My Future With Xonotic

Good evening fellows of Xonotic community... I am here to inform you that I am (at least temporarily) quitting development of Xonotic. I need you to understand precisely why, and what it will take for me to consider not leaving.

Consistently, my hands are tied with Xonotic design. I cannot push forward the design of the project without fighting through 3 groups of people first. Generally, those groups include: My fellow team mates, the competitive community, and the forum/general community. Each group requires me to explain all my choices several times, and battles them in different ways... and it wears me the fuck down. I spend more time arguing in favor or against an idea than I do actually programming or implementing ideas or bugfixes, and it draws frustration instead of the joy I would get from fulfilling a design. I understand that you want the project decisions to be entirely free, but the fact is, that doesn't work. It doesn't work for me, and I postulate that democratic design will NEVER work to build a game which can strive and push forward in regards to production and presentation quality.

I will not be coming back to this same stress level. It's either: I get superior say regarding gameplay design, mapping design, and art design decisions, or there's no way I can stand being here anymore. To clarify what i'm saying, I want the superior decision on design aspects of the game barring an override by veto of a core team member or core team vote. That is to say, superior say over my extended team mates, except for core team members who can challenge/dispute my choices.

I don't have time or interest to argue my choices with everyone, and it's simply not possible for me to lay out all my designs all the time. I do present the ones which require questioning to you folks on the forums or various parts of the community (See: Blaster concept, new weapons concepts, pretty much all my threads i've done on these forums) and implement the ones directly which don't. For the rest of the ideas/designs, I keep them in my head while i'm working on them as presenting them too early (especially while they're subject to change) can be a large problem both for the future of the idea and for my sanity, as i'm the one who is left to argue in favor of them. That being said, i'm going to lay out my current (and required) vision for this project in brief/simple descriptions. I don't have time to do this normally, and I won't be doing this for every single subject that I can be involved in, but this should paint a picture of how I see this project emerging later:

• I want proper map design, but it's not possible to define all the mapping rules and standards perfectly and objectively. It is relative to each map, and I want to have superior handling of map design and map gameplay. We need to remove Drain, the map is broken and simply not acceptable enough... It was created literally entirely for the purpose of adding a texture set, and has no place remaining in this game now. We need to fix Newtonian Nightmare, the design of this map (with generators, annoying team based jump pads, and warpzones) is simply not acceptable, it is not played by people due to performance problems and because it is simply a weird and annoying map to play on. We need to add more maps, but the Xonotic mappers don't work on the ones in the queue already and instead fight me about which SHOULD be in the queue. Vorix for example is a map which is nearly ready to be added, but no one will fucking touch it... It would probably take 3 hours of work to finish. Instead, I get suggested maps by Cortez or other mappers, and these maps are honestly lost causes in my mind given the effort required. I defined it in my other post earlier... quote here: http://pastie.org/8334459
  
• Now, regarding art style.... Lets start with playermodels: Our current playermodels are shit, they do not fit the criteria of playermodels we need. The majority of them are too small, and their design is poor and unmaintainable in general (the artist of them left quickly after they were originally made, and since then we have not and will not find anyone who can pick up their development later). The model by Taoki recently is an example of this, instead of actually making a new model in the same theme, he took an old model and distorted its geometry without editing the texture or uvmap or any other required such things. From a technical standpoint, it's a nightmare. Additionally, from a design standpoint, it's fucking retarded, because the model isn't even very good. Anyway, back on subject: Morphed and I came up with an idea of replacing the current models with playermodels that have segmented/attached body parts, this way we create a simple theme for each team, and then allow customization by the player to provide individualization. This is quite a lot like Overkill models, but with better design and artistic style in mind, allowing people to expand on them by creating more attachments or even their own sets of team models. That is the root of the idea for ditching existing playermodels and starting over with a new design. There are also quite a lot more ideas behind it, like splitting gender OUT of the model/character selection and rather putting it into the hands of each player.. this way playermodels are gender nuetral, and people rather select their own gender to be used in the game for voices or game messages. (so we can properly use "he" and "she" or such in death messages or whatever)
  
