Devs from the past or just experienced programmers?

[CallakDW]

Oh dear LOL. No, I don't need any kind of complex explanation of why somthing can't be done each time. To be honest, since I'm a programmer myself, I know that in some cases, trying to explain sertain complex reasons why somthing can't be done can be quite difficult, time consuming and lengthy, and still your audiance might not understand it. I just want to know who it is that is giving me the information. If I enter a post knowing who the more active devs are, and they post stating information on somthing, I can accept that and move on instead of leaving the forums wondering who they are that they think they have knowledge about the way the system is assembled and if their comment carries any weight.

[Deth]

You will know if a Dev post they will have Dev posted under their name. Just assume anyone else is going off of past answers or from reading between the lines.

[CallakDW]

You will know if a Dev post they will have Dev posted under their name. Just assume anyone else is going off of past answers or from reading between the lines.

Aparently not, Hal`cyon Sskyler is only labeled 'member'.

[Deth]

Because he is not and never was a dev. He went there as an intern to do DB work for free and the experience. At least that is my understanding. He has never nor does he work for the company. So he may have a little more past info and experiance that does not give him knowledge about what the devs do now.

[CallakDW]

Now is the time where I get to put on my developer hat and it's newfound responsibilities. Do you like it? It's a sombrero that says DEVELOPER across the brim. I made it myself.

Bleh, this confused me. He's obviously joking.

[Deth]

He is not a dev and never has been. As far as i know he has done BD work. Which very simplified was . "Here is a paper sheet of the changes. here is a computer. Type whats on the paper and just what is on the paper in these field." No offense meant Hal. He entered all the crystal fixes that just got pushed out.

[CallakDW]

Deth, I might ask you how you seem to know so much?

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

I need a haircut, but I offer this as proof:



Seriously though, Rick mentions me by name in the IGN interview:

Rick Simmons: Some members on the team who might be recognized as previous Horizons developers are Jason, Roger, Adam and Zack in design; Sean in support; Jeff in facility / operations; and Jason E. in technical. Many other previous developers are involved in advisory capacities to help out if critical problems come up. There are other new members to the team who are involved in art, support and design. We have a great core team that is very capable of making things happen in a progressive and timely fashion.

I'm "Adam."

[Goriax]

This is the interweb, not a PhD thesis. We don't do sources here.

Maybe this isn't for publication, but if you're going to say something about the internal workings of HZ, the dev team, or specific people on the dev team (past or present) and you want people to believe you, you should give a good reason why we should believe. The rest of us should keep some healthy skepticism, and if someone says something for which they CAN'T give a good source (i.e. there's no way they could possibly know that); it's probably safe to assume they don't know anything, just want to come off as an insider, and can be ignored.

[Deth]

Deth, I might ask you how you seem to know so much?

Because he talked about it on the boards that shall not be spoken of here. I pretty much surf the only three boards really left alive. Most of he explained in the threads about his plot being resized.

That and I have been surfing the official boards since the game came out. I do not know all of the clicks that live in the game now or all of the drama that goes on in game, at least not till it hits the boards here. but I pretty much hounded the dev post on the boards trying to gleam any little shred of info I could on what the devs are doing and said they could not.

and for me unless it was posted by a person with Dev under their name I try to take it with a grain of salt. But Amon has corrected me on a misunderstanding from time to time when I try to re quote their post.

[Arietna]

I'm "Adam."

Hi Adam!

You know, this is one of the problems with online "handles" :P we "know" you as Hal.. and of course we wouldn't make the connection..

love the hat! Picture makes you look a little bit like Shaggy from Scooby Doo though (please forgive me, my 4 year old is into Scooby Doo and I have to watch it every day!)..

[tramsan]

Just "a bit"?

[CallakDW]

Just "a bit"?

Tramsan,
I see you making a lot of comments that sound allmost like you know the system. Have you worked on HZ before?

[Menkure]

While I am not a developer who has worked on Horizons, I do have the developer sombrero. With experience in 3dsMAX, Maya, and Lightwave, and experience working on several large gaming projects, I feel that I have a good foundation which I can draw from. I too have read the same comments by past developers, and seem to have the ability to suck up into memory the smallest tidbit of info, no matter how useless it may be.

As an example, I'm sure many people have ran into the bug with the "stone walkways" not matching up properly on plot construction. This is particularly bad with the endcaps, as they cause conflicts with the other walkway segments if turned a certain way.

Drawing from my experience, I took a look at the way the individual pieces rotated, and noted that the axis which they rotate around (when in plot planning window) is always on a corner of the model. This is different from all of the other structures you can apply to a plot. All of the others rotate and their axis is centered.

In modeling, the axis point is always 0,0,0. We modelers call it the origin point. It is the center of the grid in the modeling program. With the stone walkways, the modeler built them not in the center of the grid, but off in one of the quadrants, like the lower-left one for instance. This is why they rotate funny.

It is also why they cause conflicts. Cause that corner is also seen as the "footprint" which the client uses to determine if you are trying to place it on top of another structure, it makes it easy to get the "You cannot place this structure here.. it overlaps Structure XXX". Even with the rest of the walkway pieces. You can lay them next to each other, side by side.. so long as none of the corners with the origin point touch.

The fix seems simple enough. Just go in the modeling program and recenter the model. Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. If you look in the sector files in your worldcache, you will see that the point of origin is used by the client as the point where an object resides. (It gives the origin point for the model, and the degree that it is rotated). This means, that by changing the model, every one of the pe-existing stone walkways in the world will be "offset".. ie: not in the same places where the players built them.

