Fix StarMade, Release the frakkin API!

[ShadowPilot]

Apparently every one of you hot aired knucklehead fan boys have missed the point. In complaining and defending Schine for their small dev team you all have made my point even more valid.

Their dev team would expand if they would release the API. Not only would they have modders writing code, but Devs from other games as well. How else was ARES mod created? How has it remained so stable and without need for updating over the past 10 releases? The argument that Mods can't survive Schines update cycle is bogus. The ARES Server has been up nonstop for the last six months. The only thing we need is the tools to integrate it with newly loaded sectors and we can't do that without an API.

I implore you to look at all of your aggressively defensive immature responses and recognize a pattern. That pattern being they could outsource the labor without it affecting the vanilla game. For the features they like they can refer to the modder/dev of the mod to integrate his coding into the games engine. Wallah new features done by hundreds rather than 3 devs. Again the problem lies in the Ego of Schine wanting all the credit rather than collaborating the ideas people have come up with (Other than a suggestions forum where an idea is lucky to be discussed with the dev team and rarely ever implemented) and integrating already working coding from Jeryia and Megacrafter into the base game.


*queue responses from people who halfass attempt to understand a discussion before replying, picking apart one sentence of the whole thing to stroke their frail self confidence. Further thinking that defending the dev team will earn them perks*

Sorry folks criticism is what gets things done and drives capitalistic innovation. If we all stroked innovators softly they would never have the drive to go further than ever.

 

[AndyP]

Central problem in this is:
How can we release an API that will for sure change over time?

The idea behind an API is, that it may be versioned but should work for every module written for it.
If we add new functions and add those to the API a module/mod added for it, will break if it does not properly use the new functionality.
Code will have to be rewritten and become non functional on every major update.
Remember the minecraft problem with every new version breaking all mods, and modpacks needed like 1 week to 3 months before being able to jump to the new version?
Do you really want people go through this again?
We want to make sure we have a shape of the API we can rely on and have it stable and mostly "backward compatible",
so a mod to add like a specific block with function should still work with the next versions, and possibly only lack "new functionality".
But yes, before we can make this possible, we need to make sure we do not have to change the data formats, blueprint format and other things again. If we do not know exactly how a blueprint will look like when we are done, or how a blockdata will be saved when finalizing it, how can we open an interface to that?
It will result in a total devastation of functions.
Also hunting bugs and stability issues wont be easier with 100 mods installed and cross influences.

So, in summary:
We will release and maintain an API when we know we can keep the general format and implementation in a reliable state.
Before that, we will only cause confusion and problems with version mismatching problems.

- Andy

 

[Edymnion]

Their dev team would expand if they would release the API.

No, it wouldn't.

Their dev team would stay exactly the same size it is now, except they would then have hundreds of hotshot people they can't control doing random things and taking the game in random directions. To get any use out of that, they would need to spend their limited time constantly monitoring and reviewing what everybody is doing, sifting through it for good ideas, and then likely rewriting those ideas from scratch because whoever wrote it did so poorly.

Doing an API now would just make it all a quagmire.

I implore you to look at all of your aggressively defensive immature responses and recognize a pattern.

I would recommend you do the same. You don't seem to understand how this process actually works. Just having more hands stirring the pot does not make the job go faster unless they are all tightly controlled and directed by a single source. Random people doing random things for whatever they feel like does not help an alpha stage game improve. It just makes a horrible mess that is nearly impossible to clean up.

Please contact your local community college and sign up for some computer programming classes and get some experience in what you are talking about. It would help a great deal here.

 

[ShadowPilot]

Then my question becomes at what point do you guys feel comfortable in allowing us an API? Another 5 years? At some point you'll have to pass the reigns to the player base. That then opens the expansion of such Mods. My other question is how it is that other games in early alpha allow the ability to Mod but is not replicable to this game?

As Bench has said, the update schedule wears on schema as it becomes never-ending. We have been promised some kind of API for 3 years now. Who's to say it won't take another 3 to get to the point you allow these skilled individuals to assist?

Essentially what I'm saying is why not Slow the update schedule to monthly or quarterly. Allowing the dev team to really focus on bugs and fine tune features. Leaving it to the community to read the suggestions and modders put their talents to work. Then this allows you, the Dev team to pick and choose what MODS that work with the overall Vanilla construct of the game and shortening the amount of labor hours needed for a part time staff since the code would already be written by us the community. This would allow the community to truly be in control of their ideas while the devs can get back to the basics of the engine without having to rush due to public pressure.
[DOUBLEPOST=1459435244,1459434625][/DOUBLEPOST]Ahh edyminion always reliable in his attempts at baseless insults while contributing little if anything to the community as a whole other than his weak attempts to question someone else's knowledge.