• Moving on to items: The existing health and armor models are nice. The existing ammo models are okay. The existing powerup models are acceptable. The simpleitems artwork is poor but there are other alternatives as well that are acceptable... However, I want to clarify something... Every sentence i've just said is with respect to that group of models... When it's combined, these models and design concepts are A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. There is no consistency in the design, the scaling is all wrong, the theming is all wrong. What do I want? I want to ditch all existing item pickups. I want to pick a unified 2D concept/design FIRST, which we will also use as the simpleitems and HUD icons for these items, and then we'll use those designs to build an EASILY-REPRODUCED STYLE for item pickup models that is centralized and controlled cleanly. I've had Sev (the artist who made the Xonotic font 'Xolonium', the map 'Xoylent', and the 'Luminos' default HUD and menu theme) working with me on such concepts for a bit now and i'll gladly show you piece of that to get you to shut up: http://pics.nexuizninjaz.com/images/wbq3...89ume5.png -- FYI, if I leave, make sure not to fuck this part up when picking up my place, because it's pretty important.
  
• Now for weapon balance... I'll just leave you my todolist for weapons for now I suppose: http://pastie.org/pastes/8333633/text -- In general, I want to develop unique personality for each of the 9 core weapons, with non-redundant but essential functionality that makes each weapon uniquely powerful. The main things left to do would be splitting the ammo pickups among the weapons properly, and adding the Arc (lightning gun).
  
• Physics design... My goal for the physics is to make them smooth and a delight to use, while also providing more competitive skill depth requiring you to master the physics to move faster in the game. My changes to the physics after 0.7 are represented directly in that way, as they all work towards those goals. Unwanted side effects need removing of course, but they are in general already quite good in these regards.
  
• Xonotic statistics integration into the game... WELL at this point of writing the post, i'm wearing down, so i'll just describe it as basically as possible: I want to add Xonstat integration into the menu, displaying your profile information in the Multiplayer window, as well as showing your ELO/Rank in game and handling it by code for autobalancing and other such purposes.
  
• Lobby/matchmaking/friends list system-- Generally just a system built into the menu which allows you to find games (same as #xonotic.pickup, but better ) and other friends playing the game at the time, as well as providing global/friend chat functionality built in. It would also allow you to notify other people that you're playing the game externally via IRC or email or such potentially, and it would allow you to gather people to servers for quickcups or other casual tournaments quite easily.
  
• Server listings and administration-- It is a huge problem that people see Xonotic as a sandbox for development in my opinion. When you provide only a sandbox without exclusivity, you provide a sandbox where the retarded kids shit in the corner and piss all over the rest of the box. I propose that we clean up the serverlist, providing only promoted/official servers in top view by default so that core community can build with new players and direction that you cannot get otherwise with minstagib and overkill and such taking all new players in before they get the chance to even try the rest of the game. What I propose is setting up a "hub" server community of like-minded administrators who all set up their servers to be the face of Xonotic multiplayer. Managed by community members, but ultimately controlled and hosted by the team, they would be promoted officially with tournaments, cups, and other such promotional events to publicize their existence and build their community. Additionally, I propose segmentation of the serverlist. Yes, segmentation. I want non-core servers to be in a separate category, listed BELOW core servers, and I want promoted servers to be at the top as recommendations for new players to join into. This way, we funnel the new players into places more welcoming into building the community of core servers. Honestly the main reasoning behind this? A house divided against itself cannot stand. We need one unified gameplay which people agree upon first, and then we'll deal with promoting mods later. If we release 1.0 with such bad segmentation of playerbase as it is now, the community is destined to have a population collapse very shortly after release.
  

There are literally thousands of ideas I have for the design of Xonotic, but it simply is not worth my time to write them all out and argue for them in a public forum of any sort, and i'm tired. I'm just tired. If I stay, I will work towards these goals and there will be no disputing them. Criticism on their specific design and suggestions are sure allowed, but I will not tolerate any "insistances" by other people except the core team anymore. BTW I define insistances as design demands or suggestions which will not accept refusal.

On another note, I assure you that Taoki is useless for us. I do not want him anywhere near the development process of Xonotic. I don't care if you don't know the back story or think i'm being irrational regarding him, I will not work with him in any way whatsoever. As far as i'm concerned, I would be happiest if Taoki were banned from the entirety of Xonotic. Of course, if I leave, he can stay... but well, I wish you luck with that disaster.

