Re: [endgame-singularity] Potential Contributor here

[Phix]

Hey I'm a longtime subscriber to this mailing list, and I for one think it would be awesome to see some new versions coming down. EMH and co. did a fantastic job creating this game; I know a lot of folks had a great deal of fun playing it -- and probably still do! I definitely did!

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 4:55 PM, Uneron <pgros...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hey Evil Mr. Henry,

I enjoyed your game immensly a while back and in light of the lack updates recently (not blaming you, there are mor important things in life then updating a game) I wondered if you looked for new contributors? As far as I understand (never worked with google-docs myself) I have only read access, so being added would be quite nice.

Or alternatively if I forked the project and produced a fair number of new and improved versions, would you be willing to mark my fork as the main version?

No pressure though! I just want to bring back some activity and prevent the game from dying.

Cheers
Uneron

[Phil Bordelon]

On 11/11/2012 03:55 PM, Uneron wrote:
> Hey Evil Mr. Henry,
>
> I enjoyed your game immensly a while back and in light of the lack updates
> recently (not blaming you, there are mor important things in life then
> updating a game) I wondered if you looked for new contributors? As far as I
> understand (never worked with google-docs myself) I have only read access,
> so being added would be quite nice.
>
> Or alternatively if I forked the project and produced a fair number of new
> and improved versions, would you be willing to mark my fork as the main
> version?
>
> No pressure though! I just want to bring back some activity and prevent the
> game from dying.

Uneron,

I can't claim to speak for EMH himself, but I can claim to speak for the
"general dev team." EMH hasn't been active in Endgame development for
several years; I'm the guy who's left.

You should absolutely, 100% feel free to fork the project and add cool
new features. I can't speak as to whether EMH would ever bless it as
an official continuation, but you shouldn't let that stop you.

E:S has been in effective hibernation for several years. I would love
to see someone pick it up and run with it. You should /definitely/
use the latest code in the repository, as it includes some very nice
l10n work done by MestreLion.

Let me know if you need any help from my end.

P

[Stephen Zuckerman]

I'll jump on board the welcome wagon - I'd love to see new releases!

[evilm...@emhsoft.com]

> I can't claim to speak for EMH himself

You can't but I can. Go ahead. If I end up creating games again, I'd be
making new ones. (Also, if someone else wants to do the packaging work,
I'm perfectly happy to update the site, I'm just busy.)

[evilm...@emhsoft.com]

I have added Uneron as a committer.

> Hey Evil Mr. Henry,
>
> I enjoyed your game immensly a while back and in light of the lack updates
> recently (not blaming you, there are mor important things in life then
> updating a game) I wondered if you looked for new contributors? As far as
> I
> understand (never worked with google-docs myself) I have only read access,
> so being added would be quite nice.
>
> Or alternatively if I forked the project and produced a fair number of new
> and improved versions, would you be willing to mark my fork as the main
> version?
>
> No pressure though! I just want to bring back some activity and prevent
> the
> game from dying.
>

> Cheers
> Uneron
>

[Phil Bordelon]

On 11/13/2012 06:02 AM, Uneron wrote:
> Wow, certainly didn't expect this kind of response. Great to see there are
> some others who still enjoy this game!
>
> Is anyone (looking at you Phil) still working on it? Just so we can
> organize, you know.

I can confidently say that no one is working on it officially, as I'd
be seeing the commit messages. MestreLion's i10n stuff is in Git, at
least, and should be incorporated (or at least addressed) by whatever
you do, but that was the last public work that was done.

Phil B.

[james riley]

Is there an easy way to sign up for when changes happen? I can't code
for crap, but I can play-test if there's likely to be updates.

James

[Phil Bordelon]

On 11/13/2012 11:51 AM, Uneron wrote:
> Speaking of those changes: I've just downloaded the newest version from the
> repository and after a very brief test, everything seems to be working
> fine. Looking at the Issue tracker I also can't find any major issues. Were
> there any reasons for not releasing the a new version as is? Do you know of
> any undocumented issues?