Garrys Mod is a fine example in what would actually happen to opening an API from a coded mod came RUST originally nothing more than lines of botched code now a standalone game implemented by the developer himself.

Go to your local community college and enroll in business because you clearly never learned about supply and demand. A company that cannot find a way to supply the necessary demand will have one of two things happen. Refunds due to wait times, or another competitor will crash it with its ability to produce the product faster. Don't believe that's a trend go look at Starmade Servers in it there is a graph through the years. You'll see that servers have went belly up, population has declined, and marketing a broken product will only end in said product being returned for a refund.

 

[Edymnion]

Then my question becomes at what point do you guys feel comfortable in allowing us an API?

Andy just answered that, when the game becomes stable. Aka, beta.

Allowing the dev team to really focus on bugs and fine tune features.

Thats called beta. Beta is the development lifecycle stage where the basic skeleton of the game has been finished, all major gameplay elements are in place, and only bug squashing and fine tuning are left. That is not the stage we are in, we are in Alpha where major gameplay elements are still being added.

The game will remain in Alpha until all desired gameplay functionality has been added.

Leaving it to the community to read the suggestions and modders put their talents to work.

The modders and the community don't know what Schine is trying to do. What they make could very well directly contradict the direction Schine wants the game to go in, or may be inferior to what Schine is wanting to do. Which means that it will be wasted effort that will do nothing but fracture the playerbase.

Then this allows you, the Dev team to pick and choose what MODS that work with the overall Vanilla construct of the game and shortening the amount of labor hours needed for a part time staff since the code would already be written by us the community.

Code that is likely not up to snuff for professional standards.

There is a *WIDE* gulf between code that works, and code that works well. Which means a bunch of amateur mod makers might stumble on a great idea, but code it horribly, which means Schine has to recode it from scratch.

And as Andy said, it will make it nearly impossible for Schine to keep up with bugs because it will be next to impossible to tell which bugs come from the game itself, and which bugs are coming from some mod they've never seen before.

Go to your local community college and enroll in business because you clearly never learned about supply and demand.

Actually, I have taken many business classes while getting my degree. I know about that side as well, which is why I know how both halves interact and why what you're asking for is a very, very bad idea.

 

[Arsat]

The problem is more you really havent understand what a alpha is. How long a game in alpha is is irrelevant.

A few basic gamefeatures will be changed. Thats sure when you see the last 2-3 years development.

" Alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha

The game becomes updates, bugfixes and new features. A small team needs longer then big team who work years on the same gamemechanic (Arma3) (the most of your compares were improper) and have not really a financial risk.

When you like the game (why you will be here when you dont like it ?) perhaps you support the development with a purchase of the game. It looks like your account dont have the game :p

I must say when i must wait 5 years for the API its ok. I dont want a Starforge, Spacebase DF-9 or Beasts of Prey desaster here.

PS : Sorry for my bad english. Schooltime is long ago and no one buying me a lesson

 

[ShadowPilot]

Again why do you see that it is up to schine to fix bugs in someone else's mod, are you sure I'm the one that needs a programming class?

A mod created whether in the vision of Vanilla Starmade it not becomes the strict responsibility of the Mods creator. You are clearly not well versed in sarcasm, allow me elaborate. By asking him when I was saying in how many more YEARS will it be stable enough to release an API if there is any definitive time frame. You are further showing your lack of fundamental common sense in: Modding, Business, and Basic sentence structure.

It would behoove you to move on little one as none of you can answer my questions unless you have SIGNED an NDA or have been hired by Schine.

 

[Nauvran]

Again why do you see that it is up to schine to fix bugs in someone else's mod, are you sure I'm the one that needs a programming class?

A mod created whether in the vision of Vanilla Starmade it not becomes the strict responsibility of the Mods creator. You are clearly not well versed in sarcasm, allow me elaborate. By asking him when I was saying in how many more YEARS will it be stable enough to release an API if there is any definitive time frame. You are further showing your lack of fundamental common sense in: Modding, Business, and Basic sentence structure.

It would behoove you to move on little one as none of you can answer my questions unless you have SIGNED an NDA or have been hired by Schine.

Why do you have to act so hostile?

