AcadiusLost: Tech Admin Platform, and Q/A

[AcadiusLost]

Platform:

Getting NWN2-ALFA up to speed, making sure NWN1-ALFA has what it needs to continue to support its players and DMs.

First, on the NWN2 front. I do believe NWN2 is the future for ALFA. That isn't to say NWN1 needs to be phased out, but if we neglect the NWN2 side of things, I expect we will progressively shrink as a community. We had a slow start for Live compared to some PW communities, but we ended up better positioned in some ways, more resilient to changes from future expansion packs and patches. We had a great deal of attrition among our build teams; thus far it has been a fairly uphill road to build for NWN2-ALFA. I believe we are now nearing a critical mass that will allow more casual builders to engage and have a part in the new servers as they develop. Western Heartlands and Baldur's Gate are both looming in the wings for when central systems like the vault/portaling/quarantine setup are ready, while other projects like The Far North, Moonsea, Island Kingdoms, and Waterdeep/Skullport are making some headway as well.

In essence, the move to NWN2 is not just about changing to a prettier platform, with better graphics. The core of the effort was to set out to do many things we never could in NWN1, to take a fresh and ambitious start on realizing more of the PnP mechanics and automatic systems that never came together under NWN1-ALFA. The real visionaries in this area were Ronan and Cipher- together, well before the release of NWN2, they laid the foundation for everything from scripted teleportation and scrying, to the centralized persistency database, doors you could jam, unjam, listen through, even an entirely new spawn system built on the lessons of the shortcomings of NESS in NWN1. I personally regret not engaging more in those early days; as is, I was only just beginning to script systems for the ACR when Ronan left, so much of what I have done since has been following in his footsteps, with the assistance and guidance of Cipher. Our core scripts are all publicly viewable and open-sourced, through a Sourceforge system they set up. Our haks are also publicly available. We have left behind the days when our content was secretive and closely guarded; indeed, our core efforts were able to assist the Exodus persistent world in its transition to Live, several months before The Silver Marches was ready to join it among the gamespy listings. This sharing of insights and experience has been a two-way street, with much of the early feedback on core systems coming directly from Exodus' server, when interest among our beta testers was at a lull. We have been renewing connections with long-parted members of ALFA, and emerging better informed from these partnerships.

For my part, I have been scripting and maintaining the core rules scripting package, merging, updating, testing, and managing the NWN2 haks, hosting the OAS2, helping to manage and debug the Silver Marches module (as well as bring the latest hak additions into the Live gameworld as new resources are added to the haks). I will continue to do many of these jobs if elected as Tech Admin. I believe in the importance of sharing the knowledge about how to get things done, and helping more interested members become behind-the-scenes contributors deeply, but I can promise that I will never become an Admin who merely manages others. As Technical Administrator, I will continually be actively engaged in doing the things that need to be done. The more people we can bring in and train to contribute similarly, the more we can accomplish; but simply assigning tasks and checking progress is often not enough in a hobbyist community. This is an exciting time for NWN2-ALFA, with a great deal of advancement on the horizon, from custom skills, custom content at character creation, Hialmar's new vault method to potentially elimitate CEB problems, and addition of Creslyn's subdual scripts and Paazin's tradescroll systems. We are already seeing in-house custom content creation begin, like the excellent work of Thangorn and Racerblue incoportated into the latest hak version.

