Sorry, I'll try to be more precise.
- "I prefer custom avatars, Isotropish ratings, challenges, veto mode, and any other proposed improvements to automatch."
- "I want you to put in as much time as it takes to keep improving the extension without ever breaking an existing feature except automatch, which I don't care about."
- "I'm willing to help out with testing, except with automatch."
As someone who never has trouble finding a game, I consider automatch a waste of time and resources. I wouldn't be against its development except for two reasons:
• From the little I understand, it's more invasive to Goko than any of the other features. It's my understanding that it basically puts you in several lobbies at once. That seems like something that Goko is likely to eventually crack down on. It's quite possible I'm misinformed about this.
• It seems to me (emphasis on seems) that ever since work started on automatch, other features (which I do use) have been breaking with increasing frequency.
sudgy is correct. Automatch imposes zero additional strain on Goko. It also isn't responsible for bugs elsewhere in Salvager. There have been four big things that have happened since I started on automatch that are causing problems, but they're not directly related to it:
First, I rewrote a bunch of code to try to satisfy Mozilla and put the extension in the Firefox add-on library. This was a huge mistake. I introduced a bunch of new bugs and we neither had regression testing in place nor enough beta testers. I should have waited a lot longer before releasing that version.
Second, I rewrote the VP counter code to reduce all the chatter. This turned out to be way more complicated than I'd realized. I finally ended up writing 42 QUnit test cases to deal with all the possible ways the counter is supposed to turn on and off and explain itself to users. I think that may just about do it.
Third, there were features in the extension left over from the GM script that relied on really precise timing and were occasionally breaking as a result. When I added code to deal with this I introduced more problems than I solved. I believe the current beta fixes this for everything except avatars, which I simply haven't treated as a priority.
Fourth and most importantly, michaeljb signed out. He did a lot of great work on the extension, and he had also been keeping my reckless tendencies in check. yed and amalloy continue to test and making contributions on github, and I don't mean to diminish the testing and reports people have submitted here. But michaeljb had been doing a whole lot of development and it's a lot tougher without him.
So you can blame me for the bugs, not automatch. And if you're serious about volunteering to test, I really would appreciate the help. More testing is really the only way to get these bugs out before I do official releases.