Why no new launcher.

[eashonk]

One thing I forgot to mention, and I don't want to you lose focus on getting the pack out, but one very useful thing that would mesh completely with what you're saying you want to do. It would be useful to have the ability to create an update folder for server admins. Currently, when you update servers, no matter which mod you use, you have to update the local copy of the server folder, then upload the entire thing to your remote server, wasting bandwidth and time, since you have no way to know what has and hasn't been changed, you cant just upload the necessary things. It would be nice to be able to get a folder with just the necessary updates in it so you could upload only those things to the server. Again, don't get sidetracked, but put it in the 1.7 update e.t.a.2020.

 

[danieledward]

*clap clap clap*

I am surprised at the level of insight you guys have into our team structure and projects.

This sounds a little derogatory; maybe it's the "clap clap clap". I'm surprised at the tone, coming from a moderator.

 

[eashonk]

This sounds a little derogatory; maybe it's the "clap clap clap". I'm surprised at the tone, coming from a moderator.

yep, exactly the feeling I get, and it's little things like that that make people like me call it "amateur hour". Honest, useful feedback and suggestions met with sarcasm. Which reflects poorly on the entire project.

 

[SpitefulFox]

Oooooh, the ability to make private packs without needing public permissions will definitely be handy. I'm pretty excited for the launcher now. Take your time. ^_^

 

[danieledward]

yep, exactly the feeling I get, and it's little things like that that make people like me call it "amateur hour". Honest, useful feedback and suggestions met with sarcasm. Which reflects poorly on the entire project.

I, for one, am not too impressed. It's weird how people in dev or moderator positions in the Minecraft modding community grow increasingly self-righteous as time goes on, yet, it's the fans of the mods who play them, click the links, tell their friends about them, score the you-tubers hits on videos and are basically the meat of the community. I play the mods, and I can appreciate the mod dev's time investment, but they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't like it. We all share a similar interest; Minecraft. Dev's love to mod Minecraft, while we love to play their mod. I think this is a very symbiotic relationship, not parasitic...know what I mean?

EDIT: Jinbobo, I think you need to take a step down and foster positive conversation.

 

[rolland0]

*clap clap clap*

I am surprised at the level of insight you guys have into our team structure and projects.

For anyone confused about this comment, it's a response to the these:

Why do projects fail - 101.

- Unclear timeframes.
and saying you dont have any brings us to
- Lack of proper planning
- Lack of delivery milestones.

If you dont have estimates, I asume you aren't tracking to any sort of plan. If you know what needs to be done, you can establish an estimate, even if its a rough order of magnitude.

As the business owner or project manager, you need to ensure a clear vision statement is in place, which outlines the broad objectives for your team, with clear milestones which can be fleshed out, measured and tracked through planning and implementation, during technical reviews and through every stage of delivery.

I'm just trying to help. You're in a risk mitigation phase without a rudder or sextant and all that comes to mind is the old PM adage: Fail to plan - plan to fail.

As someone that has managed mulit-million dollar projects for the last 20+ years it also sounds like you're suffering from major scope creep/uncertainty and as a result you're trying to do everything and getting nowhere (that may be a little harsh but it's time to face facts).
My suggestions would be to:
a) put down on paper the features you want to incorporate
b) get everyone (or at least the key people) to agree on a priority ranking for each feature
c) chunk the project into phases based on feature priority
d) set a target to complete the first phase - don't publish the date externally
e) establish regular follow-up sessions to track progress

When moral is low you need to get some successes to re-energize your team. Don't try for a homerun. Get a few singles and avoid making mistakes that will further demoralize the team.

And last but not least; thank you, thank you, thank you for the effort you've put into FTB so far. I've spent way too much of my free time playing.

Also agree that this has all the classic signs of feature creep and there's a lack of project management. Which is easy to run into when you haven't run a big project before, especially with volunteers. And I don't want to come off as being unappreciative of that fact. But if you want to run FTB more professionally, that means project management, and realistic goal setting. Defining a clear definition of what needs to happen at initial launch and what needs to be in phase 2.

