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Phil M · 29 Aug 2007, 10:40

After looking at the current development of Planetarion, I'm not entirely sure if that much effort is being put into changes between each round. The current developers do this as a thing in their spare time, so sadly we don't expect much. Most of the changes between rounds are generally minor formula tweaks and occasional improvements. A typical example of this are the ETA changes - a few rounds ago we had cluster ETAs again, now we've back to the old ETAs we had a few rounds ago. Maybe alliances will have 5 more members next round, you get the idea.

One huge problem which has slowed down development is the fact that it's damn difficult for Planetarion to get more help in its current state. Anyone officially working on Planetarion needs to agree to the NDA, which many people dislike. It's also hard for PA team to get coders, they only tend to recruit from the support team which limits who they're getting. I'd guess that many of the most talented coders within the Planetarion community are being wasted, they're just coding for their alliances.

So, here is my idea. Open source Planetarion development.

Anyone can contribute to the development of an open source Planetarion without having to agree to an NDA. The more talented coders could actually contribute something to Planetarion!

Jolt would not need to release any existing source code, the community would start from the ground up with a reworked Planetarion code base without any of the weird bugs or problems. If any of the code isn't up to scratch then it doesn't get added. Think of it as PA:Next done right.

What would PA team do if this happened? The same as always, run the game in the best way possible. If the NDA was modified then their coders could work on the open source code as well. If for some reason they really wanted to add a surprise feature to the game they could quietly fork the code until the start of a round and then submit the changes so everyone else can work on improving them.

Yes, there are some disadvantages to the changes as well, however I'd say it would be more beneficial in the long run for the future of Planetarion. Genuine new features seem to have stopped this round, however the work of many people could bring back new features into the game.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on this?

29 Aug 2007, 10:40	#1
Phil M Registered User Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 47	The open source idea After looking at the current development of Planetarion, I'm not entirely sure if that much effort is being put into changes between each round. The current developers do this as a thing in their spare time, so sadly we don't expect much. Most of the changes between rounds are generally minor formula tweaks and occasional improvements. A typical example of this are the ETA changes - a few rounds ago we had cluster ETAs again, now we've back to the old ETAs we had a few rounds ago. Maybe alliances will have 5 more members next round, you get the idea. One huge problem which has slowed down development is the fact that it's damn difficult for Planetarion to get more help in its current state. Anyone officially working on Planetarion needs to agree to the NDA, which many people dislike. It's also hard for PA team to get coders, they only tend to recruit from the support team which limits who they're getting. I'd guess that many of the most talented coders within the Planetarion community are being wasted, they're just coding for their alliances. So, here is my idea. Open source Planetarion development. Anyone can contribute to the development of an open source Planetarion without having to agree to an NDA. The more talented coders could actually contribute something to Planetarion! Jolt would not need to release any existing source code, the community would start from the ground up with a reworked Planetarion code base without any of the weird bugs or problems. If any of the code isn't up to scratch then it doesn't get added. Think of it as PA:Next done right. What would PA team do if this happened? The same as always, run the game in the best way possible. If the NDA was modified then their coders could work on the open source code as well. If for some reason they really wanted to add a surprise feature to the game they could quietly fork the code until the start of a round and then submit the changes so everyone else can work on improving them. Yes, there are some disadvantages to the changes as well, however I'd say it would be more beneficial in the long run for the future of Planetarion. Genuine new features seem to have stopped this round, however the work of many people could bring back new features into the game. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on this?