Waiting...................

Started by cajomi, May 26, 2007, 03:47:31 AM

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The Geostation

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 12:30:18 AM
@Thank you Jo for this information!!


@The Geostation
Why do you mean you have to protect TG2 against my critic?
I definitly not want a GeoControl like TG2.

And likewise I don't want TG2 like GeoControl.   A personal preference.   You stated yours at the beginning, and afterwards I stated mine - and by saying that different people (i.e. different areas of the market) thrive in different ways of doing things.

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 12:30:18 AM
I do like work with nodes. It is not the whole concept, the interface in general, but the weak points I mentionend, I would like to see improved.
Without that little "you have difficulties" I would not agree complete to what you wrote, but of course the personal way of thinking fits to some software better than to others. But using this small addition, you create the impression, that the weak points are not in the software, here TG2, but in my person and personal preferences. This is a typical and general way, to suppress critic.
You assume that your preference of one way of doing things over another is a weakness???   I disagree.   The comment was a contextual observation, not a means of putting down your opinion but supporting my opinion that we "don't all think the same" and different software with different approaches is the key to suiting different people.   Do you understand that now?

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 12:30:18 AM
In a standard situation: A says to B, that he do not like it, that B is making jokes about him. B answers, hey A, what are your problems? It is a simple rhethorical trick.
To avoid misunderstandings, I had first ask you very clear, what you mean.
You answered the first question with yes and the second also.  So, if you take the whole communication, it is clear, what you meant.

Jokes?   What jokes?   You think I was having a go at you?
a) I don't even know you or have any motive for approaching the subject in that way
b) See my answers above for the reasoning behind my words

I hope it's a misunderstanding, triggered by DT's earlier posts - causing you to think that I am approaching the matter in the same way as him (no nudging and winking going on here - although his underlying concerns are valid).

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 12:30:18 AM
And do not forget: That you have no problems with imported terrains, must not mean, that there are no problems, but can also mean, that you do not stumple about them.
Correct in that I haven't tried everything.   However it would help if you directly state the nature of your problem from the start of the thread.   That way, it may have added my immediate support, particularly with regards my own issues relating to the generation of fractal masks from within TG2 (derived from the landscape fractal itself).

Andrew

Andrew
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

cajomi

Hi Andrew,

ups, I meant
"I definitly not want TG2 to be like GeoControl."

QuoteYou assume that your preference of one way of doing things over another is a weakness???
It is a weakness, if I would have difficulties, to follow other preferences. Then it is an exclusion, else it is a preference. If I prefer chocolate, does that mean I have difficulties with eating peanuts? No! If I prefer an interface like GeoControl has, does that mean, I have difficulties with the TG2 interface? In your interpretation yes, in mine no.
That is why only this small addition, this "you have difficulties" is not necessary.
It may be, that if you would try to realize the same with TG2, the thing with masking, you would have more difficulties than I - only a possibility of course, how can I know that - . So it must not be caused by my preferences.

QuoteHowever it would help if you directly state the nature of your problem from the start of the thread.   That way, it may have added my immediate support, particularly with regards my own issues relating to the generation of fractal masks from within TG2 (derived from the landscape fractal itself).

That was exact, what I had done, ok may be not so exact.
I had better simply said:
Why there are not updates?

This update policy makes me angry. I had not only paid to push the developement but also to get the benefits of the developement. I am missing those totally.
Someone here posted, that it take much time to produce an update. Well, I need about 2 hours for updating GeoControl. I can not believe, that I do that job (updating) better than Jo and Matt. So, that can not be the problem.
I really was unsure, whether the developement of TG2 still was a freetime project like TG 0.9. This point is clear now. It is not.

But if it is not, I really can not understand this update cycles.

Why have I not mentioned the special problems with masking before?

Because they know them. They were discussed. And they surely have them on the todo list. I am also sure, that they make a fantastic job on TG2 and that it will be a "beast" of power. But I have paid for this beast five months ago, and I think now it is time, to get a bit more for my money than I have at time.
That is exact the difference between freeware and commercial software. Most users here in the forum seem to have the TG2TP as freeware, and then it is right not to force something but to wait in patience.
And they should not attack those, who made the developement possbile by purchasing the TechPreview, if this people are not satisfied, because there are no informations about the developement steps, no updates, no official todo list, where you can see, what is done and what will be done.
If you are not willing to update, then you must inform your customers, what is going on. Else you need not to wonder, if they are getting in a bad temper.

