L2J Changes

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What do you want for L2J? (Pick two)

Poll ended at Sun May 11, 2014 10:45 pm

Bugs and exploit fixes!!!
36
38%
New missing features!
30
32%
Customs!!
6
6%
My contributions committed...
2
2%
Compatibility with new game versions.
20
21%
 
Total votes: 94

Cresceus
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Cresceus »

Mhm, I'm not a Dev. So I'm not sure how seriously you guys gonna take my opinion.

I think first of all it is more important to fix bugs and exploits and add the missing features. After that the compatibility with newer game versions will follow.

Customs are interessting yes, but... mhmm. (;

The possibility to adapt L2J makes it all the more interesting for server operators to use L2J.


So for me it is difficult to choose two points out of the list above.
1. Fixing bugs and exploits
2. Add the missing Features
3. Make L2J customizable / Don't take L2J the ability to be customizable


4. The compatibility with newer game versions will come by itself when the missing features of High Five are added, I think.
janiko
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by janiko »

I think it would be enough to fix bugs in skill/classes/effects and then move on next chronichle.
If someone wants to add some missing feauter its his choice :)

I only worry about skills/effects/classes its enough to run good server
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maneco2
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by maneco2 »

English: In my opinion, must stop on Hi5, putting next chronichle implementations, with usual of bugs and exploits, it's getting pretty good work, if mudasce of chronichle the work would be thrown away :D

Portugues: Na minha opiniao, deve parar no Hi5, colocando implementações da proxima chronichle, com coreções de bugs e exploits, está ficando muito bom o trabalho, se mudasce de chronichle o trabalho iria ser jogado fora :D
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Battlecruiser
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Battlecruiser »

I'd say that almost any server with any chronicle later than H5 would be at least 10x rate since the low-rate players had already gone to the off (or their server stays with H5 or any earlier chronicle), so it could lean to what is to be implemented first
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Carlos_Ed
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Carlos_Ed »

Hello everyone,

I have started a topic a couple of days ago, commenting a few things not exactly fit for this topic. Although it may have not been my intention, it grew into a rather long read, which began turning to match the overall theme here. In that sense, Zoey asked me to continue the discussion here, as it apparently was now stepping into the same trend. Instead of re-creating everything here, I will simply reference that topic for everyone to refer to when reading my follow-up to Zoey's comment there. So here it goes...
Zoey76 wrote:[...]About what you wrote; yes it's obvious that everyone will at least pick "bug and exploit fixes", the idea of doing it like that was[...]
... pointless because of exactly that, in my opinion. But that's just me. As part of the leader ring, you get to pick the method of giving your community a wake-up call. At the most, I can provide suggestions on how you can proceed, but ultimately it is your choice to follow them or not, and own up the responsibility of the results of your own choices. Regardless of your commitment to the project/community.
Zoey76 wrote:[...]We (the team) changed the way L2j was going, from having compatibility with latest client and temp fixes committed right away to completing a server version adding features in the most retail like way, replacing temp fixes with proper implementations.[...]
And this deserves my heartfelt applause, since it is something that should have been done years ago. But ultimately, it is just too late for it to have any immediate effect, as can be clearly seen by the current state of affairs. Also, in my opinion, I don't really agree when you say that L2J never had the manpower to change. The manpower was there in the past. It was simply eroded along the years, due to leader ring choices, that ultimately revealed themselves bad. I have been around since long enough to see the whole leader board change multiple times over. Do not assume anything about the "seniority" of my involvement with L2J from the registration date of my profile. In the same way my data wasn't migrated properly with the forum change, the date there also doesn't reflect how long I have been quietly following L2J. It might have been a gross mistake from my part, but given this kind of reaction...
jurchiks wrote:Standard copy-paste reply from you, nothing new.
... it might have been the better choice. As much as this may/may not be true (I am not taking any sides since I do not know enough about this, just yet...), this is exactly the kind of thing I wish to avoid. This isn't constructive in any way and always has a tendency to aggravate/escalate things unnecessarily. The way I see it, Zoey is just venting frustration, and I do not perceive this as a negative reaction. I have seen enough crap being tossed around this community that could drown a whole country in it. It never has any positive result, so I try not to contribute to fuel any of it. But things do not turn around me, and most of the time I can never get my points across completely. The apparent tone of this part ...
Zoey76 wrote:[...]This lead (our beta branch mostly) to become unstable, due the lack of feedback, since people saw the "beta" word on the name they stop using it, so we were forced to delay sync with stable branch, and that made L2j community very unhappy.