Anyway, as of the end of today, I am gone until at least October. Good luck running the project without me.

Criticism on their specific design and suggestions are sure allowed, but I will not tolerate any "insistances" by other people except the core team anymore.

This thread gonna be fun! ""

Serious replies or gtfo.

I've talked with Mario sometimes, maybe with other people too, about the project and its general direction. My complaints?, or concerns are mostly about the ideas each person has.

The project has been adding more and more and more stuff to do, without actually finishing anything. There are a lot of things that you can say "are done", but looking at them you can see that they could have been improved, but since the project has a HUGE list of things to do and add, almost anything gets any close to "perfect". People keep adding ideas, merging requests, making the project bigger, but bigger is not better.

Look at the number of gametypes, look at the number of weapons, look at the number of mods, there is a ton of things that people wants added and that you guys are trying to merge.

To tell you the truth, I hadn't seen any "real" direction for the game, and that can be seen when you enter to the servers, everyone has their own rules, their own models, their own mods.

And the servers with default rules, gametypes and maps? Empty.
It seems that the only times that people play with default rules are Duels.

All this has led me to stop trying to create maps or stuff for the project. I keep hearing "this will be added, this will be removed, now this new idea will be done too", since I don't really keep track of all that, I just can't risk to add items, weapons, vehicles and such that will be changed or removed. I just don't find any reason to try and do something that in next versions will be outdated or useless.

I'll play devils advocate and say give Samual more power. Stop listening to requests. Stop merging new gametypes and new mods and trying to make them work properly. Stick to what you have and perfect it. Delete whatever needs to be deleted, if people will cry then let them cry, it's not about quantity, but about quality, if you try and continue adding things all we will get is a finished-unfinished game. With everything done but nothing perfected.

I think it's time that you give us a REAL list of what will the final version have, remove and update, and STICK TO IT. You can't keep changing plans forever.

...

Well, actually I only planned on changing such stuff before 1.0... the stable release is the point at which we define the status quo until the next major release being 2.0 (which CAN have such vast changes again...). Generally I honestly don't want all that much as a requirement for 1.0, but I do certainly want quite a few things i've listed above.

As for inconsistent servers and such... See my last two proposals listed, those are certainly the solutions. Of course, if I leave, you could just change the default to Overkill or Minstagib some shit... that'll make a bunch of people happy if you don't mind simultaneously killing the entire competitive community of Xonotic. Just putting some of the other options out there

...

Well, actually I only planned on changing such stuff before 1.0... the stable release is the point at which we define the status quo until the next major release being 2.0

I meant that a year ago the list of things to do, compared to todays list, has changed a lot.
Take for example 0.8, the last stuff added to the list is from some hours ago.
A lot of todays problems exist because stuff that was not originally planed was added. Thats the main reason this fucking game is not at 1.0 yet, and will probably never be.

...

Well, actually I only planned on changing such stuff before 1.0... the stable release is the point at which we define the status quo until the next major release being 2.0

I meant that a year ago the list of things to do, compared to todays list, has changed a lot.
Take for example 0.8, the last stuff added to the list is from some hours ago.
A lot of todays problems exist because stuff that was not originally planed was added. Thats the main reason this fucking game is not at 1.0 yet, and will probably never be.

As a non-developer, I think you should stop making claims about the development of Xonotic when you don't know what you're talking about...

FYI, most of those goals above were still my goals from a year ago. I've always had a very similar design plan for Xonotic and I want to work towards it. My problem is with the original planning (which I didn't do), which is complete shit. It needs fixing, or we're stuck with it being shitty.

As a non-developer, I think you should stop making claims about the development of Xonotic when you don't know what you're talking about...

FYI, most of those goals above were still my goals from a year ago. I've always had a very similar design plan for Xonotic and I want to work towards it. My problem is with the original planning (which I didn't do), which is complete shit. It needs fixing, or we're stuck with it being shitty.

MY CLAIMS? I'm only pointing out the facts.

