Implementation of CMMI on Empires Development

I was originally going to post this around the same time as that thread I posted and forgot to follow, but if I forgot to follow the aforementioned thread I obviously forgot about posting this. The content of this post is also related to the discussion over the design document, but I wanted a full post to explain my point.

I want YOU, both the Empires community and the Empires development team, to rate Empires development on the CMMI scale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration

CMMI is a proven method and necessary certification for many software engineering or development team. I'm not going to prove the necessities of cohesion, teamwork, synergy, and leadership in software development. If you want to argue, argue against the model.

Along with the CMMI, I have several other suggestions that I will explain after listing them:

1. Lead Developer should be ROTATED.
2. Developers should NOT, at the same time, be Moderators.
3. All planned implementations MUST have deadlines.

First Point
Rotating the lead developer has nothing to do with Trickster, it only has to do with the position. A few friends of mine used to go to a "Programmer's Guild" (not to be confused with a corporation of the same name) where it was like a school club but, not associated with a school, existed indefinitely so long as it had members. Because this guild could exist for five years or twenty, leadership positions would be rotated. After one or two terms the President would step down to Vice President or Treasurer, one of the latter ranks would step up, some would take a sabbatical, etc.

The point is, rotating the lead developer allows for a shift in perspective. Even if, for example, Trickster comes up with most of the ideas, he would still come up with the same amount of ideas as a normal developer, would he not? The job of the lead developer would be to:

1. Set priority to implementations.
2. Set the deadline for the next patch.
3. Monitor team activity and promote synergy.

Actually, in this model it might actually be possible for Trickster to do more of the things he wants to do because he would not have the burden of leadership until it rotates back to him.

Second Point
Combining the Developer position and Moderator position, in my experience, has never worked. The Developer should be free from the burden of moderation both so that he can finish more code instead of having to worry about the forums, and so that users can criticize him. Now, if the user personally insults a developer, it is fine to block or ban that user, but it cannot be the Developer who does it.

That is Vengeance, not Justice. A Developer can choose to switch between Moderator and Developer at any time, but must give up one rank and permissions associated to go to the other.

I'll give a personal example. For those who do not know, I used to be Super Moderator and Support Developer for Mani Admin Plugin. I messaged the leader, Mani, who seemed to have disappeared indefinitely, at least six times telling him to make the plugin open source (very politely, it was not spam).

You know what he did? He made the plugin open source. Now, I did know C++ at the time but I was very busy IRL as I usually am. I had only finished reading through Mani's code when another Developer jumped on board. Because he had already made another mod, he not only immediately received Lead Developer, but Administrator as well.

I had growing dislike of the way the plugin was headed. They appointed two more Super Moderators who had problems such as arrogance and insisting that their way was right instead of working with the team. Finally, the Lead Developer and Administrator made a change to the plugin I adamantly opposed. I politely opposed it, told them why it should not be the way he changed it and instead the way it was before. What happened? Before I could defend myself, my permissions were stripped and access to the forum in which this thread existed denied.

I have a few similar examples either from myself or from my friends who have also had the same issues, but I believe this suffices.

Third Point
If you do not set deadlines, you will never get anything done. This is a fact of life. I have a list of unfinished programs that I will not finish because I do not set deadlines for them. They're just hobbies. Without deadlines, Empires is just that: the hobby of the developers, relinquishing them of any and all responsibility to the community.

If a developer is busy IRL as I usually am, then account for it. "Well, I have school/work/whatever at these times during the week, so it will take me X number of days to finish Y." It's that simple. Don't use real life as an excuse not to develop. If you truly are that busy IRL, step down as developer and pick it up again when you're free. If you cannot develop you shouldn't have taken the job to begin with.

Miscellaneous
Also, if anyone tries to derail this thread with personal grudges, balance issues, nostalgia, etc. I will sage you.

 

1) ehh...

2) I can agree with that to an extent. Some people deserve it others not.

3) We have a disagreement on this one. The dev team programs in their spare time. They are not dedicated programers. They are not paid to program for us. They do it because they want to spend what little free time they have, to improve a game they like. Demanding code gets done on certain times is a bit harsh for those kind people are offering their time free of charge.

 

You forgot a stage 0 for help defining it go here. Its been what 2 or 3 YEARS since they have done anything besides upload screenshots of stuff that was done before? Compared to that Empires is bustling.

 

I'd like a quick rundown as to what you know (without further research and on reading this post) as to what you know about the Empires mod and its development, PatPeter.

Although you've been around a little while, I feel as it's not much, as you referenced "polite" a couple of times or more in your post.

 

what are you on about

 

(I read this post after I wrote it and thought it was really harsh. I'm still going to post it like it is, but I am not angry or anything, I just think that your post is retarded)

First off, your post reeks of someone who has no idea with the history or challenges with making empires on source.

1) Lead developer has never meant anything since Krenzo left. I held it for quite some time and that did not mean anything in regards of what ideas went into the game. Empires dev team has long been 5-10 people with 5-10 different ideas of how the game should run and implementing them on the same codebase. Lack of a shared vision has always been a problem, and I have stressed that point to any Empires spinoffs I have been apart of.

Secondly, There are only programmers and scripters that do any true development. There have been atleast 9 artists that have come and gone, most of them weren't even part of the community. This means that there is no 'new' content that goes in, only new mechanics and numbers.