I already tried to get former developers back, and most of their answer were, "all good, but I've got a life now".

Open-source is complicated, people try to monetize everything and when they give too much and only get sh1t in return they tend to go closed-source (private) or even worse stop working at all.
... shows what I just said. But also shows a gross management mistake IMO. L2J is/was already beta/alpha quality, and this will not change any time soon, due to lack of "manpower" as you call it. Splitting the development tree like this made it look like there was two kinds of development going on: a higher quality one, and a substandard one. The lack of foresight in predicting that people would obviously pick the "higher quality" one is staggering. Then when L2J development simply "abandons" the "higher quality" branch for months to no end without a single "decent commit" (this is subjective, and varies according to each user's personal goals), of course that pisses off people. What did you expect? Fans will feel betrayed, and overall interest on the project diminishes. This would have worked out so completely different, if you never had split the development branch, and instead just made additional, properly labelled as experimental instead of "alpha/beta/gold/w.e.", branches of the stuff developers are working on behind the scenes. This enacts two things: first people would realize that nobody is abandoning nothing, but rather "experimenting" on bold new changes that break everything. Second, it would open the chance for other candidates to support the ongoing effort, on those experimental branches. As a side-effect this would also work to scout out new talented people for the project. Thus alleviating the development effort needed to see those changes through, and providing an increase on "manpower" L2J needs. "Open-source" is a model that has it's own problems, but the more successful FOSS projects are usually the ones that not only "open" their source code to the public, but the ones that also open their development as well. It is educational, and tends to pull active development interest into the project. Even if people do not code for it, just comments/feedback about currently ongoing development practices can constructively evidence problems early (before too much gets built over a bad concept/code), or alternative ways to reach goals more efficiently. L2J does neither of these, apparently, in the way I see it. And for the looks of it, the way almost everyone else sees it. Regardless if they are able to, or even intend to, voice it or not.
Zoey76 wrote:[...]Open-source is about giving, maybe you have to give up your own standards in order to contribute.
We are open to suggestions, the problem is that some people when they receive a NO for answer, after explaining the reasons, none of them is valid and they keep pushing and disrupting the work flow.
Open-source, in my opinion, is not about "giving". This kind of mindset is actually rather hurting the image of FOSS, and spreading like a wild cancer on the web. It gives the impression that to develop for and open-source project is an exercise in self-sacrifice for an unclear "greater good". Your comment before about your "professional experience" relates next to nothing for L2J case, except to tell everyone else that you do code for a living. So what? I do too, and all the talents that told you that they "got a life" probably do too. They just don't come back because they do not find L2J interesting enough, in it's current state, to spend their free time regardless of the amount of it. The way you claim L2J is open to suggestions, is but a mild improvement on the way it was in the past. Don't get me wrong, I acknowledge that for such a "tied down" project (more on this too in a bit...) this represents worlds in advancement. In my opinion, the way L2J refuses contributions from community members on a standard basis, because they suck, isn't appropriate for the community around it. You should rather show that you are willing to accept them, if they manage to provide proof they integrated it on a working copy and built a server with it that is stable, and works more efficiently than the original base in the repository. But, then again, even if proven better, the shared contributions may conflict with the stuff you are working on at the time, or changes you are planning in the future, and refuse them anyway because of this. This shows two things. First, that you are not willing to accept alternative, and better, implementations. And second that the L2J team are not as "open to suggestions" as you claim, even when those suggestions are proven to be better. Of course, for the cases where there is no evidence to backup that the user contribution is better, it only disrupts the "workflow" (which nobody else can see...) because people allow it to. It's simple: no evidence, ignore. Leave it hanged on the forum for the community to sort it out between themselves, that also may cause them to talk about it, and sometimes after concepts mature in that fashion for a while they may actually give birth to something more appropriate later on. If nothing happens, then the author will probably refrain from further similar action, because they will not get the wanted attention.
Zoey76 wrote:[...]In L2j we somehow created a "code standard" that follow many Java conventions, but not all.
What I see here is people saying we (committers) block contributions because code style, that's a lie, we request it to be formatted under our own formatter, otherwise it represents more work to us, beside reviewing it and committing it.[...]