Fact: There was an original plan
Fact: That plan was modified.... a lot
Fact: Most of the problems (merging xonstat with the game for example) are related to the changes in the original plan.

Why were changes applied to the original plan? Because everyone had their own ideas. You just said it yourself "most of those goals above were still my goals from a year ago".

My point is that if there is no one to serve as "leader" of the project, those plans and ideas that each person has will still make the plan change.

I'm not saying the original planning was good, I'm not saying that today's planning is good, I'm not saying anything about quality of anyone. All I'm saying is that you need to GET TO AN AGREEMENT, all of you.

If a leader or "person with more power" is to be selected, then let him plan the thing. If no leader will be elected, then ALL OF YOU have to decide, right now, a fucking plan.

"I want to work towards it" is not enough. You should be able to say "WE are going to work towards it.".
Find a person to be the leader or make a not-to-be-modified plan.

If you can't make any of those 2 things, this will go nowhere.

This post makes a lot of sense. I clearly see that Samual want a unified direction for Xonotic, which ain't possible if different parts of it is designed in different way.

In fact, as long as the gameplay ain't affected the decision doesn't really affect the community, but affect the games quality (which in turn affect community in good way). So having you final decisions on visual design aspects is totally OK for me and probably many more. Then ofc, I got no idea how the community's artists and mappers feels about this though.

When it comes to gameplay though... Everyone who plays Xonotic want a vote in this since it will affect them. For example, if I have an idea which for improving something gameplay wise, then you maybe have tried that and say it fails, but it still hard for me to believe that since I haven't tried it. Having public servers or adding the option to enable an upcoming gameplay change as voteable would be really cool. Like the new movement was available as a voteable option on ucpriv(not sure if this was in git or if it was ucpriv specific).

This being said, I do support many of your decision and I also want to make you listen to my opionion as does everyone else. I do also understand that listening to everyones opinion is not possible. I also wanna say I got no problem with your attidude in IRC etc. (BUT, those stuff you said against MirceaKitsune was way too offensive IMO!)

Get someone to do the shit-filtering (development blog) for you and enjoy developing in peace.

If I stay, I will work towards these goals and there will be no disputing them. Criticism on their specific design and suggestions are sure allowed, but I will not tolerate any "insistances" by other people except the core team anymore.

YES, do it. And if you find a fitting shit-filter guy, you don't even have to explain/fight for your stuff every day.

I generally support a lot of the plans Samual has, however, I do believe that giving Samual supreme power over the core team is a bad idea. I can understand leading this project is tiring, given the different audiences you have to please or, rather, to defend against. But I wouldn't want design ideas to make it into the game that gets a veto by a core team member, simply because I really trust the core team to have sound and solid opinions and reasons for issuing a veto. My opinion might not be significant as I'm not part of the core team, but I do not recommend to give override power to a single member of the core team.

As for the ideas/plans Samual has, I think a lot of them would really benefit Xonotic. Though I personally don't care for new playermodels, design of pickups or the implementation of a lobby system - but I'd like to emphasize that this is something I personally don't care about, whereas I am absolutely certain other people do and it will help attract new players and keep them interested in the game. For example, very often when I do live tutorials or just help out new players in general I get asked if there's something like a buddy list or matchmaking system. So I would consider this a good thing for other players.

Where changes affect the gameplay, I trust Samual has a great expertise in finding well-balanced solutions, as all of the changes he implemented so far really have improved the gameplay in my eyes (ok, I'm still getting fucked up by the increase of the nex weapon switch delay, but I can see this has helped to balance the nex against other weapons). However, this does not justify giving Samual override rights over the other core team members who also have expertise that is not to be ignored. I'm especially sceptical about making the "blaster" a movement tool that works instantly as opposed to projectile based, which has been brought up before, discussed, opposed and it is STILL on the list - this makes me fear such changes could be something Samual will want to push through. (I picked this example just for giving my reasoning against granting supreme power to Samual some more substance, so let's not start discussing this blaster idea here, ok?)

On a side note I'd like to point out that if you publicly declare when and why you behave like an asshole towards almost any given person you should have the guts to deal with negative feedback. Quitting or threatening to quit unless you get supreme powers as a result of people not agreeing with your attitude is a bit contradictory in my opinion. If you reserve the right to insult anyone that disagrees with you, then you should be in turn ready to deal with insults - yet you're already struggling with politely worded criticism.

