oh snap haha

Focus
 

Focus people, lets not turn this into a bitching thread, about what people did or did not do.

Lets discuss ideas on how to get the project back on track....

If you want to btich, name call and shit liek the last 2 posts, make a new thread!

-froglok

Lets do it!
 

So far, these are the ideas / topics which need addressing

1. Dev Team - Finding out what is going on.
- Do they need to step down?
- OR - Do they need to rejoin to the community?
- OR - Do we need to forcibly appoint new developers?
- OR - Do they need to appoint new developers to join their ranks?

2. Documentation & Collaboration
We need to pick up the level of documentation associated with the project to be better focused.
Documentation of the code needs to be done
Collaboration between various teams (database, EQEmu and the community)

3. Process and Control
Investigate what process and controls are currently in place
Develop new processes and control for development of both EQEmu and various databases. (I.e. official release process, documentation process & control, making items official, alpha & beta)
Implement Process and Control though the project (i.e. what process is used to get new code in, what process is used to ensure the quality of code that is making it into the CVS, etc)
Quality Gates - Do we have any? Should we have them to stop potential harmful or under developed code making into the CVS? (I so think we should!)

4. Attitude
Stop the bullshit attitudes which can be seen though the forums and IRC. This just pisses people who want to help off.
IRC at best is a hostile place with only 20-25 people in it, 90% of which just idle. We need to change this around... people won’t like this, but if they are arseholes, /quit and take their servers with them. I’m sure people are willing to run IRC Servers (i.e. I will gladly run one for EQEmu)


5. Revamp the Site.
Use a better colour scheme
Keep the site up to date with relevant and current information

6. Audit
Where exactly is the code base at, what can be improved, what can be refracted, etc

Where exactly is the databases at (i.e. lets get a working expansion by expansion database going (this has been the case for the 2 major ones thus far, but still, we need to identify just where they are at and make it know))

7. Supporting Services
Let’s take advantage of services offered by SourceForge, i.e. bug lists and such. Currently I can find 2 bug lists, both of which were updated well, really last year some time and are so not relevant it’s not funny.

That all I can think of off the top of my head, I’m sure we can refine these topics, maybe cut some down and add some, as always, these are just my personal views and opinions, please feel free to comment and suggest different views.

8. Education of the community.
Lets education the community not to be dumb arses and constantly arse the same questions over and over again. This just pisses everyone off if the same questions are asked (i.e. when we are going to live, why I can’t get the login server source code, etc).

9. Investigate other services and technologies which can better the EQEmu Project

Let’s get some momentum behind this peoples!

-froglok

Let's see.......

#1 A couple of the devs that are still hanging out, and contributing silently, have contributed that way for a long time.
I do agree it's time for change, but there are a few Old-school devs that deserve thier positions, if for nothing else still being here for the project.
There definately needs to be a link between the Devs and the public, but I don't think that is a priority at this time since the same small group are controlling the emu and the DB project, public input isn't really needed, so not a top priority.

#2 Code commenting has always been a bit laxed/loose (some of it used to be pretty colorful :) )
A few people have tried to clean up the commenting along the way, but the code has been around awhile, and would take quite the effort to try to do more than generalize and condense what's there.
Alot of it is that way because it's been patched/fixed/changed/commented out, etc to accomodate different other code changes, etc, etc.
Becomes a nightmare real quick.
Set up guidelines for new code additions?? Min / Max comment structure??
That way we at least get the newer code/fixes/patches covered.

I think the whole thing ran better when the Development team was the development team and the DB projects, not just PEQ were being worked on by thier own seperate teams, each running thier own server with public input being a key element in the process.
If the key people don't recognize player/public input as important, the players will drop out or move on, and the more we lose , the smaller the community gets.
We need to spark up some community spirit, drag out some old screen shots from a few years back, remember way back in 2002 when npc's first started moving??... OK bouncing/sliding/slingshotting/and disappearing, but they didn't stand still :)
Back then EVERYONE got excited and wanted to jump in and help, no matter how inept or uncoordinated they were, they still wanted to help.
We need that kind of spark again, get some fresh faces to come forward and show us that they too have some great ideas/fixes/changes to add, or just to help out with input and general help to newbs on the forum/irc.
If we really want the project to be better, we need to fix it, it's supposed to be a community effort.

