Re: [s-d] Proposal: Vested Interests

["Mike McGann" <mike.mcgann@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have nothing against scripting certain aspects if done well and
properly. I just don't think anyone has the time to manage what needs
to be done. I am a programmer by trade and while I could help out, it
also means that some days or weeks, I'm just not in the mood to look
at any more code when I get home from work. And sometimes I have a lot
of free time, and other times I have none. I think everyone is like
that.

Scripting to handle the complexities of the game probably indicate
that the game has gotten too complex. It would be fine for a code
based nomic, but this isn't one of those. It wouldn't be a problem as
long as there were people dedicated to working on it, but as soon as
that interest vanishes, what then?

Scripting to provide convenience is fine. Certain aspects could be
easily automated as long as there is a way to manually handle things
when something goes wrong. The clock script and bot is a convenience
script. If it stops working one day, the game can continue--it isn't
dependent on it. It would be nice though to insure that it continues
to work.

Scripting to implement gameplay that can't be done any other way is
interesting. Previous real world experience makes me feel that it
isn't a good idea in the long run. Creating things is the easy and fun
part. Maintaining them is the boring, but necessary part. It is easy
to build way too much infrastructure before realizing how much of a
headache it is going to be later on. And usually, the person who does
the creating is not the same person who later has to do the
maintenance. I'm still bitter from an experience where an unknown
piece of code surfaced from a previous employee that apparently was
very important, needed some work done immediately, there was no
documentation of any sort, it was running as an unsanctioned service
(cough, on his old personal workstation under a local apache
installation) and the author was so thrilled with his work that he
decided to name as many of his variables as possible after South Park
characters.

- Hose

On Nov 14, 2007 10:35 AM, Geoffrey Spear <geoffspear@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Nov 14, 2007 10:21 AM, Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > All of the old code systems broke down because they relied on a single
> > person doing all the coding. I think what we need is a common body of
> > code with an actual team of programmers in charge of it.
>
> Or at the very least a code repository somewhere reliable like
> Sourceforge or Google Code so if the programmer(s) disappear the code
> is still available.
>
> Nomicapolis has actually been discussing the same sorts of issues
> lately, and I think it's possible a hybrid CodeNomic/normal nomic may
> result where the infrastructure is built like a codenomic but the
> gameplay can still be attractive to non-programmers.
>
> On the other hand, it's also a lot more likely that player apathy will
> cause us to stick with the current infrastructure with 1 admin hacking
> on it a bit.
> --
> Geoffrey Spear
> http://www.geoffreyspear.com/
>
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