The only reason for not releasing a new version is that the current one
hasn't undergone much testing. MestreLion's changes are pretty
significant, and I'd like for them to be poked at a bit more. I know of
no "unknown issues."

P

[evilm...@emhsoft.com]

I think I just fixed that.

> P.S.: In light of the previously mentioned administration: apparently my
> every post has to go through a moderation process... Grrr, annoying...
>

[Uneron]

Lets test with this post if you did!

And while you're here: Since you're the main (you are/were, right?) developer of E:S, what is your opinion on the forking prospect? I have thumbs up from Phil and would like to check in with you too.

Staying here (that is not forking) would require regular work from your side (administrative work + website that is). What is your position on that? Also, (and speaking really longterm here, so it may or may not become an issue) should I (and possibly others) make a fair amount of improvements/additions, would you then be willing to give over the project? I am asking since you said you would rather be working on new projects and therefor this question could become an issue in the future, if we don't fork.

Sorry to bombard you with so many question, its just that I want all these issues out of the way before starting to code.

[Brian Blankenship]

wow i'm glad to see my question started a revival :)

--

Your Brother In Christ

Brian Blankenship

[evilm...@emhsoft.com]

I am willing to deal with maintenance of the website and so on.

Long-term, depends on what you mean by giving over the project.
Creative-wise, you already have a rather free hand by simple virtue of
being willing to work on the game. Administrative-wise, I have the ability
to add extra owners to the Google Code project, which I think would let
you do everything except the actual updating of the website. (Main
difference is the ability to create releases.)

[MestreLion]

As the last developer to do work on the code, here is my input:

- As Phil said, my i18n made some deep changes in code. While I'm fairly confident there is no regression or bugs, I'm obviously biased, so scrutinity testing is required.

- Also, before a new release is out, there is a few "modernizations" I was planning, specially to the Options screen. There are some topics about it in the mailing list, concerning adding new resolutions, reading current screen size from user, restarting the game after changing languages, etc, etc. You may or may not want to go that route, but I think i18n alone is not enough for a new release.

- My goal in E:S was only to fix bugs and fully internationalize it. It was never my intention to add new game features (tho some UI improvements are welcome), or change game balance, since this require a much more intensive (and subjective) gameplay testing.

- As for fork-or-not-fork, this is a non issue. Game is GPL2, so anyone can fork. Clone the repo, work on it, set your creativity free. Some of your commits may help improve the "main code", and will land there, some will be specific to your vision path. You can host your version anywhere, not only on emh's website: there is also google code, and I've created a Singularity group on Github.

- I also suggested relicensing to GPL3+ and standartize the copyright headers in code, since currently it is not uniform among the many files and AUTHORS and README. Check the topic in the mailing list for some discussions regarding it.

- There are also other topic branches, mostly ideas and work-in-progress stuff: a TODO I updated a while ago in code, also FunnyMan created another TODO list, with a new vision for the game, and there are some personal git branches here and there (hosted on my personal github account)

So, basically, among git branches and mailing list topics, there is good reading and plenty of work to do.

And welcome aboard!

PS: These new guys interested in E:S might be just what I needed to be motivated to get my WIP stuff done. E:S was always a wonderful project to work on, thanks to Phil, ems and FM.

[Philippe Tetar]

As MestreLion, I also recently work on E:S.

First, I try to rebalance the game with few ideas. You can see in the mailing list or in my clone.

Second, I have implemented a way to have items of differents sizes (for computer mainly). The work isn't finished.

Third, I have implemented a way to change the background earth. Currently, I'm not very satisfied of my code. 

I can be very interested to talk about a better balance of the game and find a way to reduce the randomness.

[MestreLion]

Phillipe, based on your ideas and our discussions with Phil in the mailing list about how themes should work in E:S, I've also did a fully working "theme" selection in Options screen some months ago. Theme currently affects only background (I've used the default and the vector images you posted), but the same "framework" can be used for colors, fonts, etc.

Check out my "testing/background" branch in github...

