New efforts!

[duane]

Some of us made spreadsheets

Hey, it's Event ABC with 2 weeks to get all 20 characters to get X number of badges:  GO!

Especially before the quality of life improvement on the badge screen

[Azrael]

Thinking about the potential ('tempered' expectations...) next release of Icon...

1.  Saving zones populated with characters.
2. Animations.
3.  Walk paths.
4. Powers.

So we could populate zones and set up a living 'breathing' zone with 'shadow boxing combat and mobs on a street corner.  A form of 'life giving' oxygen to coh's ongoing resuscitation efforts.

In the release after that..?

5.  A chat window.  Proof of a working basic server.
6. Peer to peer or Lan walking/flying around.  Proof of server development.

In the release after that..?!  Lan/peer micro server.

7. Mob spawning.
8. Combat.

I'm just guessing, of course.

Azrael.

[FloatingFatMan]

Not that it really matters anymore, but there are two agreements.  One is for Coh, and the other was for the launcher.  Originally CoH had it's own launcher, which would have fallen under the CoH agreement.  By the time of the shutdown, it had moved to the common NCSoft launcher, which is separate from any particular game. 

So, the EULA for CoH itself may not apply, but the launcher is a current live, supported product, so you are agreeing to allow it access and modify your system.  I'm not a lawyer, so I suppose there is a possibility that you could say they would overstep their bounds by modifying a game that they no longer operate, but I think you would be hard pressed to make it far in court using that argument.  Unless the launcher just indiscriminately deleted the entire CoH folder, since it is conceivable, and even likely that you have non-NCSoft files contained there.  But if the launcher merely removed the executables and even PIGG files, that would be enough to prevent you from using the client, and would not violate any laws, whether US or EU.

Again, it isn't like it matters, since none of that is happening anyway.  Just a thought exercise sort of thing.

I don't have their launcher on my machine.

[LaughingAlex]

Is it weird I'm getting the feeling that when we do get the game back, Icon will be the basis for the new client?

[Arcana]

That EULA became null and void when they terminated their side of the agreement by closing the game down.

Also, in the EU, EULA's are not legally binding documents.

1.  In the US, the EULA did not become null and void when they shut the servers down, and I really don't know where you get your legal knowledge from.  They did not "terminate their side of the agreement" when they shut the servers down, because the agreement did not require them to do so in perpetuity.  And anyone who has so much as read a contract would know there are terms that can persist in a legal agreement that exist beyond the performance of the contract itself.

2.  In the EU, while its debatable whether the EULA can be binding, what isn't debatable is that if you opened the box and used the contents to connect to the servers knowing you had no intention of following the EULA, that would still be considered fraud in the EU.  You knowingly used NCSoft's servers while knowing they were gated by a legal agreement you were not going to honor.  Claiming the EULA is nonbinding or invalid means you legally should have walked away from the game.  You might legally be entitled to keep the contents of the box, but the servers themselves were never yours to use.


Edit: completely separate from this is the additional fact that whether the EULA is enforceable would have no bearing whatsoever on whether NCSoft itself is permitted to take actions expressed in the EULA which are otherwise legal in the country in question.  Updating their update servers to remove content from a game which is no longer in operation would probably not be considered illegal in any European country I'm aware of.  Any such law would criminalize game patchers altogether.

[FloatingFatMan]

I never mentioned the servers. This whole conversation is about whether NCSoft have any right to alter the contents of our local hard drivers, and, assuming you've removed the only active part of the install, the launcher, they don't.

[Arcana]

Is it weird I'm getting the feeling that when we do get the game back, Icon will be the basis for the new client?

Icon *is* the game client.  But if the negotiating team gets the game back, the game client will probably be the original I23 client.  If and when any of the revival projects deliver, they will use their own client.  If a reverse engineering project succeeds, it will likely be with a modified game client.  I doubt in any case it will literally be Icon or a derivative of it.

[Arcana]

I never mentioned the servers. This whole conversation is about whether NCSoft have any right to alter the contents of our local hard drivers, and, assuming you've removed the only active part of the install, the launcher, they don't.

But that assumption was not part of the original conversation; in fact it was explicitly the opposite.  The original question was whether NCSoft could simply instruct the updater to delete the client.  You made a comment that implied that was illegal.  No one is talking about them somehow surreptitiously hacking into someone's computer and deleting files from that computer, which is obviously illegal.

[Arcana]

Due to a number of factors, like being sick as a dog, busy with work, and corralled into jury duty, I haven't had much time to spend on my version 0.00000000000000000000001 MMO, so its entirely appropriate that today's MMO development topic is development time, and specifically how long things should take.

Lesson One: everything always takes longer than you think.

Lesson Two: nope, even more than that.

About 18 months ago, back when MWM did their kickstarter, someone suggested to me that they felt it was unlikely I would be seeing any fruits of that contribution for a very long time, if ever.  I suggested a reasonable timeline by which development could attain practical goals in reasonable timeframes.  The long and the short of it was that I decided to accept a bet in which the MWM team would reach certain goals by a certain date.

