Post: #9

Darksun is right on every aspect. We are just as busy as everyone else. Your excuses; which are plausible, are the same as ours. We try to keep up with the demands as much as possible. Life gets in our way. If you are going to cast stones, cast them at every single Dev on every emulater. It happens to us all.

We do have something stable. There are stable releases and if set up right the nightlies are pretty stable as well. I might not have 50 players running around on some sphere development server... but I have myself and a few friends who get on and my friends have fun with the things I add; when I have time.

If we put up a server, how many of your players would come to our server? Would you all REGULARLY come on the server and devote time playing and testing? I heard everyone on here say they are super busy with life. Well if you are super busy with life and we are super busy with life how do you expect us to put something up no one will be on to test? Just a thought.

Like Admin Phoenix I have a job, I go to college, I do freelance data entry, web design/development, and construction work on the side. I am in web development and programming for college studies. Two fields needing constant attention to new updates and releases of software and code changes in the industry. Add in my three children, my fiance, and an ongoing struggle to maintain my 'hobbies'; which include: Development of Sphere, Working on Scripts, Artistic Work, Gaming (which I haven't done in months besides an entire week on Diablo 3), among other misc things. I am simply trying to balance time.

What is being done with SCP2 is sort of something I have been doing for a year with the script packs with sphere. Is it ready for release? I wish. At the same time though, like other servers, scp, etc; I have no help. Not a single person likes to change simple base scripts or repurpose them.

Now. One complaint with all the replies. I would tell you if we were shutting down or crashing and burning. We are not. We are trying to make some changes with our staffing and development. We are trying to get a few people on the crew who can spend a little more time on it than we can. They might not make super advanced things but can fix bugs. I also am sorry to say, I don't consider any of you customers or consumers. You are not purchasing a product from us. Look up the definitions. You guys are a loyal community members to an ongoing emulation of a game program. Which we appreciate. Most of you know I have done PR work for Sphere long before I was a dev and had the same complaints myself for a good bit, but I stuck it out, till we were hired. At the time we were hired I was almost done with my degree in Web Design at the college I was going to. I moved back to Maryland, my home state, when I had 2 terms left to complete. Not a single credit was transferrable. So I pretty much have to repeat my entire degree.

What does get done in development you all seem to love. When something is not done for a bit, there is complaints. I personally cannot do the networking aspect. It is not my cup of tea, I don't want to mess anything up, and I prefer to leave that to Mr. SugarCube who has been in that area of the source since he has been on. He knows it better than us.

I also would like to remind you all that nightlies are made to come out broken or working . When we do finally get a nightlie completely stabilized, then maybe we can consider a update to a stable release.

Thank you,
Khaos

PS.
This subject of telling us what we do and don't do is dead. I personally don't want to hear it. I know for a fact if you all had the plate I have to eat from daily, you would be responding as I am. I take such a long absense from here at times because of the barrage of complaints. No one ever thinks about what is going on with us. We don't need gratitude. I loved hearing it yesterday. It made me smile. Inside we have a sense of happiness when you all approve of something we do. Like the appreciation I got for fixing combat with ships, making maxstats go past the 32655 up to the millions, adding in the ini option for auto privsets on functions, newbie racial select templates, etc.. These were things people asked for, for years. I didn't expect an outpour of "thank you's" or "That is awesome!", etc. I knew some of you liked it. I was happy. It is those reasons... those reasons alone, I stay with sphere and have been with sphere for over 10 years.

To all of those who have used my advice, used my scripts, let me improve your scripts, helped improve mine... for those who appreciated my rants, my delegating rough situations like these, and for those who have had several casual UO or non-UO talks with me; thank you. I appreciate you all as much as you appreciate me. It has been a great 10 years. Something I don't plan to give up yet, even though, like everyone else... I sometimes see little hope in staying on. I do stay though. This is a powerful positive experience. I want to make the best impact I can.