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 Author State of DarkSpace Development
Bardiche
Chief Marshal

Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
Posted: 2016-06-12 08:31   
Quote:
On 2016-05-23 22:03, Faustus wrote:
Hey guys, please check the news...




Neat, it's open source. Thanks for being willing to take that step, Faustus.



Obviously, like other veteran players, I still love the game. Unfortunately, like other veteran players, I have a limited skillset that doesn't mesh well with DarkSpace's current needs profile.

I still think every now and again about DarkSpace. How to generate revenue (ship skins for $$$), or how to emphasise an objective-based gameplay pattern, even how to balance the ships so new players versus veteran players is more even, or maybe even how matchmade games might be interesting... but the last one is just completely counter to DarkSpace's mission and intent.

And all of my thinking is as pointless as a sieve to hold water.

I hope the change to opensource will indeed encourage people to contribute more code and modernise the game. I look forward to playing DarkSpace again.
[ This Message was edited by: Bardiche on 2016-06-12 08:32 ]
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JBud
Marshal

Joined: February 26, 2008
Posts: 1900
From: Behind you.
Posted: 2016-10-09 06:03   
So, I'm still a programmer, and I'd love to help again. Hit me up, Jack, I believe we are still friends on Facebook. F and I are too, so you could hit me up. I'll also check back in a bit later.
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novaflare
Midshipman

Joined: November 11, 2003
Posts: 3
From: novaflare
Posted: 2016-10-21 20:20   
What i found when trying to get my own game project off the ground is this. Finding artists 3d 2d concept music people etc is pretty easy. But finding a programmer even a single one who is willing to put time and effort in to something even when a major company has stated in writing that once you get to point x they will fully fund the project is nearly impossible. I had a legally binding contract with a major company who produced computer hardware who stated they would not only fund for tools hardware and all that but also pay salaries in the amounts stated. And i still found no programmers. But other than that i had a full staff of around 15 people working on the project had tons of models ready to be animated with full textures. Sound track back story sound effects skills list trees calculations for the primary testing phases etc all ready to go in what ever engine we used or made.

in the end the project failed for lack of programmers. Thankfully you all already have a code base to work with with a working client server etc. That makes it a bit easier to find programmers. You all will get there i suspect. This game is 13+ years old.

Any ways im sure some remember me from beta. i was novaflare and nova back then good to see the old games still kicking.
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Azreal
Chief Marshal

Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
Posted: 2016-12-06 15:18   
This game needs at minimum to be migrated to a modern, wider known game engine. As it is, it will not survive. I really believe if we were to move assets to a game engine like UE or Unity, and just redo the coding, we would be better off. Its work, yes, but not as hard as it sounds. These engines are widely known, user friendly, have hours of tutorials and add-ons, and are constantly updated. The templates get you a long way to fast too. And the pool of potential contributors is huge.

As it is, I don't see anymore updates ever happening. Thats not a knock against the team of volunteers. Its about the life left in the game. A migration project would breath new life back into this game.

my opinion.
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*Flash*
Chief Marshal

Joined: April 19, 2009
Posts: 291
From: Semi retired after 1.67 !
Posted: 2016-12-29 15:47   
Quote:
On 2016-12-06 15:18, Azreal wrote:
This game needs at minimum to be migrated to a modern, wider known game engine. As it is, it will not survive. I really believe if we were to move assets to a game engine like UE or Unity, and just redo the coding, we would be better off. Its work, yes, but not as hard as it sounds. These engines are widely known, user friendly, have hours of tutorials and add-ons, and are constantly updated. The templates get you a long way to fast too. And the pool of potential contributors is huge.

As it is, I don't see anymore updates ever happening. Thats not a knock against the team of volunteers. Its about the life left in the game. A migration project would breath new life back into this game.

my opinion.


agree with you here , it hasnt been any update for 2 years or more . I barely ser 2 or 3 ppl playing the game so something new has to be done !
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar


Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
Posted: 2017-01-24 18:37   
Quote:
On 2016-12-06 15:18, Azreal wrote:
This game needs at minimum to be migrated to a modern, wider known game engine. As it is, it will not survive. I really believe if we were to move assets to a game engine like UE or Unity, and just redo the coding, we would be better off. Its work, yes, but not as hard as it sounds. These engines are widely known, user friendly, have hours of tutorials and add-ons, and are constantly updated. The templates get you a long way to fast too. And the pool of potential contributors is huge.

