So a couple years later, has anything changed?

[Hakaku]

So in the end, my intuition from the start was pretty accurate. You guys basically fed the fire by embracing someone who has been disconnected from the community for like six years. Meanwhile, the entire community has been riding the open source wave and progressing in ways that don't exactly match up with the closed sourcing that has scarred it since Priit stopped updating the game.

 

It seemed pretty clear to me that Snrrrub's eventual dissappearance was bound to happen, whether or not your disputes occured. Although I will add this, I do believe that the way Ghost acted was ridiculous, if not utterly childish. Rather than putting the effort into working with and pressuring Snrrrub for a more open relation, he decided to pull an Altec altogether. I may not agree with Snrrrub, and I've always disagreed with him concealing the source to everything he provided, but it seems pretty clear to me that Ghost decided to put his ego before everything else. It's the entire SSCouncil thing all over, he knew it meant that he would hold less influence, less power, so he opted against it. - Accusing Snrrrub of power mongering is just an excuse to conceal your own private agenda. If you were really that blind as to not catch on that Snrrrub prefered to play it safe and continue with closed sourceness, then you should all get a reality check, it was made pretty clear from the start.

 

At this point, I would rather let someone who's motivated enough bring about change in this game. Even if they're another Priit, at least it's better to have an active Priit than no Priit at all.

[I\/Ir Beefie]

I see the council as the toronto maple leafs.. its time to clean house and rebuild. Now or never.. fire all the lazy fuckers and replace them. Someone give Brian Burke a call and see if he has time to help subspace out?.. haha

[PoLiX]

Warning: Long Post

 

Hak, it is rare I say this... but you have no clue what your talking about.

 

Ghost burned his bridges with almost any connection he had, and pissed most the council / ssc zone owners off by ignoring them and going on WITHOUT their approval on helping snrrrub. Ghost also had a lot of patience with him as for 2 weeks he did not reply to any of his e-mails or requests.

 

It was then when minor things, not stuff like his source for cont protocol, but source for subgame <-> asss connection which he did release and said there was nothing security wise as stake, that he got pissed. Snrrrub even blatently said he felt the zones should figure it out for themselves and he wasn't going to do all the work for them. That is when I stepped in and e-mailed him about doing the total opposite of what we we're trying to achieve. A better community where zones work together, and more people we're in control. After that he appologized and said he was being stupid about it, and he then stepped up and offered to help the zones.

 

By this time the major zones had given up on us doing anything as we hadn't produced anything useful to them (thanks to his withholding of a lot of stuff his access gave him the ability to work on), and being he didn't document anything for anyone else to see or understand, just said it was security, and of course ghost isn't going to trust anything he don't know how it don't work, nor we're the ssc sysops, yeah. (run on sentence, sorry)

 

Ghost does not, and will not run this game like a dictatorship, though many times it has been offered up to him by the ops. Sorry, but the way you guys want to paint him, if you knew the way he is, and knew how many times he has saved this game in its history, you'd maybe have a bit more thanks for him and understand a minor mistake he made, if any really.

 

The part of our convo that has to do with this thread...

 

Ghost Ship: Looks like its all my fault that snrrrb left , hehe, well damm, even I didnt know that

PoLiX: more like since the council hasn't even done it

PoLiX: hah

PoLiX: Well, we didn't wait long enough for him to reply

PoLiX: or give him enough chances

PoLiX: or access to do as he wanted

PoLiX: we withheld all the access from him, though gave him what we did too quick, but not enough of it

Ghost Ship: He was very power hungry and tight fisted with source, (never released) it was the right decision to cut him off. Wonderfull, same issues in 2004/2007 and now 2009, at loeast we are consistent

PoLiX: hah

PoLiX: very true

PoLiX: should post that, hah

Ghost Ship: you should

 

 

PoLiX: mm

PoLiX: i'd just quote you

PoLiX: haha

PoLiX: I'm not seeking the wolves on me anymore yet... saving it

Ghost Ship: be my guest, I have been dealing with the more than me AFK and small zones wanting SSC but not lasting more than a month before someone goes nutz and tries to destroy the zone / biller / ban everyone or some similar such crap. Id gldly open access wide but Priit still holds the controls, but not the interest