I am in a bad temper, still, waiting for some concrete, information or update. And I am not bagging or suggesting, I am forcing, and that is my damn right as costumer.
It is also true, that I am as developer deeply disappointing about the communication. It was all times easyer for me to talk with Phelps (Vue), or other developers of Vue, or with the crew of Carrara, even though I am sometimes uncomfortable. But this TG developer silcence is really outstanding.
Developer of GeoControl

Will

Hi, just anouther little side note (I'm trying to stay out of this before it turns violent) but Geocontrol seems pretty complete and thus updating does not take tha tlong but in TG2TP there is still a lot of unfinished code and major issues to be worked out which take much longer to deal with. I realize (and agree) that you have the right to be angry at the lack of communication but (and I mean no aggression in this) have you e-mailed Jo or Matt? they are generally pretty quick at responding to those.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

The Geostation

#63
Many thanks for your clarification, Cajomi.   Looks like I made an assumption from the content of your messages about your regard for the TG2 interface.

It is my prediction that Matt and Jo will provide more than a glimpse of the "beast-to-come" in their next release ;D   The delays you note, may be related to issues to do with the forth-coming and intended multi-core capability - something that I believe is notoriously difficult to program at the moment.   While I don't think that it will be available during the next release, I have no doubt that Matt is attending to this right now.

I also get the impression that Matt is quite the perfectionist, with his attention fully focussed on the development of TG2.   Oshyan maybe the best route to gaining the answers you are looking for.

Andrew
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

cajomi

@The GeoStation
Thanks for keeping the communication

@Will
Thanks for calming down.

GeoControl was complete, but now it is back in developement.
So, for example, I have disabled a main feature for while, because it is not working. That prevents not from updating. It is the users/testers choice, which build he takes for his work, yes and even the alpha builds of GeoControl are used in professional work.

Of course I see more problems with this great package than with GC. But the update cycle for GC is between 3 days and 3 weeks, in the average 2 weeks. The update cycle for Silo is/was about 4 weeks, and 4 weeks for Vue.
5 months with 1 update is outstanding.

I have emailed them.

I really can not understand this behavior. This thread now is really loud, and we have got the information, that it is no freetime project. It was hard work, to get this single information, a very important one. It is definitly no fun, to play here the angry customer/developer. But what to do?
And it is also no fun, to miss the works of so many outstanding artists at rero. And may be the reason is, that after the TG2 preview it is no more fun to work with TG 0.9. but on the other hand, TG2 is not far enough.
Developer of GeoControl

jo

Hi Cajomi,

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 06:03:05 AM
This update policy makes me angry. I had not only paid to push the developement but also to get the benefits of the developement. I am missing those totally.
Someone here posted, that it take much time to produce an update. Well, I need about 2 hours for updating GeoControl. I can not believe, that I do that job (updating) better than Jo and Matt. So, that can not be the problem.

I'm sorry you feel that you are entitled to more TP updates than have been released. However we never said that registration of the Tech Preview gave access to all builds. It is not on the Pre-purchase information page :

<http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/prepurchase_tg2.shtml>

I don't know where you got the impression that things were different.

It is not our policy to release every build we make to the public. Our development process involves a team of private alpha testers who test builds in between the public releases. I've just released another Mac build to the alpha testers, for example. We aim for public releases to be reasonably stable, with any new features pretty well tested. TG2 is still in an alpha stage where we can be adding large chunks of new functionality, as well as making deep and wide ranging changes to existing code.  Alpha releases often include new features which have not been tested beyond what is possible by the developers, and it often needs alpha testers to be using things to turn up any bugs and such that we've missed. We do not want to release builds like that to the public. Tech Preview releases are made when we feel things have reached a reasonably solid state. Often when we are working on a particularly large chunk of code we cannot even release alpha builds incorporating other smaller changes as often as we'd like because things are not ready overall. As an example, the previous Windows alpha was released about a week ago but I had to delay the Mac version until today because I wanted to finish up some changes I had made.

I imagine that once we start to make changes involving multithreading the renderer etc. it is going to be some time before we can even make an alpha release.

For sure we can theoretically build a release build and put together a distro in a few hours just like you can (that is how it usually goes for alphas), but we try and accumulate a reasonable number of changes (which takes some time) or at least one major change (which often takes the same amount of time) before we do that. With both of us doing different things sometimes one has to wait for the other. For an actual public release things take a bit longer. We need to build release distros, we need to release a release candidate to alpha testers and make sure that enough try it out and make sure it's installing and working correctly, we need to make sure a reasonable number of mirrors have the new version before we release (which can take a day or so sometimes), we need to get the website updated etc. etc. It's not quite as simple as just chucking together a distro and uploading it.

