I think that the livestreams are fantastic. I only caught episode 7 live, but I’ve watched all of them (a few times, actually). They were great since I got a bit of a late start in contributing to this project. It helped bring me up to speed on what systems were implemented and gave a good overview of the overall architecture…perfect jumping off point for making contributions. You guys have really nailed the livestreams. Fantastic job.
As I mentioned elsewhere on the forums, I think the Open Projects initiative is a stroke of genius. It’s great for all skill levels. For me, it provides a structure that forces constant forward movement. I know that when I work on my own projects, I’m always taking one step forward and two steps back because I focus on perfecting systems before moving on…and that’s when the dreaded scope creep comes in. But because there’s a team behind this project, forward progress is always made. And I appreciate being able to contribute to a project that might ACTUALLY be completed some day.
One thing that I do think might help a bit is if the maintainers of the GitHub repositories posted on this forum how they are planning to evolve the major branches over time. I’m not talking detailed posts for every little thing, but it might be helpful if there was a thread were you guys could post a one-sentence explanation of a change you are going to make…something like: “I’m working on a change that’s going to move the DialogueLineSO component in ActorSO to another script.” And that change might not happen for a few weeks or so, but at least we know it’s coming. It’s just a way to give a general idea of how parts of the main codebase are shifting around so that those submitting PRs can anticipate this. I just think there should be some place where we learn about implemented or planned changes to the main codebase which updates us more than every two weeks, which is what we get with the livestreams. Sure, we can keep up-to-date with the main repository, but that doesn’t account for soon-to-come codebase changes.
The reason I say that is because if I’m working on a system that interacts with many other systems (as I have detailed in this post: Localized Phoneme / Mood / Pose Expression System ), I’d like to stay on top of what changes I need to make to my codebase so that its compatible. I don’t want the PR-merging team to have to take care of this because it’s my submission. I’d like to submit something complete and working, and make sure it’s not a headache for those testing it out. Furthermore, if I know how a codebase is going to change in advance, I might decide on a completely different architecture for my contributions.
Also, since it takes a lot of effort to keep our PRs up-to-date with the latest version of the ever-evolving codebase, I think it would be great if we would have a little early feedback on whether the team generally likes the contribution or doesn’t see it fitting in with the project. I get that everyone is busy, but just a simple like on a forum post could be an indicator that the team generally likes the direction the contribution is going, but hasn’t had time to review the PR yet. Or maybe a comment: “Before you develop this system further, please wait for us to give you feedback on the PR”…which is basically a nice way of saying I’m not sure this is going to fit. It doesn’t have to be definitive either way, but just a hint of right track / wrong track would be helpful. But then again, this is my first contribution and it was only within the last couple days…I’m not sure how long it normally takes the team to review a PR. I just don’t want to put in a lot of time maintaining something if it’s going nowhere. Limbo is a hard place to be in and with very sporadic free time, I want to make sure that I’m spending it doing useful work.
But I get all of that is adding more on top of a team that probably has more than enough to deal with right now. And if that’s the case, then that’s okay. Just wanted to give my two cents…you guys asked for it, after all! =D
At any rate, thank you. You guys have changed the game with this new initiative. I’m looking forward to continuing to evolve this project and see what else is in the pipeline for Open Projects!