 

[ShadowPilot]

You could ask yourself the same question when every suggestion or discussion is met by you and your cronies with hostility. I made but a simple statement directed towards the devs. In which I received hostile rejection. The only one who I have seen make an unsarcastic, unbiased, informed response has been Rune.

 

[AndyP]

Then my question becomes at what point do you guys feel comfortable in allowing us an API? Another 5 years? At some point you'll have to pass the reigns to the player base. That then opens the expansion of such Mods. My other question is how it is that other games in early alpha allow the ability to Mod but is not replicable to this game?

Well, I cant talk about other games, as I have no insight in their internals, but releasing an API for modding in alpha, does sound like cosmetic or advertisement effective marketing, if you are in alpha, and do not yet have the base features implemented, you cant honestly open a reliable API to the game state. (My personal opinion btw, if they have all the code/data structures totally planned to the v1.0 release and its only a thing of writing the code for it, then it would work, but I also doubt its possible to plan ahead that far before actually writing the code.)

As Bench has said, the update schedule wears on schema as it becomes never-ending. We have been promised some kind of API for 3 years now.

We never stated a specific release date, its becoming part of the game, for sure.
However yes we have a lot of stuff upcoming to implement.

Who's to say it won't take another 3 to get to the point you allow these skilled individuals to assist?

Please do not consider modders as actual assistance to the game development.
Mods are usually a subculture in the game covering a small percentage of the whole commnity, and its legally as from technical side a problem to merge a mod into the main game. So they wont help in development, in total even make it more complicated.
However, still no way to estimate the alpha-end, which would consider us feature complete. (and thus allow defining a mod-api, as the "beta" is considered as bug fixing and refining existing features to work better)

Essentially what I'm saying is why not Slow the update schedule to monthly or quarterly. Allowing the dev team to really focus on bugs and fine tune features. Leaving it to the community to read the suggestions and modders put their talents to work. Then this allows you, the Dev team to pick and choose what MODS that work with the overall Vanilla construct of the game and shortening the amount of labor hours needed for a part time staff since the code would already be written by us the community. This would allow the community to truly be in control of their ideas while the devs can get back to the basics of the engine without having to rush due to public pressure.

As stated above, making a mod official is not that easy, and what if two people would write a similar mod, which one should we support?
All problems we cannot really put effort in,
when the possible reason the mod was written is non-existant any more when our planned feature for this use case is implemented.
Also, how would we handle a mod that stops developing?
What if warpgates were a mod we acquired and now the developer does not want to play any more and stops updating it?
Should we work into external code to keep it working? This would cost way more development hours than implementing it directly into the engine in a conform code our developers can work with and update it.

I see the value mods add to a game, but I also see problems when mods stop developing or have to adjust their code every few weeks/months to keep them working.
We aim for an API that will have a mod act as a plugin that can be added and removed at any time.
But also make sure if its working once,
it does not need to follow our development cycles and only needs updates to use other mods or small additional functions we may add, but never have to "relearn" how to replace a block or add an UI for it.

- Andy

 

[CaptainTaz]

You could ask yourself the same question when every suggestion or discussion is met by you and your cronies with hostility. I made but a simple statement directed towards the devs. In which I received hostile rejection. The only one who I have seen make an unsarcastic, unbiased, informed response has been Rune.

I do believe name-calling is unneccisary.

You've been told by several developers as well as people who OWN the game (and have thus, PAID for it and SUPPORT it) why the API is not a good idea right now. You are literally shouting at a wall at this point.

I urge everyone else to just let shadow rage by himself here, and not continue to feed this fire.

 

[Nauvran]

You could ask yourself the same question when every suggestion or discussion is met by you and your cronies with hostility. I made but a simple statement directed towards the devs. In which I received hostile rejection. The only one who I have seen make an unsarcastic, unbiased, informed response has been Rune.

Please learn t use the "reply" or "quote" buttons, they are there for a reason.

I'm not being hostile right now am I?
Well you harvest what you seed, or something like that. The tittle you gave this thread is already a little bit hostile in itself and the way you have been acting in this thread calling people names and such isn't really helping, although I do agree that some people here have been saying some wrong things or written their comments in a horrible way.

 

[Edymnion]

Again why do you see that it is up to schine to fix bugs in someone else's mod, are you sure I'm the one that needs a programming class?

Again, your inexperience is preventing you from seeing what is going on.

A mod modifies the base game, its why its called a mod. Once the mod is installed, it is part of the base game's code. If the mod throws an error, it isn't a self contained entity, its the main game itself throwing the error. Most people don't have computer science degrees, if they see a bug, they would report it to Schine without being able to tell where it came from.