I'd go on and suggest more ways to improve there, but really find a veteran project manager for the team and make him your friend. Someone who's not afraid to say no when it needs to be said.

These three posts, while I understand are intended to be helpful, are rather insulting. They seem to be implying that the FTB team consists of amateurs that don't know what they're doing. The following seems like a pretty good indication that they do, in fact, know what they're doing and have organization in place.

First - Although I cant mention a name yet. I recently added a new member to the FTB team. This is a person highly respected in the minecraft modding community. This person has essentially been taken on to oversee launcher development. This in and of itself has added to the delays as this person has made some changes and suggestions that we will be making to improve the launcher.

Second - Internal communication. We have now added a new system for internal communication and started having actual meetings between a large group of FTB staff to help get things more organised.

Third We have pulled in outside help from the modding community to help with work on the launcher itself.

Forth - Whilst Wyld has resigned from FTB to allow him to focus on streaming. Jadedcat has returned and we added in Eyamaz onto the mod-pack team. Together they are working extremely hard to make sure that when the launcher is ready, we have mod-packs good to go. The plan is on day 1 to have 3-4 proper, fully tested FTB packs for 1.6.4. Alongside this, as soon as we can, we are going to open up the tools for mod pack creation to the third party pack people to allow them to transition over to 1.6.4 as smoothly as possible. Finally, we will be releasing in full the FTB master config list in order to help in the construction of packs.

 

[DREVL]

*clap clap clap*

I am surprised at the level of insight you guys have into our team structure and projects.

Lol right? I wanted to express thoughts but I knew I don't know squat about the goings on, but full on yes men sound just as silly.

 

[Lykeuhfox]

EDIT: Jinbobo, I think you need to take a step down and foster positive conversation.

He's responding the way he is because FTB consists of volunteers using their free time to develop and forum know-it-alls think it needs to be run with the precision of a formal business without knowing the inner workings of the processes they're already using.

 

[eashonk]

Did that touch a nerve? Because that's what moderating is like. Every person in a position of responsibility gets targeted and blamed for every little thing. After having to put up with that day in and day out, do you honestly expect people to NOT get a little snarky?

This is exactly the mistake that moderators make. Ever heard the saying "Don't poke the bear"? Well, in forums I often see the moderators making comments that antagonize people and pollutes the discussion with off subject topics such as this. If he would just swallow his pride and be a professional, keep his mouth shut and take the criticism at face value, the discussion would remain focused on the project, as it should be, and not over semantics and snarky comments. Moderators are constantly poking the bear, and should keep their opinions to themselves as long as the discussion is civil, and stay out of the conversation if they have nothing constructive to add. Their job is to moderate, not interject themselves into the conversation, that is their only responsibility.

 

[slowpoke]

As someone that has managed mulit-million dollar projects for the last 20+ years it also sounds like you're suffering from major scope creep/uncertainty and as a result you're trying to do everything and getting nowhere (that may be a little harsh but it's time to face facts).
My suggestions would be to:
a) put down on paper the features you want to incorporate
b) get everyone (or at least the key people) to agree on a priority ranking for each feature
c) chunk the project into phases based on feature priority
d) set a target to complete the first phase - don't publish the date externally
e) establish regular follow-up sessions to track progress

When moral is low you need to get some successes to re-energize your team. Don't try for a homerun. Get a few singles and avoid making mistakes that will further demoralize the team.

And last but not least; thank you, thank you, thank you for the effort you've put into FTB so far. I've spent way too much of my free time playing.

A) Done
B) Done (for the most part)
C) Yup thats been done as well.
D) There are internal targets, the problem isnt that, its that there are things outside of our control at the moment that are delaying us. As an example, the person we took on as a project leader is delayed by another project that he is working on. So why take this person on I hear you ask. Answer is simple, because in my opinion despite the short term inconvenience this person is worth the wait.
E) Like I said in my post we have already implemented regular meetings that will help in this regard.

