A Question of Relevance

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wallyweb
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A Question of Relevance

Post by wallyweb »

A recent posting in another thread has given me pause to reflect:
andythenorth wrote:@wally - TTDP is pretty much unmaintained AFAIK, at some point it's impossible to maintain a spec between the two games. We're pretty close to that.
Yes, the appearance would seem to be that TTDP is unmaintained. Unfortunately this has been forced upon TTDP. The status of TTDP is currently nightly r2366. Not too long ago, DaleStan attempted to commit an update to r2367. Apparently the server farm is no longer able to compile TTDP. A little history is in order. At one time TTDP had it's own SVN repository and compile farm. A decision was made that these services should be moved to the OpenTTD servers. All was well until those maintaining the OpenTTD servers found it prudent to upgrade. There were problems. The new installation broke OpenTTD. It was fixed. Unfortunately nobody thought to check to see if there were problems with TTDP compiling as well. There were. Some weeks ago Rubidium was kind enough to reply to my PM'd inquiry and at the time I found his response to be quite reasonable and acceptable. The conclusion was that the TTDP situation would be fixed. We are still waiting patiently. Suffice it to say, TTDP is very much maintained as long as those who undertook to maintain the necessary tools meet their fiduciary responsibility to provide the support that they committed to.

As for maintaining a spec between the two games, this is not impossible and never will be. The only way that the spec could be made to diverge into separate paths is that someone makes a conscious effort to force the issue. That would be a very sad day for two communities that up until now were mostly able to work in concert. Hopefully both communities will continue in a remarkable spirit of co-operation in spite of the few who either through intent or through ignorance would frustrate this process.

In conclusion, TTDP is still very much in the game. It is merely stalled at r2366 through no fault of it's own.
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Re: A Question of Relevance

Post by Rubidium »

wallyweb wrote:At one time TTDP had it's own SVN repository and compile farm. A decision was made that these services should be moved to the OpenTTD servers.
I'm wondering which "own" compile farm you're talking about.

Lets begin with some history.

From 2004 OpenTTD used to use a compile farm "provided" by the library of the university of Szeged; one of OpenTTD's former developers had an affiliation with that library.

In 2006 the OpenTTD compile farm started to make TTDPatch's first nightlies. In other words OpenTTD was building (and hosting) the TTDPatch nightlies from the very begin.

In 2008 we were made aware that the before mentioned former developer's affiliation with the library was ending and so we, OpenTTD, sought another solution for our compile farm as the library would stop providing one. OpenTTD then bought/got sponsored its own dedicated server to which we migrated the services "our" old compile farm provided. We continued building and hosting TTDPatch's nightlies.

In 2011 we moved to another server, and even though we had tested the migration. After the migration we found out that after a few compiles the compile farm would completely lock up stuff, which was when we stopped the compile farm. Over time we have been busy with getting the right infrastructure for building OpenTTD and only very recently the compile farm was capable of building grfcodec again.
wallyweb wrote:Yes, the appearance would seem to be that TTDP is unmaintained. Unfortunately this has been forced upon TTDP. The status of TTDP is currently nightly r2366. Not too long ago, DaleStan attempted to commit an update to r2367.
r2367 was triggered by a NewGRF developer wondering why TTDPatch and OpenTTD behaved differently in some case. As such it is safe to say that without OpenTTD r2367 would not have happened. If I take that into consideration, the last commit to TTDPatch was r2366 which was 10 months ago and is still the 'current' nightly. So I don't think you can argue that OpenTTD forced TTDPatch to be unmaintained when it actually triggered someone committing something maintainish three months ago.

Without OpenTTD compiling TTDPatch nightlies you would still be playing TTDPatch 2.5 beta 9.

I'm happy to invest time in setting up a new TTDPatch compile farm, but I don't think it is worth to do it for just that single revision and no indications that TTDPatch is going to get any significant development any time soon.

