The Energon Pub

Seibertron wrote:My biggest concern about multiple developers is this: the more people I've got working on the site, the more the problems will arise exponentially. I also am not a fan of letting people have access to all of my hard work, not to mention all of our data in the database. I have some ideas about how to address this going forward, but it concerns me greatly about having too many chefs in the kitchen

Thats where the moduler design of the game with one 'main' programmer comes in. You only need to give the full access to that main programmer. The sub programmers would be able to carry on with their jobs without full access. Not only that, it will leave you with a ready pool of permanent or short term replacments should the main one find them selves unable to caryr out their job for the long or short term.

Admitedly, it wont solve the recent problem of issues with the current game that the rest of the staff cant fix, but it might have made OS, or Glyph's complete standing down from the role unnessercary. Let one of their suordinates stand in and carry out all the regular maintainence and tweaks, until they are ready to fully regain the reigns.

Whilst we have your ear, what happens as far as backups? Becuase I was somewhat suprised there was no recent back up of the game that could be reinplemented after the hurrican struck. The game just before was pretty stable and had a lot of very nifty features, but instead we had to do with a very hastily reprogramed older version, which is sadly still very much broken.

I'm not saying that we have too many mods now, in fact I like having more mods so usually there is always someone around to help. My only concern by having a HMW support staff, multiple programmers, a head programmer, beta testers, HMW mods, and HMW admins is that it gets to the point where there are too many people involved who have some form of power. Where is the cut off between not enough and too much? How much power is not enough power or too much power?

I dont see the logic of the development staff having forum powers. Thier jobs have no need of it, all it'd do would be to act as an unessercary distraction from their actual job. It'd be like expecting a company's accountants to also run the advertising department.

Sure they'd have a little extra standings in the comunity of course, but thats not the same as having too many chiefs and not enough indians.

Redimus GTS wrote:I dont see the logic of the development staff having forum powers. Thier jobs have no need of it, all it'd do would be to act as an unessercary distraction from their actual job. It'd be like expecting a company's accountants to also run the advertising department.

Sure they'd have a little extra standings in the comunity of course, but thats not the same as having too many chiefs and not enough indians.

I agree Developers/beta testers don't need special forum access. Have 1 guy with the all-powerful access, the rest are just helpers.

I've worked testing games, all you really do is play, write bug report, repeat. then try everything you can think of to glitch/cheat the game, report it, repeat

We only need enough people so admin of the game doesnt become a chore. The idea of the support staff was that we wrote the mission texts, drew the alts and did the grahics etc. so the programmer had more time to concentrate on fine tuning the mechanics, but that never happened under the V2 development as OS kept his cards too close to his chest and couldnt delegate. We really need to learn from that.

Seibertron wrote:I think I coined the term "hmw 2.0" 5 years ago, actually. I think before Glyph even came onboard, when I really wanted to push the idea of a color-coded map of Cybertron that included interactive areas that users/groups could battle over to gain control/dominance over the planet Cybertron. If one particular group such as the Decepticons won full control over the planet. The game would reset and we would enter the next phase of the game ala "The Matrix" film trilogy where there were multiple versions of the Matrix. I thought this concept could lead to leaders within the community emerging and constantly keep the game fresh since the users were truly driving the global scale of HMW, instead of it being so individually based. Of course, we would still maintain the arena battles and perhaps the old-style missions side-by-side with the new style Cybertron missions.

FYI ... not a fan of the Maximals and Predacons concept currently. It overly complicates the game, unless it's good vs evil and you can choose your "good" allegiance (i.e. Maximals/Autobots) or your "evil" allegiance (i.e. Predacons/Decepticons) which would allow Maximals to battle Decepticons, etc.

Youre not the only one.
I designed this map about 18 months ago; each city was a different mission number, e.g. whichever faction won the most missions ending is 6 would win control of Polyhex and so on, and it was pretty sucessful. The only reason it never got past testing is that it became too unwieldy to score by hand and only worked with 2 factions, not 4.