On the other hand I only (or at least mostly) see Samual promote and publicly defend the core team's design ideas. I think it would make things a lot easier if Samual wasn't alone defending the design ideas the core team has approved. IF the core team has approved a design idea, the core team members should participate in defending the idea if it is opposed by any section of the Xonotic community, no matter who initially had the idea. Unless there is a dedicated ressource for doing the dev-team to community communication, I would suggest to give Samual more support in this respect. This burden cannot, and should not be carried by Samual alone.

I think it's time to clarify how the development team works (probably should update this part on xonotic.org )! I believe there was never a news post when it got introduced ~half a year ago.

There is no one with something like "supreme power".
The development team consits two type of categories:

- Core team (6 people)
- Extended team (20 people)

Everyone got the power to call a vote (example: Include 'this' map) and it will run for 2 weeks (unless a majority is reached). The others are able to vote about it (yes/no/abstain) and discuss their opinions.
A core team member got the ability to veto a vote, which sort of stops it. A core team member is able to open it again, but then it's a "core team-only" vote.
Note: This is rarely the case, although there are heavily discussed topics and close votings.


I think we have to tackle the blog idea in the near future, because apparently the majority seems to think Samual got ALL the power, which is clearly NOT the case. Also this is never going to happen.
In fact a lot of people from the team 'attack' his ideas on regular basis, but that's 'invisible' to the causal people. That's why he is so stressed and reacts often like he does, because he got to deal with other crowds as well.
I personally do the same already if I have to explain things over and over again within a tournament. It's ANNOYING and STRESSFUL. (Note: Does not justify heavy insults and I would like to leave that topic out here)


There needs to be more news about latest development for the forums/IRC crowd.


About the roadmap, it has not changed that much actually if you read pre 0.7 again: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=3801

Huge text of wall with tons of negative feelings associated with it. Oh my.
I don't even know where or how to start replying on this, but I have to, since I'm generally known about standing with a sane opinion.

I think in this post I'll only tell my opinion on exactly one topic. I'll have to defend Taoki. Or rather, not even defending him on general. But the very essence that drowe Nexuiz and Xonotic in the past almost 10 years. It's the mutual acceptence of other's opinion, respect towards the efforts in pushing the game forward by any small means let that be only ideas or actual work done regardless of how much work is involved with it, and last, but not least, the most important thing, FRIENDSHIP.
What you're doing is simply stomping on these standards many of us accepted, and lived to. You being one of the most prominent members of the community, a core team member and hence the face of Xonotic and the people around us, this behaviour of yours in unacceptable. I can understand your frustration, this is something other developers, who had too much responsibility on their shoulders experienced too (I think everyone remembers when divVerent almost left).
However, this doesn't justify this immature behaviour that you represent now. With your sandbox metaphore, you're acting like a crybaby who threatens others to leave the playground if anybody else builds another tower to the sandcaste that you personally didn't aprove. However, we'd like to have our own fun too, and we're essentially building the same sandcastle from the first grain of sand, yet you claim the whole playground to be only yours.

It is true that not everybody can build whatever they want. It's true that if we'd implement everything that we do, we'll get a horrible abomination (similar what Nexuiz was in it's latest releases, ow even worse). However, this totalitary design aproach you want is unacceptable. You want too much power for yourself, you actually want to design every aspect of the game and in the end, tell everybody how to have fun. I know you worked a lot on the game. You and divVerent are the two people who actually pushed forward development in the present or in the past, you two made the most work on every aspect of the game, so it'd feel naturally to have higher weight on your opinions, ideas and decisions about the path of the game. Still this doesn't justify you to tell everybody on the playground (not just the sandcastle, but on generally every toy) how to have fun.

I like lots of your ideas. Realy. I think I'll replay to those in another thread, so it's not offtopic here. But there are things I very much oppose too. I know this is not a right to brag about it, but apart from Morphed, there's only one other guy who's in this community, who knows and loves the game and is an active community member since 1.0: it's me. And on that ground, I dislike some of the decisions you'd like to make on the game. Our game.

