Scawen is clearly stuck for some time with this, but that's ok, it's not an easy problem. What I don't get is why does he want to do that all alone? Even the brightest people need some outside help from time to time, scientists don't work all by themselves most of the time or at least get their stuff checked by others. So why not get help? It might turn out that what he wants is theoretically impossible, or bumped into a problem that mathematicians struggle to solve for decades, he just doesn't see it... otherwise 4 years (or how many is it now?) with just one aspect of the game is... well just a waste of time, really.

Quote from HorsePower :

Have you any idea how much effort it would be to get new people to a point where they are able to understand all the LFS coding implemented so far good enough to be helpful at all?

I'm a professional software developer in a big company and I know what I'm talking about. LFS surely is such a big project that educating new people in order to be helpful to the project would cost Scawen more time altogether than just doing it by himself. Also the code quality would clearly suffer from that.

I don't like the speed of progress of LFS either, but complaining won't help. So I play nothing or something else until the next update comes. And maybe I don't even have any interest anymore in LFS when the next update comes, but that's fine for me and fine for Scawen I think. No one really cares. Life is more than just LFS.

That's only valid if the amount of remaining work is comparable to the effort needed to educate new people. If there is plenty of work still to be done, then it'll worth getting new people. Typically when you have a project under time pressure, adding new people won't help keep the deadline, but it's plainly wrong to assume that adding more people to the project never helps. Clearly LFS is not a project under time pressure. Two people obviously won't produce twice the amount of code, but seeing the same thing from an entirely different perspective can often help get around a problem faster.
And I also work as a developer so I know what I'm talking about

Do not forget that Scawen clearly stated why they wouldn't hire additional developers and the reason is not that it wouldn't help, but his personal preference to keep things the way they're now...

Quote from Dac :

What we, are, bothered about, is, not just, the fact that, they have been promised, but the lack of content, which hasn't been updated since 2007.

yeah I can't use punctuation correctly, sorry for that, I'm not a native speaker and I rarely write english.

But I agree, that is too long. Most people would like to see progress much more often, even if the steps are smaller and the released stuff is not perfect. But that is up to Scawen and co. to decide, after all it's their own product, they do it how they feel it suits them. And let's not forget that when people payed for the licence, there were no promises for updates, so basically any update you get is a gift. If you say you would be even willing to pay for the updates, I don't think that would help either, for the reasons I wrote in my previous post.

Quote from yeager :

Because nearly every problem with people on this forum waiting and complaining is down to communication. LFS is a fantastic game and i've gotten WAY more fun for the money than any other software.

However the developers really do a poor job of communicating their work to the user community. Why report no progress? Simply because people are waiting and a few words of assurance that things are still under way but no dates yet to report goes a long, long way.

There is so much frustration on this forum simply because nobody really knows what and when things will happen. A simple few lines every month, giving just a little insight into what is going on, would ease tension a great deal. Especially when updates are over a year late.

....

I don't think communicating the progress (or the lack of it) would do any good. Why are most people frustrated? Because updates have been promised, even a release date was communicated for the upcoming contents, and - not so much later - it turned out that the release will be delayed. For whatever reasons. People are now puzzled, how can the delay be that long? After all, iirc developers put up a release date a month or so before the original estimated date, and that has passed more than a year ago. That is, you have to admit, disappointing. Even if there are a lot of other extra stuff that has been, and will be done in addition to the original plan.

I, for one, don't care, because I play LFS only occasionally, and can't even remember the last time I went online, but will try the new patches whenever they come out.

As a software developer myself, I know how this stuff works, and I am surprised that, after all these years, Scawen and co. can still work on it. That alone, is a big achievement I think. And I wouldn't be surprised if, after being at it that long, many other things in life became more important than developing this single piece of software (no matter how much they like doing it), like family and so on. That, and the ever increasing complexity of the software slow down the development. You can always bump into a problem that you think you can solve in two days and then turns out to be two weeks. There will always be people who can't accept these facts and start to moan about the lack of progress here in the forums. Developing a software with this complexity is a huge task, and if only one person is doing it, it takes a lot of time.

Progress reports don't speed up the development - if there is no customer or, even better, co-developers to provide some pressure (which can help productivity to some degree, but can be counter-productive as well) - and don't make impatient people calm down either, so they're really pointless, unless the developer feels like writing one. Regular progress reports can help keep up the interest but, not for very long. More than a year, imho, is very long.

There always will be moaners, no matter how good or bad the communication is. Even if the patch comes out, there will be people saying: "that's what we've been waiting for this long? that's sh!t, try 'xyz' they're doing this and that so much better!" People who are bored, can't be satisfied, and grow angry over time, and there is nothing you or anybody can do to change that. Except for themselves: they need to find something else to do to cure the boredom.

Last edited by Vertic, Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:32.

ok, thanks for answering, I haven't thought of using the Total field of the CNL packet yet, so it was useful info

Hi!

I'm developing an InSim application which will be used in the hungarian league.
I have a question about these connection numbers and unique IDs.

1. As I understand unique IDs are used to identify racers who are not spectating, i.e. joined the race (they may be in the garage, though), and those who simply spectate do not have a Unique ID. The questions are: what if someone spectates and then rejoins the race? Will he get the same unique ID or is it undefined? If someone leaves the race, will the other unique IDs be affected in any way (I guess not)?

2. Connection IDs. Now, if I'm not misunderstanding something, the host has always the connection number 0, and others get the next integer number as they join (1,2,3...). If someone disconnects, then every connection number remains the same, except for the last connection (player with the biggest connection number), whose connection number will be changed to that of the disconnected player. Am I right? Question is - what if several players disconnect at the same time? Since LFS uses UDP packets, my InSim program may receive the packets in wrong order, so it may go out of sync (wrong updating of connection numbers). If that's the case, how can I make it work (to be in sync again)?

Thanks in advance

Last edited by Vertic, Wed, 19 Oct 2005 08:08.

The flag indicating autoclutch usage in player info in mpr is not set correctly.

Hi!

There is a quite annoying thing about current MPR data, which makes it hard to process the mpr automatically for league races. Namely, the DNF racers are simply excluded from the results, thus it is impossible (or very hard ) to decide the order among DNF racers.
This leads, if we don't want considerable extra work to be done after every race, to the very unfair rule as to give the same points to every DNF racer. No matter if one simply left on the first lap and the other runs out of fuel at the very end of the race, so that he stops one corner before the finish line after struggling for 70 minutes for a better position, they get the same amount of points.
A more annoying thing about this is that, what if we'd like to decide race order based on travelled distance? I mean, let's say, there is a racer three laps behind the leader (let's call him A). He gets the checkered flag as he crosses the finish line (final place undecided yet). Let's say there is another racer (B), who is fighting for second position, but unfortunately he loses connection on the final lap, so he cannot cross the finish line. He also lapped A twice. The result should be that, B gets a better position than A since he's done more laps, but currently B gets simply DNF (not even noted in the results), which is not good, imo.
(also there is a bug in the mpr data, because it does not indicate autoclutch correctly - but this better goes to the bug reports section)

Last edited by Vertic, Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:50.