Ghost Ship: Thats ok, Ill post and blame you for everything

PoLiX: lol

PoLiX: well, part of me thinks they need to hear it from you too dude

PoLiX: I already told them that pretty much clear, but they don't want to get it from me

 

PoLiX: but yeah, Snrrrub I tried helping a lot, and he kept shooting himself in the foot

Ghost Ship: I think I have posted about this stuff years ago, but you can quote me at will. Things havent changed very much, because I cant really change it. I dont have a client, there is a server, but its slightly hard and unstable. There is a biller, but I have only limited access to it. I*d love to know how to make all of this change. Ive tried unsuccessfully 3 times now to make it happen. Fail X3

Ghost Ship: At least I still try

PoLiX: true

PoLiX: true

 

Ghost Ship: well you stated it pretty well, my stand is the same, as long as snrb is will to release his work, even if only to a limited circle of ppl. So that we dont get a new software dictator, Id support him again. But what happened before was really bad news. I burned a lot of bridges supporting him against most of SSC, and now even SSC is about dead. That kinda leaves me as the last guard.

PoLiX: mhmm

Ghost Ship: If you and Mom hadnt stepped up to the plate, MTN would be the last active in SSC

[Chambahs]

Lol, as far as snrrrub getting pissed off and not helping zones, do you blame him?

 

How many retarded posts do you see here and mgb forums with some idiots asking the same exact thing that is posted in 41 FAQs and 102 other posts? Snrrrub told me what was going on when it was in that state. Everyone wanted him to do everything for them.

 

Would you not get annoyed? I dare you say you wouldnt....everyone reading this post, I -dare- you.

 

He got tired of putting up with ignorance and laziness, who wouldnt?

 

As far as not being quick to respond to emails and such...he -does- work at google. Real life > a 15 year old dead game.

 

Granted, it doesnt take alot of time to type "im busy with real life right now, blah blah, gimme a bit", but still. Theres always another side to every story. Im sure snrrrub probably read all these posts, and I dont blame him for not responding, who the fuck cares about this game anymore?

 

Im not gonna act like I was in the middle of this whole situation, because i wasnt, but that doesnt mean we didnt have multiple conversations.

 

PS: I'll defend snrrrub till the end. Hes a fucking pioneer, and my hero <3

 

(Off topic)

 

PoLiX: we've both tried stuff too many times and failed

PoLiX: I keep trying to revive/reunite the web community and fail

 

Because you suck at keeping things fair and unbiased, stop sticking people with knives in their backs and acting like this is -oh so srs-, its a dead community, yet you still take it so seriously, have fun with it, dont censor and try to protect everyone from "bad words", grow a fucking sack. You know im a blunt person polix, and you just need an ex-friendly kick in the ass for you to realize these things.

 

EDIT: add a <3 emoticon.

Edited November 11, 2009 by Chambahs

[»doc flabby]

Heh don't hate on TW too much, being the biggest zone makes it harder to make any kinda change, hence a natural conservatism cos if we fuck something up, SS dies pretty much.

 

I think it would have been better if we had got a group of SubSpaces best coders to work on a project like this.

 

Theres quite a few guys who can be trusted on security issues like myself, Samp and Maverick (these are the guys I know well and trust, theres other guys who can be trusted too). I think if you had got Snrrrub to work with us in a working group like this, alot of these issues about fear of losing code would go away, because if one person drops out, its not a problem. Also Snrrrub would have not felt like he was doing it all on his own.

 

I think we would all be willing to put some time into improving SSC if we had been asked.

 

I think this project is still achievable, but it requires bringing some more people in, to work on development. We can't keep leaving everything to just 1 guy, it needs a group effort.

Edited November 11, 2009 by doc flabby

[PoLiX]

TW is trying to change, but in a way that splits the community that is left. Well atleast the idea of moving onto their own biller/server.

 

As for everyone wanting snrrrub to do everything for them. I explained that to him over the phone, and it wasn't like that at all. People just needed some sort of starting ground as most zone's developers have very little knowledge of how to implement protocol, so giving them only that is useless. I understood his side, and he understood mine. He eventually agreed they needed some basis to atleast get going in the right direction.

