Jump to content

Why You Matter when it comes to features being added to the game.


Recommended Posts

Hi guys.


Let's talk about contributors such as myself actively ruining the game features that are added to the game that do not necessarily keep the best interests of you, the other players, and the general balance/design of the game itself, and what you can do about it if you've had it six ways to Sunday with how development is going. Not all features are designed to be like this but we've all had a situation where we saw a gameplay change that we hated, so I'll detail in a bit what to do once I get a little bit of background out of the way.


https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3


The above link is the github. SS13 has, ever since the game got stolen on a flash drive, been traditionally open source for several years. Aurorastation is one of these many branches of code development. The codebase pretty much primarily Baystation-oriented with a lot of features from the various servers that are also open source. The above link contains everything that makes the game work with each facet defined by the engine as background factors to simply realize the world everyone plays on. There might be a million or so lines of code. I couldn't tell you the exact number.


https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues


The above link is where members of the community are encouraged to go where they have reports of bugs or game behavior not working as it was supposedly designed to be. It is important to search if your issue has already been posted before posting it, it otherwise creates a duplicate issue which is generally discouraged in repeatedly doing. It's okay to report an old bug if it happens to resurge or it simply has not been addressed in awhile and it's particularly problematic for standard gameplay to progress. Your issue can be anywhere between a mild annoyance to a gamebreaking server security issue that you should actually report to the head developer right away in private DMs on discord or using github if you wanted to. If you see a bug, you should report it on the github either right away or, preferably, until the round's over so you don't risk IC in OOC if you give away certain details while a round is still on-going, this is very unlikely, however.


Admins do not handle bug reports. Do not ask admins if something is a bug, most admins' specialty is in handling player misbehavior. Admins get cool powers only on virtue of occasionally erasing mistakes or other stuff, they are not always likely to know anything about how coding works or if anything is really a bug. Some admins are contributors, and even Alberyk himself is considered to be a codermin due to the consistent amount of contributions he's done for this server. Bless that Brazilian fellow.


https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pulls


Here is the very important part. This is where the developers AND anyone else can put up requests to change the game's behavior, add new things, fix a bunch of bugs by themselves, and so on. Because of the "add new stuff" qualifier, it's a really good idea if you want to be more involved in this community to check the pull requests at least once or twice every week to see what the developers have in store to add in terms of terrible cool ideas. The PR (Pull Request, not Public relations) format helps facilitate non-staff affiliates to be able to lend a hand and add stuff to the game without needing the weird strings attached. It is still important to follow the same PR procedure that devs follow for the sake of orderliness.


You don't need to be a contributor to voice your distaste for a feature. You don't need to know shit about code to say "I don't like this feature and I think it's a bad idea". If you think a feature would be really bad if it were added, it is absolutely okay to blackmail convince your friends to go post on the PR and state your opposition to the change because of X and X reasons. Skull generally merges most contributions if they're already approved by a reviewer, he puts trust in the person reviewing the PR, so don't yell at him for just updating the codebase, it's clearly the reviewer's fault if they permitted a change to go through. Don't harass them, obviously, be nice about pointing out issues. A reviewer will most likely not approve a PR if it introduces imbalance or changes something for very trivial and unsound reasons, and if it's controversial/stupid enough, it'll get closed right away.


Consider making a github account for this reason, seriously.

Best case scenario, here's the tl;dr you want to work for: See bad feature? Get your friends to nicely shit on the PR and explain why it's not a good idea in equally nice and reasonable terms. A contentious PR is about as likely to get accepted as a bad/meme/bad meme PR.

See a good feature? Support it and say it's a good idea. Or don't.


If you have no interest in participating in lobbying support for or against certain features proposed on the github, then you really can't complain when those features go live. Your participation is more helpful than you think, if you don't say anything and nobody else does too, the devs will assume silence is compliance and chug on through. Speak up early before the development-merge process, or your opinions will get left behind and will stop mattering in the grand scheme of the server's development.


Remember, bully contributors relentlessly. They do nothing but actively make the game worse, moreso than our pious and upstanding developers.

Link to comment

Github is not the ideal place for non code-related feedback. If you want to target a PR for more discussion then create a forum thread referencing the PR, do not clog the PR's page with non-code related discussion. PR's that grow contentious are usually marked as such and all discussion is moved to a forum thread.

Link to comment

Github is not the ideal place for non code-related feedback. If you want to target a PR for more discussion then create a forum thread referencing the PR, do not clog the PR's page with non-code related discussion. PR's that grow contentious are usually marked as such and all discussion is moved to a forum thread.

 

I should've definitely clarified this case. But yeah, thanks.

Link to comment

Generally you should use the reactions available on github if you want to provide a quick feedback.


As mentioned by LordFowl we usually shut down Feedback that is not related to the technical implementation rather quickly.

If features are controversial, the developer of the PR should put up a Feedback Topic on the forums and edit the PR Description to include the link.



Starting with the April Update we are going to use ingame polling to collect feedback.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...