So Schine now has a bug report. They spend a lot of time and effort trying to replicate it so that they can identify exactly where in the code it is. They fail because they don't have the mod the user did, time and effort that could have been put into adding features and fixing the base game have now been wasted.

And mods interact differently. Schine wouldn't be able to just install every mod on the internet onto one database, because the presence or lack of mods create a unique environment. They would need databases set up for every mod, and every combination of mods in order to properly do due diligence because its impossible to know if one mod creates a bug while another mod overwrites something else that fixes it.

So again, you don't fully understand what you're talking about here. The issue is so, so much bigger than you think it is.

 

[ShadowPilot]

I understand the differences in development, again I ask where the End game is to the features? Since we have such a steady flow of of suggestions will there never be an end to the features in essence meaning we'll never get an API?

 

[Edymnion]

I understand the differences in development, again I ask where the End game is to the features? Since we have such a steady flow of of suggestions will there never be an end to the features in essence meaning we'll never get an API?

They know what the end game is. They have said repeatedly that they have planned out what they want to do.

No, they cannot tell us what those plans are, because if they have something unique and awesome up their sleeves telling us means telling the competition (like Space Engineers) who have larger dev teams and could implement those features into their games before Schine could.

So they have a plan. They know what they want their end game to look like. Just because they can't tell us what those end game plans are doesn't mean they don't have them.

Sure, there are a steady flow of suggestions, but they are just that, suggestions. Schine rejects them all the time because they don't fit with their gameplan. Some ideas are minor tweaks that don't affect the endgame but are good ideas, so they can get added.

An API will come when we hit Beta. Just relax and trust that the people with the computer science and business degrees that are making a professional game have some idea of what they are doing, and that they understand their position better than you or I do.

 

[Arsat]

I understand the differences in development, again I ask where the End game is to the features? Since we have such a steady flow of of suggestions will there never be an end to the features in essence meaning we'll never get an API?

Features dont must be a part of the core design. The core design is not fix now. Thats why a API is not good in this development status.

When the core design/maincode what ever you call it is fix and "only" features come into game a API can come too.

 

[ShadowPilot]

Thank you for explaining and answering my question AndyP, essentially there is no end to content creation so we can pretty much assure that we won't be getting an API since there is no definitive end to the Alpha "Content" cycle.
[DOUBLEPOST=1459436993,1459436803][/DOUBLEPOST]Edy, refer to Andy's response he did in fact state they do not know the end. That they have a load of planned content but

However, still no way to estimate the alpha-end, which would consider us feature complete

 

[Edymnion]

Edy, refer to Andy's response he did in fact state they do not know the end. That they have a load of planned content but

He said they can't estimate it, not that they don't know what it is.

Huge difference.

But you know, nevermind. You're right. Schine doesn't know what its doing, they will never release an API, they are incompetent and we are all mindless cronies and drones. You are smarter than all of us, and you can see things we can't. You are 100% right.

Now we can end this train wreck, yes?

 

[AndyP]

I understand the differences in development, again I ask where the End game is to the features? Since we have such a steady flow of of suggestions will there never be an end to the features in essence meaning we'll never get an API?

We have a plan how far we will go for the game, and it will need some time.
Possibly take a look here: Starmade Roadmap.
In general we know what feature we want to implement, and use suggestions as guidelines and inspiration on how we can improve our idea of the feature.

Like, back when we wanted to add FTL, we had the general idea to allow some form of jumping around and not having to fly every single meter with the ships. From sci-fi games and personal opinion, jump drives and warpgates were equal solutions.
While the jumpdrive would be more flexible, it would need sane restrictions to make it not replace flying around in total.
However warpgates allowing a "networking" and establishing routes between systems/universes were also appealing to have.
The suggestions back then, showed both were theorized and had 'fans' for the mechanic.
So if we had only warpgate suggestions back then, we possibly would have discarded the "jump drive".
So both were added, keeping both systems and their use cases covered. (flexible short range, long range as infrastructure)

So suggestions are guidelines and good sources for improvements and inspiration for things we are going to plan.
They do not actually drive the development focus, but get a good weight in it. (However some suggestions look good, but cant be considered as "upcoming" features cover them already)

- Andy

 

[ShadowPilot]

Nauvran, if you're incapable of connecting a conversation without the use of quotes or remembering your own statements you need to look beyond Starmade and invest in some Ritalin or Adderall