 

I told him from the get go when he came back that developers were far and few, and there wasn't the core group there use to be anymore. He was determined to prove me wrong, but in the end realized the development level in most zones when it came to programming was pretty low. A lot of people who I thought we're possibly their zones best at understanding these things, he said really didn't have the understanding needed.

 

So in the end, his own high expectations kind of killed his plans/ideas, imho. Not one person alone could do what he wanted, but I think he wanted it faster than was possible. I actually remember him at one point thinking a client could be released in a matter of months. A few years ago I would have agreed. But there just isn't the amount of developers there use to be who had a good grasp on this game.

 

-------------------------------

 

And cham, I tried having fun with it and letting stuff go. Then stupid fucks got out of control and ran rampant. And then every topic was a flame rootbear or flame this guy topic. So I banned some people, and sat back again. If I took this as serious as you think I do, I woulda had SSO out in a night, and would have tons of stuff working on SSForum that isn't. On top of that, I woulda banned you a long time ago if I cared.

 

-------------------------------

 

As for Ghost, he is still willing to work with Snrrrub on this. But more than 1 person needs to be in control of the source, plain and simple. This I totally agree with.

[»doc flabby]

Well atleast the idea of moving onto their own biller/server.

I know they are keen to switch to ASSS, i wasn't aware of the biller plan (ive not been staff in TW for some time)

 

I guess its more I think the right people wern't contacted, or asked to help. Snrrrub did come to me with a couple of questions about stuff i'd messed about with menu.dll (and to be honest, this kinda thing is not something im good out) but that was all the contact I had if I recall correctly, i know we did talk some. Maybe a "Developers Needed" sorta post here would have worked idk.

 

If someone gave me a decent spec of the SubSpace SSC billing protocol, I together with others could recreate it and create a new billing server using an SQL backend. This is pretty much what I get paid to do already in my job (except I use the HTTP protocol, but its the same stuff)

 

Alot of the problems with development in terms of SS protocol, are caused by the protocol documentation being so poor. Theres lots of little things you need to know that can trip you up. It took me several attempts and alot of experimentation to get a stable directory server going, because the protocol isn't documented properly. This isn't any ones fault, but there are some major inconsistancies in hwo the protocol is implemented, espcially with reliable packets and certain packets Continuum doesn't like getting sent in certain ways.

 

If we knew exactly how subspace physics and the client-side prediction, and protocol/packet interaction worked, it wouldn't take too long to bring out a replacement client. The 2D graphics techniques used in game are all well known. The hard and time consuming work is all the reverse engineering we have to do...

Edited November 11, 2009 by doc flabby

[Gravitron]

Especially since a certain zone sysop has proven a bit of a control freak to a lot of other ops/sysops lately, that divided a lot of efforts even more.

I'm honestly having a hard time deciding which because, last I knew, there were so many...Will naming names really ruin anything at this point, Polix? Yes, I know, it's a drama stirring more than anything but, honestly, I tire of political BS and lies and masks. I want the real douches to be reckoned for what they are. People without dignity need not have their shameless self given a shield of anonymity out of undeserved respect.

 

Personally, I've worked with free-pro-bono coders on many projects that failed because they lacked the interest and motivation to keep on going so I pretty much bounce from one project to the other, contributing what I can to each. I just keep on going hoping to find that one awesome and self motivated talented coder that'll make my design dream come true. To find my (very own) "JeffP".

My current project is also suffering from the "one coder guy who appears and disappears at will and hold all the source" syndrom. I personally don't want to open source it, and neither does he, but I'd like to be able to bring in other coders, if possible, to keep developing, alas I cannot as he holds all the keys to the kingdom.

But, I've grown accustomed to it by now. I know they'll come and go as they please. I know they have "all the power" so to speak, because without them my ideas are just ideas. And I know they have personal desires, lives and so on. So it's ok. We both try our best and what happens - happens.

 

I don't really know snrrrb, and I am not going to hold him to blame. He probably did what he thought to be best.

I do know Alex to a good degree, and I know that saying he's putting his ego in front of SubSpace would be wrong.

At the end of the day, different people have differing ideologies and personalities and things which they believe will be worth the risk and things which they believe will bring forth the Armageddon.

The difficult part is to make them put aside their differences, strike common ground, compromise, and find a consensus to be used as a framework for them to collaborate within towards a higher, greater, goal.

Edited November 11, 2009 by Ori Klein