Something that bugs me

[Mr War]

How MG versus GAE partisanship still pollutes some debates. Like going into the MG forum and responding to questions by saying GAE does this or that, and vice versa. I'm not trying discourage responding to questions, or discussing the forks, but it's getting repetitive and unhelpful.

And another thing, people pushing the devs to merge. Please give them breathing space, ultimately they decide with their actions not a popular vote. Those of us who are not contributing directly to the code base rely on their good will.

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just undercurrents I notice only too often.

Sorry for the rant but I felt it has to be said

[Gabbe]

How MG versus GAE partisanship still pollutes some debates. Like going into the MG forum and responding to questions by saying GAE does this or that, and vice versa. I'm not trying discourage responding to questions, or discussing the forks, but it's getting repetitive and unhelpful.

And another thing, people pushing the devs to merge. Please give them breathing space, ultimately they decide with their actions not a popular vote. Those of us who are not contributing directly to the code base rely on their good will.

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just undercurrents I notice only too often.

Sorry for the rant but I felt it has to be said

I think it is only helpfull to those who mod to say which fork has which features, even if they already have decided which one to use. Then they might change their mind if the really need that particular feature

[ultifd]

+1, this has happened since the beginning of MG.  While about half the time it's OK, there are sometimes where it's kinda getting out of hand.

Maybe we should quote your post, and this post too in a stickied thread at the MG board.

I think people are giving MG less credit than the devs deserve. Getting multiplayer to work is one of the most difficult tasks in game development (Wikipedia). Any feature used in multiplayer (which means most if not all of the single player features) could potentially break it. GAE has had the luxury of not having to worry about that. GAE has also focused more on getting features out rather than worrying about producing the best gaming experience. Like multiplayer, it is a difficult task and the MG team has worked really hard to make both single player and multiplayer a fun experience (regardless of anyone's subjective opinion).

I can understand the frustration of having two programs that appear to serve the same purpose. This is the nature of open source (more specifically GPL software). Another fork could appear tomorrow and that would be ok. If this were not possible then there might not be a stable multiplayer at all. When it comes down to it the people that do the work get the say. This was stated from the beginning of discussing the merge.

A possible compromise is to only promote GAE for modding and treat MG as a stand-alone game for the MegaPack and treat any other compatible mods for MG as secondary. This will allow MG to expand into other areas without worrying about the modding community (ie they can break compatability to make a better experience) and (almost) remove the choice that modders are having trouble deciding. I think both can exist together but they need to be treated as separate projects with separate goals and audiences, not two forks that can be mashed up to make one.

[Psychedelic_hands]

I think when a thread is about a particular feature; which GAE has, it is perfectly acceptable to discuss that. Infact it should be discussed as it might lead to porting that feature to MG. Discussion about a feature could also lead to better implementing it in GAE. That also benifets the modders because it makes the engines more compatible, which means more mods will be able to be played on both eninges . We should be talking about ways MG and GAE can co-exist and work together better.

The only thing I see that isn't helpful is engine bashing. Which I don't notice as much anymore. 

[Mr War]

Well I'm not against debate, and a slightly competitive environment might be helping the rate of changes. What vexes me is the tone or intention of some "helpful" comments. We should all try to be encouraging and constructive on response to other peoples questions

[Omega]

Think of it this way, if GAE has a feature that MG does not, then MG might wish to implement it. However, if they do not know about this feature in MG, they may end up implementing it differently! Having the same thing done a different way in both engines is a huge pet peeve of mine, since there's no reason that has to happen, such as with Lua timers, GAE had them long before MG and they were well known to exist, yet MG created their own syntax. Had they used the same syntax, MG scenarios with timers would be compatible to GAE and vice versa.

Likewise, with tooltips, they can either create their own method, or they can use GAE's existing method. This has NO DISADVANTAGES and numerous advantages, such as allowing mods to work on both engines, allowing documentation to be easier (just document one feature for both engines instead of one each, despite doing the same thing), modders can adapt to the other engine easier (same syntax instead of having the learn new syntax), and in the event that a merge should ever resurface, it will be easier, as there's no need to support legacy code then.

It's called constructive criticism, and it overall brings the better for the game (sadly, a merge would bring a lot more of that "better").