Commissioned coders?

[SirBeans]

Basically, do we have any in the community?

I have a feeling that a lot of people would be willing to fund the coding of their favorite backlogged content to get it into the game after its approved. If this has been discussed before I obviously haven't looked hard enough for it.

 

[Noob Salad]

Nah. Wsan used to code his own submissions tho, including if you commissioned him.

 

[Wsan]

Like Noobsaleh said I'm probably the closest to what you're talking about. You could ask Drake or the other guy - alexei? - but they don't actually offer it as a service afaik, you'd just be asking fan coders. You could also ask me but I'm cynical and jaded and if it's been backlogged for 3 years, chances are there's a reason.

 

[balitz Method]

That reason generally being "there are dozens and dozens of people contributing content and like three people consistently coding it and there's been no move to gather more".

 

[SirBeans]

I just see piles of content that even if it was approved would probably take a long time to get in the game because its niche. I don't even have anything in particular that I personally am looking at to get coded. It just seems like a waste to have peoples work wither and disappear just because it doesn't catch alexia or Drakes attention (no blame there you two, you're working for free after all).

Sorry if I'm coming off as hostile at all about this, just trying to start a constructive conversation on getting the backlog out of limbo instead of just whining about how its not happening.

 

[Upcast Drake]

The backlog of approved submissions is really not that big anymore, FWIW.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

question now is, what happens when Fen DOESN'T have a backlog? He'll start giving out cash prizes for people to write scenes I suppose or something similar to that... only we'll run into the same issue CoC suffered from.

 

[Upcast Drake]

question now is, what happens when Fen DOESN'T have a backlog? He'll start giving out cash prizes for people to write scenes I suppose or something similar to that... only we'll run into the same issue CoC suffered from.

The review backlog is worse than the code backlog.

 

[Zavos]

I've been following @Preacher 's work for a while now, apart from Vasrin being rejected as "too rough around the edges", I don't think he's seen any signs of life from review aka Fen

 

[XBoxMaster131]

It's literally been half a year since Preach submitted a snake tf, and still nothing.

@Doots Also has had a project stuck in limbo for a while. A hyena-morph mercenary. Forget the name, though.

 

[Soldier660]

It's literally been half a year since Preach submitted a snake tf, and still nothing.

@Doots Also has had a project stuck in limbo for a while. A hyena-morph mercenary. Forget the name, though.

Sounds fun. Daam a lot of good and awesome things are in the limbo dont they ?

 

[SirBeans]

The review backlog is worse than the code backlog.

So if the review backlog is the biggest issue at this moment what ways could we move things along? Is there a way we could "crowd source" it like a lot of authors do for editing? IDK just thinking out loud.

only we'll run into the same issue CoC suffered from

Sorry, I wasn't following the development of CoC when it was happening what issue are you referring to?

 

[Wsan]

Is there a way we could "crowd source" it like a lot of authors do for editing?

No. Crowd-sourced anything is a complete crapshoot (especially writing, QED), but the whole point of the review process is that it's done by people who are 100% sure not to suck at judging. I can already imagine the disaster that would sprout from crowd-sourced writing getting crowd-sourced reviewed and then getting commission-coded into the game and completely bypassing fenco.

 

[SirBeans]

into the game and completely bypassing fenco

You make a very valid point. I wasn't clear enough on what I meant, what I'm trying to say is have the community as an initial filter so that fenco only need to look at 20 submissions instead of 50. Or pick out a panel of sane and trustworthy reviewers from the community for the initial pass on stuff so its not total lust fueled anarchy. Not trying to circumvent fenco just support and make their lives easier. Like I said I'm just tossing out ideas.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

So if the review backlog is the biggest issue at this moment what ways could we move things along? Is there a way we could "crowd source" it like a lot of authors do for editing? IDK just thinking out loud.



Sorry, I wasn't following the development of CoC when it was happening what issue are you referring to?

bunch of people getting their mary sues/OC's into the game and incomplete content galore is what happened.

 

[adev]

Re: incomplete/bad content polluting the game

But it would not necessarily need to be in the 'official' fenco approved version of the game. With proper modularisation content could be added, tested and refined by independent writers/coders. Players could test this new content injected into the actual game fully knowing that this version is experimental and not approved by fenco. And once the content is proven to be good enough in terms of completeness, quality and value to the game by the writers and fenco it could become part of the main/official version.