Now with stating you'll leave if Taoki remains I have another proposal too. You and other members of the core team aproached me several times to join the core team. I alway turned the offer down, because I felt that'd put too much responsibility on me. But I see now there's realy need to have the "voice of the minority" too in the core team to be heard, if the community entrusts me with this, I'll accept to join the core team, and from this point, I'll be the one who others can turn to with their concerns, and I'll be the one who announces things that'll most likely generate shitstorms.

You would have my support, C.Brutail.

I think there is a majority that actually agrees with most of the suggestions you make, Samual... the problem is your attitude. And I also fear that giving you "supreme power" will just alienate other contributors and team members, and I doubt you can make all those suggestions happen all by yourself.

That said, I think it would be a great loss for you to leave Xonotic development!

My suggestion would be actually to go the old tried and true solution of open-source projects: make your own branch/fork of the game and be a small dictator with it as much as you like (and no discussions what so ever). Then the full Xonotic team decides what to merge back into the main branch, which (given the fact that nearly all of your suggestions sound good to me) will be probably more or less everything.


tl,dr: make your own branch; have less drama; superior results will be merged back for sure.

I think there is a majority that actually agrees with most of the suggestions you make, Samual... the problem is your attitude. And I also fear that giving you "supreme power" will just alienate other contributors and team members, and I doubt you can make all those suggestions happen all by yourself.

That said, I think it would be a great loss for you to leave Xonotic development!

My suggestion would be actually to go the old tried and true solution of open-source projects: make your own branch/fork of the game and be a small dictator with it as much as you like (and no discussions what so ever). Then the full Xonotic team decides what to merge back into the main branch, which (given the fact that nearly all of your suggestions sound good to me) will be probably more or less everything.


tl,dr: make your own branch; have less drama; superior results will be merged back for sure.

THIS. Also, Xonotic being the open source project that it is, you are pretty much free to come and go as you please. It seems like you've just assumed a large portion of development, almost as if you were obligated to do so, and in doing so got a little crazy from it. Regardless of whether or not you permanently leave development on this, it sounds like you really need to take a break from it before it causes you to go completely insane. I say step back for a little bit, cool off, and if your ready come back to it if you feel like doing so.

To clarify some things:

• I do not want supreme power OVER the core team, I want decisive power of design over the extended team.
  
• I didn't say that "it's him or me" regarding Taoki, I simply said: If I stay, I will make sure he's gone from my sight in one way or another. (Even if I have to just /ignore him) He is useless from my perspective as he will not do anything we actually request, and he does not fix anything he produces.
  
• I don't want CuBeOwL on the core team in that situation, I feel you're quite poor at design honestly and would make bad decisions.
  
• I will not make a fork or separate branch. Forks are incredibly difficult to make (and pointless amount of redundant work would have to be done), and I would not tolerate someone mutilating my design from a branch like such... If I leave, my design will not be done anywhere (any time soon anyway) as I have no interest in doing this half assed anymore.
  

Basically, i'm tired of fighting for my design to be done. I also do not want to stick around if I can't produce the game that I want to produce here, I have no interest in coding merely for the sake of coding. I want to clarify that my decision making will be no different from before, i'll absolutely still involve community in design regarding gameplay or any other such aspects, but i'm tired of having to argue through those 3 groups aforementioned.

This is the deciding point for me because I have an opportunity to be spending my time on a better purpose if the project otherwise stays the same.

P.S.: I want to clarify regarding divVerent, who I much consider to be my equal in this situation... I don't want any power over him especially, he is reasonable and we're generally quite good at developing compromises/working together for various ideas. The only problem that arises between me and him is that I don't lay out my plans all the time for the whole team to see, which would become a null-issue if I take design lead as I won't have to argue my decisions all the time and ACTUALLY COULD lay out my basic designs on a fair basis.

The whole map making process has been mishandled from the beginning of xonotic.

I want proper map design, but it's not possible to define all the mapping rules and standards perfectly and objectively. It is relative to each map, and I want to have superior handling of map design and map gameplay.

standards are good and important. they need to be defined, not by only one person. It also needs to be transparent what is required for an official xonotic map.
For example asking you all the time is this or that good for xonotic would just piss you off.