Btw.. should push our "testing" branches to main repo, like FM did? Or maybe its better to keep the "official" repo "clean" and all devs add each other as remotes in their own personal repo, like I did with Tetar's repo?

[Uneron]

Hey MestreLion, great to here from you!

Since rebalancing and UI-changes, which both naturally require lots of testing, the testing of your code shouldn't be an issue. But its good to keep in mind.

Yes, I do agree with you, that while i18n is very important, there should go at least *some* bugfixing/rebalancing in, before releasing. Simply so that people don't lose interest. Also I wouldn't use the word 'only' for having done both bug fixing and internationalization.

Hmm, you're probably right about the forking part. I can merge changes back to the main, when it makes sense. That way I have my freedom, and the main gets something back out of it.

Oh, and I briefly read through the issues and the last commits. From my point of view, everything i18n related with the exception of a few languages and the points you just raised, seemed to be finished. Is that correct?

With the relicensing you got me on the wrong foot, honestly. I would have to read into it, because I have no idea what this would require. Help and/or reading material would be most appreciated.

Thanks for mentioning those branches. I definitly have a look!

Cheers
Uneron

[Uneron]

Ah yes, thanks for pointing that out! I read through your ideas and I can't agree more, that minimizing this (quite frankly) rather annoying randomness has to be reduced significantly.

Your ideas were rather tame though. Instead going into number crunching, I would like to tackle the problem on a more fundamental level. I've put some thought into it, but the concept is in no way decided or even fully devoleped yet.

For instance, I am thinking of making the discovery rate *mostly* dependent on your actions. Buying a small office or renting a server is not going to cause you trouble. But doing jobs without identification from there, using sci-fi equiptment which no man has ever seen before, will get you in trouble (the sci-fi equiptment perhaps even more then that). Confiscated logs might give the authorities the location of your other bases, and so on. But again, just an idea of mine, which would require quite a few new features and gamemechanic changes. For now lets just concentrate on getting this project running again.

Oh, and about the clone: Could you send me a link or something? Couldn't find anything.

[Uneron]

Its okay, just found it! I'll have a look into it!

[MestreLion]

At 19:06 14/11/2012, you wrote:

Oh, and I briefly read through the issues and the last commits. From my point of view, everything i18n related with the exception of a few languages and the points you just raised, seemed to be finished. Is that correct?

Yes, the i18n "engine" is fully functional. Of course, the only full "language pack" so far, besides the default English, is Brazilian Portuguese. It uses standard .po files, so any non-programmer can add new languages. There's also a handy script, utils/gettext-singularity, that helps managing new (or updated) language packs.

But "fully functional" does not mean it can't be improved: currently there are a bit too many files for each language, and I have a strong feeling that at least data/strings_XX.dat could be merged with the new .po approach, since it only deals with fixed strings. Techs, Locations & friends are another issue: since they are tied to the data files, maybe integration with .po is not worth it.

Apart from bug-fixes and i18n, there are also other new features of interest:

- XDG compliance: settings file and saves go to ~/.config/singularity. No more cluttering users' $HOME

- Revamped Options screen: dropped some advanced settings, added more resolutions, etc. It is working already, but it can (and must) be much more improved. IMHO restarting the game after switching language, and detecting users' desktop resolution are must-have features.

- testing/background branch has a working "theme" support. Ugly but functional, only implemented for backgrounds.

With the relicensing you got me on the wrong foot, honestly. I would have to read into it, because I have no idea what this would require. Help and/or reading material would be most appreciated.

I started a topic about it some months ago. Basically, what is needed is to edit all files, using a common GPLv3+ header for all, with a fixed list of copyright owners (the way I see it, only ems, phil and FM). Sporadic per-file contributions should go to either README or AUTHORS, not to the files Copyright line themselves. And, of course, all of this would need permission (or at least blessing) from the current cited names in each file. (that's why keeping copyright notices with the few names as possible is important :)

Thanks for mentioning those branches. I definitly have a look!

https://github.com/MestreLion/singularity <- have fun ;)

I've also created a Singularity organization... contact me via github so I can add you there. We could keep that repo with our collective work and keep google code's repo clean from testing branches, and only commit there when there is some sort of agreement of what should go to 'mainline'

Cheers,
ML

[Brian Blankenship]

i'm so exited to see where this is going to go!!