As it is, I don't see anymore updates ever happening. Thats not a knock against the team of volunteers. Its about the life left in the game. A migration project would breath new life back into this game.

my opinion.




The blueprint system in UE4 is nice, but the engine is still very immature (regardless of its adoption rate, if you look at their development schedule they discuss rewriting multiple parts of it); and whilst Unity is arguably easier to use, there's a reason no-one has used it successfully to create an MMO (performance). UE4 would probably be the best bet, but there's a reason very few if any studios ever change game engines; you essentially have to rewrite the entirety of your codebase. Forget copy-pasting or even using old code as a reference (past numbers at least), everything has to go - time to start from scratch. It is exactly as hard as it sounds.
[ This Message was edited by: Pantheon on 2017-01-24 18:38 ]
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BlackYoup
Grand Admiral

Joined: December 31, 2009
Posts: 32
From: Nantes - France
Posted: 2017-03-18 08:05   
Quote:
On 2017-01-24 18:37, Pantheon wrote:
It is exactly as hard as it sounds.



Yeah, well, so is the onboarding when you want to contribute to the game (IMHO). There are a few people here and there ready to contribute and give time (myself included) but it's kinda hard to do so, especially when you don't know what to do or what have to be done.

From my (rather small) experience as a developer, I always enjoy rewriting not-easy-to-maintain software, or software that has derived from its original ideas / goals. And with that, you know where to go and what to do, what were the troubles you had the first time and it allows you to go faster.

I'm in no rights to tell you to change the whole code base since I don't know it nor I have studied it. But my feeling is that a rewrite would allow to use modern technologies, could be cross-platform (I couldn't make the server work on GNU/Linux after multiple hours trying) and hopefully, bring new / old people back.

But maybe you don't want to put any more efforts in it and that would be totally understandable, given the awesome work you already did. Nonetheless, it makes me sad to come here every 6 months to see that the game I used to play when I was a teenager don't progress anymore and that a few people are still IN to contribute and give it a second breath.



PS: Also, I'm still following an other game I used to play, warzone2100: the game has been "abandoned" by the original studio but put opensource in 2004 and it's still under development (I see pull requests / new commits here and there). It's quite old (first release in April 1999) and some parts has been rewritten since then, but I find its story is quite the same as darkspace: https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100
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Ciryadin{IC}
Admiral

Joined: September 19, 2001
Posts: 87
From: The Netherlands
Posted: 2017-08-08 10:00   
Why don't you try a kickstarter?
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Eledore Massis [R33]
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights


Joined: May 26, 2002
Posts: 2694
From: tsohlacoLocalhost
Posted: 2017-08-28 16:51   
Quote:
On 2017-08-08 10:00, Ciryadin{IC} wrote:
Why don't you try a kickstarter?


OK i'm late to the punch, but a Kickstart would not do us a lot of good, besides getting a view of our lurking supporters and fans.
If you want to even Start something as a KickStart, you should need to have a PLAN beforehand on what you will actually be doing with the money.
Ill now be copy pasting a few things out of my presentation i give at UIBS and a few other Belgium colleges.