I was toying with the idea of a wiki style game development system for a while where pages were equivalent to content modules and games were defined by what modules/revisions were referenced by the game's 'start page'. So an author could create an item/npc/shop/dungeon/planet, reference it from his personal start page (ie his customised game version) so it can be tested and refined. And once it measures up to standards it is then referenced from/added to the official game version.

On the one hand this could help preventing incomplete/abandoned projects because authors wouldn't get the feeling that the content they produce is ignored/forgotten and going nowhere while becoming obsolete by the ongoing game development. They could test the new content during the writing phase and gather feedback from others.
On the other hand I got the impression that most content authors would not be ok with this liberal use of their work so I have not developed this idea further. Developing such a framework is way too much work to be ultimately ignored by the people capable of filling it with life...

 

[Aullama]

Re: incomplete/bad content polluting the game

But it would not necessarily need to be in the 'official' fenco approved version of the game. With proper modularisation content could be added, tested and refined by independent writers/coders. Players could test this new content injected into the actual game fully knowing that this version is experimental and not approved by fenco. And once the content is proven to be good enough in terms of completeness, quality and value to the game by the writers and fenco it could become part of the main/official version.

I was toying with the idea of a wiki style game development system for a while where pages were equivalent to content modules and games were defined by what modules/revisions were referenced by the game's 'start page'. So an author could create an item/npc/shop/dungeon/planet, reference it from his personal start page (ie his customised game version) so it can be tested and refined. And once it measures up to standards it is then referenced from/added to the official game version.

On the one hand this could help preventing incomplete/abandoned projects because authors wouldn't get the feeling that the content they produce is ignored/forgotten and going nowhere while becoming obsolete by the ongoing game development. They could test the new content during the writing phase and gather feedback from others.
On the other hand I got the impression that most content authors would not be ok with this liberal use of their work so I have not developed this idea further. Developing such a framework is way too much work to be ultimately ignored by the people capable of filling it with life...

The only thing that would do is cause people to see the "official" version as the lesser one, as it would have less content, good or bad.

 

[adev]

Interesting thought on that issue - although it would never occurred to me. I would not think that anyone is bored enough to collect all half finished projects and try to build a functioning version out of it. Generally what I would expect from such a custom version is the official content with a possibly half finished / half working expansion tacked onto it.

I would not have the time/patience to play such a hoarder version with the added risk that saves might break on every release - but then people pay money to play beta tester...

Thanks for the input though

 

[SirBeans]

The only thing that would do is cause people to see the "official" version as the lesser one, as it would have less content, good or bad.

I agree, I would expect that if the modded version would steal traffic from the official version and just spitball into some massive patchwork of half-baked badly implemented content with just enough decent content to get people to use it over the official release.

Just a crazy idea I just thought of is what if someone took the time to make a dev tool for coding? Like a UI/text editor that could allow a layman to put their writing into and "code" it. Have a set of tools like a button to insert a descriptor for the players dick for example but not flood the person with the code and keep it neat, because from what I've seen is that most scenes have very similar coding structures and don't have all that many special variables. This could make it so that the busy work coding for simple characters that don't need fifteen different endings for every sex scene (looking at you B) wouldn't take up fenco/alesia/drakes time. It would probably be a fairly big undertaking to build it but once its built it could completely change the work flow of the development process.

In any case thanks for keeping it civil and constructive people.

 

[Upcast Drake]

I agree, I would expect that if the modded version would steal traffic from the official version and just spitball into some massive patchwork of half-baked badly implemented content with just enough decent content to get people to use it over the official release.

Just a crazy idea I just thought of is what if someone took the time to make a dev tool for coding? Like a UI/text editor that could allow a layman to put their writing into and "code" it. Have a set of tools like a button to insert a descriptor for the players dick for example but not flood the person with the code and keep it neat, because from what I've seen is that most scenes have very similar coding structures and don't have all that many special variables. This could make it so that the busy work coding for simple characters that don't need fifteen different endings for every sex scene (looking at you B) wouldn't take up fenco/alesia/drakes time. It would probably be a fairly big undertaking to build it but once its built it could completely change the work flow of the development process.

In any case thanks for keeping it civil and constructive people.

I thought about this but there's 2 main problems.

First, such a system would still require knowing how the game engine works and how to do something in detail. You'd still have to keep up with flags and you'd still have to be able to do complex conditional logic and loops etc. The only real difference would be streamlining the menial stuff and interacting with a tool instead of code directly. It wouldn't be any easier than using a decent IDE and some hotkeys or scripts.

Second, it'd be a fuck load of work and would need constant maintenance. Your time would be better spent coding for the game than coding for the tool.