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>> NFS:SA Booster <<

The Big NFSSA Vent/Rant (for a brighter future)

Napisany przez takigosciu, 04-10-2020, 14:42


The Big NFSSA Vent/Rant (for a brighter future)

Offline Tekk

#11
I understand you completely fine, actually. Some of your questions are the reasons why I don't feel like playing anymore. I'll try to answer what I can.

(04-10-2020, 14:42)takigosciu Wrote: - rare and small updates, maybe without the latest one, as it did a fair bit of changes
- question of handling has not been majorly revisited since the first Dyno update
- Discord's update channel pins are a joke.

1. The updates are rarely getting released because barely anyone wants to work on them. If you're asking for the new gameplay elements - that can be very time-demanding and Quindo/Orbacle are the only people right now who does the scripting. Also, there are some people from the community who wants/wanted to do stuff, I guess me and Broski would be a good example, but alone we can't really do anything - we gotta ask Quindo to do server-side work to apply our changes. Overall, if the dev team doesn't care or doesn't feel like working, then stuff such as maps, new vinyls etc are either gonna be denied or will stay on hold for an unknown period of time.

2. Handling changes is a large topic, and everyone knows there are problems with these. But "no one is yet considered to be skilled enough to work on them" if I can put it that way. There are solid reasons, though: NFS:SA handlings are quite different from the vanilla ones. However, it's still possible to make at least small fixes if you know how those multipliers work. Some of us do. The ZR (or was it Banshee? I forgot cause both had shit susp) received a HSD fix last time. Thank fuck, Jesus. I mean, it was such a minor thing to fix, but some of us were almost begging for it to happen. Hopefully there will be more, but IDK. Like, I made one for the Previon months ago but I doubt it was accepted. The thing deserves a whole new line anyway.

3. Discord server in general became a joke since long ago and it's why I quit it at some point. You actually mentioned a few aspects about it in your post, so I'm gonna answer this all at once. There's one exact dev who wants it that way, you can try and guess. Me and Bunny actually argued with him about it. My DC account is long gone, otherwise I'd probably provide the pics, but you may ask Bunny about this if you care. Both of us just said we're not gonna be the ones responsible if there's a possible shit storm, since we were not allowed to moderate the channels properly. IDK if this situation was resolved later, but I could guess the channels are still full of autism.

(04-10-2020, 14:42)takigosciu Wrote: I don't want to call out exact people, but the staff ranks are filled with people that are not even related to the server anymore for years.

There are indeed people who quit in 2016/2017/2018 years, but as Quindo once told me when I asked for a demote (cause I was leaving), he said that there's no really a point. If a person did their job fine, but decided to leave at some point, there's a possible chance they will later return again and maybe consider doing this job further. Tl;DR - no point in taking the rank away if they did their job alright. Speaking of new moderators, there's like 50 players average right now, you said it yourself. Only the people who are trusted are getting promoted, AFAIK. Last year there were a few who could do that job I think. But I'm not sure if there's anyone now. Maybe Broski is still around if PL chat needs another mod.

(04-10-2020, 14:42)takigosciu Wrote: c) A state of Exploit and Performance

Another large topic. Will answer all of the questions at once - FPS exploit is pretty much unfixable as it's a problem that lies within the old renderware engine versions. There always gonna be at least one dude who will decide to "trick everyone" and abuse something that's broken. Even if you'll force players to drive just one car, not much is gonna change regarding the exploits part. Plus, there were and still are so many bugs that it's just easier to accept all this crap and admit it: The game was never meant to be played competitively. Personally, I enjoyed the racing part of this server despite was having the shittiest FPS and input lag. But if you really care about taking the tops and love the skill-demanding aspects, it's just easier to move on to some other games for that. Sorry, I know it's quite sad to hear as there's no other game that's close to NFS:SA but it's true.

(04-10-2020, 14:42)takigosciu Wrote: - Manana's 3-speed/4-speed gearbox

This is another bug of the renderware engine. This is possible to fix and the dev team knows how to do it, it's just not that simple. A lot of parameters are tied to each other when it comes to NFS:SA handlings, so before every car will get a handling fix, there's gotta be a lot of testing. Let's just hope this server will see another rebalance one day. (I know I just said that competitive-wise it's irrelevant, but just for the sake of having fun. People would love to have something new.)

(04-10-2020, 14:42)takigosciu Wrote: - bartek[PL]'s absence
- Crews [ALPHA] forever
- Bullshit of Timeline

1. Bartek quit working on this project which explains why he's gone from the dev list. He's still in touch with the rest of the team, but he's just doing other stuff. Everyone's gotta move on at some point in their life. Bartek's no exception, so there's no real point to bash him. Quindo is leading the NFS:SA project since 2019.