This is the point, a lot of these things people are saying are actually topics that I already talked about in the post. I am not saying your wrong, in fact your right with what you say. Just we have done a lot of them already. We will have a much clearer idea of how things will look in the next couple of weeks.

 

[danieledward]

For anyone confused about this comment, it's a response to the these:





These three posts, while I understand are intended to be helpful, are rather insulting. They seem to be implying that the FTB team consists of amateurs that don't know what they're doing. The following seems like a pretty good indication that they do, in fact, know what they're doing and have organization in place.

the "confusion" is that of the tone, not the content. The posts from the community you quoted are well warranted considering the original post. Weather these posts are insulting or not rests on the shoulders of the parties they are directed at, of which, I presume, you are not one. I would also presume it would be up to the FTB team to decide if they feel insulted or not.

On topic, I have been really looking forward to the FTB Team's updated packs for a while and am, truthfully, disappointed it's been so long. I, like many others it seems, have resorted to using other modpacks, and may continue to do so even after FTB 2.0 is launched. I feel like FTB needed to get 1.6 out before redesigning the launcher, to appease the crowd, while giving themselves maximum behind-the-scenes time for the work required for the FTB 2.0 launcher. Meanwhile, everyone in the community is happily distracted by their new 1.6 worlds, maybe only requiring a slight bug squash every now and then. heck they could have even called them beta 1.6 packs, giving the FTB team the time they need for a redesign for 1.7.

I'm obviously no expert, just wall-o-texting.

 

[zartine]

Heres how I see things, take all the time you need to get things right, with the PS4 and XBOX one, COD Ghosts and BF4, I have plenty to keep me busy until they can get everything straight, and for anyone complaining about it not getting done,, SHUT UP!!!!!

 

[danieledward]

He's responding the way he is because FTB consists of volunteers using their free time to develop and forum know-it-alls think it needs to be run with the precision of a formal business without knowing the inner workings of the processes they're already using.

And likewise, the community is responding the way they are for good reason. I would expect a moderator to know better, and not be personally invested in a hot topic. Am I wrong?

 

[Bbaass_TMH]

Ps: by the way, people who complain about the oncoming world reset, take a peek on Midas Gold, the world converter:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...world-world-block-item-id-converter-for-mods/

I can confirm that this works to an extent. We have used it on our server to convert items from Ultimate to Unleashed. I created a new superflat world (we are using MCPC+), set up systems to convert large amounts of metal ingots into other types of the same ingot (RP2 copper into copper nuggets, then into Thermal Expansion copper ingots), set up some areas for players to store their items in diamonds chest, DSUs, and ME storage drives.
Several of us worked on three seperate google docs to create the conversion list, all 32 thousand lines, one for each possible item ID. Google docs were laggy if it was all in one file. Anything not specified would automatically convert into cobblestone.
It did not convert the damage value, that stayed the same, meaning we did lose pretty much all of Forestry, as that changed a lot.

We did later realize that after our players had stored their items in various methods, we had to take it out of ME drives and into diamond chests and/or DSUs.

All in all, it was a succes, given the other option was not do it and have everyone start fresh again.

 

[thekolo]

Dear FTB Team,
There are other mod packs out there. I decided to give a couple of them a try. I mean why not? Lots of these mod packs have already migrated to 1.6 and blah blah blah. It really opened my eyes to the quality work you guys do. So please do take your time and don't let the angry mob get to you because the quality of your work is outstanding and what you plan on doing sounds head and shoulders better than what we already have.
XOXO,
Mike

 

[Hambeau]

it's the minecraft stream he did yesterday, he also streamed a bit of kerbal space program yesterday which also can be found in the archives

I watched the Twitch stream where apparently Slow was playing the new pack that appears to be intended to showcase new Mods that aren't getting a lot of "airtime". He was on Forgefield after being unable to log onto the intended server.