Kicking buckets with Kickstarters

As a lot of kickstarters figured this out to late and fail, but money doesn't make a kickstarter.
The plan is the most important part, and again it isn't alone about how you divide the money.
    Who do you need. The person's able to make the object you want to create.
    • Are they even available?
    • Do they even have a interest in the object.
    • Can you afford them.
    The lot of the experienced people mostly already have a Job, can you convince them to fulltime or partime help you make this thing you promised to make. Some of them won't. Others don't have a interest and just refuse, i mean why work on a phone charging pants when you work with the test models for chililips. and most importantly you will HAVE to pay them wages, unless you want legal issues to arive.
      Where and how do you do what ever you need to preform.
      • Work from a office, warehouse, garage or your kitchen.
      • How do you communicate.
      • Will you buy your tools and fabrication matterials at Wallmarkt?
      First one might not be a issue at first, but you will need to produce prototypes, store other things as simple as documentation, yah your receipts and Legal things. Skype or Whatsapp will do for you students, but not everyone might be required to work on the project at the same time, no production specialist or sales representative is needed when you don't even have a working prototype. still they will need to know things you did in the past. where do you get your resources, i gave a example here, but you will need to have a specialist for that as well. You are doomed to fail if you underplan your resource price. you will not only need to research but invest time in acquiring those cheap.
        Setting up production
        • Handmade products sell high for the exclusiveness.
        • Mass production for the massive low prices.
        • Production run at a cost.
        If you plan to make only a few hunderd you might be able to make them yourself in your kitchen if you want to go that mile. Ask Adi Dassler how that turned out. Or ship the production order out to a chinese firm to have it build for you, they are cheap but require time, as they are known to produce cheap and fast, fast actually means once we set up production we mass produce them, but getting them that far is going the extra mile. And how much do you produce, even apple only produce phones by a few million before they stop production. overestimating leads you to suffering losses for not selling, and under might mean you will have to give the chinese guy more money for re-setting up production again. yah they don't wait for your next order the moment the last product is made they start on another product immidiatly.
          Finaly you got a production able prototype you are able to mass produce. How do you distribute.
          • Send directly from manufactoring.
          • Warehouse it locally, and ship from there
          • Sales, Presales, Aftersales, Complaints, returns, warrenty.
          After all my early talk, i you still cant understand what the physical issues with a Kickstarter are. Ask in your blody economics class what these words mean. I'm don't have time in these slide to explain those terms. Unless you want me to explain the Ponzi Scheme way of getting rid of all that.
          All of this needs to be Known in advance or Known how to aquire the skills and knowlage to do all those things. Give all those things a representative amount of money that is required for those to be preformed. And that total amount should be your kickstarter fundraiser.
          You may not all have the issues that are here, but they should not be ommited. A roll-in student doesn't need a wage, his payment is able to put the project on his CV, reason why usually your intern job involves doing product development, less cost to write of in manhours. Other people might do this next to there job and could borrow facilities and or skills from current employer.
          onakcanoes.com



          TLDR
          Putting this in DarkSpace terms we will need a programmer. By definition that would probally mean Faustus, it his baby, his product, his hobby, he put in the most of anyone into this game and i doubt he would just let any work be done ont it if he wasn't involved somehow.
          So lets just red-thread this with no ill will intended and using our dear Faustus as a object of discussion.
          He already has a job! can we convince him to quit or part time for us. Does his current contract even allow for Part time work. How much does he cost a week. Heck Lets skip all that, how LONG do we need him.
          Could he modify and upgrade the Medusa engine, or would it be faster to build from scratch. Do we want him to include documentation of his work for future references. What do we want him to actually programm. Just a copy of the current state of DarkSpace or do we want more features and how should those be implimented, we got documentation for that?
          Ok we will need a Game redesign probally, who will write those designs. For the sake of making that easyer lets hire another person to do that for us, before we hire Faustus. Maybe BackSlash (jack) could be available, if we can afford him of our budget..
          How will our Development designer communicate with the Programmer, especially because there will probally be feedback and questions from our Programmer. A development tool is to slow for that.

          TLDR-again
          Do i need to continue?
          Kickstarter, Nice concept, but Unless you have people able to do pre-thinking and or know people who can do planning for you, you are either better of calling it a Quickstarter (or Quickfailure meter) then a Kickstarter.
          You cant buy everything with money.

          E.

          p.s.
          Sorry for the harsh attack, but as a capital investor myself. sometimes to often i see investors and inventors dive in and become losers..

          p.p.s.
          Boy i forgot how much a pain DS Forums where again, i cleaned it up a bit, but it will still look like a mess, we could really use a programmer to.........

