[crossfire] Crossfire+/Crossfire2 Versioning and Metaserver

[Alex Schultz]

Marc Lehmann wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 01:09:18AM +0200, Yann Chachkoff <yann.chachkoff at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>   
>>> The project is indeed different, but why shouldn't it have 'crossfire'
>>> somewhere in it's name when it's inheritance is still so much visible?
>>>       
>> Because it is confusing.
>>     
>
> We asked a number of times for indications of that, but received none.
> Obviously (all of) "you" are not confused about it at all, so who is, and
> how? We asked our players, and they do not seem to be confused by that.
>   
We have from time to time seen new players enter the #crossfire IRC
channel on freenode, who were somewhat confused at your server and
project. Most of the confusion was with regards to the version reported
on the metaserver, but I do recall some confusing regarding the project
name and the general relation between the projects. I do not believe
that the name containing "Crossfire" is inherently confusing (perhaps a
small amount of disagreement about this detail on our side), but the
lack of other distinguishing elements that is confusing. The metaserver
confusing users would be highest priority however, as that has created
by far the most confusion among users.

For example, it has not been uncommon to see a newbie show up in
#crossfire and ask some question (or complain about some issue), and it
turns out they were on schmorp as opposed to something running normal
crossfire, and they were unaware of the separate projects, and simply
thought it was nothing more than a newer version. I hope you can
understand that this can be rather frustrating.

>> Actually, such a user is fooled. If I'm a new CF player, I'll not pick
>> a server randomly, but will probably select the latest one, because it
>> probably got the most interesting features.
>>     
>
> Then wouldn't it make to keep it as it is? Looking at all servers on a
> "most interesting feature" basis clearly makes the 2.x servers "more
> interesting", both for internal features as well as player-visible ones.
>
> (Remember that crossfire 2.x does implement most of the features that the
> crossfire 1.x "team" plans for their version 2, so in a very definite
> sense the current 2.0+ server is much closer to what the crossfire project
> wants as 2.0 than the 1.x servers).
>   
In some regards yes, however I doubt this is 'most' and there are quite
a number of various differences in goals and methods of achieving them.
However what I feel is more significant however is how what you are
doing is very much akin to creating a fork of apache, making some
changes like offloading non-core functions to a scripting language and
deeply integrating it, adding some features, and then calling it "Apache
3". Can you note any sort of significant difference between such things?
I see no relevant difference myself.

> Honestly, I am a bit annoyed at crossfire 1.x. We wanted to use the "+", and
> we constantly being told that the + should go from the version number. Now
> that we did we are asked (or some cases commanded) to add it again.
>   
Your annoyance is understandable, however I do not believe anyone simply
said to remove the "+" (perhaps someone did and I was not aware of it).
To my understanding the issue with the version strings like "2.0+" was
that it wasn't clear enough to users it was a separate project, and when
the "+" was simply removed that made it even more unclear that it is a
separate project. I'm not sure what the best solution would be in this
regard, however to avoid confusion, until the metaserver supports
another relevant column or two, the easiest way to avoid user confusion
as I've noted above would be to add a more distinguishing elements to
the version string, not simply remove one distinguishing element that
wasn't sufficient to avoid confusion.

> Before shoving perceived or made-up problems into our direction, couldn't
> all of you first agree on what you really want and then ask us? Obviously
> we are happy to comply, but it is no fun if you make a full 180 every few
> months. Could it be that the reason you are annoyed at us is actually of
> your own making? I think it is unfair to call us "arrogant" when all we do
> is try to play nice but only earn arbitrariness in return?
>   
I apologize for calling you "arrogant"; I was feeling rather flustered
at how you seem to present your project as the "successor project"
(which you seem to believe it is) while a majority of the Crossfire
community does not accept CF+ as being a true successor. I believe some
of my statements were too harsh, and that us on this side are not quite
in 100% agreement on every detail, however I do not believe it is not
fair of you to be saying we are just making up problems despite honest
attempts to explain what we see as problems.

Alex