A post to Jon i hope you read this. (in General)

I am going to preface this by saying i understand you don't know me and probably do not care what i have to say but i beg you to read anyway.

Jon you are desperately needed here. The game you have spent from what i understand is nearly a decade crafting to a level which most devs only dream of called addictive needs your attention to stay that way. I do realize you have a job and a family and that comes first but maybe a day here a weekend there to work on the game would give your loyal crew there captain back and a feeling that the ship was not heading toward a massive iceberg. i end this by saying do you really want to see a project you have worked on for so long die do to lack of leadership? now is the time to save it players are still here and still coming in daily now is the time to save it.

A CM or email would have done better.

Thats prob the quickest way to get /ignore from Jon, Im one of them :[

Jon has stopped by recently... and I don't know if folks quite understand the difference between a job and creating a company from nothing... It's not like he's picking something else with his "leisure" time (which from FB appears to mostly deal with cleaning up after kids), the man is simply working on something else.

Nightstrike has given of himself in countless ways to CB, and I while I understand your perspective isn't exactly the most informed one as to regards his contributions I'm amazed you chose to ignore him entirely in your plea.

The group of folks we have here working on CB is small, and often busy with outside projects, but we're here, most of us every day! Another post crying wolf and declaring the end of CB doesn't change that one bit. I'm not telling you not to care, or even not to worry, I'm just trying to get the point across that the sky isn't going to fall because Jon doesn't visit often enough or because Nightstrike has fallen into the reactor and is now glowing like a neon sign.

If you want to be a part of CB in five years, tell a friend, buy a supporter item or name your gear... we'll be here.

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0037ml

This thread should help a little Sienna. :)

Sienna:

Jon's starting a company
I'm working endless hours on a new job
Fex is getting married
etc
etc

If you'd like to help, please do so in a constructive way.

Other than what nov has listed if you have any kind of programming knowledge (I truly wish I did), or know someone else who does that has free time for a side project, see if there is something you can do to help out. Even if it is something small hey that is one less thing for the crew to worry about.

Would it be helpful if there was a list of things that folk could work on for CB (if they're able to), that people could sort of 'sign up' to and say "Hey, I'll take care of this for you guys"?

It's hard to offer your time/effort/work, when you've no idea what needs to be done, and if there's actually anything you have the expertise to help on...

My idea's always been that if NS and Jon do not have time to contribute towards CB (understandably because they are busy people) then someone else may be brought in to help add new things to the game. I guess that would require a person knowledgable in whatever programming language this site runs but at least the game would be changing instead of remaining stagnant.


I do believe that bringing to attention that this game is slowly dying off is pretty constructive.

I love this game and that's why I still play it instead of other MMOs and I'd like to see it prosper instead of slowly decay.

the reason i made this the way i did is very simple. NS i'm sure you are a nice fellow and all but this game is not your baby it is his. from my perspective without some sort of direction the game is driving down a slippery slope of tedium that will lead to the vets we have left quitting. papercuts are cool but that's just mostly visual changes that don't address gameplay which is the major issue.

I second GL's idea of posting a To-Do list. Of course, I dunno if Jon would want just anybody messing with the game code or whatever (you can see I'm not a programmer), but it would at least be nice to know what the devs would like to see done. Then it would be easier for us non-programmers to at least look around and lobby for someone to come in and do some work, when we can show them specifically what there is to do.

Also, is all the usd going into the game going straight just to the maintaining costs/Jon? I just mean, if the -only- way any programming work could be done would be through volunteer work, that would be really tough. But if maybe there is some, albeit limited, funds to go towards this, plus maybe if it was made clear how much something would cost, the community could work on donating to the cause. Say like maybe something went on the Home Page saying "We need $1000 for this update to happen, donate here!", and players can see what is being planned, and then can donate to the cause. For just a quick example, my dad is a programmer, and while game development isn't necessarily his field of expertise, he definitely can handle at least some of the smaller things, but he wouldn't do it for free. But if we said, we can pay for 10 hours of his time at whatever his rate is, he could get a lot done for the game I think. I'm not actually volunteering my dad, just using him as an example. :P

Anyway, I think it's a possibility.

it would probably help greatly if we had someone who just kept a to-do list of things that have already been agreed upon and assigned to current devs. i haven't gotten ns approval on this but i do not see it being a problem. for ease of use and access i would put it on google docs word processor.

if someone is interested in taking this on, there were many of these assignments made in the papercuts thread and just yesterday ns assigned a task as well, cm me if you create this and i will find that thread and send you a link.

i would suggest linking the to-do items so that the devs, when they have time, can just go to the list and then check the thread for details if needed. it would likely be best to organize it by dev.

the main thing about something like this is to share access (read & write) with others so that our bus factor is larger! ; )

it could also be placed under the known issues wiki page under the section: non-buggy to-do list linked here:

http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/Known+Issues#5

we really just need to let people know where it is so that they can use it.