[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Development Strategies [Was Documentation, Usability and Development]

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 11:34:23AM -0500, Andrew Sutton wrote:

> excellent point... there seems to be a fundamental divide on the actual 
> direction of the game. there's one camp that believes that features should 
> only be added by core developers, restricting the feature set to those that 
> have been approved and tested. the other camp believes that customizability 
> is the goal to success (if not necessarily performance :)

In the 3 years I've been following Freeciv it has become much more
customizable, although nothing takes it beyond a multiplayer Civ I and II.
Little of this customizability is actually being used.  The game has also
become more portable, but the user base seems more or less stable.

The general direction has been consolidation.

> who gets to decide the eventual direction of the game. IMO there seems to be 
> considerable short-sightedness on the part of the maintainers.

Who?  There is one (1) maintainer to speak of, Raimar.
We haven't always been so lucky during the last 3 years.

> the alternative would be to develop in anticipation of the needs of 
> users/developers. anticipating eventual features would lead to a more 
> flexible framework.

Definitely, but is it worth the trouble?  I've never seen more than 30
players at once on civserver.freeciv.org and they *never* ask to play
with an alternative ruleset.  If the existing range of options in rulesets
isn't being used, is it worthwhile to make the game more extensible?
 
> it seems that the main conflict comes from vision: near future to eventual 
> future. so what's the answer. who decides the future of freeciv?

Whoever takes charge.  (Don't look at me ...)

> andy

-- 
Reinier