Giving Back, How Do?

[elantzb]

Schine,

I'm looking for ways to give back or at least expedite your work.

I understand that bug reports are helpful, but the bug tracker seems to be down?

Anyway, can the Community help by refitting stock ships/stations for the new systems? Though it makes sense to hold off on that until Weapons 2.0 is released, I figured I'd just ask.

Or can we help by providing playtest/QA analyses of dev builds (or the latest stable release)? With screenshots and spreadsheets and all that? Should that get its own forum or a new category in the bug tracker? Can we help catch exploits/game-breakers before releases?

Are there areas that need more moderation? Here on the SMD, or the Discord?

<edit>Or Wiki editors?</edit>

Do you need volunteer developers?


How can the Community help support your vision for StarMade? Seems a lot of folks have fallen into whatever options they think they've been presented with--coming here to either praise your work or complain about it, make little tertiary suggestions that are mostly specific to their own desires, or propose half-baked rewrites of features that are barely out of the gates, and (again) only serve their *own* vision of what they want this game to be. ( I for one think that you ought to be posting bug reports or constructive feedback before you're allowed to complain ;P )

Anyway yeah, what do?

--elantzb

 

[therimmer96]

Phabricator is the bug tracker.

 

[Edymnion]

If you really want to help in an easy way, buy the game. Get your shiny little white and black forum badge.

Beyond that?

Blueprints. If something doesn't seem to be balanced right, or the mechanics are acting funky in ways you don't think they should, save a ship that is experiencing it to blueprint, export it, and upload it here where the devs can load it up and see for themselves. Its one thing to say "this is broken to the point only X is feasible" and actually providing "Here's ships A, B, and C. They're all roughly the same block count and size, but C is DRASTICALLY more/less powerful and A or B for no good reason other than it seems to exploit X and Y more based purely on shape".

Really can't stress that one enough. The more tangible, direct evidence and numbers you can bring to bear, the more useful that feedback is.

 

[Comradecolonel]

I like your assessment of the siuation at hand. Its clear that things aren't going to well around here these days. We need some real solutions to some real problems. I wish there was something that the community could do to better this game but it seem that the people in charge want to help and fix the problems that many have face in creating this game directly.If we could work on the issues more directly, i have no doubt that we could help things along. Alas we are rendered merely spectators in the development.

What is it that you want to accomplish? is it taking away the developers ability to develop? Or do you want steer the game in the right direction? Where do you see yourself in all of this?

 

[NaStral]

If Schine were to put together a comprehensive guide on how to test, fill out bug reports and do any other helpful activity needed for an open alpha game like this it would go a long way getting things on the right track.

 

[petlahk]

Schine,

I'm looking for ways to give back or at least expedite your work.

I understand that bug reports are helpful, but the bug tracker seems to be down?

Anyway, can the Community help by refitting stock ships/stations for the new systems? Though it makes sense to hold off on that until Weapons 2.0 is released, I figured I'd just ask.

Or can we help by providing playtest/QA analyses of dev builds (or the latest stable release)? With screenshots and spreadsheets and all that? Should that get its own forum or a new category in the bug tracker? Can we help catch exploits/game-breakers before releases?

Are there areas that need more moderation? Here on the SMD, or the Discord?

<edit>Or Wiki editors?</edit>

Do you need volunteer developers?


How can the Community help support your vision for StarMade? Seems a lot of folks have fallen into whatever options they think they've been presented with--coming here to either praise your work or complain about it, make little tertiary suggestions that are mostly specific to their own desires, or propose half-baked rewrites of features that are barely out of the gates, and (again) only serve their *own* vision of what they want this game to be. ( I for one think that you ought to be posting bug reports or constructive feedback before you're allowed to complain ;P )

Anyway yeah, what do?

--elantzb

I really should probably go to sleep, but, here are a few things I do/would do:

- I post discussions and changes that I think are reasonable about the dev builds. Note: I said reasonable. I try not to rant and rave and get all upsettii about them if I don't think people have enough of a point.

- The new bug tracker is Phabricator You'll need a separate account. Also, report the dev build bugs to release candidates or the devs will get annoyed at you. And, if you wanna annoy them on the reg, you can stick the specific dev build in the title. :P

- I tried my hand at wiki editing about three years ago. But, I was a young and anxious sohpomore in highschool then, and then the game started changing a bunch. I plan to try again in the summer after the weapons update is completed when the game should be stable again.

- Please oh god please do ship refits. I would do it but have convinced myself I don't have the time. Also, I don't know how to get to the hidden ship files for each of the factions in order to refit them. And, I would rather do more text-based stuff like wiki-editing xD (Though, I might refit a few ships after weapons update as well.)

- Game breakers and exploits would probably belong with a dev build bug report, or a PM to the devs.

- And, I literally just posted a sorta psuedo Armor VS Weapon-Srength analysis for the early dev build!
[doublepost=1524550709,1524550557][/doublepost]

If Schine were to put together a comprehensive guide on how to test, fill out bug reports and do any other helpful activity needed for an open alpha game like this it would go a long way getting things on the right track.

I might consider putting one up tomorrow. Or, talking to you about it on discord. But I have some work to do tomorrow, and really need to stop procrastinating sleep.