This is a question like "when will you finish fixing your house". There's always something else to do, but one day you decide its time to live in it and the next project can take a rest for a few days. The mod's not "done". I know that, Guspav has told me that (although I don't let him talk much), and in general there are signs I'm the only one that has a clue as to what to do in the mod I just dumped on others to "play with it". Thus I probably need to burn man days going through this very forum for notes as to what got changed when and make some sort of rolling change log.
Since "paid games" do this, and users expect if anything much higher standards than games with a budget (and lots of extra flunkies to order around -- doingmake work documentation to justify their salaries). I get it.
I said "by Halloween you'll have a working preview" and sort of we hit that last night - sort of. For a brief moment the mod (with v137) was stable but changes I made literally yesterday caught Rand118 by surprise and he didn't really know much about the mod except that he had spent many days with Phantasy Calradia (2014) version. Which is like stating he knows how to ride a bicycle just before I hand him a motorcycle... they're sort of similar, but in some ways it is a new skill. Anyway, multiply that by a few thousand times and the value of documentation increases. I can guarantee the mod is so very different that not even Guspav knows how everything works inside. Somehow I considered that "part of the fun" to re-tinker almost every mechanic until it became a new mod, but it does mean that I shouldn't just dump it raw and undocumented. There certainly isn't much time before month's end (and Halloween). There certainly are still a few things that could/should be done better before I could say the mod is "done".
Someone asked last night "why not use battle sizer to move the battle size beyond 150, 'like Warband was meant to be run'". Right now, I expect Phantasy will crash with the (not battle sizer modified) slider set much past 85. It has a great many operations that aren't efficient and must be changed before the battle size can safely grow. I don't care how well PoP runs with 500 on your rig; I care that the code driving the current magic system wastes 70% of the bandwidth stuck in loops that take exponentially longer to run as the battle size increases. PoP does perhaps 1/25th as much exposure to these loops that are so heavily influenced by battle size; I don't really feel like comparing the two, especially since neither is open source so I need to deal with what _I_ have been handed, not what someone else is doing (differently). But complaining that "oh, I can see a fix but it really needs 2-3 weeks more to rip it apart and glue it back together" makes it seem like I want a release just to skim donations while complaining that anything still broken is someone else's problem. It's not that at all -- more like, at less than 90 days into the project, I have a certain capability working, and what isn't working WELL can be solved fairly quickly. At least it does work -- which was the purpose of having a live demonstration via public stream. Its a pity I didnt really understand Rand's stream so came an hour late to it (I still thought he was patching for an hour), and its a pity he didnt make a fresh character immediately as his character was showing some effects of an out of alignment save game (such as messages stating he would be busy for some hours when he hadn't actually started any Rigale training or crafting). By the way, his stream of build v137last night is at https://go.twitch.tv/videos/185000868
So is it Thanksgiving? American Thanksgiving is 3 weeks after Halloween. It would be a great target for the next open house. I'd like to make an open house where you the reader can download something and see exactly what works and what doesn't, preferably with a manual that starts with "we know these things dont work, so dont waste time/frustration on them", while suggesting new strategies and new ways of using what mechanics DO work. Maybe it will help to take the sting out of 3 1/2 years wait between updates. If I could work full time on this, I could make monthly updates. But "is it finished"? That is like asking "does it do ENOUGH?" What exactly is enough?
Is the player flying enough? I'd remove that for a Halloween release. It is poorly integrated with PBOD and deathcam keybinds. It doesn't recycle within the same mission at the moment. I cant have NPC follow the player in formation. All of PBOD would need re-writing. And thats just one, minor feature. ONE feature of hundreds. Hidden movement? Curses? Effective stats used instead of permanent stats to make buff/debuff glitch free in battles? New artwork? Every time something gets added the "release" gets pushed back. I could continue pushing it back for at least another 20 years if I keep adding "must have features". How about "it works - mostly", with the following month "it works a little more", and keeping updates from NOT being every 4 days like it really is, so that players don't get burnt out with save games not being able to be carried from version to version (which is extremely likely to be the case - every new version, automatic re-roll). I've put considerable focus on tools to speed level, tools to remove the grind, tools to inspect the game from within, tools to monitor the "secret" stuff like prejudice, tools to measure the number of parties and tune performance to your PC. ALL of these are available to the user. It's not an e-sport. Its like cheating at solitaire. I won't tell if you don't.