Neverwinter Nights One. Since my efforts became focused on NWN2, I have had admittedly made very little contribution to tech work for the NWN1 servers. Before that time, I worked actively with AlmightyTDawg on implementing the clerical domain revamp, along with associated custom feats and RP spells. This was my first adventure in core content rollout, and and inspiring one which is still enjoyed in-game today. The second and more independent project I took on was the rideable horses. For backstory on this, realize that the animations and models for rideable horses were added to ALFA at least a year earlier. They had become iconic of an ALFA stalled project, and were often lampooned as something that would never be implemented. With some initial guidance from Ronan, and help testing from several other members, I wrote, debugged, and implemented a cross-server persistent, re-namable horse system which utilized many of the canon PnP 3.5E rules. Like many things, this ended up a much larger project than initially intended, and some bugs continue to linger with them; but instead of just complaining about the lack of rideable horses, blaming others for not developing them, or just participating in prolonged circular theoretical debates about how they could or should be done, I rolled up my sleeves and did the work. When I started, I was only familiar with a small fraction of the functions needed to accomplish it; but with occasional nudges in the right direction, I learned as I went. The lack of documentation and disorganization in our NWN1 haks makes them quite difficult to work with on some levels, likely as a product of their sole management by a very longstanding former tech administrator. He knew where things were, so there was no "need" to document. Based on this experience, I have moved to a meticulous method of documentation for the NWN2 haks, and know the value of a central versioning system for scripts. Many of the problems I've seen with NWN1 servers stem from outdated haks or scripts, as there is no easy way to check and insure they are fully updated, at least since the hakupdater was retired. I believe the Worldgate client is the easiest fix for this, and I have already had two extremely capable volunteers to configure this for NWN1. This is long overdue, and something perhaps I should have seen to earlier; but it is easy to get focused on more urgent pressing fixes.

NWN1 and 1.69. I understand that the NWN1-focused portion of our community is eager to get at the new content available in 1.69, and the difficulties experienced by members who are active in other PWs or campaigns which may already have updated to the new patch. I also understand that the NWN1-focused members do not wish to be dismissed, demeaned, or ignored. While I expect NWN2 matters to dominate the majority of my time, I do want to ensure the NWN1 half of our community (half approximately by recent member logins) is not left barred from advancing to the current patch. My suggestion would be to appoint one person to coordinate the 1.69 project (with staff Head voting rights, if they wish, using the slot formerly used by my ACR Staff Head position), with moderation access to an extra forum to be used specifically for that purpose, and wide authority to recruit specific assistance from others and update the haks. Ideally I would hope to get an assessment of how much might need to be re-tooled on the server side before the effort is too far progressed. If extensive server rebuilds would be required for whatever reason, this will need to be weighed by the NWN1 HDMs. I do not plan to obligate every remaining NWN1 server team to rebuild their servers to remain a part of ALFA, if this is not their wish. Logistically speaking, much of the expertise that gave us the remaining crop of servers has been lost over the years. I know from experience, that it is a far easier thing to maintain an existing module, than to remake it from scratch. I would not be above doing a share of the work for the 1.69 conversion myself, either. In particular, the new horse system will be a definite challenge to merge with my earlier system, in order to retain the strong points of both systems. I would be willing to take this on, and perhaps additional projects as well depending how involved it became. This would also give me a chance to revisit, and hopefully improve the system with the benefit of my more recent experience.

This 1.69 plan hinges somewhat on finding an effective staff member to orchestrate the process. Realistically, I can expect from experience that an unreasonably large percentage of the work would have to be done by this person. In this case, it seems a clear candidate for the job has chosen to identify herself. While I have certainly had my differences with Zelknolf in the past, one thing I can certainly attest to is a high degree of ability at working with just this sort of thing. Zelknolf has no lack of motivation in this pursuit, as evidenced by the growing strategy thread on 1.69 in General Discussion. I suppose the key question will be whether or not this would be an acceptable arrangement from her perspective. My plan would be to retain the 1.69 adaption position until such time as the servers are migrated (or, far less likely, if they decide to remain at 1.68), after which it can be transitioned into a much lower-workload NWN1 tech staff position, which Zelknolf would be welcome to stay in after the adaption if she wished, assuming communication and coordination is maintained with the NWN1 HDMs with regards to content additions to the haks on their servers. If Zelknolf does not wish to fill such a role while I am Tech Admin, I would regretfully open a call for other volunteers, with the understanding that the path to 1.69 would likely be a considerably slower one.