Let me remind again, I have been saying that I actually have been following L2J for years now. If my small, past example, of L2J leadership idiosyncrasies ticked you off that's your problem. Now don't pass what happened in the past before your time as Zoey76 on L2J as a lie, just because you never saw it happened. Plus, the argument that it represents more work for L2J developers is the actual lie. You yourself just said you use a formatter template, which is used to automatically formats code according to your "standards". Review, one-click to format everything, commit, this is how it works. After referencing your professional development experience, not knowing that the formatting templates are rather used in auto-cleanup/formatting processes is... rather strange. L2J stopped refusing contributions with too much formatting differences, when the formatter templates "happened" into existence on L2J because of the trouble manual formatting stuff was. Since that doesn't apply now, because the formatting process is automatic, you argument that code formatting represents more work for L2J team is contradictory. Unless, the problem lies elsewhere. Since I'm sure that code formatting has zero influence on committing it, by exclusion of parties, it leaves only the "review" part. If reviewing code that isn't formatted in the way L2J developers are used to look at, constitutes more work for you then it means they can't read code like they are expected to, given how much emphasis on their "expertise" is given. Is it just me, or there is something not entirely right here?
Zoey76 wrote:[...]L2j has the problem that we develop a solution that is linked to the success of the game, that means that at some point there will be no sense on developing it since everyone will be playing MMOs with virtual reality headsets.[...]
Well, I did hint before that I was going to get at the "tied down project" part in a bit, so here it is. This isn't the only way the project is... "tied down". The project began ensnaring itself long before interest in Lineage II began to decline, but at that time I was considered as being "disrupting workflow" whenever I tried to get the warning across. It is obvious that if you people "obsess" (don't take this word literally, please) over mimicking NCZ0ft so much, then as they burn their own game to the ground, so L2J burns. Regardless of this, the resilience of the project, which is rather a fruit of it's inherent inertia and "ensnarement", is something to admire. But if L2J fails to capitulate on this, then nothing will change and when the time comes when there will be "no more sense on developing it", it will sink. Which, let me tell you, is a statement of rather poor taste about a project you apparently lead. When the lead writes off the fate of their own project like this, what image do you think it passes to the community? Not a good one, I reckon. That's why I beg that everyone that reads it takes it as just you venting off steam from a bad day. Plus, you also shouldn't be tossing predictions about future technology like that. I still remember a few years back everyone was saying that desktop computers would cease to exist in a few years, and only compact portable forms of computers would exist. That cellphones would be so small as to be carriable in your key chain. Guess what? Desktop PC's never ended, the smaller form of computers are actually the ones phasing out in favour of tablets, and people now talk in phones so utterly humongous as to look like they are talking with a signpost sticked to the side of their heads, not a phone. Virtual reality headsets will never become "fashion" as long as they are as cumbersome, complicated and obtrusive to wear. Even if they didn't, there is a problem of media presentation resolution, to which current fabrication processes are physically impossible to provide solutions other than prototyping.
Zoey76 wrote:[...]The talents you mention, if they are so great, I'm sure they could find a way to work with us and eventually give shape to L2j in any way they want, like I did when I didn't like how the project was going (and I wasn't more than an Adv. User.)[...]
Work with you...? Or work for you...? Or maybe work instead of you...? What you are saying may be your honest intention, but L2J history shows that isn't exactly what the aim is most of the time. Even if this may not be true the way I perceive it, I'm almost sure it's the way it's perceived by people. Strictly speaking about me alone, I am already "giving shape" to L2J in the way I want it. L2J works so lovely as a small library JAR of 4.5Mb, where my team builds our own thing on top of it. We link to it, extend it, override it, hack on it, subvert it as we please to fulfil what we want from it. An experiment on reimplementing the game according to our view, not according to what NCZ0ft thinks it's good. L2J has made it pretty clear that they do not want this. This is what takes up my free time to code, among other things. In order to help here, I need to take time out of developing my own "solutions" and re-implement stuff according to L2J "standards" and bogus available "retail information", since it would be too much trouble for you guys otherwise, only to see it refused because it doesn't fit into the development planned as it's not "retail like", neither does it fit on the goals L2J commit logs show. Waste of time...? Perhaps not exactly, but you get the idea. I don't mind helping, but the apparent pre-conditions only point to it being a waste of my time. So, unless I see the situation changing, there is nothing I can do. In this regard, L2J is also "tying my hands down".