Is it ready for me to ask for donations? I kind of wanted to be more fair to Guspav. But also I'm taking a hit to get this done faster. At the moment I managed to get by, but its a new month coming up so I really need to hurry this up. Yet, Guspav worked years on it and never asked anyone's help. I just this morning found his message in a bottle buried from last March (2017), where he DID ask help. I should have answered him then, but I wasn't looking. I was still worried about studying for a job. I just decided, come August, that if God wanted me to have a job, He/She/They would certainly have arranged something to come my way, and maybe I wasn't looking hard enough in the right place. Suddenly I could code, maybe for the first time, clearly and with great insight. So this 3 months of wasting your eyesight in the forums was sort of "documentation", inspiration, surfing YOUR energy, and otherwise trying to "prove" that I was at least worth Guspav's "partner" status, instead of just "the jerk that stole Christmas" at yet another famous mod. I hope I was at least a "value add", even if Phantasy 2017 felt more like a "submod" than the evolution of Phantasy Calradia (2014). It's there -- both are. A submod and the original, kind of evolved. Parts of Phantasy would be hard to recognize. Parts are the same as ever. I just hope its "good enough" when you finally see it. It's not just some marketing trick, or a cheap rip off of 2014, or whatever else someone thinks I pulled on them. I think Guspav at least knows the difference. Its really a fresh compile, not just a quick and dirty retread to slap my name on it. My name was never important. Having artistic license to complete MY calling, now that matters to me. But the name isn't important. I'm not in great health all the time anyway. But I won't drag this project along for years and not release.
It looks to me I should quickly bang out at least some of the changes I wrote Guspav about in the last few days, to really optimize his battle handling, so players can slide their battle size and never once realize that as it was these last couple years, it would never worked -- but perhaps by this time Saturday it works just fine. Guspav did 85% of the work needed. Allow me a few hours to add 15% value add, and increase the performance a bit. It's what little I'm good at. Anyone can do documentation. The forum is FULL of documentation. But I'm thinking, if more users are exposed to what I have, they collectively can make their own notes to help each other, and you, find something different in the mod. I personally want a mod to surprise me, and keep me coming up with new strategies, ideally that have some sort of rambling sense to them instead of just "work arounds" for poorly built game mechanics. I'm accused of being arrogant, nasty, barbaric, and uncouth; and living in a smelly place, etc. That's only half true. My new host country is fairly clean; there is excellent fresh water in Sofia. The cost of living is around 1/12th to 1/16th of my native California. But nobody asked me, so its not important to mention. I will mention that Guspav did some great work -- and I don't think I'm better than him. Maybe I'm more desperate, maybe I've waited longer, maybe I'm closer to death than he is. But -- I'd say we did about even amounts of work by now, on THIS version of the mod. I just compressed my time better, by robbing from my day job, where they wanted me to quit anyway, and thus stopped paying me to show up. Suddenly I type like a mad man, here. But maybe its all exactly according to Plan. In which case, I'd tell Guspav "Vaya con Dios" and let his inspiration rise up as it always has. And always should.
- GS
Since "paid games" do this, and users expect if anything much higher standards than games with a budget (and lots of extra flunkies to order around -- doing
I said "by Halloween you'll have a working preview" and sort of we hit that last night - sort of. For a brief moment the mod (with v137) was stable but changes I made literally yesterday caught Rand118 by surprise and he didn't really know much about the mod except that he had spent many days with Phantasy Calradia (2014) version. Which is like stating he knows how to ride a bicycle just before I hand him a motorcycle... they're sort of similar, but in some ways it is a new skill. Anyway, multiply that by a few thousand times and the value of documentation increases. I can guarantee the mod is so very different that not even Guspav knows how everything works inside. Somehow I considered that "part of the fun" to re-tinker almost every mechanic until it became a new mod, but it does mean that I shouldn't just dump it raw and undocumented. There certainly isn't much time before month's end (and Halloween). There certainly are still a few things that could/should be done better before I could say the mod is "done".
Someone asked last night "why not use battle sizer to move the battle size beyond 150, 'like Warband was meant to be run'". Right now, I expect Phantasy will crash with the (not battle sizer modified) slider set much past 85. It has a great many operations that aren't efficient and must be changed before the battle size can safely grow. I don't care how well PoP runs with 500 on your rig; I care that the code driving the current magic system wastes 70% of the bandwidth stuck in loops that take exponentially longer to run as the battle size increases. PoP does perhaps 1/25th as much exposure to these loops that are so heavily influenced by battle size; I don't really feel like comparing the two, especially since neither is open source so I need to deal with what _I_ have been handed, not what someone else is doing (differently). But complaining that "oh, I can see a fix but it really needs 2-3 weeks more to rip it apart and glue it back together" makes it seem like I want a release just to skim donations while complaining that anything still broken is someone else's problem. It's not that at all -- more like, at less than 90 days into the project, I have a certain capability working, and what isn't working WELL can be solved fairly quickly. At least it does work -- which was the purpose of having a live demonstration via public stream. Its a pity I didnt really understand Rand's stream so came an hour late to it (I still thought he was patching for an hour), and its a pity he didnt make a fresh character immediately as his character was showing some effects of an out of alignment save game (such as messages stating he would be busy for some hours when he hadn't actually started any Rigale training or crafting). By the way, his stream of build v137last night is at https://go.twitch.tv/videos/185000868
So is it Thanksgiving? American Thanksgiving is 3 weeks after Halloween. It would be a great target for the next open house. I'd like to make an open house where you the reader can download something and see exactly what works and what doesn't, preferably with a manual that starts with "we know these things dont work, so dont waste time/frustration on them", while suggesting new strategies and new ways of using what mechanics DO work. Maybe it will help to take the sting out of 3 1/2 years wait between updates. If I could work full time on this, I could make monthly updates. But "is it finished"? That is like asking "does it do ENOUGH?" What exactly is enough?