I realize it is somewhat unorthodox to be forwarding an opposition candidate as a potential staff member, but the world of NWN-tech is not a large one. If I read between the lines of her platform right, the converse may also be implied by her platform. If this is the case, the election may be a matter of deciding what way around the voters will want to take, to get to approximately the same destination. This does not hold as well if Zelknolf would be unwilling to take on the 1.69 work if not herself elected, but I have faith that any misgivings are outweighed by the common compulsion for making broken things work again, to keep technical problems from interfering with the stories and roleplay on ALFA's servers.

About me. I am married, 32 years old, and have recently finished my doctorate in Microbiology. I joined ALFA in October of 2004, at the urging of my old fencing teammate, Ayergo, and spent most of my years here as a player on Shadowdale, and as a DM, EADM, or HDM among the Northern Cormyr / Arabel pair of servers. I was one of the main builders for the ground-up rebuild of the Northern Cormyr server several years ago, and a member of the Constitutional Committee, which oversees ALFA's electoral process. ALFA was my first Persistent world, and has remained the focus of my interest throughout the years.

Working relationships with the present Admin. Without hestitation, I can say I hold the other standing Admin in the highest regard. When I joined a NWN2 server build team, I joined it because SpiderJones was leading the team, with his encyclopedic knowledge of canon, his strong sense of fairness, and his dedication to the realization of Faerun through the computer platform. Paazin, too, was a member of that project; also a good friend, quiet contributor on many fronts, and a consistent voice of reason, a level head amidst the perennial outbreaks of community drama. I have spoken elsewhere of my strong respect for and appreciation for Hialmar's work, without which we would be logistically unable to maintain any sort of community at all. I have been impressed by FI's handling of the PA position so far as well. I believe I will be able to be work very effectively among this group.

This ended up rather longer than intended, but I appreciate everyone who invested the time to read it through in its entirety. I will now field questions generally about my candidacy and platform from any member of the community as best I can. I apologize in advance if there is some turnaround time for some of them, as I'm heading for a fairly busy week ahead.

-Tom / AcadiusLost

[White Warlock]

tl:dr



lol, just kidding. very interesting and well thought-out post.

[paazin]

Hi AcadiusLost, good luck in the election. A few questions:

You said you don't wish to be a 'manager' as the Administrator and wish to be very 'hands-on.' I'm a little concerned by this as the work involved is voluminous.

What is your plan and/or strategy for dividing up the work required for our NWN2 servers so that all of it is made in an effective, quality-focused, and timely manner?

Relatedly, do you have any ideas how we can increase our tech staff membership? Would you support doling out small simple tasks (say, modifying a single 2da, testing a certain function or small, new addition) in order to get volunteers familiar with how our tech works, rather than 'scaring' them away as it seems we've often done?

[Hialmar]

Good luck Tom.

Your platform looks very good to me and your proposition to work with Zelknolf as the NWN1 person looks very good to me.

I think I remember you were the first one to propose having two groups of Admins for ALFA (NWN1 admins and NWN2 admins).
Do you still support this idea like Zelknolf and what are the pros and cons in your opinion ?

Also would you be willing to work under Zleknolf if she is elected as TA ?

[AcadiusLost]

What is your plan and/or strategy for dividing up the work required for our NWN2 servers so that all of it is made in an effective, quality-focused, and timely manner?
...
Relatedly, do you have any ideas how we can increase our tech staff membership?

On the first issue, I will try to interest various members in adopting a needed system as a "pet project". I've been very impressed at the quality of some of these developing so far- things like Bartleby's work (summonings and readable/writable books), Creslyn's subdual system, Teric's work with morale and travel map encounters, and even work from scripters in Exodus, who have overlapping goals and needs. Similarly for hak additions, helping builders, DMs, or players interested in certain additions contribute towards their inclusion helps them feel more involved, and spreads around the knowledge. I will add sourceforge SVN accounts for those who wish to become fluent in the ACR, so we can keep the efforts centralized and coordinated, and not lose large amounts of work to members disappearing to RL or losing hard drives. As fluency in our core scripts increases, hopefully more of the integration of these systems can be done by their authors themselves as well.