2. Well, Bartek wrote the biggest part of the code and Crews is probably included in that. There's certain stuff that Quindo and Orbacle don't even wanna touch, and the answer for that is simple - It's just so damn complicated it became hard to fix one thing about it without breaking another. So yeah, can't say much regardings "Crews" part, but stuff like Pursuits is likely never gonna be changed in a serious way. Way too much of their personal time to invest into it.

3. Don't even bother discussing the timeline problem with the devs. It's just gonna remain a conversation with no success. I spent some time thinking how lots of stuff could actually be done in a different way, but what's done is done, that's what I was told at some point. No change is gonna be made. With the amount of problems this place has now, this is the least important one.

---

I wonder if anyone's actually gonna check the full thing, but anyways, thanks for reading my essay. Tried my best with the answers.
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Offline MatthewChow

#12
Obviously, I only read the last reply of this thread, I do not have the time budget to check the whole thread atm, but I'll try to give a small update to your concerns with the info I got from the inside. Anything specific, ask.

- The most exploited 3/4 gear cars have been converted to 5 gears. Yes, Manana is 5 gears now, however, this change caused a lot of fighting because at least half of the players this was discussed with were against this change because of URL or something. We can't please all.
- There is a person assigned to a full handling rebalance for months now, he's pretty much finished and the whole thing it is already in testing phase, however, no one wants to test. We have no active testers and no one seems to really trust my judgement when it's me doing it.
- Saying we have two active coders is an overstatement. Quindo is dead and Orb is barely alive. They are good people but they have problematic personal lives and their own issues to take care of, as now I do too.
- I also asked to leave the development team officially, but, as Tekk said, they don't take off ranks because honorary dev and stuff. TBH, color or no color, it's the same. It's just a color. The active modelers currently are colored like normal players, the colors kinda lost their meaning. A lot has changed, even if it went unnoticed.
- The Discord server is still toxic waste, and, that seems like it won't change, however, some of the more annoying members already left. Some people, no matter how much I ban them, always come back. I'm looking at you, Fayde.
- Moderators lost their will to moderate because they feel powerless, from what I am able to understand. When they want to act, one of us devs (many times me, I know) stop them. So they gained a "why bother?" attitude. Again, from what I can understand. I'm pretty sure it goes deeper and it ain't so specific for most.
- Lap times/top times are a joke. Don't trust them, don't pursuit them. I'm very tired of the "X player exploits" flame wars. All of us devs are, because we can't do anything about it other than just making another game in another more modern game engine. Also, with the handling rebalance, many of these will get nullified anyway because the meta changed.

Dunno what else more to say. We are trying to make things better, at least me and a few others are, but we are not under the best conditions at the moment.
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Offline Pedroxz15

#13
Congratulations to the person who made this post, this post shows the truth as the server is getting worse

I would like to know if the staff continues to take this project seriously
About moderation. Moderation on the server is completely 0%, I still don't understand how there are still retards on the server
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Offline darealarusham

#14
tbh im surprised you didnt include the booster in the list of things that suck
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Away ItsATrap

#15
former retard here: I love that nfssa discord server has no rules ok
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Offline MatthewChow

#16
(09-10-2020, 06:20)darealarusham Wrote: tbh im surprised you didnt include the booster in the list of things that suck

Actually, if you understand how Booster works, it's actually pretty cool and useful.
It does a great job of removing micro-stutters at car loading in the game map and it improves the resolution of the vinyls while on Freerun (you can test this well with small text), if you select the "experimental" highest quality option.
But most people complain Booster doesn't work for them, and I can't quite figure out why.
I'm wondering if it's a Windows 10 or UAC thing, because on my Win7 that has UAC disabled I never had any issue. Most people that complain use Win10, from what I've seen.
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Offline Pedroxz15

#17
I remember using Booster on my old PC with Windows 7 and actually was good, it helped me to play on the server with no lag
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Offline Tekk

#18
Just wanna mention a few things before this thread gets completely derailed with the booster talk.

(06-10-2020, 22:32)MatthewChow Wrote: - Saying we have two active coders is an overstatement. Quindo is dead and Orb is barely alive.