--

Your Brother In Christ

Brian Blankenship

[Philippe Tetar]

My bad, I haven't seen your repository on github. I'm thinking you have stopped your development when you deleted your repository on google code. I will look at it.

[Philippe Tetar]

Yes, I agree the problem is more fundamental than few idea to balance gameplay. The player have no real control over discovery of his bases. Random is the main (and only) enemy of the game. I think a way to fix it is to add a more visible enemy. I like the idea of a governemental agence that investigate about Singularity.

[Thomas Wilson]

Hi all,

I've been following this thread with great interest. First, thanks Uneron for stepping up to the plate. I've enjoyed this game for a long time and look forward to enjoying your continued development of the game. EMH, Phil, et al, thanks for being so supportive of Uneron in this regard.

I'd like to take this opportunity to expand on what Philippe suggested, but will do so from another angle. Reducing the randomness of the suspicion index across the board could make way for more detailed human interaction.

Data moving across the Internet has a much lower chance of being deemed suspicious by virtue of the mammoth nature of the Internet. Internet-bound traffic's suspicion index should climb only after Philippe's aforementioned agency's formation, for they have the authority to order constant monitoring for such activity.

The Agency's authority expands as you cause a greater drain on the power grid, the economy, the workforce, basic resources. As you draw on the power grid, you may find that the Agency gains the authority to reduce or eliminate the supply to one of your large warehouses, which draws a vast amount of electricity. This is mitigated by research power-generation technologies like solar and fusion power.

The Agency may unexpectedly implement new restrictions on who can buy electronic components, requiring newer and better identification in order to prove your humanity.

But the origin of the Agency is probably the most titillating of all. The second discovery of one of your major bases causes the government to question the safety of humanity. On the first discovery, they think they've got you, but soon after the second discovery they realize that you spread like a virus and that you've not been terminated as they first thought, hence the formation of the Agency. At first, the Agency is a governmental organization based in, and restricted in jurisdiction to, the first country or continent in which you're discovered. Eventually, with more international discoveries through civilian and scientific cooperation, the Agency is reformed to be an inter-governmental agency with the authority to operate in every major country, and with all civilian and scientific man  and tech power at its disposal.

I think that weaving this as additional backstory makes for a more intriguing and interactive gameplay. I'm more than happy to help with implementation, testing, and idea generation. Bounce things off me, I like that :)

Cheers!

Thomas

--
 
 
 

[Uneron]

Ok, I've taken a more detailed look at the latest main pull.

The option screen is definitly an improvement, though it doesn't need to show all those standard resolution once its capable of detecting the one the system uses (I am going to tackle this issue soonish).

I had several issues with the languages screen:
 - You mentioned before that a restart would be required, but all changes seem to be applied on the fly.
 - No languages (even the portugese you mentioned) seem to change any of the button labels (or at best a few).
 - Are the other translations all that bad? Because the german one (only one I can really assess) is quite awful.

About changing the licensing: we probably have to limit it to the three developers and therefor the code. I am not sure if we can get hold of the composer(s) (who is that by the way?), all these font licences (or we could limit use to just the one we have 'use for whatever' rights) and of course the nasa images.

Cheers
Uneron

[Uneron]

Hmmm... apperently a post of mine decided to disappear into thin air. In case it drops in after all, you know the reason for the double post. ;)

Basically I remarked that you all post during the wrong hours (I am in the wrong time zone, apperently). Also you are all awesome for bringing back some much needed activity.

Also I created a new fork on github, on which I am going to work from now on. Had to create a new github account too, since I rather avoid my boss seeing what I am doing in my freetime :)

Anyway, here we go: https://github.com/uneron/singularity

I am going to get some work done this weekend, mainly merging existing branches where possible/reasonable and getting some UI fixes in. Also a bit of rebalancing for good measure and to keep things interesting for myself.