Anyway, that's the last I'm going to add to this thread. I would guess, looking at where we are, that we are not too far having another TP release with a reasonable number of worthwhile changes ready, but I cannot give any sort of timeframe for that. I hope it's sooner rather than later, because I know there are some nasty Mac specific bugs fixed.

BTW, it's not really my job to be doing this sort of stuff anymore, I try to stay focussed on development these days. I think I'm all forum-ed out for now :-).

Regards,

Jo

jo

Hi Cajomi,

Ok, really my last post on this thread...

Quote from: cajomi on May 29, 2007, 06:52:24 AM
I really can not understand this behavior. This thread now is really loud, and we have got the information, that it is no freetime project. It was hard work, to get this single information, a very important one.

TG has not been a free time project for years and years and years and years. In fact basically it never has. I think it was only a free time project when Matt was at university, ever since then he's been working on it pretty much full time either as Planetside or when he was at DD. I worked on it for a long time without being paid because I was ill and needed something to do, but for many years it's been my job. Both of us have had brief times when we've been working on something else. I think possibly we haven't said anything about this because we didn't really think it needed to be said. To be honest, whenever I come across it I just think it's someone being a crank, and I can't waste my time on them. If anyone got in touch with me directly I would answer them. However, if we had to try and answer every angry person with the wrong idea about what we're doing or hit back at every rumor on a forum somewhere then we'd never get anything done, and in any case there is so much going on across the internet it's an impossible task. For sure we haven't done the greatest job over the years of communicating where things are at, but people just make stuff up without bothering to find out anything different. People tend to assume that when we're not in constant touch with the user community we're off doing something else rather than working. I only wish it were so :-). I certainly get more development work done now that I'm less involved with the user community directly than I was perhaps a year or so back, even though I do sometimes miss being in close contact with people. I find the forums much harder to monitor than where there was more happening with the email list, and I mainly rely on Oshyan to let me know if there's anything important I need to address and I swing an eye over the support forum periodically.

We've often taken steps to try and give a better appearance of being alive and kicking but I think often we're just so busy it's hard to keep that going. I wish it were different.

Regards,

Jo


cajomi

Thank you Jo for this reply.

It is a question of priorities.
Developer of GeoControl

Buzzzzz

Jo you said: I'm sorry you feel that you are entitled to more TP updates than have been released. However we never said that registration of the Tech Preview gave access to all builds. It is not on the Pre-purchase information page.

However on the pre-purchase page is states:

You may purchase a commercial license for the Technology Preview which will remove these feature restrictions and allow you access to more frequent development releases of Terragen 2. You will also be entitled to a free upgrade to a final release of Terragen 2 when development is completed.

So my question is: What does more frequent releases mean? Does it mean we get the same updates that the  non-paying folks get?   I understand we don't get all alpha builds as you say. However,when I pre-purchased I was under the impression that we would receive more frequent updates than unregistered users. If that's not the case then this is a little deceiving in my eyes.

jo

Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on May 29, 2007, 08:05:17 AM
However on the pre-purchase page is states:

You may purchase a commercial license for the Technology Preview which will remove these feature restrictions and allow you access to more frequent development releases of Terragen 2. You will also be entitled to a free upgrade to a final release of Terragen 2 when development is completed.

Sorry, can you please post a link to which page says this? It's not on the one I linked to. I will have to bring this to the attention of the others so that web page can be updated. As far as I am aware the official statement of what the license entitles you to is on this page, which is the pre-purchase page :

<http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/prepurchase_tg2.shtml>

Regards,

Jo


Buzzzzz

Quote from: jo on May 29, 2007, 08:21:13 AM
Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on May 29, 2007, 08:05:17 AM
However on the pre-purchase page is states:

You may purchase a commercial license for the Technology Preview which will remove these feature restrictions and allow you access to more frequent development releases of Terragen 2. You will also be entitled to a free upgrade to a final release of Terragen 2 when development is completed.