[edit: while I am not one for overstated praise, I will also make sure that contributors to tech advancements are given credit for their effort. Hopefully, this will help others considering trying tech work a larger pool of people to ask questions of, and remove some of the impression of tech as an incomprehensible black monolith, produced by the Tech Admin as a result of frequent enough badgering, heh.]

Ideally, we want to see the barrier to members getting started with tech work lowered. I realize this has been a goal of most of us in Tech since Ronan's tenure started, but hasn't been a great success so far. One plan I have is to introduce a clause in the ACR which allows it to function in a limited capacity without the full NWNx4/persistency setup, to make it easier for builders and scripters to test scripts which do not require this. So far, advanced scripting and spawn point testing has required what essentially amounts to a hosting setup, which does pose an intiial hurdle. Development of a working fully-functional basemod for NWN2 should help this as well. Similarly, I would like to enlist the help of anyone up to date with NWN1 building to ensure that an updated basemod is publicly available for that platform as well.

I am also certainly interested in to hear other suggestions towards these ends. If elected, I intend to be a very available and approachable Tech Admin. I am active in IRC daily and leave an account logged in more or less around the clock to get back to pending messages. This is more efficient than PMs for simple questions, in my opinion.

[AcadiusLost]

I think I remember you were the first one to propose having two groups of Admins for ALFA (NWN1 admins and NWN2 admins).
Do you still support this idea like Zelknolf and what are the pros and cons in your opinion ?

Also would you be willing to work under Zleknolf if she is elected as TA ?

I don't recall specifically advocating separate Administrations, I may have suggested it as a possible solution, but I think it could be problematic for some areas like PA/DMA positions, and would tend to widen divisions between the two platforms, which would not be my preference. For tech work, a division of the responsibilities makes sense logistically. Having a single Technical Administator does allow for some oversight if needs be on either side, though. I would think the commonality of Admin is most important for the PA/DMA sides of things though, to try to make sure we are consistent in how we apply the rules, standards, and principles of our community.

I will continue to serve the community by doing tech work, building, and other tasks as best I can if Zelknolf is elected. I do not anticipate friction unless she became particularly interested in significantly changing the direction of the NWN2 effort. I believe we have fairly compatible views on technical issues, in any case.

[Hialmar]

My bad about suggesting that you wanted to split the platforms. I was too lazy to re-read the thread talking about this.

Anyway I think you are right.

Good luck on the election.

[paazin]

Thanks for the answers, AL. I'll ask you the same thing I asked Z:

As I hate seeing any code wasted, what is your thoughts on making our scripts easily transferable between one platform and another and trying to sustain the idea of 'platform-independence?'

I'm looking here to see if we'd want to try swapping over some sections of the NWN2 ACR into the NWN1 ACR. It could be a monumental undertaking, yes, but it would be handy to have some standardization in our platforms.

[AcadiusLost]

The hurdle I see currently to merging in NWN2-ACR content with the NWN1 servers is that persistency is tied into so many NWN2-ACR systems, and requires the NWNx4/MySQL deal to function. I'm not sure that we'd want to risk breaking enough systems to wrestle it in. We could still grab code like the scroll activation stuff with fairly minimal adjustments, I suppose. RP XP scripts would be another nice addition, though, again, they require NWNx (NWNx2 might work though, not sure how many of our NWN1 hosts use it).

In principle, I'm all for it- and I can keep a thought towards which systems might port over easily as I work. Actually I think some of the NWN1 code might be helpful for the NWN2 ACR; in adapting it, we may be able to tune it up a bit in a way that benefits the NWN1 servers as well. Lots of nifty little systems on NWN1 that we never got time to code for NWN2.