In sum, I am proposing some suggestions about where L2J should go. It is ultimately up to the leader ring to follow or dismiss them, again, for Nth time over the years. I am with a clear consciousness, as the responsibility for success/failure lies only on the shoulders of the leader ring. I decided to break my silence, because there is too much piled up already, and I think Zoey is being honest in wanting to keep supporting this, despite not really understanding how just yet. In that sense, I thought it to be worth my while to provide a nudge in the direction I believe is right. I hope I am not being misunderstood, as if just ranting or attacking people... that would not be nice.
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St3eT
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by St3eT »

Off: I wonder if those long texts someone reads, I do not. :D
BTW for me is important fix bugs, synch with stable and add missing features. :P
If i should be black sheep for sure no as punishment
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Cresceus
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Cresceus »

St3eT wrote:Off: I wonder if those long texts someone reads, I do not. :D
BTW for me is important fix bugs, synch with stable and add missing features. :P

You should read if you care what the community's opinion is. (;
Sometimes you have to write a bit more than just 10 sentences. (:

Regards
Last edited by Cresceus on Fri May 02, 2014 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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St3eT
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by St3eT »

If i should talk directly yes - i dont care what others want. I have my goals and if i do something for free, i need enjoy it - and nobody cant push me to something what i dont want to do. #badguyplzreport
If i should be black sheep for sure no as punishment
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jurchiks
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by jurchiks »

You're a true l2j team member.
/sarcasm
If you have problems, FIRST TRY SOLVING THEM YOURSELF, and if you get errors, TRY TO ANALYZE THEM, and ONLY if you can't help it, THEN ask here.
Otherwise you will never learn anything if all you do is copy-paste!
Discussion breeds innovation.
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St3eT
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by St3eT »

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If i should be black sheep for sure no as punishment
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jurchiks
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by jurchiks »

Image
If you have problems, FIRST TRY SOLVING THEM YOURSELF, and if you get errors, TRY TO ANALYZE THEM, and ONLY if you can't help it, THEN ask here.
Otherwise you will never learn anything if all you do is copy-paste!
Discussion breeds innovation.
Cresceus
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Cresceus »

Steat my post was not meant to attack you. I'm sry if you felt this way.

But guys is this really the way things are going to be discussed here? I hope not.
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jurchiks
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by jurchiks »

Relax, it was a one-shot. Probably.
If you have problems, FIRST TRY SOLVING THEM YOURSELF, and if you get errors, TRY TO ANALYZE THEM, and ONLY if you can't help it, THEN ask here.
Otherwise you will never learn anything if all you do is copy-paste!
Discussion breeds innovation.
Sdw
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Sdw »

And forks land just won another battle !
Carlos_Ed
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Re: L2J Changes

Post by Carlos_Ed »

Well, I am the first to admit that I thoroughly overdid it. But you have to understand that being quiet for so long, then things that just have to be said keep piling up. One day, something tilts the pile, and everything scatters everywhere in a flood.

I guess it's what happened. I kind of was commenting my view of how L2J has been evolving over the years, pros/cons and pointing out examples, which I tried to explain and back up. Since it was a comment that spanned years, trying to give a general description of all those things, trying to keep details to a minimum... I'm sure you understand.

Regardless, do not worry. As long as I am not called upon to dissect everything that I post, then the insanely huge walls of text I wrote should be considered a rare sight, borderline extinct. I also do not derive any special pleasure of boring people like steet to tears. The same way they are troublesome to read, they are also troublesome for me to write. Incidentally, I hope we manage to keep the discussion constructive... although the imagery was good for a few laughs. But let's not push it, OK?
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