[Scummvm-devel] What is happening to the ScummVM team?

[Johannes Schickel]

Eugene Sandulenko schrieb:
> As of the quality, unfortunately reality shows that with each release
> since 0.8.0, when we introduced testing, we get lesser and lesser
> people willing to test. For instance, still nobody tested all Kyra
> games, and that engine definitely had big changes recently. Johannes,
> you could contribute to the testing too, no offense.
>   

Right, so far I only tested my German CD version of DOTT. And I stilled 
planned to at least test Kyra1 again, since there were some major 
changes to the input code of that one. Actually due to real life issues 
I had less time to test games, thus it would be a personal plus when we 
would delay release too ;-).

> As of MM v2 bug, as I stated in my release status e-mail, I am not
> convinced that that is the real issue. AFAIK there were no changes to
> the scripts engine of SCUMM, and nobody confirmed that those bugs
> occur on English version. Moreover, MM v1 is completable, and it uses
> practically same codebase at least for the scripts.
>   

I checked all our release testing web pages since 0.8.0 now and it seems 
we never had any report on German version for MM v2, thus maybe it could 
be an even older problem?

> Still, I am really don't like the way you point this out. As I
> announce with each release schedule, I do not put it in stone. A
> simple request with sound reasons will easily make me push release
> date or even cancel it altogether. It is not that I am dictating it,
> although certain degree of dictatorship is required from the one
> wearing a release manager hat ;).
>   

Actually I'm wondering how I should point it out then. Of course I could 
have just written an reply to our release thread instead, but since I 
was wondering about some other things too and considered this rather an 
general aspect instead of something only 0.13.0 release related I choose 
this mail to discuss about it.


>> I also know some might say, "but we should really have a release soon"
>> or "we always release every 6 months", but in my opinion we should
>> rather have a quality release than a release in a fixed period, which
>> has too many annoying bugs. Thus my vote for this release is: wait for
>> more testing results! (means delay it)
>>     
> Although I wholeheartedly agree with you on this, unfortunately
> experience shows that in this case it will NEVER happen. The hardcore
> users just refuse to replay even beloved games 130-th time. And the
> newcomers just don't care.
>
> Thus I would rather release 0.13.0 and then 0.13.1 soon when wider
> audience will test it. The reasons why 0.12.1 was released is (a) lack
> of time (b) I did not see many complains about ITE not working
> (unfortunately).
>   

This is actually giving me headaches, releasing a probably not well 
tested release, to get more tests is pretty much strange to me. Of 
course it might help to get more testing results, but those results 
should be done before release testing. Maybe we should just release some 
release candidates in the future with some weeks in between and when we 
find the situation good enough we will create a final release. (Actually 
it seems what you propose to do with 0.13.0 and 0.13.1 seems to be 
exactly what other projects achieve via release candidates).

> For the sake of this, and hoping that we will participate in GSoC'09,
> I am looking into automated testing task which I recently added to
> http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/OpenTasks#Implement_recorded_play
> Otherwise I see no bright light in the way of quality release testing.
>   

Yes I saw that and find it a nice improvement, but till that is done we 
need to manage our release without it.

>> I'm happy to hear any comments from you about it, might it be: "just
>> bullshit, our release testing is great, just test the games yourself" or
>> "we might really want to think again about it". I would not be happy to
>> hear the usual silence, though. Also please note ITE was purely taken as
>> an example here, which sadly had some problems in the last releases.
>>     
> I simply lack of time these days. When in the past I easily spent
> 20-30 hours per week on ScummVM when I worked from home, today I get
> 15 hours per week wasted on my way to the workplace, so I am really
> happy when I get even 15 hours to work on my beloved project. And in
> that time I have to squeeze lots of e-mailing, work scheduling, commit
> reviews and sometimes bugfixing.
>
> So if you like to help the team and step in as a release manager, at
> least I will not be against it.
>   
I'm happy to help out as a co release manager with next release. In case 
you do not want to be release manager for next release, I would consider 
stepping in as main release manager too.

>> The next point I wanted to talk about is our engine additions.
>>     
> The current policy was that as long as there are people interested in
> working on the engine, and as long as it is a 2d advenure (preferably
> point and click), it just gets a green light. I saw quite rare
> interest from people working on engine FOO in the development of
> engine BAR. Sometimes I was not even aware of certain engine
> development, consider Tucker which just arrived completable.
>
> I personally see no problem with that, since the policy mentioned
> above proved to be working in most cases. I care when some engine
> demands our core changes, thus touching more people than just the
> engine authors. Then I have to diligently evaluate the needed changes.
> In other cases I keep in mind that after all, an engine could be just
> compiled out.
>   

I would still find it more politely to inform other team members about 
those addition though.

>> I would have really loved to hear more about  what is going
>> on with ScummVM development.
>>     
> Quite often there is another factor which should be considered. Price
> of the ScummVM-supported games. As you remember, I tried to do my best
> and talked privately to the team members when I was aware that certain
> games are about to get supported, so they could obtain copies for them
> on eBay at cheaper prices.
>   

Maybe we should then get something like dev-discuss again, means a 
private mailing list to discuss such things. I do not see the price 
factor as a real good argument to leave people in the dark though.

>> Now another issue I came across today in our IRC channel by chance:
>> FreeSCI merge. It seems that the FreeSCI team is preparing for an merge
>> into ScummVM. I am pretty astonished that so far nobody of our team
>> members involved in the FreeSCI discussion about this and/or planning
>> the merge together with them had said any word about it. Actually I
>> thought our policy was to post mails to -devel to discuss such changes.
>>     
> There were NO changes. Everyone would certainly be warned about it.
> And the manner of that message would be something like: "Hey! FreeSCI
> folks finally agreed to merge, hurray!", not asking opinion or
> whatever. Not because I ignore opinions of the team, but because
> everyone was informed that SCI engine is on the way, and everyone
> greated it. Being it SCI1 or FreeSCI doesn't change anything.
>   

I have my problems seeing the SCI1 engine you talked about back then, as 
the same as FreeSCI. Actually as stated in one of your other mails you 
said one FreeSCI developer for example does not support the merge. This 
may be an internal FreeSCI fact, but still it might make us wonder 
whether we should really support the merge or maybe even have an open 
discussion with both teams to help the situation a bit.

> I gave several reasons for not announcing it till now in my another
> e-mail.

That mail was send after my original mail though, thus I do not consider 
it a source of information I could judge by when I wrote the mail.

> Let me stress that currently I consider all of these
> accusations as premature.
>   

Actually from the information I was able to get through our ways of 
official development related discussion I fail to see what I complained 
about being "premature".  And I actually want to say here, that this 
again looks like keeping things secret and hope people are happy with it 
then they are informed or even not caring about others at all.

>  We did not silently dumped anything into our
> repository. Neither we had plans to do so.
>   

I wasn't able to tell that you hadn't any plans to silently do the merge 
actually, thus I think it is fair and ok that I am wondering why nothing 
was said so far.

>> * Are we still one team? Or is it nowadays rather that "the ScummVM
>> team" as an umbrella team and various single engine teams?
>>     
> We always were ScummVM project consisting of several subteams:
>   - Core
>   - Engine-specific
>   - Port-specific
>   - Other, such as Wiki editors
>
> Name it as you like. Such structure comes from 2001 when Simon engine
> was merged.
>   

If we are really that loosely connected teams, I am wondering why we 
have a central svn rep.


// Johannes