Seibertron wrote:FYI ... I have a lead from within the HMW community, and the staff, of someone who might be willing to help us out. This staff member and I have to have a lot of conversations first before anything official can happen. I've got to figure out how to do this right this time around. 3rd time's a charm, right?

Thats great news, fingers are crossed...

Ever since I started playing Urban Dead, I can't help but envision a similar type game for a new Heavy Metal War.

Urban Dead.....................................Heavy Metal War
City of Malton and Suburbs...................Planet of Seibertron and Sectors
Zombies..........................................Decepticons
Humans...........................................Autobots
Death............................................Stasis Lock
Buildings.........................................Fortresses
First Aid Kits....................................Energon Packs
Bats, Axes, Knifes.............................Swords, Axes, Dead Robot Arms
Pistols and Shotguns...........................Fusion Cannons and Nullrays
Learnable Human and Zombie Tactics.........Learnable Autobot and Decepticon Tactics
Walking to move from place to place..........Transforming to move from place to place

I just checked out the developer's own website Kevan.org

You could contact him by sending an email here: kevan@kevan.org

I mean, the programming could be damn near cloned with just adding a new, robotic skin to replace the current rotting flesh one. It'd be worth looking into if he would be interested in helping. Never hurts to ask.

Hey guys,

Appreciate all of the suggestions but we'll be sticking with one programmer. Trust me ... it's a lot easier that way. I'm a programmer ... you don't need to try to convince me one way or another about multiple programmers, etc. I'd much rather work solo than with a team on my every day programming. It's too much of a cluster **** when you get more than one person involved, especially on a relatively smaller project like HMW. I guarantee you I couldn't get two programmers on this site to agree about how HMW should be programmed let alone keeping the style of programming the same. It's hard enough to do that at the companies I've worked at during the past 9 years, let alone on a custom application like HMW.

I'll keep you guys posted when I have something more to say about the future of HMW. In the meantime, I'm stepping back from this endless loop of a thread.

Seibertron wrote:

Absolute Zero wrote:That's not true. There are free games online that don't charge monthly memberships. True that some charge for certain ingame content or items, but you don't need those to play the game or enjoy them. Most of the game advertisements on this site are for free games that pay their programmers. There's no reason HMW couldn't be among the same, it would just take some devotion to the game and building it up. If done well, HMW would easily make money over whatever was paid to any programmers. It's how games and sites like Maplestory and Gaia work.

Gaiaonline.com is one of the top 1,000 sites in the entire world. They can afford to pay people.

Not sure what you were stating wasn't true. If I have to pay a programmer to work on the game, then I'll charge a membership fee for the game. I don't want that. You guys don't want that. Let's end this part of the conversation.

I think you missed the point. You could hire a programmer, and not pay a single cent out of pocket or charge people to play the game, if done correctly. There are several MMORPGs online that do the same thing. With dozens of programmers. That was my point. No money from site owner, no membership fees.

Seibertron wrote:I could be talked into multiple developers, though I think it's extremely unnecessary, assuming that the lead developer could orchestrate an environment where they share a common codebase via SVN or something.

My biggest concern about multiple developers is this: the more people I've got working on the site, the more the problems will arise exponentially. I also am not a fan of letting people have access to all of my hard work, not to mention all of our data in the database. I have some ideas about how to address this going forward, but it concerns me greatly about having too many chefs in the kitchen.

FYI ... I have a lead from within the HMW community, and the staff, of someone who might be willing to help us out. This staff member and I have to have a lot of conversations first before anything official can happen. I've got to figure out how to do this right this time around. 3rd time's a charm, right?

It wouldn't even need to be a programmer in charge. Someone who understands the game and is already respected by the community would be a ideal director type person for keeping multiple programmers on the same page, since they could also make sure the alt modes and missions all follow in with what's expected. Pretty much any browser based game I've played online is coded by two people, so that if something goes wrong while one person isn't there, the second is likely around. It's a failsafe at worst. It's pretty much the same as having two moderates from different timezones so that if something happens when one isn't on, then the other should be around to cover it. Honestly, Burn or Psychout would be the best fit for this role.

