almost bug free?

And now you see why I'm a terrible tester! :P

Who knows what other tricks he's been doing this whole time without anyone knowing about. 😮

..But what I would like to know is who the heck has been rating the bug threads. That's pretty funny. :googly:

well.... just lost about 30 hours worth of work to a header error.
I haven't seen this since the early betas, yet this one is supposed to be more stable huh?
I'm pretty disappointed to say the least.

One thing I do think needs to be addressed that isn't related to 2.5 proper: some form of consistent documentation that won't require people to A) look at a tutorial or B) comb through old forum posts. I recall the ZCWiki was supposed to fill this need, but I imagine some sort of packaged documentation would be preferable for the final product. Fortunately, that's something that can be addressed by the community at large, developers included, over the next [insert random time period here]

This would be awesome. I think the format of a Wiki is ideal for this.

nagging... ROFLOL
You better be extremely careful who you marry, you're liable to go absolutely insane.
I come in and bust yer balls what... about once every six months?
It's just who I am, a grumpy old biker bastard, who tells it like he sees it, regardless of ruffling a few feathers here and there.

Like j-man already said, it does sound unfortunate that you seem to always get the short end of the stick, and suffer such huge set backs. Sorry to hear about the 30 hours lost.

So.. Maybe some action should be taken. We still have heard nothing of what the devs intend on doing other than "making it bug free". This is nice, but where is the stopping point? What can be categorized as an "acceptable bug" and more importantly, when will features stop being added? I have been paying some attention to the updates more recently, and it looks like nothing but bug fixes. In fact, I have not seen anything truly new in quite some time. I was just wondering about an official status here.

Is there some sort of check list you devs use or do you just play it by ear?

I was fortunate and got my 30 hours back

The most important thing I see right now is that people get in and test it for bugs, the devs can't fix bugs they are unaware of and trust me, there are some sneaky ones in there.

I think it's officially time to say goodbye to Zelda Classic. It has died. There's no saving it anymore unless someone goes back to... let's say ZC 2.10 or the Lost Isle build and starts working with that when it wasn't a big damn mess yet.

So why waste time with Zelda Classic anymore? Almost everyone has finally realized it is time gone to waste. The developing team is a mess and no one seems to know what they're doing. I'm sure there are enough people around here with good programming skills, why not try to rewrite the engine, or start from scratch? It's time to make a new Zelda Classic. No matter how many years it would take to get that new Zelda Maker out, I would support it and bugtest it like crazy. Game making is my passion and I want ZC back the way it was: Good and relatively bugfree!

Yeah I know, I suck too. I may be good at designing games but I have no programming skills so I depend on others to make the tools for me. Zelda Classic was that perfect tool, a dream come true, and it was ruined by the incompetence of the new developers. The organizing of this project went to hell many years ago and Freedom and I tried to talk some sense to the developers, but they never listened. Now here we are, after 5 years and almost no progress for the better has happened. So sad. 😞

I jut wonder what's so hard to understand about this simple yet effective concept:

1) Add a feature, test the hell out of it, release a "stable beta", test the hell out of it as well and then finally call it a stable, full release.

2) Repeat.

Now that I've spoken, go ahead and give me that negative rep, I don't care. I've probably deserved it for being so negative but that's how I am when I am very frustrated.

- Pete

New proposal (Similar to something in Peteo's post):

1. Start with ZC 2.10.2
2. Make it as stable as possible as well as its code as organized as possible. Make this near perfect version official. Say 2.10.3

3. Impliment one feature from 2.11. The code is already written, so perhaps it only needs to be cleaned out and properly inserted into 2.10.3.
4. Bug testing.

5. After enough of the essential features have been implemented, release.
6. Repeat 3,4,5.

Reasoning:
The betas, just have an overwhelming amount of new features, and no stable release since 2.10. So rather than rewritting everything from scratch, 2.10 seems like the best chance for a starting point. It's very solid, and perhaps only needs to be cleaned out. Really, even a few basic features (I mean without all the scripting, enemy editor, etc.) I think could get me and others re-interested in ZC. Basic features like the multiple warps and new combos. The betas wont have been a complete waste if they are used as guidance for the features to be added to the stable ZC.

Main Idea:
Rewrite from 2.10, focusing on making the expansion of ZC clean, effective, and organized.

oh man.....
now people are calling for a re-release of 210...
What a depressing thought.