          [ This Message was edited by: Eledore Massis [R33] on 2017-08-28 17:03 ]
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          Saphirako
          Fleet Admiral
          Faster than Light


          Joined: December 22, 2009
          Posts: 55
          From: Deep in the void of space...
          Posted: 2017-11-12 23:39   
          Howdy folks! Sorry to bump a kinda old thread... I was just curious if there was a Development Discord server? I know there's a general one but usually dev teams have some sort of IM-ing tool. (Maybe you guys used Slack or Google Hangouts instead?) If so, is there a way for new people hoping to work on the game to join it?
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          DarkSpin
          Captain
          Sanity Assassins


          Joined: August 03, 2005
          Posts: 651
          From: Somewhere in the USA
          Posted: 2017-12-23 06:45   
          I personally am very excited to see DarkSpace still here, 2001 is when it all started right? oh... gosh DarkSpace is a really old game at this point... we don't have any programmers active anymore from the looks of it; so it may not be too far in the left field to expect that many programmers we might get simply can't acquire Visual Studio (2005 / 2010), at any price. Given that hurtle to entry alone... development will stagnate with that alone as no new comers cant even build the source (myself included). I would love to tear into the darkspace source code but what good will that do? No one seems to pull the sources or branches, No one is there to communicate with; to ask questions to get started.... This is a giant problem, and people need to be in the loop to contribute but where is the loop?...

          So right now the barriers to entry are so high that the majority of people won't be attempting.

          If any current developers want to help me get into the fold lets do it, I have loads of time on my hands most of the time, that I would rather be doing something productive with.

          I know the dreaded handholding... but a little hand holding may go a long way.
          [ This Message was edited by: DarkSpin on 2017-12-31 09:15 ]
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          ThePile
          Vice Admiral
          Deicide


          Joined: June 27, 2010
          Posts: 39
          From: ThePile
          Posted: 2018-01-04 04:37   
          Quote:
          On 2017-12-23 06:45, DarkSpin wrote:
          I personally am very excited to see DarkSpace still here, 2001 is when it all started right? oh... gosh DarkSpace is a really old game at this point... we don't have any programmers active anymore from the looks of it; so it may not be too far in the left field to expect that many programmers we might get simply can't acquire Visual Studio (2005 / 2010), at any price. Given that hurtle to entry alone... development will stagnate with that alone as no new comers cant even build the source (myself included). I would love to tear into the darkspace source code but what good will that do? No one seems to pull the sources or branches, No one is there to communicate with; to ask questions to get started.... This is a giant problem, and people need to be in the loop to contribute but where is the loop?...

          So right now the barriers to entry are so high that the majority of people won't be attempting.

          If any current developers want to help me get into the fold lets do it, I have loads of time on my hands most of the time, that I would rather be doing something productive with.

          I know the dreaded handholding... but a little hand holding may go a long way.
          [ This Message was edited by: DarkSpin on 2017-12-31 09:15 ]



          Another big problem is that there does not exist, as far as I can tell, any ticket or issue system or documentation or wiki anywhere; no JIRA, redmine or confluence.

          There is a development wiki - but us "open-sourcers" do not have access to it, so I'm not counting it since it was used by the "in-house" devs that disappeared.

          We need these things if we want to progress in any meaningful pace - at least the issue/ticket systems. In that way Faustus can coordinate us by, e.g. in redmine, creating issues and sub-issues on what needs fixing - as well as sub-sub-issues.


          ==[ Commercial (probably not viable because of $$$) ]==

          JIRA:
          https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

          Confluence:
          https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence


          ==[ Open-Source ]==

          Redmine:
          https://www.redmine.org/
          https://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/issues

          Trac, Bugzilla, Mantis bug tracker etc:
          https://usersnap.com/blog/open-source-bug-tracking/

          Bloodound:
          http://bloodhound.apache.org/
          _________________


          ThePile
          Vice Admiral
          Deicide


          Joined: June 27, 2010
          Posts: 39
          From: ThePile
          Posted: 2018-01-04 04:49   
          Quote:
          On 2017-12-23 06:45, DarkSpin wrote:
          ... we don't have any programmers active anymore from the looks of it; so it may not be too far in the left field to expect that many programmers we might get simply can't acquire Visual Studio (2005 / 2010), at any price. Given that hurtle to entry alone... development will stagnate with that alone as no new comers cant even build the source (myself included) ...1



          This does not need to be a problem - we can update the solutions to VS2017 community edition (the free kind), it will probably take time and be a pain but what doesn't?

