI like everyone here wants along with the game and server logic like Iso had then yes the GUI adds to the maintenance cost. Of course, how difficult something is to maintain depends more or less on how well it was written with maintainability in mind. They were able to make lots of changes to the GUI during the Beta (like those maligned bane card animations), so I guess it can't be an incomprehensible mess right?

They were also providing a bunch of much needed updates to the campaign during the Beta.

But the game logic should be comparable in complexity to Iso's which was able to implement all the cards up to Adventures.
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cactus

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Re: Improving Online Dominion
« Reply #74 on: October 20, 2015, 12:50:54 pm »
+9

Adam - I just want to put on the record that I disagree with pretty much everything you've written in this thread:
1/ We probably all started coming to these forums because we love dominion and I think it is perfectly natural for people to want to vent when things are not going well for online dominion (which they are not)
2/ I think the tone you take in your posts on this thread does way-not-enough credit to you fellow forum members - who in my personal experience are generally polite, urbane, witty, knowledgeable, and very often inventive and proactive
3/ You have plenty of inventive excuses as to why MF might be doing a better job than they seem to be doing but the fact for me is I only have an iPad, not a computer. Normally I'd play dominion with my best friend once or twice a week (he lives too far from me for us to play IRL). Now at least in part because of MFs development priorities there is no version that is playable on an iPad and I'm feeling pretty miffed ... is that what you'd characterise as my "sense of entitlement"
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