L, what do you have to say about that after being so quiet in the rest of this thread?

You have GOT to be kidding me...

Too much work has been put into 2.5 to go back to 2.10. Plus, there's not much left that needs to be changed in the new builds besides fixing the bugs.

If anything this thread demonstrates why I respect Freedom's complaints and concerns when he states them while basically ignoring anything Petoe says.

jman2050 wrote:If anything this thread demonstrates why I respect Freedom's complaints and concerns when he states them while basically ignoring anything Petoe says.

But it doesn't matter, you developers have been ignoring me for the last 5 years and look where we are... I mean, you ZC developers are talented programmers, I aknowledge and repsect that. But as developers you have done an awful job. Now everybody makes mistakes but what about learning from them? Would that be too much to ask?

I understand first hand Petoe's anger and frustration over what's happen here.
When L first started adding so many features so quickly, and stated that there was no such thing as a bug free program, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see where it was headed.
I warned about it at the time, and today wish I had been proven wrong instead of right.

The additions that L and the rest of you developers have added have been a great improvement, but you forgot what the program was intended to be used for, and that's to build and release quests with.
Forgetting that has caused builders and players alike to seek new ways to occupy their spare time.

I've been back here for the last month because I tore my guts up carrying a heavy wooden army footlocker and was flat on my back, and TV sux.
If I could have been, I'd have been out working or riding my bike, but instead I decided to finish at least one of the quests I have shelved as a tribute to Elise, who is really the one that is responsible for the motivation that allowed me to release all the quests that I did since SwanSong.

Personally I don't believe a stable release is coming, but come or not, I'm going to release this last quest and be done with it.
I owe that to Elise, and to myself.

Shit's depressing :/

What I want to know is how serious are the devs about re-doing ZC from the ground up after a "stable" 2.5 comes around?

[QUOTE=Petoe's sig]<-Quotes->

"GET a stable version, THEN add more with the builds, DON'T just keep adding bloat to something that doesn't work already.
Has common sense just left the building, or what?" -Freedom[/quote]

...I'm pretty sure that's been in your sig for at least two years...

And to be realistic, complaining will bring about no change. Test the latest builds for bugs, report them, and they shall be fixed in due time. We just need testers WILLING to comb for bugs and developers WILLING to sift through and debug code.

Yes, but what is the point if features keep being added? There is no end to what you can test as there will always be something new to test. If the developers focus on bug fixing rather then new features, I'm sure people will come back to help test.

Uhh guys...Newsflash. 2.5 is considered feature complete and 99% of the remaining work that needs to be done is nothing but bug fixes. Didn't anyone get the memo I sent out? :P

Gleeok wrote:Uhh guys...Newsflash. 2.5 is considered feature complete and 99% of the remaining work that needs to be done is nothing but bug fixes. Didn't anyone get the memo I sent out? :P

yea, got that memo some 4 years ago and set back and watched a complete scripting systems built in defiance of it.
shall we count the days and number of releases since DN closed the suggestions forum?

Yes Freedom, I agree with you that there certainly should of been at least one full release since all that. jman even said the same thing and I'm sure he wishes he would of put one out when he had the chance. While you're not going to get _L_ to fess to over feature jiggering or bad timing any time soon (he's stubborn, that one), he's trying to fix bugs and get it 'stable' as much as anybody.

According to my flawless broken logic, 2.5 will be done next week sometime. Just find yourself a reality to Gleeok metric conversion chart and you have an absolute time frame. Or, realize that the faster we fix the remaining bugs, the faster it will be done. As I said somewhere else; if one developer fixes the bugs in zc, it could take a while. Just like if only one person tests it, it may take a while to even find any bugs in the first place. You want to know when 2.5 will be done? I don't know Freedom. It depends on how many bugs are left and how hard they are to fix.

I also find it sort of amusing in a twisted sort of way that no one actually believes that no more features are being put in and putting out a release is the main goal. Man, you guys really did a number on the user base, not to mention dragging our credibility through the dirt. Jeez..

Man, you guys really did a number on the user base, not to mention dragging our credibility through the dirt.

give me a break, I simply told the truth as I saw it, and time has proven me right.
When all this started you weren't even a developer for that matter.
sugar coat it or paint it any color that amuses you, the truth will still be obvious to anyone who takes the time to look.

The results of the user base had nothing to do with the "you guys" you refer to, they had to do with the fact that builders could no longer build, and as a result players had nothing to play.

