Unfreedom is a problem in the world creeping even here

[HvS]

Filtering out bug reports that are not useful to us does not make them go away.
Edit: The current fix is very crude, it needs refining to a more friendly system. You are welcome to think along.

May I suggest that this setting go to the same part of Advanced Settings menu, where other GRF-related settings are (e.g. "allow multiple GRFs with vehicles")? I cannot think of an internal solution which would eliminate all GRF-related problems simply because some of them have no logical solution. E.g. the user played a game with FIRS - and then removed it. What to do with the industries? Replace them with standard ones - but how? And so on.

[Terkhen]

Nobody is talking about "dumb" users here. At least I'm not. I'm talking about users that want to use the game without reaching crashes, unforeseen bugs and so on. They don't want to get any special knowledge, they just want to play with everything working correctly. For those users, allowing to change NewGRFs ingame is a trap that sooner or later will cause their games to break. I also don't see the point of forcing people to reproduce the bugs by themselves.

My biggest issue with your suggestion is: What do we gain? Why is it better to the current situation? From your current posts, I don't see any improvements on the current situation. I also read all of your posts, and they still don't answer all of my questions.

[andythenorth]

If you think people are intelligent enough to get the message that changing GRFs "voids warranty"

No warranty It's GPL

If the OP - and I appreciate you're not the OP, you just seem to have been sucked into this madness - doesn't like the change to the GUI, they can patch the game to suit their needs. Or they can read the ottd wiki where it's clearly documented how to turn on the newgrf developer tools.

The action of the OP - laden with probably unintended irony - was to compare a fully free open source project to fascism. It's as though they drunk too much of the 'free' kool-aid, resulting in some form of diminished intelligence.

Meanwhile, it is *trivial* to render a game broken by changing newgrfs. This may not cause a crash, but may cause damage to the game the player is playing at the time.

There are cases that do (or did) cause a crash. I crash the game *regularly* when developing newgrfs, simple things such as changing certain strings will cause a crash. It's entirely plausible that this could also be caused by, for example, a user swapping different versions of the same newgrf.

Changing newgrfs is therefore far from robust. It's akin to allowing the user to scribble all over the contents of memory, and not something that is simply 'at your own risk'.

[Sylf]

This feature, or bug, has this one huge side effect to some users. Someone already pointed out in passing: now we are seeing so many posts and threads on this same topic. Now we, some Joe Average users are made into victims having to sift through these beaten-to-death boring posts and threads. (I know, if I'm a type who enjoy reading trolls or watching the drama, this could be more entertaining.)

I courteously ask that this bug put back on, so we, the average users, are spared of this pain. Keep the pain to the coders, having to sift through the repetitive bug reports.

Please don't share the pain with us.

/troll

[Dave]

Quite a simple solution since this program has nothing to do with your computer working or your life being made easier by technology: If you don't like the game's methods of "making you do things", then don't play it!?

On the contrary, I do and will exercise my right to freely and openly express opinion, whether dissenting or not, on any issue in any civilized way available. This right is secured as a basic human right in any constitution I am aware of. In more colloquial terms, this is called end user feedback.

Why put yourself through something you don't enjoy just to exercise your right to free speech?

End user feedback is one thing, disguising this issue as a matter of freedom is entirely another.

Your issue is a legitimate disagreement with the way the game has been taken (which as far as I can ascertain, has done so thanks to years of experience from the developers). Your issue, and the OP's, is NOT that your liberties are being compromised.

[HvS]

Nobody is talking about "dumb" users here. At least I'm not. I'm talking about users that want to use the game without reaching crashes, unforeseen bugs and so on. They don't want to get any special knowledge, they just want to play with everything working correctly. For those users, allowing to change NewGRFs ingame is a trap that sooner or later will cause their games to break. I also don't see the point of forcing people to reproduce the bugs by themselves.

Well, you personally might refrain from calling people dumb, when:

Maybe you are mature enough not to report such a case, but experience shows that many users do not understand such warnings.

