As far as building IBX generation into PCS2, I'm pretty sure there was a reason we let the FS2 engine do that and not a separate program, although I can't exactly remember what it was. I don't know how having PCS2 generate it would make it go any faster than FS2 can do it, they both have access to the same data.
Kazan wasn't around and he, last asked, doesn't want to take the time to take the time to implement the IBX generation code into PCS2, nor does anyone else.
Having PCS2 generate it wouldn't make it go any faster than FS2...I didn't say it would, either. It could be twice as slow, too. But you act like people running -pofspew is a big enough deal to multithread it; they shouldn't be doing that in Freespace 2 if you can save IBX data in POF files. It should be done automatically in PCS2 when the geometry is converted to the POF, and loaded and saved with the rest of the POF data, so that the end users aren't required to be bothered with POFSpew. Granted, there's still reasons to test POF files, but I can't see much reason for that to be a frequent enough occurrence to spend a lot of time on optimizing it.
WMC, I have nothing against making things better, but there comes a point in time when you need to stop the line, so to speak, and fix your problems...
I don't know how to respond well to an ad hominem (however valid or invalid it may be) when it's in lieu of actually understanding what I said. General Battuta and Vertigo7 seem to get my point; you didn't.
I am extremely hesitant to work on the SCP for the concerns I expressed below. Communication on the team is complete crap; Goober scheduled a code freeze in the middle of the only free time I had this last summer. I've expressed this concern time and time again and there's been no change made. In fact, as near as I can tell, the majority of communication happens via PM or IM at this point.
I have no wish or desire to be made into a volunteer slave. I've worked, in some form, on the project for about 5 years. It's outlived its usefulness to me, personally, and I don't see the project as going in the direction for some 'higher good' right now. It's a game. It's not helping starving children in Africa. Its usefulness is measured by how entertaining it is, and how many people it entertains.
So if your claim is that I have some duty to sit around and bugfix all day, then, no. I don't want to spend the rest of my life redoing what other people have already done. If the existing game engine isn't capable of taking advantage of other people's work, if it's written in such a form that obstructs innovation more often than not, then the time I or anyone else spends working on it is suffering reduced leverage. At some point, the amount of time lost due to working around the existing constraints will equal the amount of time that could be used to write a new game engine with the same general properties as the Freespace 2 engine. It's impossible to measure that time, but I do think it can be said to exist. There's also a lot of capabilities that you lose out on in using the old engine, because you MUST maintain backwards compatibility, you MUST support the old files, you can't rewrite everything all at once, and so on and so forth.
So my personal opinion is not fixing bugs is dumb. My personal opinion is that good design leads to less bugs. Or rather, good design for the intended use leads to less bugs. The present engine had time constraints and assumed technology constraints with it. Those constraints may or may not exist now, and it's possible to take the time to question those constraints. Building a simple game engine doesn't take a whole lot of time. If it's done right, you can make little games that people can play and draw an audience for the engine. The fact that it's a new game engine has additional draw.
But if you want my own personal reason for why I'm not going to be bugfixing anytime soon - I don't enjoy it, and I absolutely disagree with the direction this project is headed, both in what I've detailed here, and in the attitude I've seen in spending $300 of community money on a toy, random forum pranks that more often than not end in forum crashes and errors, absolutely no inclination to listen to anything anybody else says without a considerable amount of condescension, banning community members because they ask the wrong question, and so on and so forth. No one act that's particularly horrible, but this is not an attitude or an environment that I can support in good conscience. Arguing hasn't changed anything. So I've done my own thing, done my best to make it work, and I'm pretty satisfied how that turned out. I've seen far less bugs flashing across mantis that had anything to do with them than I've ever seen, and I got far more implemented and repaired in the couple of months that I was coding full-bore than any other time.
I would prefer to work in a community where people try to find answers to problems and feature requests and there's enough manpower that there is time to innovate. I'd rather see that there are enough good ideas floating around and the environment is conductive enough that people can find a balance between preventative measures and enabling systems. I see some kind of mutual cooperation as being a necessity in such an environment, because everyone, including the lowliest bug tester, is giving up some kind of time for participation in the project. If you aren't paying them, you can't expect them to want to work for you, so some kind of individual expression or payback is necessary to make them want to participate. Or if you want to be less self-centered about it, you are
obligated to do something for those other people in order to make it worth their time to participate, or you are guilty of unfairly exploiting them.
I don't know if such a place exists, but I do see a significant deviation from that vision and here. Sadly, I seem to be the only one who sees it, so all I can do is express my opinion and wait and see if my hypotheses is correct. It is possible that 3 or 4 people will come in and renovate the old engine to be fully functional and up-to-date, but I think it's extremely unlike. On the other hand, I think it's extremely unlikely that anybody in the community will have the desire, drive, time, and skills necessary to undertake such a project. I've expressed my opinion but I don't expect other people to necessarily agree and I'm certainly not planning on undertaking it myself. At this point I plan to stick around in a sort of advisory role if anybody has any further questions or problems that I'm needed to answer, but other than that, my coding days are over. I've given & sacrificed much for this project, and it's time for me to move on and let this project go this own separate direction so I can get on with the rest of my life.
Much more interesting post than I expected to write.
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