True, but neither of them have said that they quit, at least publicly. So that means they're somewhat active and shouldn't be wondering or getting annoyed when people are asking them server-related questions. Also, their lack of activity leads us to the problem where the biggest chunk of small updates cannot be released without these guys being involved. Maps, vinyls, other stuff that people want to see in game and that is already finished anyway. The last time I spoke to Quindo (around August 16th) and mentioned the event maps from the GS (these were already uploaded, just hidden), he simply told me to go bother someone else. Like who? I kept mentioning these shortly after the event was over, exactly 3 days after, when I made the fixes for the minimap routes, he was still active back then. Later people been asking me about the maps for weeks so I had to remind about it again. The august update, however, did not include any maps at all. So this tells a lot about how much shit the dev team still give about what's left of the racing community, when something this simple couldn't be done in over 2 months. At some point people will completely stop sending their stuff and then the racing aspect of NFS:SA will truly die out with no chance to return. Also, the forum is also completely fucked and the donation system is not working. Weird that this wasn't mentioned so far.

(06-10-2020, 22:32)MatthewChow Wrote: it is already in testing phase, however, no one wants to test.

Prolly everyone has their reasons, but I think Scaftz explained it the best with his first reply - you simply can't contribute much to the project yourself in most cases. What exactly was there to test for the last two years apart from the UV stuff and modelling? I mean, it's a job for like 2 or 3 people before public testing, rest of the team will just report the same issues that's already been found. In your particular case, you even handpick the testers yourself, and during the moonbeam handling discussion you claimed that you don't care about the opinions of the others. So why would anyone bother? This leaves the team with little to nothing to test, as Orbacle's CS only got released the second time overall, and it was mostly getting polished by him on a private server through months. Also, through years, a lot of times tester team opinions were considered irrelevant/not important in general, regardless of topic. Offers from them (to help with fixing stuff) were getting ignored for no particular reason. All this can easily kill your wish to play/test/do whatever you wanted to do for the community, cause simply no one on the dev team gives a shit about your possible effort or good intentions. Remember the last big HSD discussion that had its place like 6 months ago? You've been there, you've seen it all. The team has finally made this decision, yeah, but sadly, the server's already hanging on a life support.

--


As for the booster - Matt is correct and it's confirmed working for the Windows 7 and 8.1 (64-bit) if you're following the instructions that I left in the general thread. Can't say much about Windows 10, maybe it's broken there.
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Offline MatthewChow

#19
Well, although it used to be true, you're a bit outdated on the second point. The situation has changed in the last few months. I've been making force so these tasks that used to be on the coders' shoulders get distributed to active community members, thus, why we are getting a handling overall and new vinyls (and more models than we can deal with). There is A LOT to test in the dev server at this very moment, like, really a lot, specially regarding the handlings since it's the most game changing aspect, the problem is that all the testers are already inactive themselves.
We as players find the whole situation frustrating, the whole no updates, devs don't reply, etc... But now imagine you are literally the only active developer in the team at one point in time and you need help with something or simply that one of your team members answers your question and you cannot get a reply from any them whatever you do to get their attention. I've been stuck with situations I've been needing help with for several months now, one of them affecting this very update. If I didn't turn to community members or if I simply quit a few months ago, I'm pretty sure this project would have already been dead today.
This is even more frustrating to me than for a normal player because I have a lot of investment in this project, and I really find it a shame to just let the server die like this... There's so much that could be done still, even if it is beating a dead horse.
As much as I can find people to make models, handlings and vinyls, things I know how to teach and can give tools for, I cannot code. I still need at least one active coder above all that can keep up a pace, so the others can get their own stuff into the game.
I want to go away myself, now that I'm in uni, but I really wanted to leave this in good hands... And it's being very hard to manage that.
I got sidetracked.
For now, I just want this update launched, the one we have now in the dev server, and for that to happen soon, I would, arguably, need the testers, else it's the players that will do the testing, and, Syaan to pick up where I left off, or, alternatively, me simply getting another vacation from uni to wrap up the parts, but that will only happen in December... I believe the update is a bit stuck at the moment. That's not all, I also need a coder to debug and solve one of the glitches that is happening at the moment with the new parts, and this is the one that truly bites my ass, because it's the only that I really cannot solve by myself with just having time.

TLDR, we have a lot of active development still but only in some areas, and we tend to get stuck by the lack of development on the other areas, and we are all very sad and demotivated people with a million frustrations in life.
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Offline 86DrifterYT

#20
Yes, NFSSA community in a nutshell.
ngl I'm fed up with it. I would recommend playing on the server if you enjoy collecting, customizing and racing cars without any toxic rivalry, just friendly competition. And join the discord at your own risk, trust me you'll get tired of the nfssa discord community and leave it just like me. I prefer interacting good people in other great communities but the nfssa discord isnt worth talking in, just be there for knowing about updates and nothing else. Also I aint coming back to nfssa discord so quit all hopes.

Edit: also Taki forgot to mention I appreciate how you pointed out these main things that shows how poor the community is, hope this shit gets fixed or we might lose this great feature rich mta server to ashes.

Another edit: I'll be back on the discord for now, curious about the updates, wont be active on the community tho.
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