Some players became rude, and the developers became rude as well after closing the third bug in two days about someone refusing to have seen a red warning (despite of he must have clicked it away at least 5 times).

but for me it is quite clear, that a person who ignores red warning banner - and even claims to have never seen it altogether - is dumb. There is no need to be politically correct, just call phenomena by their proper names: a clown is a clown, black is black, and dumb is dumb.

My biggest issue with your suggestion is: What do we gain? Why is it better to the current situation? From your current posts, I don't see any improvements on the current situation. I also read all of your posts, and they still don't answer all of my questions.

My understanding, that formed from the first page of this thread, was such:
- The ability to change GRFs on the fly can cause many issues, which might be percepted and reported as a bug;
- The developers know that well, and understand that this is fundamentally linked to the game design and cannot be fixed easily like any other minor bug;
- Despite the warnings, user still report those bugs in tons, which takes the developers' time and resources for nothing, which is a pain in the back;
- The developers decide not to let users mess with GRFs with ease any more, which blocks the influx of useless bug reports;
- And there was much rejoicing.

Or, simply put, that the developers were working on it, but it's gonna take long time, so in the meanwhile they made it so that the users will no longer bother them with redundant reports of the same issue.
This is fine, but some of us don't like that we can no longer do "the thing", even though we would have never abused it - or steal the time of our dear developers.
Thus I proposed to discuss another solution, which does essentially the same: does not let dumb users trouble the developers with bogus reports - while the game is as it used to be. And developers can have their time free to do what they want to at the proper pace, including working on the GRF changing system.

It looks like the developers believe it is better to change game code than to add some lines to the bugtracker.
Well, fine. I just wish my dissent, along that of the other players, be recorded - so that later it may be referenced should the same approach be suggested to be applied to some other feature of the game.

[HvS]

Your issue is a legitimate disagreement with the way the game has been taken (which as far as I can ascertain, has done so thanks to years of experience from the developers). Your issue, and the OP's, is NOT that your liberties are being compromised.

Well, there are different freedoms and liberties. The right of free speech is, naturally, on a quite different scale than the freedom to change GRFs at will on the fly. But for me, it does not mean that the smaller freedom is negligible. As a political science scholar, I know that freedom is worth fighting for on any scale, for the little things make up the whole. I also know that it is the inert majority who can play the main role in depriving everyone of freedom, just by saying "uh, ok, no big deal" and conforming. For me it is a natural reflex to act upon receiving even a minor tip that a freedom might be taken away. I will be happy if in the end I acted unnecessarily - but that is better than not acting and then suffer the consequences and the moral repercussions caused by the knowledge that I probably could have changed something, but did nothing.
Let me explain the worst-case scenario I am afraid of, and against which I now speak up: This issue is fundamentally caused by the fact that developers had to waste their time on dealing with multiple bogus bug reports. They decided not to let users change the GRFs by default, and this apparently helped, the flow of related bug reports dried out. Now, what if they decide - considering the success of this very case - to use the same approach with other functions of the game? As I told above, the conforming majority is likely to embrace new restrictions. And yes, I personally can change the source code of the game (which I actually did a few times) and fix it. But the majority will use the "standard" version. Now, the crucial question - in such a case, how do you expect me, for example, to play together with those users? I think being a lonely "the smart guy" with a different "personal" strain of the game is not a desirable outcome. So I don't want it to happen. And thus I speak of dissent and freedom*.

* - and no, this is not the only case where I do.

[andythenorth]

This issue is fundamentally caused by the fact that developers had to waste their time on dealing with multiple bogus bug reports

There is no single fundamental cause in this case; the development of openttd is by a group of people with differing opinions (sometimes wildly differing). The motivation for the person who actually made any given commit may be just one of a number of factors why the change is considered worthwhile.

I was around when the change was discussed.

This issue is caused in part by the fact - as I explained above - that changing grfs can either introduce irretrievable corruption into the game you are playing, or crash openttd. Responsible programmers don't make it easy for users to shoot themselves in the head.

