New vision for Angband - Part 1

[Antoine]

I think fizzix or PowerWyrm could be good maintainers for V but i doubt either has the time.

A.

[Nick]

1. A new takkaria steps up and produces version 4.0, and people love it.

2. V fossilises at 3.5 and Angband lives on through Sil, ToME, FA, Mist and (perhaps!) Pyrel.

3. One or more of the devteam acquire a new lease of life and produce 3.6 which, somehow, is interesting for them to work on and welcomed by people who are not shouted down by detractors. Timo welcomes this as the best Angband ever and I update my sig again.

Or 4. Something else happens

[takkaria]

Or 4. Something else happens

OK, someone needs to say it.

Nick McConnell should be the Angband maintainer.

Comments from anyone, particularly myself, encouraged.

[Nick]

OK, someone needs to say it.

Nick McConnell should be the Angband maintainer.

Comments from anyone, particularly myself, encouraged.

You complete and utter bastard.

[MattB]

OK, someone needs to say it.

Nick McConnell should be the Angband maintainer.

Comments from anyone, particularly myself, encouraged.

To be honest, the only reason I haven't said this myself before is because I thought it was a given. I mean, it is, isn't it?

[half]

And yes, we have, as you guessed in another post, suffered huge amounts of opprobrium for making changes that people didn't like. I don't just mean the normal balance of criticism (which is always a bit more common than praise simply because we all take a bit more time to post about what we don't like rather than what we do) - I mean totally rabid, insanely vehement and over-the-top, both in volume and tone, way out of all proportion (IMO) to whatever it was that was bugging people.

What Magnate says here is accurate. There has been a *lot* of (undeserved) hostility, which saddened me whenever I visited the forum. This must have done a lot to break the morale of the developers. I would have given up much earlier in the face of that.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that there is very little of that on this same forum when it comes to Sil. I think that goes to confirm Magnate's suspicions that the anger was partly due to Angband's perceived 'sacred' status as opposed to Sil's youth.

[Antoine]

There were two different things going on. There was a lot of criticism of some fairly dodgy design decisions in V, which Sil has largely escaped because your design decisions have been so good. But then there was also hostility, which arose from bad manners and a sense of entitlement. The Sil player base doesnt have that sense of entitlement.

The V maintainer should have a good sense of design, which will avoid a lot of criticism, but also a thick skin, to put up with the residual hostility. Nick of course has both.

A.

[Susramanian]

Whose behavior to reward?

What galls me about the idea of letting Angband fossilize is that it would be rewarding exactly the wrong sort of behavior. Temper tantrums and name calling and whatever other hostility has shown up around here shouldn't be allowed so much influence over Angband's future. Of course it's easy for me to spout generalities like "shouldn't be allowed," since I'm not the one with the difficult job of disallowing anything. We're back to the need for somebody with vision and motivation and thick skin. I hope such a person (Nick?) steps up and gets to work making changes to Angband. As a first change, I suggest picking something so shocking that people prone to internet hostility totally melt down and leave the community. When they're gone, all the sensible adults can have nice rational discussions about the changes

[TJS]

Wow I didn't realise there was that much hostility going around. That's a shame since the game is much better these days than when I started playing 6-7 years ago. Three cheers for all the work that has gone into the game the last few years!

I would be tempted to name and shame personally, so probably just as well I don't know who they are

From working in the games industry there's a certain type that always prefers things the way they were regardless of what the change is (a certain 80s 8-bit gaming legend was particularly bad for it). I also think that people get a sense of entitlement if they've been playing the game longer than the people working on it.

Sil escapes the problem both because it is new (and really cool) but more because the people who run it were the ones that created it. If it ever gets passed on sometime in the future then I expect the criticism to start.

But hey the thread has had an excellent result already, there's a whole load of new ideas and we have a new maintainer

[TJS]

So we are in a situation where "the community" prefers the old maintainer model, but nobody wants to do that; the "devteam" prefers the newer model, but there's no incentive to develop Angband because people don't want what we want(ed) to do, and there's nobody who's willing to do development solely based on what forum posters want, without any direction of their own.

Actually thinking about this bit, the community is primarily the people who get off their arse and actually do the work. Yes yes making the odd comment on a forum here and there is worth a small amount, but it's the people who actually spend hours planning, discussing and coding stuff that are the ones that ultimately should matter the most.

If they want you to do what they want without bothering to do any work themselves then they better start sending out monthly wage cheques.

[chris]

I suggest picking something so shocking that people prone to internet hostility totally melt down and leave the community.

Simple: Remove Potions of Slime Mold Juice

[debo]

I expect V to get about 1000x harder if Nick ends up being the core maintainer

[HallucinationMushroom]

Nick's already been working on the new Vanilla. It's called Beleriand. V's finally getting wilderness code!

[Derakon]

Nick's already been working on the new Vanilla. It's called Beleriand. V's finally getting wilderness code!

This is a blatant disregard for the history and legacy of true Angband. Nick is ruining the game for fans who have been playing it for decades!

[kaypy]

Nick McConnell should be the Angband maintainer.

"FAAngband already does this"