Sorry, can you please post a link to which page says this? It's not on the one I linked to. I will have to bring this to the attention of the others so that web page can be updated. As far as I am aware the official statement of what the license entitles you to is on this page, which is the pre-purchase page :

<http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/prepurchase_tg2.shtml>

Regards,

Jo




Hi Jo,

Yes, it's right here:  http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/tech_preview.shtml  5th Paragraph

jo

Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on May 29, 2007, 08:28:33 AM
Yes, it's right here:  http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/tech_preview.shtml  5th Paragraph

Ah, I see. Thanks for pointing it out, I will let the others know about it. I apologise to Cajomi in regard to that, although as far as I am aware the official description of benefits to purchasing a commercial license is what is set out in the actual pre-purchase page.

Regards,

Jo

Harvey Birdman

You know, Jo, this entire misunderstanding (if that's what it is) could have been prevented by more frequent communication with your user base. You've chosen a business model that has you accepting payments for an incomplete product with the understanding that this early purchase is going to entitle the users to updates. The frustration you've witnessed here stems, I think, not only from the fact that there haven't been updates with the frequency users would like, but also from the fact that inquiries here have met with absolute silence. You seemed upset about my questioning the number of hours per week dedicated to the project. What else was I to assume, when no activity is evident re: updates, and there is no communication on the subject? You may feel you don't owe the users explanations. I would argue that you do owe us explanations of these long delays - you placed yourself under that obligation when you accepted money under this 'technology preview pre-purchase' philosophy. Seems Buzzzzz has found this in writing. Perhaps you should consider a more accomodating attitude towards your paying users instead of running off to change the web page.

Buzzzzz

Quote from: jo on May 29, 2007, 08:40:53 AM
Hi Buzzzzz,

Quote from: Buzzzzz on May 29, 2007, 08:28:33 AM
Yes, it's right here:  http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/tech_preview.shtml  5th Paragraph

Ah, I see. Thanks for pointing it out, I will let the others know about it. I apologize to Cajomi in regard to that, although as far as I am aware the official description of benefits to purchasing a commercial license is what is set out in the actual pre-purchase page.

Regards,

Jo


My Pleasure Jo, but I would think on a Business Site that all pages would be Actual and or Official. I read that 1st page and took it as Gospel so I didn't pay that much attention to the second page to notice that frequent updates weren't listed there. Oh well another lesson learned.  :( sigh..... And I think more than just Cajomi deserves apologies. How about all the pre-registered people that were expecting more updates than the unregistered? Well at least we now know not to expect anything to be frequent.

Looking forward to all Your's and Matt's hard work.

Regards

Jay

jo

Hi Harvey,

Quote from: Harvey Birdman on May 29, 2007, 09:36:32 AM
You know, Jo, this entire misunderstanding (if that's what it is) could have been prevented by more frequent communication with your user base. You've chosen a business model that has you accepting payments for an incomplete product with the understanding that this early purchase is going to entitle the users to updates. The frustration you've witnessed here stems, I think, not only from the fact that there haven't been updates with the frequency users would like, but also from the fact that inquiries here have met with absolute silence. You seemed upset about my questioning the number of hours per week dedicated to the project. What else was I to assume, when no activity is evident re: updates, and there is no communication on the subject? You may feel you don't owe the users explanations. I would argue that you do owe us explanations of these long delays - you placed yourself under that obligation when you accepted money under this 'technology preview pre-purchase' philosophy. Seems Buzzzzz has found this in writing. Perhaps you should consider a more accomodating attitude towards your paying users instead of running off to change the web page.

Please understand, I am just a developer these days. I have perhaps made a mistake in trying to correct misconceptions about what we are doing, but I thought I would jump in and say something because I thought things were getting out of hand. I certainly don't feel personally responsible for a lack of communication with users, because it's not my place to do that anymore, even though I do acknowledge it could be better. I also didn't mean to imply that I thought just changing the web page was a sufficient solution for those who feel they have been misled. I have let the others know about the situation, and that is as much I as personally can do.

I can't comment on the lack of response to inquiries about updates, because it is not my place to do so. Like I said, I don't even really read the forums much myself.

For myself, the explanation for delays between updates is the same as it has always been. I don't even see it as delays, because we haven't made specific promises about releases. I think it's better to say that the interval between releases has been longer than desired. We are working as hard as we can to push things forward. That has never changed, and from my perspective I can't say anything more that. I did try and explain why updates are not so frequent as might be desired, and when I look at it there has even been a fair while between alpha releases up until recently.

This really is the last post on from me on this thread. I hope that I have been able to clear up least a few of the misconceptions about TG's development, and hope that I have not muddied anything else. I shall now go back to my usual habit of posting little and stick to the support forums. I only really posted in this thread in the first place because I was waiting for a build to finish :-).

Regards,

Jo