Fender Bender wrote:Ever since I started playing Urban Dead, I can't help but envision a similar type game for a new Heavy Metal War.

Urban Dead.....................................Heavy Metal War
City of Malton and Suburbs...................Planet of Seibertron and Sectors
Zombies..........................................Decepticons
Humans...........................................Autobots
Death............................................Stasis Lock
Buildings.........................................Fortresses
First Aid Kits....................................Energon Packs
Bats, Axes, Knifes.............................Swords, Axes, Dead Robot Arms
Pistols and Shotguns...........................Fusion Cannons and Nullrays
Learnable Human and Zombie Tactics.........Learnable Autobot and Decepticon Tactics
Walking to move from place to place..........Transforming to move from place to place

I just checked out the developer's own website Kevan.org

You could contact him by sending an email here: kevan@kevan.org

I mean, the programming could be damn near cloned with just adding a new, robotic skin to replace the current rotting flesh one. It'd be worth looking into if he would be interested in helping. Never hurts to ask.

Honestly, not in favor of that. And I don't think he actually owns the code for that, since there was a Naruto game exactly like that a few years ago, before Naruto got huge in America.

Burn wrote:I floated the idea of a "Support staff" years ago and Glyph actually implemented it and it was working well, we'd put ideas forth and he'd start working out how to implement them.

That was thrown out however.

If it was brought back I wouldn't see a need for multiple programmers, one could do that as long as s/he has the right support backing him/her up with ideas and a direction for the game.

And trust me, we have the people who could easily work for support, probably too many in fact!

And Ryan, i'm fairly certain you came up with HMW2.0 a few weeks after the game was initially launched!

That was a good idea, and the game seemed to be running it's smoothest at the time it was being run. However, as I just said, having at least two programmers ensures that someone should be around should something happen.

Fender Bender wrote:Ever since I started playing Urban Dead, I can't help but envision a similar type game for a new Heavy Metal War.

Urban Dead.....................................Heavy Metal War
City of Malton and Suburbs...................Planet of Seibertron and Sectors
Zombies..........................................Decepticons
Humans...........................................Autobots
Death............................................Stasis Lock
Buildings.........................................Fortresses
First Aid Kits....................................Energon Packs
Bats, Axes, Knifes.............................Swords, Axes, Dead Robot Arms
Pistols and Shotguns...........................Fusion Cannons and Nullrays
Learnable Human and Zombie Tactics.........Learnable Autobot and Decepticon Tactics
Walking to move from place to place..........Transforming to move from place to place

I just checked out the developer's own website Kevan.org

You could contact him by sending an email here: kevan@kevan.org

I mean, the programming could be damn near cloned with just adding a new, robotic skin to replace the current rotting flesh one. It'd be worth looking into if he would be interested in helping. Never hurts to ask.

DO NOT WANT. If I wanted to play Urban dead, I'd still f**king play urban dead....

Absolute Zero wrote:That was a good idea, and the game seemed to be running it's smoothest at the time it was being run. However, as I just said, having at least two programmers ensures that someone should be around should something happen.

I'm the 2nd programmer to ensure that someone should be around should something happen.

Seibertron wrote:

Absolute Zero wrote:That was a good idea, and the game seemed to be running it's smoothest at the time it was being run. However, as I just said, having at least two programmers ensures that someone should be around should something happen.

I'm the 2nd programmer to ensure that someone should be around should something happen.

So... can we has 3-5 missions, a little bit higher spawn rate for Beasts vs G1 missions, and maybe the mod panel back up 100% so Psychout and Burn can add missions as needed?