          We can also make it easier to get into the code base by setting up environments in Sublime and Visual Code (also free variants and very light-weight) to make it easier and less intimidating to get into the code.

          Either way, these are code/project maintenance issues - as long as software practices and environments keep changing and evolving the code base project needs to be updated to keep up. One solution I have seen to this problem is to have portable versions of the tools in the same repo or installers to 2017 community edition, sublime or visual code with their project settings at the same place.

          I would recommend keeping these on a separate repo though, since the code base is in itself already in the GB size.
          [ This Message was edited by: ThePile on 2018-01-04 05:08 ]
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          ThePile
          Vice Admiral
          Deicide


          Joined: June 27, 2010
          Posts: 39
          From: ThePile
          Posted: 2018-01-04 05:28   
          Quote:
          On 2018-01-04 04:37, ThePile wrote:
          Quote:
          On 2017-12-23 06:45, DarkSpin wrote:
          I personally am very excited to see DarkSpace still here, 2001 is when it all started right? oh... gosh DarkSpace is a really old game at this point... we don't have any programmers active anymore from the looks of it; so it may not be too far in the left field to expect that many programmers we might get simply can't acquire Visual Studio (2005 / 2010), at any price. Given that hurtle to entry alone... development will stagnate with that alone as no new comers cant even build the source (myself included). I would love to tear into the darkspace source code but what good will that do? No one seems to pull the sources or branches, No one is there to communicate with; to ask questions to get started.... This is a giant problem, and people need to be in the loop to contribute but where is the loop?...

          So right now the barriers to entry are so high that the majority of people won't be attempting.

          If any current developers want to help me get into the fold lets do it, I have loads of time on my hands most of the time, that I would rather be doing something productive with.

          I know the dreaded handholding... but a little hand holding may go a long way.
          [ This Message was edited by: DarkSpin on 2017-12-31 09:15 ]



          Another big problem is that there does not exist, as far as I can tell, any ticket or issue system or documentation or wiki anywhere; no JIRA, redmine or confluence.

          There is a development wiki - but us "open-sourcers" do not have access to it, so I'm not counting it since it was used by the "in-house" devs that disappeared.

          We need these things if we want to progress in any meaningful pace - at least the issue/ticket systems. In that way Faustus can coordinate us by, e.g. in redmine, creating issues and sub-issues on what needs fixing - as well as sub-sub-issues.


          ==[ Commercial (probably not viable because of $$$) ]==

          JIRA:
          https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

          Confluence:
          https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence


          ==[ Open-Source ]==

          Redmine:
          https://www.redmine.org/
          https://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/issues

          Trac, Bugzilla, Mantis bug tracker etc:
          https://usersnap.com/blog/open-source-bug-tracking/

          Bloodound:
          http://bloodhound.apache.org/



          Most of this you seem to be able to do via GitHub - as you can tell I am more used other environments. That's good, then we have a central point in coordinating our work, Faustus need to make a project on the GitHub page so that we can start creating issues.
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          Pantheon
          Marshal
          Palestar


          Joined: May 29, 2001
          Posts: 1789
          Posted: 2018-01-05 19:17   
          I just ported over the project to VS2017. As far as issues go, we'll probably stick with our GitHub page for now. We do have a Mantis install up and running, but it's got a lot of old stuff in it that probably won't be followed through anymore.

          If anyone wants to help, pull the VS2017 branch of the projects on GitHub and work from there. Once we're sure it's all fine, we'll push to develop.
          [ This Message was edited by: Pantheon on 2018-01-05 19:31 ]
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