If you don't agree with that, you're free to start your own compile farm for TTDPatch. However, it's not that we ever "took over" TTDPatch's own compile farm as it never had one.
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wallyweb
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Re: A Question of Relevance

Post by wallyweb »

Rubidium wrote:In 2006 the OpenTTD compile farm started to make TTDPatch's first nightlies. In other words OpenTTD was building (and hosting) the TTDPatch nightlies from the very begin.
Thank you for that link. In my ignorance I had completely forgotten about that thread :oops: and I stand corrected.
r2367 was triggered by a NewGRF developer wondering why TTDPatch and OpenTTD behaved differently in some case. As such it is safe to say that without OpenTTD r2367 would not have happened. If I take that into consideration, the last commit to TTDPatch was r2366 which was 10 months ago and is still the 'current' nightly. So I don't think you can argue that OpenTTD forced TTDPatch to be unmaintained when it actually triggered someone committing something maintainish three months ago.
Granted that TTDPatch development has been nowhere near that of OTTD, but irregardless of how the need for r2367 became apparent, it did happen.
Without OpenTTD compiling TTDPatch nightlies you would still be playing TTDPatch 2.5 beta 9.
Or we could be at TTDPatch 3.x beta y. There is no doubt that OTTD compiling TTDP nightlies is a valuable service and an excellent example of the co-operation between the two communities that I had mentioned above.
I'm happy to invest time in setting up a new TTDPatch compile farm, but I don't think it is worth to do it for just that single revision and no indications that TTDPatch is going to get any significant development any time soon.
This could be a self fulfilling prophecy. The lack of a compile farm could arguably deter someone from attempting development.
If you don't agree with that, you're free to start your own compile farm for TTDPatch. However, it's not that we ever "took over" TTDPatch's own compile farm as it never had one.
I would love to be able to set up a compile farm but unfortunately I lack the expertise and must rely upon OTTD's support.

My comments were not aimed at you nor at the OTTD community. Your reply to my email was taken very well by me. I was frustrated by andythenorth's response. As you and I cited, a maintenance (r2367) was attempted and failed and as you rightly pointed out, TTDP remains at r2366. Irregardless of the intervening periods, one has to ask what other updates will go undone, what developers have walked away without completing a project? Unfortunately, without a compiler, we will never know. :cry:
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Re: A Question of Relevance

Post by DaleStan »

I could imagine sitting down for a few weekends and adding support for NewGRF version 8 to TTDPatch. I am not going to guarantee that it will happen, though.
This would not be a significant user-visible change, except that version 8 NewGRFs would load.

If I did so, I am (of course) capable of posting my own TTDPatch builds, but I'd be happier if there were a compile farm that did it for me.
George wrote:
andythenorth wrote:@wally - TTDP is pretty much unmaintained AFAIK, at some point it's impossible to maintain a spec between the two games. We're pretty close to that.
I do not think so. If we'd add new props, the sets would support TTDP with old props and a more configurable support for OTTD with new props. Do not see much problem here. That's like having introduction date and long introduction date props.
Yes and no.
TTDPatch does obey the long intro date props, at least to the extent of its ability to do so.
Before that was added to TTDPatch, it would error and refuse to load the GRF if it encountered such a property. However, GRF authors had the option to skip setting that property in TTDPatch, making their GRFs continue to load in both games.

This workaround does not apply with NewGRF version 8. GRFs cannot present as version 7 to TTDPatch and as version 8 to OpenTTD. They must pick one for both games. Until both games support version 8, GRF authors must either accept the limitations of version 7, or accept that TTDPatch players will not be able to use their GRF. For this reason, inventing GRF versions requires much more discussion and cooperation than does adding a simple property or variable.
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Re: A Question of Relevance

Post by michael blunck »

DaleStan wrote: I could imagine sitting down for a few weekends and adding support for NewGRF version 8 to TTDPatch. I am not going to guarantee that it will happen, though.
This would not be a significant user-visible change, except that version 8 NewGRFs would load.
That would be great. It would spare me (and possibly other newGRF authors) from supplying one more different version than already needed.

regards
Michael
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