Possible fixes range anywhere from a database query fix, to a fix on the client side. How do I know this? Simple logic brought from experience as a game designer. It was confirmed in an email communication with a previous developer who did work on Horizons (We communicated on this a bit, and I also filed a support ticket on it)

Database management is not my forte, and I've never seen any source code to the client. So while I can say that it is something that can be fixed, I can't say what exactly can be done on that end to fix it.

This last paragraph is important.. This is where I stopped. Yes, I said there's a few possible options, but I didn't go and suggest anything beyond what I already know, and can back up with knowledge or experience. I'll leave the rest up to the devs to figure out.


Now for the REAL point of my post. That was a pretty darn long post, wasn't it? And most people here are not even going to read through it, much less understand what "origin points" are, and how Horizons uses it as a "footprint". They only care if it works or not.

This is why, when I offer my input or insight on a subject, I try and keep the reasoning behind it down to a small post. I don't ever think I have said "can't be done", and left it simply at that.. but I have had to refrain from explaining (in great detail) why certain things are "unreasonable" or not very feasible, because I don't want to write a book that 99% of the people here are simply going to pass up and not even read at all.

So you see, there are quite a few of us who are rather knowledgeable in development stuff. You have to be careful though, as it can be quite difficult weeding out the really helpful and insightful posts from the ones where the poster obviously doesn't know what they are talking about

-Menkure.

[tramsan]

What he said. I'm not a HZ dev, I just have a lot of experience in various facets of software development, and lots of experience tinkering with and modding games - not least of which HZ.

[Ophelea]

Menkure,

Never underestimate the knowledge or intelligence of your audience. They don't have to have your education to be able to follow your logic.

Give the short answer so those who have difficulty following get what they need. Then, follow it up with support for those who want to know why.

You'll find people repsond much better to the "armchair quarterback" when it's an very capable, educated player who can satisfy them with well-reasoned logic and verifiable facts.

AKA - People like knowledge. Knowledge is power.

[Menkure]

Menkure,

Never underestimate the knowledge or intelligence of your audience. They don't have to have your education to be able to follow your logic.

Give the short answer so those who have difficulty following get what they need. Then, follow it up with support for those who want to know why.

You'll find people repsond much better to the "armchair quarterback" when it's an very capable, educated player who can satisfy them with well-reasoned logic and verifiable facts.

AKA - People like knowledge. Knowledge is power.

I understand, and I don't underestimate the playerbase. There has been times though when I've been told by people that my reasoning or logic was not important. As one person told me: "I want a simple answer.. yes, or no. Can it be done, or can it not be done. I dont want a 40 page book written about it, thank you"

I dunno.. I guess I took that to heart. It's also very hard just explaining intuition. One of the things I learned from a good friend and coder, who worked under me, was that although I had some really great ideas for gameplay or new features, I had to realize that we didn't have an infinite amount of time to get the project done, and we had to be selective of new things we could add. I also had to learn how to separate the "meat from the fluff". Basically, fluff being a very cool effect or feature that may only have a one time use. That's all good, but when you have a complex effect system you're also trying to add, which is the foundation for your spell casting in game, the meat comes first.

This is the intuition that can be very hard to support.. knowing what is fluff from the meat. There are some really really good ideas for HZ that have been brought fourth by the community, but unfortunately quite a bit of it can be categorized in the fluff folder, and there's a lot more meat that needs to be chewed through.

Boy.. did I just turn us devs into cannibals? ACK!

-Menkure

[CallakDW]

Now for the REAL point of my post. That was a pretty darn long post, wasn't it? And most people here are not even going to read through it, much less understand what "origin points" are, and how Horizons uses it as a "footprint". They only care if it works or not.

This is why, when I offer my input or insight on a subject, I try and keep the reasoning behind it down to a small post. I don't ever think I have said "can't be done", and left it simply at that.. but I have had to refrain from explaining (in great detail) why certain things are "unreasonable" or not very feasible, because I don't want to write a book that 99% of the people here are simply going to pass up and not even read at all.

Funny thing is, because of my personal 3D graphic projects, I understood everything you just said, and was going oooohhhh, even though I've never experienced this issue! Hehe.

So you see, there are quite a few of us who are rather knowledgeable in development stuff. You have to be careful though, as it can be quite difficult weeding out the really helpful and insightful posts from the ones where the poster obviously doesn't know what they are talking about

-Menkure.

I guess this is really what this thread is about more than trying to figure out who the devs are, because allready, from what I have heard here, sounds like the current devs never post, but there are people that got involved in the past that know a thing or two about HZs construction. I just want to get that down.

[CallakDW]

Menkure,

Never underestimate the knowledge or intelligence of your audience. They don't have to have your education to be able to follow your logic.

Give the short answer so those who have difficulty following get what they need. Then, follow it up with support for those who want to know why.

You'll find people repsond much better to the "armchair quarterback" when it's an very capable, educated player who can satisfy them with well-reasoned logic and verifiable facts.

AKA - People like knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Good point, I would just hate to have to retype somthing like that every time someone asks, though I suppose you could hunt in down and cut and paste or even just link it.

[Rawdge]

I need a haircut, but I offer this as proof:

i lol'd!

...... *looks around*

ack!

*scurries back under his rock*