The Situation in ShootMania

[NJin]

Both will share tech, but it should be two separate .exe. Because of marketing, it is hard to tell more about the future, and it is as much frustrating for us.

Sounds like maniaplanet would be more a client software similar to blizzard or steam in the future instead of a game engine.

[keeth]

Unfortunately more than several months. My intention was to release RoyalSquad and use it as a way to work on it and make one thing really clean, to both train new people that will have more time of these subjects and keep things on going for SM. It is not easy call to split forces.

There is a lack of polish in our previous work and it requires a lot more people to both innovate and polish

Awe man several months
I can assure you i will be there first in line to try it out none the less!

But i feel like an early alpha of such a huge update will be needed for both TrackMania and ShootMania. It really sounds like there will be continental changes done to both games.
With that in mind i am wondering if it could be an option to run select testing phases or limited periods for the new tech or features. As a screening to see what works and what doesn't.

I feel like this is something the community of ShootMania is eager to participate with.

[Dmark]

I think the most important thing for the players is currently the bug fixes.

Sure you want to focus more on the new big thing, but the current SM version has some critical bugs, so that people stopped or wanna stop playing.

Is it possible that we work together with the devs who are involved into bug-fixing?
Or making a public list at which bugs you are currently working, maybe with updates when it will be pushed.
And push them to a beta state first so everyone can test them, if anything new is broken?

[Hylis]

I have updated my previous post to talk about squadding.

Tests were always quite difficult on SM. When it was on the favorites mode, it was too often opposition to change things and when it was on new things, players were not really coming. Channels were a way to help this. If there are two channels, one for test and one for real, I don't think many would come in test since there is already not many in real.

Bug fix phases happened during the 4.1 release. And if we go for a new phase, we will make a private forum, invite players and do as always.

Bug fixing is something important, I totally agree on this, but the range of things is really wide.

[Hylis]

Engineers works really well with players in private phases. Never something negative to moderate. So, we better to wait for these moments.

[Hylis]

If there are bugs in our current games, it is much likely they would be in our next, so there is no trouble of priority there.

[keeth]

Engineers works really well with players in private phases. Never something negative to moderate. So, we better to wait for these moments.

Concerning new features and changes: It is also something i feel like should be introduced in an early phase to players. In order to avoid a situation where there are features that look cool on paper, but end up being minimally used by the players.
I imagine that this is also counter productive from a developers point of view.

[Monk9443]

Ok, good, at least we now have a communication platform.
Lets step back a bit, and talk about concrete things.

Many things happened, many things were done, a lot influenced by emotions. Still, deleting messages will achieve nothing.
I don't want to hang on that thought, just note that censorship is never a good idea. (when something went public, of course censoring things before they go public is a viable strategy but let's not get into that)

Now, i cannot speak for the entire community, but the feeling in the air is that there is a mismatch of directions.
Nadeo is pushing one side, while we as a community are pushing in another. Of course someone has to lose.

Can we ignore all the media talk, and just make an agreement. As current players we are happy with the amount of content, while we do wish for many things, i am sure most will agree that removing major bugs and freezing the development is enough. Since, as you said Hylis, there will be a split, we would be happy with that. On another note, if development will continue, something needs to change. And we need to discuss what.

I am not saying this to boast, but to warn you. This happened now to SM, and TM is headed in the same direction. It will not be tomorrow, but one day, and one day not too far from now. Similar thing will happen.

This little, let's call it "incident", made wounds on the community, some are shallow, but some are deep.

[Hylis]

Thinking about what is valuable in our game is still our job. I don't say this as our 'precious' ^_^ but that balancing the tech question / various type of players / planning / long term goals etc, has to be done with a lot of information. When discussions are bad, it is hard to get the best information from core players, who are important as well.

[Monk9443]

Oh, there has been more talk.
I've missed a bit.

The approach to bug fixing should be taken with priority. Some bugs can be fixed later. Some need to be fixed as fast as possible.
I do not know what approach you are using in development. But having a broken game until the phases roll over to a bug fixing one is not a good approach.

If you do demos you should know, make it work and make it presentable, a minute is enough.

Just to note, am not saying to fix all the bugs now, but to fix ones that are impeding the gameplay and the "presentableness" of the game.
(basically major ones)