MrPotatobird
commented
2 weeks ago There is no money for an actual developer position, so the value of a PR is completely dependent on the whims of other volunteers, and it will probably stay that way. If you're worried about your effort going to waste then you should try to ask around or guess as to whether there's anyone who would be willing to look over + test your code, and think about what type of changes they might be motivated to help with. Even for "no-brainers", it takes time and energy. This is just the reality of a game existing post-devs; there is no plan, and unfortunately it doesn't matter whether your PR is good if nobody feels like reviewing it. If you can't enjoy the process even if your PR is ultimately meaningless, then for the sake of your sanity, you should think twice before coding it.
It might be worth adding a disclaimer like the above to the Github somewhere.
I think the command changes were due to hackers ruining the game, so they were kind of urgent and may well have saved public servers. Obviously it would have been nice if they had turned out a bit cleaner. I'm just grateful there was even enough motivation to patch serious hacks. Am I jealous they did that instead of adding my trampoline mods? Only on some small selfish level. I certainly wouldn't call it an "awful decision," it's just that people's motivation has limits. Mostly I'm just grateful! I hope you can be grateful too.
You could always try to host a server yourself if you want to ensure you get at least some value out of your changes. Or try to get some other server host in the community to add them.
I'd just like to ask what is the plan for this game's development?
There have been two periods of time where I created bugfix and feature pull requests basicly on a daily basis. I did so as a volunteer and for fun. I learned a lot about programming/scripting, enjoyed it and I generally like the idea of playing an important part in a game's development.
Previously I played Awesomenauts which is a game I sunk thousands of hours into. Unfortunately the developers in that game made some pretty awful decisions. They didn't fix bugs even though I created extensive bug lists with videos and explanations. Eventually their forum got hacked and they couldn't provide a back-up. And about a year ago they went bankrupt and servers shut down, making the game unplayable.
Having experienced this, I would wish for this game "King Arthur's Gold" to not go in the same direction. There is still a good number of players playing actively every day and I think it is worth to put effort and time into developing the game further. Having ingame events (halloween etc.), but also releasing new versions with new bugfixes and features, usually makes players come back to this game more often. I remember a time where 100+ (idk exactly) of players were online during a halloween event.
Having created so many PRs and seeing that they are "sitting around" for lengthy periods of time, I'm wondering what is going to happen about them, if they are going to get added or not, and if all the effort was worth it. I'm not asking that every single one or even the majority of my work needs to get implemented but there are a lot of things that should be no-brainers. Fixes to very annoying gameplay bugs (double slash buffer bug, archer fake arrow bug). Features that don't need any real testing (new chat commands for example).
I also have a question in regard to bunniewormy's sanitization PRs. What issues did these PRs fix in the first place? (Is it things like creating/destroying lots of tiles out of the blue - I witnessed that once) As you know, by implementing those PRs, a lot of small bugs slipped in.
Are these issues going to get fixed? And are (some of) my PRs getting added? If not, why? I hope that you don't make the same awful decisions as those other game developers. I would be happy to help develop your game further and make more pull requests, but I would like to see that my efforts aren't in vain, first.