The red box is useless because some high fraction of the time, changing newgrfs won't cause the game won't crash, or won't introduce corruption, or the corruption won't be noticed. Therefore it's easy to learn that it's a "safe" behaviour.

The other significant factor was bug reports, but not just for the core game. Changing newgrf in game is also a significant source of bugs for newgrf authors. (a) we're not all going to modify our bug trackers to accommodate a broken behaviour (b) our users primarily don't use bug trackers, they post here (c) we'd need a savegame for the bug far more often, this makes diagnosing much harder.

[PikkaBird]

Uhoh, fellas, we got us a "political science scholar". I'm going to avoid political correctness and say that you, HvS, are a dumb clown. The OpenTTD developers—and AI, GRF, and whatever else developers—put hundreds of hours of work into a hobby that amuses them, and can do what they like. They owe you, HvS, absolutely nothing. You may have opinions, and thanks to orudge even have a place to express them, but you have absolutely no rights with regards to their work. The fact that the developers acknowledge that there are people who will still want the old behaviour, and have accommodated them with a config setting, should make the whole issue moot.

Let me explain the worst-case scenario I am afraid of, and against which I now speak up: This issue is fundamentally caused by the fact that developers had to waste their time on dealing with multiple bogus bug reports. They decided not to let users change the GRFs by default, and this apparently helped, the flow of related bug reports dried out. Now, what if they decide - considering the success of this very case - to use the same approach with other functions of the game?

I hate to tell you this, but this has happened in the past and will almost certainly happen again in the future. On receiving large numbers of bug reports relating to an issue, the developers do have a habit of altering the game to address those reports. The freedom-hating b******.

[andythenorth]

Uhoh, fellas, we got us a "political science scholar".

Ach, me too. I have an actual BSc in it and everything. I'm all in favour of people running around defending freedom. I do wonder if it could be pointed at actual...you know, like, oppression and stuff

[HvS]

Uhoh, fellas, we got us a "political science scholar". I'm going to avoid political correctness and say that you, HvS, are a dumb clown. [...] They owe you, HvS, absolutely nothing. You may have opinions, and thanks to orudge even have a place to express them, but you have absolutely no rights with regards to their work. [...]

Oh, so you are one of those who get butthurt from any dissenting voice, and rush to the front row to say "noone owes you anything"? I've heard such an argument a lot, even people saying that you cannot critisize the government, because "they don't owe you anything" and "you get what you deserve". Those fellas are usually pretty retarted in other respects as well, to be frank.

[HvS]

Uhoh, fellas, we got us a "political science scholar".

Ach, me too. I have an actual BSc in it and everything. I'm all in favour of people running around defending freedom.

You cannot have BSc in political science, since it's from humanities, you can only have BA and MA (that's what I have).

I do wonder if it could be pointed at actual...you know, like, oppression and stuff

I have published several articles on the flaws of the electoral systems in my own country, which give the party of power an unfair advantage. I guess it counts as a fight against actual oppression and stuff.

[andythenorth]

You cannot have BSc in political science, since it's from humanities, you can only have BA and MA (that's what I have).

Please don't oppress me with your assertions.

A sophisticated discourse distinguishes between matters of fact and matters of opinion, notwithstanding that the creation of 'fact' is a political act and necessarily an operation of power (but for discourse we tend to need to agree on at least some basic tenets, which we can for convenience treat as 'facts').

In this case it is broadly a fact that I have a BSc, and that I studied political science; of course it's possible that my existence takes place in some other phenomenological scenario, such as evil demon or unreliable narrator.

[PikkaBird]

Uhoh, fellas, we got us a "political science scholar". I'm going to avoid political correctness and say that you, HvS, are a dumb clown. [...] They owe you, HvS, absolutely nothing. You may have opinions, and thanks to orudge even have a place to express them, but you have absolutely no rights with regards to their work. [...]

Oh, so you are one of those who get butthurt from any dissenting voice, and rush to the front row to say "noone owes you anything"? I've heard such an argument a lot, even people saying that you cannot critisize the government, because "they don't owe you anything" and "you get what you deserve". Those fellas are usually pretty retarted in other respects as well, to be frank.

