Milestones

[Erazer]

Hello,

So basically this project (as of now, the development is frozen, God knows why (Double parenthesis ftw, but yeah, I don't know why, some others might)) needs to set up some milestones.

To be honest, apart from the large amount of commits and stuff the devs have added, theres not a real milestone to be achieved, as of the moment and the way I see it its just a commit-every-thing-we-can-encounter. Which in the end, its really disorganized.

The community of rA should be able to see and know about these milestones to see if they need to actually upgrade (update their current revision to theirs+1 or just wait for theirs+50 revision to do a proper update) or just keep it until a proper milestone is reached.

For instance:

Milestone 1

• Get all 3rds to work properly
  
• Get all the skills from the 3rds to work properly
  
• Arrange and fix all items regarding all episodes up to 14.2
  
• Provide the community with a proper data to be used until this milestone.
  

Milestone 2

• Get all renewal mechanics working.
  
• Get Oburo and Koguro (Fix those spelling mistakes if I got any on those names), working.
  
• Clean the jAthena leftovers from the source.
  
• Add the missing chunks of npc's (Quests, jobs, etc).
  
• Rework the Scripting system actually handled by rA.
  

That way, ladies and gentlemen, things would be a lot lot cleaner/organized and for a period of time (doesn't matters how long a milestone takes to be completed) the whole dev team would focus on just 1 milestone instead of doing random commits from all different things that people want.

From RO-Resources, I found that a proper SRC documentation SHOULD be made for people to actually get ahold of eA's crap SRC coding (No offence but yeah, you know it is) so this way, the whole community (Well, ill just say this but I know, I'm just being Martin Luther King-here) would be a bit more helpful and probably, more devs would be glad to help (See, I don't blame anyone for not being helpful when it comes to SRC editting, I myself, when I started to mess up with eA's src, it was a pain in the frigging ass, theres so much shit scattered around its not even funny) and yu.

This would have been probably a topic that should've been created since day 1 but I don't see it yet, at least not a public one where people can actually know what to do, when to do it and if its worth the wait.

That being said, I take my leave.

[Arcenciel]

There is one that is kinda similar though less specific...it probably needs to be updated...

http://rathena.org/wiki/RAthena:Status

But, I do agree that we need a more pro-active goal setting around here. So +1 for calling for it.

[Mystery]

What about a Milestone for cleaning up eAthena codes and scripts?

[xXAkatsukiUchihaXx]

I completely Agree! with Error404 +1

Edited March 10, 2012 by xXAkatsukiUchihaXx

[Hayate Yoshida]

Agreed, I like to know the goals and where everything is pretty much headed. Maybe do a timescale, say 3-6 months and make goals for periods.

[Lighta]

Fixing eAthena codes and scripts, can't be a milestone imo since it's a way too big definition, that we can't even see the scope properly, is it all tiny script errors ? all db issues ? does this contain eA majs etc...

Milestone defined by Error404 like all script regarding episode 14.2 are way more interesting, since there you know where to focus, plan a ETA etc...

Anyway I do have faith in you guys even if it seem to slow down a bit thoses days, I don't really get why you halted 3ceam merge (like missing some sorcerer skills/status) or brathena since code more closed to rA.

Finally I'd change Error404 milestones for something like that :

- Clean the jAthena leftovers from the source and document functions

- Implement all 3rd job skills

- Fix renewal mechanics

yes basically something more Core oriented since the majority of us could fix those items, script errors, etc.. (Don't mistunderstand me here I don't say it's not important but we can deal with it ourself so don't set it as a major achievement)

Finally I'd rather the status,skill systeme than the script one, wich is fine imo.

[Erazer]

Those I said were mostly an example, the idea all overall is to actually have a goal.

[Fuyuko]

⁺¹

^{I can agree too. The work that has been done is great and all but I've been seeing more fixes that have nothing to do with the actual skills or source. I've been trying to help by testing between iro and testing within rathena to find bugs but some of the information I can provide won't really help since some of the classes don't even have skills yet so there's no way to test them. Ive seen the update to GM's and group policy on that but it wasn't majorly important were if the classes atleast all worked we could continue to finish testing and providing information on them to get them to the point were they could be shipped as ready to go. Even if you don't plan on merging with another project again what use is all new features when all the skills don't work which use these new features. So I say}

^Skills

^{then mechanics}

^{then everything else which doesn't depend on those above.}

[Judas]

hopefully we get one of the devs input on this topic

[Erazer]

So I create the topic and I get less rep than ^

Sad day is sad.

Anyways,

Hi all,

Indeed. The development team has actually been working on this behind the scenes for some time. We may need to ask the communities' input, but for the most part, we may have something that we want to go on. Obviously, development from eAthena still takes priority (fixing old bugs, making code cleaner and more optimized), but we obviously want to keep going in the direction of RE mechanics and continuous features.

Once we have something, we'll get it together in a community-readable format.

Thanks for your concerns.

You didn't get my point.

Milestones would serve the purpose of not only letting everyone know of what the current objective of the Dev team is but, when should One really update/upgrade.