No, I was referring to the zc devs and the sort of domino like effect we see here where everyone just assumes it's all lies, and at any moment someone's going to add in a weapon editor and enemy scripting engine and thus effectively add two million new bugs into zc. You misunderstood.

Then I stand corrected, my apologies.

From the way I'm looking at it, there is nothing to distinguish "A Stable new release version" from "Build 2,500" from "The least unstable beta" from "The official 2.5" at all. One could make the argument that no new features should be added, (And then one would have to define "feature."😉 and then one could suggest that all unfinished features remain unfinished until all the bugs are ironed out of what already exists, release that as the milestone public release, and then finish off the unfinished features, debug those, and then release THAT as yet another public milestone release because that one is both stable and finished. Because again, some define finished as being bug-free, and some define finished as being both bug-free and completely inclusive of everything the features suggest it should have with nothing being incomplete.

Considering that the unfinished things can just be completed immediately after the milestone release, there's no need to complete any currently worked-on features now. So it doesn't really matter that things can go unfinished. The most important thing is the bug-fixed, rather than the completeness of the program by which to call it a finished 2.5 product.

Besides - 2.5 doesn't sound nearly as official as ZC 3.0. 😛

Gleeok wrote:Uhh guys...Newsflash. 2.5 is considered feature complete and 99% of the remaining work that needs to be done is nothing but bug fixes. Didn't anyone get the memo I sent out? :P

Hey, in all sincerity, I missed that one :P I am quite glad though; to hear it "officially" at least.

ShadowTiger wrote:From the way I'm looking at it, there is nothing to distinguish "A Stable new release version" from "Build 2,500" from "The least unstable beta" from "The official 2.5" at all. One could make the argument that no new features should be added, (And then one would have to define "feature."😉 and then one could suggest that all unfinished features remain unfinished until all the bugs are ironed out of what already exists, release that as the milestone public release, and then finish off the unfinished features, debug those, and then release THAT as yet another public milestone release because that one is both stable and finished. Because again, some define finished as being bug-free, and some define finished as being both bug-free and completely inclusive of everything the features suggest it should have with nothing being incomplete.

Considering that the unfinished things can just be completed immediately after the milestone release, there's no need to complete any currently worked-on features now. So it doesn't really matter that things can go unfinished. The most important thing is the bug-fixed, rather than the completeness of the program by which to call it a finished 2.5 product.

Besides - 2.5 doesn't sound nearly as official as ZC 3.0. 😛

So, if what Gleeok said is true; about just working on bug fixes as of now, I'll gladly jump in and do what I can to test (though, I only have had one very minor bug in quiet a long time, and I could not replicate it :s) It was during the feature jam of the last two years that I kinda of seriously lost hope, and interest.

I'm all for a capped off, yet stable version.

ZC 2.5 is an object lesson of what feature creep can do to any project. I take a great amount of responsibility for the mess, but it also doesn't help when my mistakes are dragged through the mud repeatedly at a time when I don't spend as much time working on ZC as I used to, and when I do it's fixing whatever bugs I can and hopefully stumbling upon a solution for stuff that's a lot more complicated (the mp3 mess being an example). That's part of why I quit the first time, if you'll remember. I came back because I felt that I had made this partially my responsibility and that I should see it through to the end, for better or for worse.

Also, while it's still on my mind, I haven't forgotten about the 4th quest contest. The plan was always to determine the winner shortly before 2.5 released.

I don't think anyone means to drag your name through the mud Jman, the situation just got to a point that it got far more frustrating than a lot of people wanted to deal with.
there's plenty of blame to go around, not just with developers, but with testers, builders and everyone else.
People calling for new features daily, when they don't even build and release quests to begin with.
People reporting bugs and then never following through.
Today it is what it is and it's a new day, if everybody pulls together it can happen.

Freedom wrote:if everybody pulls together it can happen.

I really don't know how serious the developers are Petoe about trying to get a version stable and release it.
I decided to try and finish my quest since it was so far along, I've been trying to report what bugs I find along the way.
They seem to get serious when the hell raising threads come alone, and then settle back into indifference once things quiet down again, so who can say.
I want to finish this one, but have no real plans to start another.

Did they all go on vacation? I haven't seen any new posts in what, 21 days now? Where did everyone go?

ROFLOL
21 days.......
It died years ago.