[froglok23]

Hi all,

Most of you won’t know me, I kind of phase in and out of EQEmu. I originally got involved back with EQEmu 5.5 by writing some tools to add items to NPCs loot list and such. Since then, due to outside commitments, I've been phasing in and out.

I’ve seen eh team change so much, that the only people I remember now are LE, image and devnoob really.

Gee, that was quite a few years ago....

However, back to the point. After all my years of phasing in and out, long time reading, first time poster sort of thing I really wanted to get back involved in official dev'ing for EQEMU.. Why? Because it’s a fucken awesome project. However, from my own experiences, I have noticed things which prevent this.

First and foremost, the lack of communications which has already been drummed to death on this thread. Really there’s no too little communication between what’s happening with the project and whatnot.

This makes it hard to find out exactly what is going on. Then when you finally get the balls to ask what’s happening in IRC, majority of the time is attitude and smart arse remarks. I don’t know what this steams from, as I said, this I just my personal experience.

Secondly, as my own career has lead me too many senior development rolls, I’ve seen a lot of projects and the one thing which keeps a project is alive, besides communication, is collaboration. People working together and sharing ideas.

This does happen with EQEmu, but generally your only listen to if your known or have been around forever (but by no means I’m saying I’ve been around forever, haven’t not contributed to the office code in any form).

I think what EQEmu firstly needs is a clean stand on where it is heading, lay down some process, control, accountability. Now granted this is a community project, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have design documents, open forums between devs, admins and users.

I did talk to FWN(I think I got it right) and he did point me to some basic documentation on the wiki on the architectures used in EQEmu.

Hopefully he will agree in saying this, when it comes to EQEmu, it fails miserably on the topic of collaboration, certainly in the dev area.

Thirdly, al the pointes previously stated by other members, code not making it into the official release, and what code is made part of the official really is bandaids and hardly documented.

If we want EQEmu to succeed to a point where it’s stable and playable with all functionality to titanium, then we need to implement some process, control and accountability.

Lastly, this is more of a pet hate than anything else, which may or may not reflect on the site (so sorry for going off topic, but it’s *semi* related). The site is bloody dark.

Could we lighten it up, more recent updates, a better user experience?

Our own little community here in OZ, we have both EQ (EQEmu) and WOW (mangos) servers running and the portal for the wow server is simply amazing (granted I’m not a big fan of wow), but it looks good and it gets people attracted to it.

Now, this is all well and good you might say, but who’s going to step up to the task.....

Well I for one would gladly offer my skills in the software development and process & control sections. Having been a project manager on MANY different kinds of projects, I feel that my controbution could have a positive effect on the EQEmu project and community.

I’m also sure, there are a bunch of people feeling the same way, who feel that they could bring a new era to the project. So why don’t we?

In order for this to happen, realalisticly (and some people aren’t going to like this), the project needs a revamp, on a management level.

If the dev's have lost instrest (burn out is 110% normal, etc) then they need to either step down or be forced to step down and had over controller.

Does anyone (who is an official staff member) have access to the security for the CVS to grant new members official access to the source tree?

Also, let’s get the code documented, some processes & controls in. The Wiki could be the perfect spot for this...


Also talking with FWN, there’s no official bug list or anything like that... That is going to have to change with more process and control around it.

Now... DONT get me wrong, we don’t want to go Nazi with it, but I feel that the project needs some revolutionary changes to move forward and get out of this rut as it was.


All of which, I’m glad to donate my time and serves to helping, but thus far, 98% of my questions or ideas, have been met with smart arse remarks or land on deaf ears (or fingers as it is the case online).

Now also, as I stated, these are just my personal views and may appear very generic and broad, but they are made with the best intentions to get the project in full swing.

As someone said, it will only take a hand full of people to get EQEmu project energy levels up and though the roof again!

Froglok

P.S this is not an attack on anyone or the project; personally I just think it is time for change.

P.S.S I would also like to point out that previous devs have done a outstanding job in getting EQEmu to where it is today! (But, we need to change to move it forward)

P.S.S This post is intended to by constructive criticism