Oh, so you're one of those who resorts to misrepresentation and ad hominem attacks when you're called on the ridiculousness of your position?

I never said that "no-one owes you anything". I said that the OpenTTD Developers don't owe you anything. They are individuals pursuing a hobby, and can do what they like. If you would like to make your own OpenTTD fork where developers are elected representatives of the player base, go ahead, I wish you luck.

[PikkaBird]

A sophisticated discourse distinguishes between matters of fact and matters of opinion.

I think you're showing your age a bit here, andy.

[HvS]

In this case it is broadly a fact that I have a BSc, and that I studied political science; of course it's possible that my existence takes place in some other phenomenological scenario, such as evil demon or unreliable narrator.

I don't know where you got it, but the general rule is that BSc is for "hard science", and BA is for humanities and social sciences, political science being one of them. Although I googled out that in Denmark, UK, and Nigeria - to name a few examples - you can get BSc in almost anything. Still, that is a weird deviation and I am surprised to learn that.

Oh, so you're one of those who resorts to misrepresentation and ad hominem attacks when you're called on the ridiculousness of your position?

If calling someone personally a dumb clown is not an ad hominem attack, then I am the Emperor of China.

[PikkaBird]

Still, that is a weird deviation and I am surprised to learn that.

Surprised or not, perhaps you should engage your brain before your fingers, and not accuse people of making up their qualifications.

If calling someone personally a dumb clown is not an ad hominem attack, then I am the Emperor of China.

There is no need to be politically correct, just call phenomena by their proper names: a clown is a clown, black is black, and dumb is dumb.

Please try and remember what you've written; you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be used in rhetoric against you. And you're still avoiding addressing my actual points.

[HvS]

Still, that is a weird deviation and I am surprised to learn that.

Surprised or not, perhaps you should engage your brain before your fingers, and not accuse people of making up their qualifications.

I actually meant he had BA in Political Science - not that he had no qualification whatsoever (either in general, or specifically in PolSci).

If calling someone personally a dumb clown is not an ad hominem attack, then I am the Emperor of China.

There is no need to be politically correct, just call phenomena by their proper names: a clown is a clown, black is black, and dumb is dumb.

Please try and remember what you've written; you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be used in rhetoric against you. And you're still avoiding addressing my actual points.

I don't know how to explain the difference between insulting a certain person and avoiding the use of euphemisms when talking about phenomena at large.

[Rubidium]

This whole unfreedom thing of changing NewGRFs can be easily compared to the second amendment in the USA.

I see reporting a bug when it's caused by changing NewGRFs as shooting a police officier. Changing the bug tracker to reject that is like giving the police officer a bullet proof vest, but they can still shoot at your head. For example report it on the forum or via email because the bug tracker didn't accept it.

Previously everyone was given a gun at birth, i.e. everyone could without any knowledge change NewGRFs in game. Now they just have to do some research on where to "buy" the gun, i.e. search the forum for changing NewGRFs, and then they have to actually "buy" the gun, i.e. change that setting. Obviously you can get a gun as present from somebody else, i.e. someone else changes the setting for you.

Now there are several states that disallow guns in certain areas, e.g. on planes. This is comparable to OpenTTD not allowing to change NewGRFs at all in multiplayer games, where changing NewGRFs cause harm to many others, as would shooting the captain of a flying aircraft.

Many states also require permits and have all kinds of other rules and regulations regarding guns, but OpenTTD does not restrict you further than what I've written above. So the USA must be extremely unfree with respect to their gun laws.

[PikkaBird]

I don't know how to explain the difference between insulting a certain person and avoiding the use of euphemisms when talking about phenomena at large.

Is the difference that bad arguments are easier to make if you talk about nebulously-defined "phenomena"? Nevertheless, I stick by my assertion that you are a dumb clown. And you're still avoiding addressing my actual points.

Rubidium, *groan*. I think I'll bow out of this thread now.