appreciate ZK

so. after hokomoko and Manu12 had the nightmare of meeting me, i learned the following, which i want to address here:

hoko is, aside from kl00t, the only engine(-confident) developer, and the only one heavily involved with ZK. he is about to start his 1st job after finishing his studies. meaning not having that much free time in the future.

the (as he called it) bus-factor is pretty low - 2 persons which actually can save the world when needed and this count will be approximately lower in the future.

i dont know how to increase the number of engine devs, as the making the engine has a hillarious learning curve and it was made aeons ago. getting someone with the skills and the dedication, just as hoko, is very unlikely.

i fear the day, when i cannot attend my therapy sessions anymore. this is just for awareness. no lobsters were harmed in the making.

You increase the number of engine devs the same way you increase the number of kernel devs. You create a foundation and use it to funnel money to them, or you use the engine in your project and submit modified code back to them.

Make ZK2 in Godot?

Wesnoth can, why not ZK.

I think it might be a bit too early to mourn Spring/ZK/me. Even though the situation might look bleak, there have been worse times in spring's history.

quote: The we would know where to advertise ...

I'm not sure if the situation can be remedied by advertisement. While Spring isn't even close to being the horrid monster aeonios describes, it doesn't make life easier for people who want to contribute to jump in and do so.
Can it be made easier? Yes. Do you have people with motivation and time to make it easier? Unfortunately I don't think so.
In some ways becoming an engine dev is similar to getting into ZK, you need to stubbornly face technical and inter-personal obstacles. While steam brings a steady stream of players to ZK, how many stay? how many interact with the community? very few.
Similarly I think a recruitment call such as the one made by Wesnoth (which brought something like half a dozen devs, they told me) might bring some initial interest, but in the end it's not going to work for Spring for various reasons:
1) Wesnoth is a flagship linux game, Spring is not even a game. While they could get advertised on Slashdot, it's likely that we won't be able to. (although I think we can get to some other places like phoronix)
2) Wesnoth has a much bigger player base and campaign developer base.
3) Wesnoth people are far less notorious about their friendliness or lack thereof.
4) Wesnoth is a less complex engine.
Add all these together and you understand that you need a miracle to find someone that would have enough time motivation to be part of the Spring project and isn't already around here in some way or another.
Moreover, you can only put a call out if the current devs have time/motivation to really assist and work with newcomers.

quote: You use the engine in your project and submit modified code back to them

Yes, Sprung and ivand do this and they are definitely talented and brave enough to hack the engine.

quote: You create a foundation and use it to funnel money to them

Probably no. But although money and Spring don't mix too well, we have a unique opportunity here, as I have a free week or so starting Oct. 15th, and will code for shelter/food if it's somewhere nice and not too far from Germany.
I know that doesn't solve the problem at all, I'm just abusing the thread a bit ;)

Here is another recent one :)

quote: Here is another recent one :)

Shows some cobbler making storage farm and several factories... Bleh :\
KILL WITH FIRE!
PURGE PURGE PURGE!

I would like to help, but having no idea of coding at all it doesn´t seem likely that i can be of much help until in a few years, more likely a decade...

To give you a bit of a contrasting opinion, i think that zk is in a very good spot if you look at what it is: an old, obscure niche game with a super-small playerbase. And that playerbase hasn´t collapsed for how long? I know a lot of games that died while having more players. Zero-K is a zombie, not willing to die. It is kept alive by few people that are sooo dedicated that they don´t stop to play, even if you have to wait a few hours for a 1v1.
This is also why i think it´s less important (while by no means unnesessary) to care to bring just more players, but to give really interested ones and first of all the veterans a good time here. If you loose the dedicated veterans, even a bunch of new players wont stop the zombie from dying eventually.

Firepluk
its what lobsters do, building storages and porcing :)

quote: if any commercial game out there that has the thing that Zk has, I think this game would have a mass exodus.

What I like about ZK is the evolution - it keeps changing over time. Commercial games do not do that reliably over a 10 year period (ok, ZK proper did not do it either yet, but if you consider all precursor games it kinda did).

Also, the topic is about the engine! I think for the game there are more developers, and more people doing side projects (new units, new maps, campaign, lobby, etc, balancing ideas, crazy ideas). For the engine on the other side situation is different as mentioned in the first post.

i would be more concerned about the server-situation in the long term tho.