Todogut is The Man.
And yes, that means a lot.
For, while he cannot prove he is,
I can't prove he's not.


Let's just say I didn't win the bet.  The moral of this story is, never bet on any development team you're not actually on.  For that matter, if you are on a dev team, look around you.  Yeah, probably don't bet on that one either.  I'm sure MWM is doing their best and all, but when you slip a deadline, sometimes there are catastrophic consequences.  This would be one of them.

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to find a miner's hat, a banjo, eighty-three paper clips, and a bowl of yellow M&Ms.

[LaughingAlex]

Icon *is* the game client.  But if the negotiating team gets the game back, the game client will probably be the original I23 client.  If and when any of the revival projects deliver, they will use their own client.  If a reverse engineering project succeeds, it will likely be with a modified game client.  I doubt in any case it will literally be Icon or a derivative of it.

Makes sense though the client would still likely need some slight changes due to us having a new server.  I do wonder though, and I know it's been asked but it'd be awesome if we got all the more popular costume options that the player was never allowed access to.

[P51mus]

Due to a number of factors, like being sick as a dog, busy with work, and corralled into jury duty, I haven't had much time to spend on my version 0.00000000000000000000001 MMO, so its entirely appropriate that today's MMO development topic is development time, and specifically how long things should take.

Lesson One: everything always takes longer than you think.

Lesson Two: nope, even more than that.

That's pretty much game dev in general.

[Twisted Toon]

[JanessaVR]

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to find a miner's hat, a banjo, eighty-three paper clips, and a bowl of yellow M&Ms.

I suppose there are worse Noodle Implements to have to search for...

[FloatingFatMan]

Let's just say I didn't win the bet.  The moral of this story is, never bet on any development team you're not actually on.  For that matter, if you are on a dev team, look around you.  Yeah, probably don't bet on that one either.  I'm sure MWM is doing their best and all, but when you slip a deadline, sometimes there are catastrophic consequences.  This would be one of them.

Now if you'll all excuse me, I have to find a miner's hat, a banjo, eighty-three paper clips, and a bowl of yellow M&Ms.

So true. Today, I spent ALL DAY analysing someone else's code for a project we've been handed by our client, trying to figure out why a datetime column would only do a string sort.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

When I found the cause... Eventually.. It took 30 seconds to fix.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

I hate working with other people's code... You just have no idea how long it's going to take to do something.

[Voltixdark]

So true. Today, I spent ALL DAY analysing someone else's code for a project we've been handed by our client, trying to figure out why a datetime column would only do a string sort.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

When I found the cause... Eventually.. It took 30 seconds to fix.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

I hate working with other people's code... You just have no idea how long it's going to take to do something.

It's like trying to find a colored gem on a big sandy beach!

[ivanhedgehog]

So true. Today, I spent ALL DAY analysing someone else's code for a project we've been handed by our client, trying to figure out why a datetime column would only do a string sort.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

When I found the cause... Eventually.. It took 30 seconds to fix.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

I hate working with other people's code... You just have no idea how long it's going to take to do something.

and people standards of documentation can be....so creative

[FloatingFatMan]

and people standards of documentation can be....so creative

Documentation?

Wait, did you just say, documentation?

.
..
...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!no.


The documentation I got consisted of... about 20 mb of source code, a broken VS2010 sln file, and a long email of change requests....

*sigh*

[JanessaVR]

So true. Today, I spent ALL DAY analysing someone else's code for a project we've been handed by our client, trying to figure out why a datetime column would only do a string sort.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

When I found the cause... Eventually.. It took 30 seconds to fix.

ALL. FRACKING. DAY.

I hate working with other people's code... You just have no idea how long it's going to take to do something.

As a programmer, I am intensely critical of most other programmers.  I pride myself on code with a standardized structure and naming conventions, clear in-code commented documentation of each section of code, and formalized code documentation files, which are neatly organized and specifically designed to be read and understood by non-techies.

The vast majority of programmers I have ever met fall greatly short of this standard and I consider them to be lazy and undisciplined.

[Arcana]

As a programmer, I am intensely critical of most other programmers.  I pride myself on code with a standardized structure and naming conventions, clear in-code commented documentation of each section of code, and formalized code documentation files, which are neatly organized and specifically designed to be read and understood by non-techies.

The vast majority of programmers I have ever met fall greatly short of this standard and I consider them to be lazy and undisciplined.

Other than things I scribble together that is never intended to see the light of day or for that matter anyone else to read, use, or comment on, I believe the number one imperative of programmers is to write clear, readable code.  That it actually works is the second.  If it can't be supported, its not worth the trouble of having no matter what it does.  Most programmers believe they write code for the computer to read.  But in fact for most large scale programs (and most smaller ones also) they should be writing first and foremost for their fellow programmers who have to deal with their work.

[LaughingAlex]

In other words it sounds to me a lot of programmers would be terrible engineers.  Because the most golden rule of all is KISS.