 

[KirinDave]

Dear FTB Team,
There are other mod packs out there. I decided to give a couple of them a try. I mean why not? Lots of these mod packs have already migrated to 1.6 and blah blah blah. It really opened my eyes to the quality work you guys do. So please do take your time and don't let the angry mob get to you because the quality of your work is outstanding and what you plan on doing sounds head and shoulders better than what we already have.
XOXO,
Mike

I'd like to stress that FTB is the standard of quality everyone aims for. I use the phrase "FTB quality" in the work we aim for. And I confess to being very jealous that FTB has a staff as big as they do. I think it's only in the last 3 weeks that you could build a truly stable, interesting modpack in 1.6.4. Even if you ignore TE3, MCF has been going through a lot of changes and major mods have been bouncing around dependencies, so it's no surprise very few people have good stable releases.

I think it's great that FTB is taking time and adhering to the quality standard that they CAN adhere to. Quality and stability are definitely one of the big differentiators of FTB. I hope that they can make a great release and then keep momentum working towards 1.7 modpacks early next year.

For my project, our efforts HAVE to be an "open beta" kind of effort because we simply don't have the staff that FTB can have. If we did, we'd do it more like FTB does it with a lot more internal testing. FTB doesn't have to burn that card with its users, and I wish we had that luxury.

 

[Hambeau]

I, for one, am not too impressed. It's weird how people in dev or moderator positions in the Minecraft modding community grow increasingly self-righteous as time goes on, yet, it's the fans of the mods who play them, click the links, tell their friends about them, score the you-tubers hits on videos and are basically the meat of the community. I play the mods, and I can appreciate the mod dev's time investment, but they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't like it. We all share a similar interest; Minecraft. Dev's love to mod Minecraft, while we love to play their mod. I think this is a very symbiotic relationship, not parasitic...know what I mean?

EDIT: Jinbobo, I think you need to take a step down and foster positive conversation.

I don't think Mod or Dev behavior is weird at all, seeing how they're treated in various forums by faceless masses of demanding users of "product" they put out for free use.

 

[Aphenro]

A) Done
B) Done (for the most part)
C) Yup thats been done as well.
D) There are internal targets, the problem isnt that, its that there are things outside of our control at the moment that are delaying us. As an example, the person we took on as a project leader is delayed by another project that he is working on. So why take this person on I hear you ask. Answer is simple, because in my opinion despite the short term inconvenience this person is worth the wait.
E) Like I said in my post we have already implemented regular meetings that will help in this regard.

This is the point, a lot of these things people are saying are actually topics that I already talked about in the post. I am not saying your wrong, in fact your right with what you say. Just we have done a lot of them already. We will have a much clearer idea of how things will look in the next couple of weeks.

Good to hear. Short term pain for long term gain sounds good. So long as you're making decisions for the right reasons you're on your way.

Sorry if I came off sounding like you didn't know what you were doing or how to get/keep on track. But the two biggest issues I see in projects again and again, are lack of a clear agreed to scope statement and lack of sponsorship/buy in from the key stakeholders and it sounded like you might be suffering from these. But I now see you've got them covered.

If you want to carry on this conversation in private I'm more than willing to help out if I can, otherwise I look forward to seeing the new launcher when it's ready.

 

[danieledward]

I don't think Mod or Dev behavior is weird at all, seeing how they're treated in various forums by faceless masses of demanding users of "product" they put out for free use.

I'll assume you read all of my post, though it's hard to. We're talking about a moderator at this point, primarily.

I agree that the "faceless masses" are sometimes ignorant, belligerent, and are occasionally downright nasty. However, like all things, we have to take the good with the bad or in this case, the bad with the good, moderating the nasty. Lumping everyone into the bad category for posting text featuring less than praise doesn't help anyone. On the flip side, there is also tons of positive feedback for what these people do, and if I may walk out on a limb here, more praise than distaste. Clearly, we are now digressing from the point of the role of moderators.

EDIT: I'll stop responding to the issue of the moderation in this thread, as this thread discussion should get back to the topic.