In other words, milestones should be considered as "Stable" releases, when its guaranteed that up to that point, all features promised are working and that you should stick to that until another milestone is reached.

Currently, and as I see it, you all, trying no to be rude here (most people just don't understand some others way of saying things), are just commiting for the heck of it So just set global goals and a ETA on them. Finish those goals and release a Stable package. Once you have that solid base, then you can keep doing random commits and set a new goal.

That being said, I want the reps! Cuz the more reps I get, the more ladies I'll date with, fk yeah.

[SkzBR]

RAthena starts to refuse community suggestions to make this a more professional way of developing and releasing things. Every 'company' (yes, we aren't company, but we 'work' for a public) have a method of developing, testing, releasing prototypes and deploying releases. Milnestone make team focus on what is MORE important and have a way to do in CURRENT moment... Of couse, all developers prefer to implement new things instead of fixing bugs, rewriting stuffs or modifying anything that is done from jAthena... but what is more important in the current moment, or what is more important to make the emulator more functional, close-to-official and easier to update?

[Hayate Yoshida]

It definitely isn't an easy/simple thing at all. I agree on getting the eAthena bugs out first. I think it'd kinda be odd if we didn't since rAthena is supposed to be (at least in my opinion) better than eAthena.

[Kenpachi]

I have to agree with Error404. Fixing bugs can't be called "milestone". It's a basic task every developer is responsible for at any time.

As you may noticed I was promoted to leader of script/DB development so things can start now. I'll talk to "my" developers and make a plan on how to get things done and announce it when it's definite.

[Panallox]

One of the major pitfalls of other forks of eAthena is that they tend to dive straight into developing new content. The belief, apparently, is that if you don't develop new content immediately then people will lose interest in the forked emulator. This is a lot of crock. One of the major concerns right now is to re-work a lot of the eAthena code to improve our code-base, and to fix up the plentiful bugs that still exist within the source. For example, once my coursework period is over I will be committing the status database update (which converts source-specific status settings to a modifiable database format.) This is the kind of change that eAthena has been waiting to see for a few years now, but was never completed.

If anything, one of the milestones should be 'fix that crazy eAthena crap up', or even 'step up the source game', but since fixing bugs isn't really considered a milestone, we'll just slowly integrate new content while we build around the existing codes and try to improve the functionality of the emulator

[SkzBR]

Can I try to send a patch to remove hard-coded clif_displaymessage errors that aren't official, like when you try to remove some item of your inventory that is binded to your character? This messages make emulator not user-friendly to other countries languages and make the gameplay visually more 'trash'...

Also, i had made a patch to correct some files encoding that breaks international symbols when you try to translate the emulator.

I'm posting this here because on eAthena no developer have take a look on it when i posted that, and if rAthena change to git, i can just make a pull request, but...

Edited March 14, 2012 by SkzBR

[Brian]

Do you want to add them to bugreport:2265 ?

[Erazer]

One of the major pitfalls of other forks of eAthena is that they tend to dive straight into developing new content. The belief, apparently, is that if you don't develop new content immediately then people will lose interest in the forked emulator. This is a lot of crock. One of the major concerns right now is to re-work a lot of the eAthena code to improve our code-base, and to fix up the plentiful bugs that still exist within the source. For example, once my coursework period is over I will be committing the status database update (which converts source-specific status settings to a modifiable database format.) This is the kind of change that eAthena has been waiting to see for a few years now, but was never completed.

If anything, one of the milestones should be 'fix that crazy eAthena crap up', or even 'step up the source game', but since fixing bugs isn't really considered a milestone, we'll just slowly integrate new content while we build around the existing codes and try to improve the functionality of the emulator

Finally.

So yeah, I'm not in pro either of adding stuff without fixing the current ones. Theres no use of adding and keep adding and just add a huge load of crap if the base trembles at any possible interaction beween each function.

I'd say the most important milestone as of now is a total eACrap cleanup and optimization, along this, a full documentation on rA's source should be done. I keep saying this because people don't know the importance of a proper documentation.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, eA's source is so messed up, it really needs a rewrite.

This takes time but I'm sure everyone will be most than welcomed to wait for a proper step-by-step rewrite. Functions could be optimized. Packets would be much easier to capture and thus, understand, there wouldn't be redundant functions doing almost the exact thing but for a different file.

So yeah, thats what all of you should be focusing right now. You got Renewal, good job, you good 3rds (not finished but still...), good job, but you are still working on a deprecated and non-solid emulator as eAthena is (Says the XXXX amount of bugs in it).

I'm having the reps ups, zoooh, i'll get tha ladies mang!

[CalciumKid]

My next major move is having the script team rework the NPC folder, and I have brought this up several times with the staff.

We intend to, or atleast most of us agreed it'd be a good idea to release milestones as episodes.

We'd have one milestone at 13.2 (pre-re). From there, each episodes content would be it's own milestone.

The biggest part of this job is sorting out what is missing where regarding the current state of the emu. We have far too much content to sort out easily, and with that said it's hard to determine what belongs in what episode. We have bits of everything.