Cheers
Uneron

[MestreLion]

At 21:24 15/11/2012, you wrote:
>Basically I remarked that you all post during the wrong hours (I am in the wrong time zone, apperently). Also you are all awesome for bringing back some much needed activity.

Actually, the credit is all yours: /your/ recent interest on the game is what brought life back to the project :)

>Also I created a new fork on github, on which I am going to work from now on. Had to create a new github account too, since I rather avoid my boss seeing what I am doing in my freetime :)
>
>Anyway, here we go: https://github.com/uneron/singularity

May I suggest creating the repository via github fork of either my personal repo or the singularity organization's repo? That would add more visibility to all.

>I am going to get some work done this weekend, mainly merging existing branches where possible/reasonable and getting some UI fixes in. Also a bit of rebalancing for good measure and to keep things interesting for myself.

Don't forget to keep changes in distinct commits and/or branches: logic and UI fixes are a no-brainer, and may be commited to main repo without lengthy (or any) discussion. Balancing and other gameplay changes are always a subjective matter, and require people to agree on what is the best way to improve the game.

ML

[MestreLion]

At 21:09 15/11/2012, you wrote:
>I had several issues with the languages screen:
> - You mentioned before that a restart would be required, but all changes seem to be applied on the fly.

Most changes are applied on-the-fly, but not all...

> - No languages (even the portugese you mentioned) seem to change any of the button labels (or at best a few).

... and button labels are one of them :)

Change language to Portuguese, save cahnges to disk, and restart game. Voila!

> - Are the other translations all that bad? Because the german one (only one I can really assess) is quite awful.

Yup.

And most are very incomplete too, with many strings untranslated.

Not to mention none of them besides pt_BR have the UI translation (ie, messages_xx_XX.po), since this is very recent.

>About changing the licensing: we probably have to limit it to the three developers and therefor the code. I am not sure if we can get hold of the composer(s) (who is that by the way?), all these font licences (or we could limit use to just the one we have 'use for whatever' rights) and of course the nasa images.

No matter which fonts we use, they would have associated license and copyright anyway. If we ship them, we must give proper credit. Unless you can find suitable system fonts that are present in Linux, Windows and Mac, so we don't have to ship our own. And still look cool (ie, techie, cpu-ish with a bit of retro-gaming feel). Good luck with that :P

As for music and background, my opinion: I LOVE them! Current music /and/ background images were the "catchy" factor that hooked me up to this game in the first place. :)

And don't listen to Phil when he talks about ambar-esque color theme. He is deeply misguided on that one :P

ML

[MestreLion]

>Ok, I've taken a more detailed look at the latest main pull.
>
>The option screen is definitly an improvement, though it doesn't need to show all those standard resolution once its capable of detecting the one the system uses (I am going to tackle this issue soonish).

This should be taken to the Option screen topic, there is a fair amount of discussions and opinions there already. But I'm too lazy for that, so here it goes...

We should provide a list of standard resolutions even if we detect users'. People like to change resolution, both windowed and fullscreen, to make window bigger (or smaller) and/or increase font size. No one likes to type in resultions, so the list is welcome.

What we could do is: if user desktop is widescreen (no matter the size), we show only widescreen resolutions, and vice-versa. This way the list can change from 8 to 4 (or 10 to 5, don't remember)

User's resolution is to fix a long-standing "issue" of E:S: the default window and fonts are /tiny/. E:S @ 800x600 in a 1600x1200 or 1920x1080 monitor looks /very/ ugly.

Also, current default is windowed (switching to fullscreen is another ongoing discussion at options screen topic), so we must take panels into account: -70 for height, -50 for width. And that is what prevents us from switching default to 1024x768, since such window would be too large for some monitors. So reading desktop resolution is about changing the /default/ resolution, and only that.

My personal opinion: default = fullscreen, matching desktop. And Windowed mode should automatically subtract (50,70) on-the-fly when switching from and to, unless user selects custom resolution. This would require 2 distinct resolutions: the "real" one and the "abstract" (to present users)

ML

[Phil Bordelon]

On 11/15/2012 05:09 PM, Uneron wrote:

> About changing the licensing: we probably have to limit it to the three
> developers and therefor the code. I am not sure if we can get hold of
> the composer(s) (who is that by the way?), all these font licences (or
> we could limit use to just the one we have 'use for whatever' rights)
> and of course the nasa images.

