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

["Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:21 PM 01/12/08 +0100, Reinier Post wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 11:34:23AM -0500, Andrew Sutton wrote:
>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.

Customizable in a very restricted way. The real problem is that none of
the customizations really replace the lack of basic features that are
still missing.

>> 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?

That is like saying there is no need for any options in Danish supermarket 
products based on a market survey of only New Guinea tribesman.

Besides the whole ClientAI thrust is to allow extensions for just such
reasons. 

So the question is does one do another primitive oneoff hack or think 
about what one might need to do to build this into the game system in 
a general way that could be used by everybody from FreecivAC types or 
other game/rules variant developers to the Civbot challengers.

And just to stem the refrain about the scariness of dealing with code
not sanctionned by the maintainers, you should be aware that there are
somewhat more advanced concepts of how to do this than you seem to 
imagine. Rest assured that because you can think of a bad way to add
code does not mean that this is likely to be the final design choice 
so it is at least reasonable to talk about it :-).

As a for instance, interpreters are usually considered quite safe in
that the code they interpret is basically constrained by the operations
or language the interpreter understands.

It is also the case that we are a long way from the DOS days when the
entire operating system or program was open to any code that wanted to
poke around in its innards.

At least in some programmng circles or languages ...

Please wait for the fire before hauling out the wet blankets :-).

>> andy
>-- 
>Reinier

Cheers,
RossW
=====