#3 According to the original mission of PEQ, each expansion was to be finished, tested, fine tuned then released.
It's become hard to stick to the mission plan evidently, since now the addition of multiple expansions and even non expansion correct additons have become commonplace, as a means to pacify players I guess, and I see new posts all the time mentioning overlooked npc's or objects from zones that should have been finished from prior expansions.
Rushing the work always leads to disaster, It may take a bit longer, and people may complain along the way, but when they source the DB in it should work, and be of High Quality, not a work in progress that needs hours of work.

As for the Emulator end, the coders in the community need to maybe form a panel, have new code snippets/fixes/changes reviewed once a week or so and any valid code be commited on at least a weekly basis, so that the fix that was made this week isn't sitting in a forgotten post for weeks at a time.
If need be , have community elections, among qualified persons to head up the panel???
Elect a couple people, not just one, that are capable of commiting the code so there is always someone available for the weekly commit???
Quality control is a must, not sure what is in place, if anything right now.

#4 The attitude in irc has been there since I came here a LONG time ago.
It used to irritate me too, when I created #npcmovdb channel, we would try to help the people and be decent, and we had quite a few people that would stop by and comment on how nice it was to log into our channel, get an answer (even a correct one most of the time) without all the hassle.
I guess it's easier to bark at the newbs and discourage them , than it is to answer a question, and satisfy thier need so they can go about business.
Anyways, point being EqEmu irc has always been and probably will always be, an attitude waiting to happen, there are actually a few of the irc channels that help people :)


#5 Agree completely, like black, but we went a wee bit overboard???
Color is good, color is your friend.
Would be great to have relevant info maintained regularly, but we get back to the lack of shared information again, and the persons with the access to do so being available to actually do it.

#6 See #3

#7 I guess it's just easier to have the bugs reported on the forums for the individual projects, makes it easier to keep track of them, if the team actually monitors the forum I know that the DB bug forum got a good workout, and the resolved bugs section is looking bigger all the time.


#8 It's funny, everyone who has been here more than six months says the same thing about asking stupid, asked a million times questions, but they are the same stupid-asked a million times questions that EVERYONE asked and got chewed out for when they arrived new and exicted about playing EQ on a "Player run server"......


That's my view on things, not that anyone really gives a shit anymore.

EqEmu has survived many rough spots/times through the years, it has it's ups and downs but somehow always seems to survive.

Buffer Overflow
 

HI all,

It just occurred to (a link between exploiting which has been going on and a warning I’m getting), when I compile EQEmu in VS 2k5 (following the guide) I get the following warnings:

Warning 1 warning C4996: 'sprintf' was declared deprecated c:\eqemu-0.7.0-1034\common\sharedlibrary.cpp 110

Which, originally I just wrote off as *nix being compiled on windows and didn’t give it much thought... well that was silly of me.

sprintf is unsafe and can be exploited with buffer overflows.

What’s a buffer overflow? In short, it’s when a block of data in written to a buffer that is too small.

I.e. writing 10 chars to a buffer which can only handle 8 chars.

The solution for this (at least on windows) is to use sprtinf_s.

Or for a more generic solution (cross platform) snprintf which ahs these safety checks.

What’s people’s ideas / thoughts?

- froglok

P.S for more information about buffer overflows, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow

Had to look it up since I wasn't really sure exactly what a "fork" was. And I guess for me to fully understand what this means, I had to look up the true meaning to what the word "impass" means (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impasse); in short, it's like a stalemate in a chess game, for whatever reason - in our case, we are at an "impass", due to simple lack of comunication.
I guess already there has been a "fork", when the original dev(s) were booted out, for whatever reasons. If the original Devs decide to continue their direction, then they will rightfully hold the original source, and what we have now is a fork? How about the databases: should they be considered as part of the "source" , and if so, where is the original database that should have been what we all worked on?

Angelox,

Thanks for posting that info, even gave me a better understanding too (which is never a bad thing).

I don’t think forking the project is worth it at this stage to be honest.

Lets reconcile and get communication flowing again, that should the main priority in my opinion.