Licensing shouldn't need changing for the media; it's just the code that
needs normalization. That said, it's trivial to get in contact with the
composer, but I don't see why we need to. The music's under a very
reasonable license.

P

[Mestre Lion]

You can subscribe the "endgame-singularity-commits" mailing list: an email is automatically send whenever theres a new commit to the official repo.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/endgame-singularity-commits

You can also help testing our personal testing branches. I have a few in my github account, and phillipe tetar too. I usually rename branches from "testing/*" to "topic/*" or "update/*" when I development is done and I think they're to merge. That is the perfect time for testing.

[Uneron]

I REALLY like Agency ideas, expecially that only after finding your second base a international organization is etablished. Well thought of!

As your actions affect humanity and prove of your existance increases, the support of the Agency increases as well. I always found it weird that no one cared when I invested the gross national product of a major country for a space mission or that I (based on the amount of income) must have been providing a good part of the earths workforce, while they all wanted to murder me for having the audacity of creating a few web servers in different parts of the world.

[Uneron]

May I suggest creating the repository via github fork of either my personal repo or the singularity organization's repo? That would add more visibility to all.

Ok, done!

Don't forget to keep changes in distinct commits and/or branches: logic and UI fixes are a no-brainer, and may be commited to main repo without lengthy (or any) discussion. Balancing and other gameplay changes are always a subjective matter, and require people to agree on what is the best way to improve the game.

Hmm, can't say I completly agree on this one. As long as I am the only one actively developing I'll keep design discussion on minor things (linke doubling the cost for a technology, etc) to a minimum. I'll simpy do what I think makes sense. It takes too long to get an agreement and takes from the creativity and reduces the workflow. Also these are changes that can be easily reverted. That will be of course different for major gamemechanic changes, like the pre-mentioned reduction of randomness.

On the other hand, if you *really* want to discuss these minor details, I am afraid you have no choice but come back developing >:) [do it!]

[Eagle Boy]

I had time to kill at work so I figured I contribute to the revival of the game. Attached is the translated files for Spanish (Mexico) I got form http://code.google.com/p/endgame-singularity/ 

Hopefully this will let others enjoy the game like the rest of us.

[Uneron]

Great!

Before I commit them (and to be on the save side):

Have you translated these?
Are you a native speaker?

Cheers
Uneron

[Eagle Boy]

Yes I translated them myself and yes I am a native speaker but feel free to run them through someone else just in case I have a typo or incorrect grammar.

[Uneron]

Ok, thanks a bunch! That is really helpful, especially since most of the translations are positively dreadful so far. ;)

I am going to commit it.

Cheers
Uneron

[MestreLion]

Thanks Eagle Boy!

I took a look at it, and translation seem great! I've already commited it to repo, take a look:

http://code.google.com/p/endgame-singularity/source/list

http://code.google.com/p/endgame-singularity/source/detail?r=0b4f076e6e902b81a30d113a43c011d3907e2297

I've also took the liberty to fix some hotkey conflicts undera separate commit, I hope you don't mind:

http://code.google.com/p/endgame-singularity/source/detail?r=270742fe021a10a1fa2facfb452a799f263a3111#

Last but not least... are you still experiencing touble when opening the Options screen? Can you please open a new issue at http://code.google.com/p/endgame-singularity/issues/list and provide these files attached:
- ~/.endgame/prefs.dat (or ~/.config/singularity/prefs.dat)
- ~/.endgame/error.log (or ~/.config/singularity/error.dat)
- complete console output when playing the game using --debug
- the output of "locale" command

Thanks!

[Eagle Boy]

For the changes I good with it. I thought I made sure there were no conflicts but that is why there is the external validation process to catch the minor slip ups. :)

I will test the updated code and make an issue if it is still crashing.