Is the player flying enough? I'd remove that for a Halloween release. It is poorly integrated with PBOD and deathcam keybinds. It doesn't recycle within the same mission at the moment. I cant have NPC follow the player in formation. All of PBOD would need re-writing. And thats just one, minor feature. ONE feature of hundreds. Hidden movement? Curses? Effective stats used instead of permanent stats to make buff/debuff glitch free in battles? New artwork? Every time something gets added the "release" gets pushed back. I could continue pushing it back for at least another 20 years if I keep adding "must have features". How about "it works - mostly", with the following month "it works a little more", and keeping updates from NOT being every 4 days like it really is, so that players don't get burnt out with save games not being able to be carried from version to version (which is extremely likely to be the case - every new version, automatic re-roll). I've put considerable focus on tools to speed level, tools to remove the grind, tools to inspect the game from within, tools to monitor the "secret" stuff like prejudice, tools to measure the number of parties and tune performance to your PC. ALL of these are available to the user. It's not an e-sport. Its like cheating at solitaire. I won't tell if you don't.
Is it ready for me to ask for donations? I kind of wanted to be more fair to Guspav. But also I'm taking a hit to get this done faster. At the moment I managed to get by, but its a new month coming up so I really need to hurry this up. Yet, Guspav worked years on it and never asked anyone's help. I just this morning found his message in a bottle buried from last March (2017), where he DID ask help. I should have answered him then, but I wasn't looking. I was still worried about studying for a job. I just decided, come August, that if God wanted me to have a job, He/She/They would certainly have arranged something to come my way, and maybe I wasn't looking hard enough in the right place. Suddenly I could code, maybe for the first time, clearly and with great insight. So this 3 months of wasting your eyesight in the forums was sort of "documentation", inspiration, surfing YOUR energy, and otherwise trying to "prove" that I was at least worth Guspav's "partner" status, instead of just "the jerk that stole Christmas" at yet another famous mod. I hope I was at least a "value add", even if Phantasy 2017 felt more like a "submod" than the evolution of Phantasy Calradia (2014). It's there -- both are. A submod and the original, kind of evolved. Parts of Phantasy would be hard to recognize. Parts are the same as ever. I just hope its "good enough" when you finally see it. It's not just some marketing trick, or a cheap rip off of 2014, or whatever else someone thinks I pulled on them. I think Guspav at least knows the difference. Its really a fresh compile, not just a quick and dirty retread to slap my name on it. My name was never important. Having artistic license to complete MY calling, now that matters to me. But the name isn't important. I'm not in great health all the time anyway. But I won't drag this project along for years and not release.
It looks to me I should quickly bang out at least some of the changes I wrote Guspav about in the last few days, to really optimize his battle handling, so players can slide their battle size and never once realize that as it was these last couple years, it would never worked -- but perhaps by this time Saturday it works just fine. Guspav did 85% of the work needed. Allow me a few hours to add 15% value add, and increase the performance a bit. It's what little I'm good at. Anyone can do documentation. The forum is FULL of documentation. But I'm thinking, if more users are exposed to what I have, they collectively can make their own notes to help each other, and you, find something different in the mod. I personally want a mod to surprise me, and keep me coming up with new strategies, ideally that have some sort of rambling sense to them instead of just "work arounds" for poorly built game mechanics. I'm accused of being arrogant, nasty, barbaric, and uncouth; and living in a smelly place, etc. That's only half true. My new host country is fairly clean; there is excellent fresh water in Sofia. The cost of living is around 1/12th to 1/16th of my native California. But nobody asked me, so its not important to mention. I will mention that Guspav did some great work -- and I don't think I'm better than him. Maybe I'm more desperate, maybe I've waited longer, maybe I'm closer to death than he is. But -- I'd say we did about even amounts of work by now, on THIS version of the mod. I just compressed my time better, by robbing from my day job, where they wanted me to quit anyway, and thus stopped paying me to show up. Suddenly I type like a mad man, here. But maybe its all exactly according to Plan. In which case, I'd tell Guspav "Vaya con Dios" and let his inspiration rise up as it always has. And always should.
- GS