As for the database... hmm, that’s a bit more of a complex issue, due to the database... Well databases... The 2 main versions, which gets preference / priority over the other? Should a 3rd be created, which houses both of them, etc?

- froglok

I always felt there were room for 2 and maybe more databases. That's why I released mine after hording it for a few months. I wasn't trying to compete with FNW's PEQ, but rather I wanted to offer people a choice. I have to say, if it wasn't for Angelox's database I might not have accepted FNW's offer to take over PEQ because then we'd be back to one db and no choice for the players.

Angelox once compared database design with art and he was right on the money with that analogy. That being said, there should be no official database project. Players have the right to choose which they like to use based on personal preference whether it be technical or political. Hell, people still ask me for my old database. Much of it has been merged into PEQ, but people often don't want to deal with the evil empire that is PEQ. I can understand it, normally, I support the small guy too.

Do this plz....

Ok, I think that we're all agreeing on the what(s), now we're just haggling on the how(s).

we can sit here and negotiate this all day (for weeks), but someone needs to grab the reigns and run with it.

Suggested Execution:
Collaboration Space:
Matt, would it be possible for you to split the dev section to add a "Community" dev section?

Since I don't think we want to do a full project fork, but the devs don't want to take the time to test / add the community code, I suggest that we take their code changes and test / add them to our code, as if it was submitted by the community. At that point, we would be able to keep a comprehensive source version, rather than a rogue code source.

Over time, I feel that this approach would make the community code, the official source for the project.

Code Repository
We will need someone (please step up and volunteer) to set up a repository for code builds. I guess this would be done through source forge. Whoever sets this up, should delegate to a few trusted people to keep this clean.

We should have all the official working database tools up there as well, along with a comprehensive guide on building the source. There are 45 different guides on the forums and wiki, and none of them work 100%, they all expect that you've used Visual Studio or whatever tool before. We need to make this project accessible to the masses. If anyone is willing to come in and join this team, they should be welcomed and treated with respect. We gain NOTHING from flaming new people. Let me repeat that:

We gain NOTHING from flaming new people.


Let's get this thing started. What other items need to be handled?

Dax

Can't quote froglok here but 2005 did depreciate sprintf, but I believe snprintf should still work and it allows you to specify the max size of the buffer.

Id rather take a little time and plan this before we just go about on our way and end up in extactly the same spot.

Suggested Execution:
Collaboration Space:

WEe do alrady have this, but its so under used :(

This is so not what we want in my opinion, we dont want to have 2 seperate versions, a offical and community version. we want an offical version which the community contributes to.

See above, I belive we shoudl only have 1 source tree

Unfortantly, I dont think we have any offical 3rd party tools. Maybe this is somethign we realyl need to consider and extend for EQEmu.

1000% agree here, but we want to putit on the right path now and as such, I think creatuing another source tree/fork is so not the way to go. I belvie we shoudl get the current devs back into the community and go from there

Once again, jus tmy opinion

-froglok

Sorry if my previous post sounds harsh, but spliting it to a offical and community version is somehting i feel very strongly that we shoudl avoid.

1 release is the way to go and then patches for custom code.

In order to ensure community code gets put into the offical project, we woudl need a process for code submissions, reviews, quality assurance and then finally merge it into the sourcer tree.

- froglok

The issue which would have to be addressed would be quality of the source code. As a software dev over nearly 15 years, we only want quality source code in the project to ensure security, stability and flexibility and sorry to say, but not all code provides this when submitted. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not everyone is up to the task of writing high grade code. This is where the dev team needs to check the code submitted and rewrite it if need to ensure its quality.

If we just allow anyone to add code, we are going to open sooooo many problems. I.e. even more security exploits, laggy or buggy code.
This is so not what we want in my opinion, we don’t want to have 2 separate versions, an official and community version. We want an official version which the community contributes to.
First things first tho, we need to get input from the dev team before we all run off and do our own this. Let’s make EQEmu united again, not fractured more.
Any who, its Fathers day here (my 2nd one) and im off to a bbq, so tonight ill have more input and start typing up some policy and process which the community can review and have input on :)

- froglok

I really think this thread is going somewhere :)