I believe we have a runner-up for the new position of HMW programmer. We've had a few phone conversations as well as some emails between us. We've discussed ideas for the game, my ultimate vision, the purpose of HMW, deadlines, forum role, etc. Our runner-up will be presenting me with a "project plan" of sorts within the next few days, no later than Monday. I will be making my decision upon receiving this document early next week. If I decide to bring this person on as the next HMW programmer, I will make the announcement at that time. I'll keep you guys posted.

Sound exciting.

Psychout wrote:We only need enough people so admin of the game doesnt become a chore. The idea of the support staff was that we wrote the mission texts, drew the alts and did the grahics etc. so the programmer had more time to concentrate on fine tuning the mechanics, but that never happened under the V2 development as OS kept his cards too close to his chest and couldnt delegate. We really need to learn from that.

Agreed! OS always seemed too busy with other tasks then programming and hardly let anyone help with much. Although I do have to give him credit and thanks for the time HMW crashed and he was busting ass getting everyones xp back to where it was last. I am glad he stepped down because if you can't do something right then there's no point in doing it at all! I mean if you know you don't have the time then why waste our time when someone else can get the job done. I did find it odd that we had been asking for all these game goodies quite some time ago and we would get shot down repeadly. Then it was all gun-ho for what seemed to be everything and more. Just to end up back where we were over 2 years ago. (more like 3 or 4 years if you consider crashes) I hope this new programmer works out! Best of luck to the future of HMW!

O S resigned
this is bad comedy

And it's been two weeks or so, and haven't heard anything about the other guy, so I guess that means that it didn't go well. And the backup programmer, as far as I know, hasn't added missions for level 5.

Absolute Zero wrote:And it's been two weeks or so, and haven't heard anything about the other guy, so I guess that means that it didn't go well. And the backup programmer, as far as I know, hasn't added missions for level 5.

I think we should be patient for the new programmer to come on board with the game. Also Ryan is the 2nd programmer/ Back-up, I think he has alot on his plate with the rest of the site.

I also would like to see new missions but all we can do is wait.

I'd love some 3-5 or 4-6 missions. i could make a coulple level 5s, ROS can damn near make a 6 i think

Optimus Prime007 wrote:I think he has alot on his plate with the rest of the site.

That's all very fair and good, but there becomes a point, when nothing has been done on the game for months, when someone, and at this point I couldnt care less who, should do *somthing* for the good of the game and it's comunity. And if that means some galleries are a couple of days late, then that's a price Im 100% willing to pay...

From what I know (and for all I know Psychout could have a e-mail sitting in his inbox with even more information) the new person is apparently already at work on the next version.

As for you guys who can level up past level 4, all I can do is ask (emphasis on ask as I can't order you) to NOT do that but to get into more 2-4 missions.

Yes, you'll be "XP generators" but frankly if you're going to gripe about that, get over it, that's how the game works. You're at the top, you're a target.

But if you can get into the 2-4 missions some more it'll give more people a chance to earn xp and thus produce even more healthy competition. And I HOPE that when this next version is set to launch we can manage to squeeze in a End Game tournament and maybe get those new missions and there should be a lot of people sitting on a lot of xp who can help fill a number of various levels.

So, uh, are we allowed to know who the new blood is, or do all you badge wearers fear we'll grab the torches and pitchforks and have at them as per the stereotype?

We don't know who it is, or at least I don't. Others might.

What happened to the announcement letting us know who it was? Or at least that he had replaced OS? Yay for HMW Top Secret!

Absolute Zero wrote:What happened to the announcement letting us know who it was? Or at least that he had replaced OS? Yay for HMW Top Secret!

ooh OOH i know

"if they told us they'd have to kill us"

whats the worst we'd do? *hides pitchfork and torch*

Name_Violation wrote:whats the worst we'd do?

It's the best we'd do actually.

Know what made this game at the height of it's popularity? The community and those working behind the scenes to keep the game moving forward. There was a core group of people both with and without titles who were helping this game to grow.

That's why I really hope whoever it is comes forward soon and starts talking to some of us. I really REALLY don't want to see another game developed based on one person's ideas. Been there, done that.