The end of an era
A few days ago, Tiy stopped hanging out on the hedgewars IRC channel.
If people weren't aware, Tiy's last commit was about a year ago, and that was just to add a few maps from Starbound. Since stopping work on hedgewars, he's had some well-deserved success on his other projects Terraria and Starbound. Understandably, he wants to spend most of his time on these now.
Tiy probably did more for the hedgewars community and with his art contributions to make the game popular than anyone else, and it's very sad to see him leave.
I just want to thank Tiy for his work over the years (and of course the work of unC0Rr, nemo, koda, sheepluva, mikade, Palewolf etc.). The community has noticeably shrunk since he stopped contributing. It's a shame that he never got round to implementing some of the modes that he had high hopes for. Although I haven't played so much in recent days, hedgewars has sustained my interest longer than any other open source game (and possibly any commercial game too). This is in a large part thanks to Tiyuri.
Another blow that perhaps has gone unmentioned: hedgewars didn't get accepted for GSoC once again.
EDIT: don't mention IRC discussion
While Tiy does deserve those "thank you"s, I'm not sure he's too happy of you putting a description of that misunderstanding that he had with another project member, or even just his history on hedgewars, here on the forums.
I for one hope that the issue is just temporary and will be resolved soon. So that Tiy will enjoy hanging out in our channel once again
Ah, I see you're as negative as usual :P
Hedgewars didn't even apply, did we?
As far as I know the developers do not have enough time and resources to mentor any GSoC students these days - so we decided to not take-part in GSoC THIS summer.
So yeah, we weren't accepted - but we weren't rejected either - because we didn't apply.
Also I want to mention that due to openSUSE's help last year we had a great GSoC and found some new friends regardless of not being accepted as individual GSoC organization...
sheepluva <- me
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I'll add my "me too" I think the post is highly inappropriate, and, yes, I didn't feel I personally could commit to the time required for mentoring due to family responsibilities. I think that might apply to unc0rr. There were similar life issues with other devs.
Not applying was the responsible thing to do. We almost certainly would have had one slot at a minimum, since we had been reached out to prior to do a collaboration.
If you personally wish GSoC to continue, you're more than welcome to start contributing actively to the dev team. We will undoubtedly reexamine this in the future.
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Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev
This post has generated entirely the wrong response...
My bad about GSoC, I hadn't realised that hedgewars didn't apply this year. I thought it had applied and been rejected. Anyway, I was just mentioning this in passing.
I also didn't consider the IRC conversation to be particularly sensitive, and if something is discussed in a public channel with several dozen people in it at any one time, I didn't see what the objection could be to referencing it here. In any case, I removed the offending section.
And yeah, the tone of my post is a bit negative... but I just think this is an occasion worthy of mention.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I can see why Tiy wouldn't want the discussion mentioned particularly... I guess I can be a bit insensitive at times. For some reason, I thought nothing of it when writing this post. Anyway, I apologise for that.
WRT community shrinking after he left. I don't see those as particularly related. We still try to do nice frontpage posts, and sheepluva is awesome at art for that.
Most of Tiy's ideas for the game were implemented, and of course many from others as well.
Overall downloads of the game seem strong, and there's no clear trend in server users either.
The solution to lack of activity on the website seems to be for those who care, to try and build more community. Maps, modes, tournaments, random chat...
Overall activity seems to shift around over the years and depends often on events out of our control, like press coverage, or people pouncing on the game given negative reactions to a similar game.
Given how long the game has been around, I think it is doing rather well.
And, yeah, the tone was rather negative all around (people going away, stuff not being done, community shrinking) stuff like that is not a good way to, well, grow community if that's your concern (not that I can see much evidence of shrinking usage).
Although, I guess it does guarantee a few comments
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Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev
One of my long term goals is to start contributing big stuff to this game, but as of now now my agenda is full due to school and as well as my role as an artist for a popular Terraria mod.
Plus one day I really need to just sit down and figure out everything that I can do with Inkscape, since I'm pretty sure the Calligraphy tool isn't meant to be used for drawing... and that's what I've been using... :p (sheepluva expect me to start bugging you sometime in the future. >:D)
Oh, and yeah, I'm planning on returning to PAotH comics soon. Stay tuned for more radio silence on the matter!