It's been suggested plenty of times, help has been offered (for free) plenty of times, but the dev's position has been made clear. Yes it would mean more people could work, but it's not what they want so it's not going to happen.
[OLD] Tyre Physics Progress Report
(4434 posts, closed, started )
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.
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.
For everyone complaining about the devs not adding more people because LFS is 'late', read about Brooks's law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
This probably means that adding people at this point would DELAY the release of the new physics, although it might speed up development several months from now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
This probably means that adding people at this point would DELAY the release of the new physics, although it might speed up development several months from now.
I'm a developer on a big project here in Brazil and +1 to everything you just said, you couldn't have said it better
+2
By that route, it would make Scawen some kind of project supervisor, yellin' at people, fixing flaws in code etc., not the coder.
Quite frankly, I (and I believe many others) play (well, I don't play anymore, sadly) LFS because of his coding capability.
I just hope he/they can continue to work on LFS for many years to come.
LFS code is great indeed! Very efficient and stable!
I've been quiet for years (literally) but this is taking the piss lol 
Keep on racing!
Keep on racing!
Many people have offered to help, even for free. I have worked on few such projects where people have offered themselves to work for free, but every single time, the enthusiasm fizzes out after a few days, sometimes hours. Scawen obviously knows this.
It isn't about the volunteers enthusiasm - perhaps a little, but I think the learning curve has a lot to do about it.
What else motivates you then, if not enthusiasm, when you are working for free? Nobody has that much time on their hands that they can afford to work for others without getting anything from it for themselves.
Passion. I work constantly on my side projects, and would gladly have helped the devs. I've asked them 3 times - roughly once a year. I've got the same response each time, but I don't look at it as begging, just as reminding them I'd help. Completely for nothing besides my satisfaction of helping.
Programming, and racing (okay- sim racing), are my primary interests and hobbies. Although I do have a few others, but those take a back burner to these two.
Programming, and racing (okay- sim racing), are my primary interests and hobbies. Although I do have a few others, but those take a back burner to these two.
Enthusiasm and motivation is great, but it doesn't guarantee results and in this case, it doesn't mean that one instantly understands everything about the project. I.e., the time used to bring an enthusiast up to speed could be used otherwise.
Certainly not, as you can see from my posts above. I understand fully why the developers won't add people - it is their project, and they are staying true to their vision and what they set out to do way back when.
Depents on what point the development is (the sad thing is, we don't know). If what you say would be thru, there wouldn't be any 'multi people' projects on the world.
But there are, and to make that possible, you have to devide the project in parts, and everyone does his/her part. But for that to work out well, the project has to be wel documented. And LFS probably isn't.... I think the problem is that the source of LFS is a very very long spaghetti sourcecode with no comment lines at all, which only Scawen can understand and probably sometimes he can't either (that's why it takes so long)
physics and damage modeling are what i think would be the hardest elements of a game to program, and LFS has both. what the devs are doing is hard work, and i don't think they deserve to be yelled at for it. that's like yelling at an average elementary student for not fully explaining the theory of relativity fast enough.
Do you think it would be accurate to say that this year and a half of stagnation is due to one algorithm?
Assuming Scawen wrote specs for the tire code, how much would someone really need to know about LFS's internals to work on this problem?
I've been here long enough to see that Scawen really doesn't need help with LFS when it isn't this tire physics problem; but... it's this tire physics problem.
Assuming Scawen wrote specs for the tire code, how much would someone really need to know about LFS's internals to work on this problem?
I've been here long enough to see that Scawen really doesn't need help with LFS when it isn't this tire physics problem; but... it's this tire physics problem.
And still I have all the trust that Scawen will work this out, together with Eric, Victor and the bèta testers, it will become well loved again. I still have full trust in that.
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...
Be prepared for when he will say to write your own simulator
Code review
Last I read from Scawen, he wasn't making much in the way of progress; at least, that's what I took away from it. The reason I made my post was because of this pattern:
"Scawen should get some programmers"
"No he shouldn't, it'd be a disaster"
What I'm trying to say is: If you've been stuck on a problem for a year, it might be worth considering hiring someone with the appropriate skill set to help with same. It's not hiring someone to help with the project in general. It's just the one problem.
For all we know, Scawen has hired a consultant or two. It's not like he'd advertise it.
I imagine we'll be getting an e-mail this year
Well I do think that at the moment he is booking much progression. But that all the forum hype about his 4000th post made him decide to indeed keep his 4000th for that particulair post. But that's just my personal thought.
I have all believes that we will get an e-mail about a new patch/test patch before 31st of December 2010.
P.S. You got a very nice username, I've been in love since day 1 they started to sell Mountain Dew here. Awesome beverage.
I didn't say that adding new people to a project never makes sense.
Adding new people to a project slows the project down at first, because the new people need to be educated. How long this takes, depends on the complexity of the project and the matter. If the pressure and the deadlines for development are ok with that, it's fine to hire new people.
So what do we know about LFS? Not so much, only Scawen knows ... but from just playing the game one can already say that the complexity of the matter (i.e. the phyics of racing and the development of a stable program for multiplayer access) to me seems quite great.
This would be an argument not to hire a new developer.
We also know that there is no pressure or deadline at all. This would be an argument to think about hiring a new developer.
Any further arguments can only be judged by Scawen. And when he says he wants to work like before, I can well understand, because it would change his daily life significantly. From independent developer to supervisor. Being forced to lead hours of discussions with the new people about why this and that has been implement this or that way and so on ... Progress on LFS would most likely stop for months!
But of course Scawen has proven that he asks other people for advice regarding the physics of racing and he also does his own research (on track). So he's not all alone ...
Adding new people to a project slows the project down at first, because the new people need to be educated. How long this takes, depends on the complexity of the project and the matter. If the pressure and the deadlines for development are ok with that, it's fine to hire new people.
So what do we know about LFS? Not so much, only Scawen knows ... but from just playing the game one can already say that the complexity of the matter (i.e. the phyics of racing and the development of a stable program for multiplayer access) to me seems quite great.
This would be an argument not to hire a new developer.
We also know that there is no pressure or deadline at all. This would be an argument to think about hiring a new developer.
Any further arguments can only be judged by Scawen. And when he says he wants to work like before, I can well understand, because it would change his daily life significantly. From independent developer to supervisor. Being forced to lead hours of discussions with the new people about why this and that has been implement this or that way and so on ... Progress on LFS would most likely stop for months!
But of course Scawen has proven that he asks other people for advice regarding the physics of racing and he also does his own research (on track). So he's not all alone ...
all of the above aside...
They could still give us an update on their progress once in a while. Just a few paragraphs once every couple of months...
I would be more than satisfied with that as i know it is a lengthy process what they are trying to do.
They could still give us an update on their progress once in a while. Just a few paragraphs once every couple of months...
I would be more than satisfied with that as i know it is a lengthy process what they are trying to do.
i am not even interested into the scirocco anymore. not because i would not care for the car, but lfs is for what i dont care anymore. for a few weeks after the release of the scirocco there would be lots of scirocco-only servers indeed. but after that it returns all again to the servers on which you have to play for months to race with higher class-cars and cruishiting . maybe if the devs can make the ai's as good as in gtr (2) i would play lfs again (offline ofc)
a demo-server filter would be great too
a demo-server filter would be great too
Many of us are looking forward to the physics changes rather than the Scirocco. At the moment, I'm happy enough driving offline occasionally. Just give the AI a headstart = funz.
You seem to have a shallow view of the game online too, but that's your loss.
This thread is closed
[OLD] Tyre Physics Progress Report
(4434 posts, closed, started )
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