2) What? You got banned from another forum so you want this forum to not be the same way?

3) I don't think you have ever worked on a large project before while trying to keep up with real life. Deadlines are nearly impossible in a large, spare-time project. Don't kid yourself.

There are alot of ideas and few people with the skills, time, or effort to implement them. This is and always will be the problem with mods in general.

Try to sage me all you want.

 

I on the other hand, won't be quite so polite as Kylegar.

You are retarded.

Seriously, you're making multiple posts as if you have any sort of idea about project management or game development, let alone Empires itself, when it's clear you don't.

1) As Kylegar said, Lead developer means nothing. I am not the lead developer, so you're already pulling information out of thin air. I would argue maybe against Kylegar slightly, and say that this is probably the first time I've ever seen a shared vision in Empires among the developer team. This isn't because we all want some huge advances for Empires, but because we're all realistic about what can be achieved, and we know it isn't a great deal. We have 3 coders, a scripter and a particle artist. We all weigh on gameplay aspects, management, and we do the best we can with the incredibly limited resources we have. We manage maybe 5-10 coding hours a week average, but that's very much variable. Which will lead me on to point 3.

2) No. What gives you the right to claim this? Stop talking to that idiot outside of the forum who's never played the game, and look at this realistically. This is not a democratic forum. Get the fuck over it.

3) As I was saying, set deadlines? Are you fucking retarded? When coder time varies from 0 to 20 hours a week at the extremes, there's no possible way that can be done. People work on this for free, not as a paid project. They get nothing of benefit from it outside of the game itself.

Seriously, you're just stupid.

 

Level -5 Development / Trickster bought a 2560x1600 monitor and a fridge full of milk for the sake of managing peasants like PatPeter.

I have no objection for these kind of actions.

 

Hey, I have to have SOMETHING to stop me from punching through my monitor when idiocy like this shows up. Making it a good monitor means I'm less likely to break it. If it was some cheap one I'd have thrown it out of the window by now.

 

this is i think the only part i agree with, its a bad combination and this job is something that should be preformed by middle management

all the other stuff is a bit out of touch with reality, empiresmod is being developed by a "janitor devteam" not a full development team at all

 

Are you trying to say that you want the Lead Developer title?

 

Gah, no one needs lead. Trickster is doing a good job as project manager, and that's balanced by the point that he and we all know that he doesn't have the skills to get it in game, but that he acts as a sounding board and communications point for the team.

To be honest, it was a position that needed filling and i'm glad someone was finally allowed to.

 

Ikalx has it right really. I'm just sort of a central hub in the team to consolidate what everyone is doing and keep everyone on the same page. Most decisions are made as a team because we're fortunate to finally be in a position where most of us have the same plan about where the game should be going. Beerdude, Jephir and Marcin all code, I do a bit of script work and as you said, relay information around, Smithy and Chris0132 are taking up more prominent artist positions, with Varbles pitching in with refreshing the Empires assets and doing stuff that we'd never get to. Empty is still working on particles if asked, as well as contributing some great ideas for the future (his idea for tank overhaul is one we're looking forward to implementing in the future, should we ever get there).

It's taken a long time to get to this position, and we're not even close to where we want to be, but we're getting there slowly. Very slowly, but we're finally moving forward. If/When we eventually get a patch out, then it should do wonders for the morale of both the community and the developer team.

 

You can give me the head developer title if you want to, I can't code goto commands well enought to touch empires code, but I certainly can ... develop ... things ...
but i don't agree on the rotation part, this would make it sick ... all the rotating while trying to focus on setting deadlines for redundant, obnoxious and crude code empires certainly lacks.
I doubt that heading in different directions whenever you look ahead is going to help any mod without 20 coders generating code of another lead devs terrible ideas before the next lead dev arrives.
Also stepping down due to not being able to keep deadlines would leave empires in a kinda ... dev-free zone ... at least you wouldn't have to worry about the forums anymore...
And yeah, I agree, Empty is a horrible moderator, still, gtfo and crawl back to Mr..Die.

 

Empires is a hobby, none of the developers have any responsibility to you, nobody gets paid to do this, most people have other quite pressing responsibilities to attend to, trickster dumps quite a bit of money into running his server, and the forums aren't free.

I find the idea that empires developers should be somehow subservient to the community to be rather offensive. They're the ones doing the work, if you happen to enjoy the result then aren't you lucky? Otherwise GTFO and make your own mod.

He's the one that everyone talks to, the one that bugs everyone else about what's happening, and the one that organises all the playtests.

Essentially he makes everyone else work, he's actually rather good at it and nobody else would do the job. Certainly a vital part of the team.

Trickster's actually been consistently helpful for a very long time when it comes to trying to get new people to develop and keep the development in general going. It's genuinely impressive because I have absolutely no idea why or how he does it. It's like all the brain power and patience he doesn't apply to design decisions and people in general get funneled into organising empires development. It's quite a rare skill and very useful to have.

 

I saw that.

 

if anything the dev team can walk away from this knowing they are supported in this assbackwards world known as the forums....

too bad they cant simply applaud your efforts rather than blitzing some guy out of the water for suggesting structured development.

 

Except asking people to step down and stop working on the mod because they don't have enough time to do it all the time, would actually not help the mod at all, rather... Killing it.