We need to add more maps, but the Xonotic mappers don't work on the ones in the queue already and instead fight me about which SHOULD be in the queue.

Where is the queue? but the other question is why does he programmers work on the features they want and dont work on the features which need to be added?

regarding the maps i have the answer but like it.

Vorix for example is a map which is nearly ready to be added, but no one will fucking touch it... It would probably take 3 hours of work to finish.

Why dont you talk the author? maybe he doesnt want the map to be official, maybe no one else wants to complete the map

Instead, I get suggested maps by Cortez or other mappers, and these maps are honestly lost causes in my mind given the effort required. I defined it in my other post earlier... quote here: http://pastie.org/8334459

Maybe these people think that the suggested are worth to be included?
And you say they are not worth the effort, what about some of your planned features are they worth the effort? Different persons, different perspective.

To clarify some things:

• I do not want supreme power OVER the core team, I want decisive power of design over the extended team.
  

You had exactly this. The core team's power to trump the extended team is implemented in the xonvote rules (apparently there is one bug though, which zykure sure will handle).

• I didn't say that "it's him or me" regarding Taoki, I simply said: If I stay, I will make sure he's gone from my sight in one way or another. (Even if I have to just /ignore him) He is useless from my perspective as he will not do anything we actually request, and he does not fix anything he produces.
  

You have the right to /ignore anyone you want, but he IMHO doesn't deserve a ban.

• I will not make a fork or separate branch. Forks are incredibly difficult to make (and pointless amount of redundant work would have to be done), and I would not tolerate someone mutilating my design from a branch like such... If I leave, my design will not be done anywhere (any time soon anyway) as I have no interest in doing this half assed anymore.
  

"Would not tolerate someone mutilating"? You do know this is an open source project and ANYONE can mutilate Xonotic in whatever way they want, as long as it stays under GPL?

Basically, i'm tired of fighting for my design to be done. I also do not want to stick around if I can't produce the game that I want to produce here, I have no interest in coding merely for the sake of coding. I want to clarify that my decision making will be no different from before, i'll absolutely still involve community in design regarding gameplay or any other such aspects, but i'm tired of having to argue through those 3 groups aforementioned.

You haven't involved me. We will have to agree that anything controversial WILL have to be put through xonvote (and anyone in the extended team who finds something - planned or done by anyone, not just you - controversial will be encouraged to call for the vote - although the core team does have ultimate power over the outcome of the poll). The result of a core team vote will have to be accepted, whatever it may be.

P.S.: I want to clarify regarding divVerent, who I much consider to be my equal in this situation... I don't want any power over him especially, he is reasonable and we're generally quite good at developing compromises/working together for various ideas. The only problem that arises between me and him is that I don't lay out my plans all the time for the whole team to see, which would become a null-issue if I take design lead as I won't have to argue my decisions all the time and ACTUALLY COULD lay out my basic designs on a fair basis.

NOPE. As design lead, you STILL will have to involve the core team (AT LEAST) with decisions. And you haven't done before. We will NOT accept your decisions JUST because you are in the role of design lead - we actually HAVE to actually accept them because of what they are.

THAT will have to change, basically.

But we can improve the communication channel to the rest of the community. I suggest e.g. this:

We get SOME kind of blog (be it self-hosted, F***book, Twitter (if you don't want to type much), Google+, don't care). Any developer who does anything "big" will be encouraged to post there and describe it - however, not be obliged to listen to comments. We will nominate one or more "moderators" whose job it will be to watch over these comments, and distill the results. This can very well be CuBeOwL - one of his biggest strengths is his "thick skin".

That way you will be mostly shielded from the annoyances.

I've sat on this thread for long enough, so I suppose it is time for me to respond.

First of all, thanks for all of your contributions. I certainly appreciate your efforts and all that has been done. You certainly pushed forward a lot of great things in the few years that I have been involved with the project. Those who have been around more than a month know this as well.

I'm sorry to hear you are not satisfied with things as they are today, but in all honesty I think you've set yourself up for disappointment. With an open source project, you *have* to expect that there is going to be a lot of very vocal opinions with everything you do. That's just the nature of things. The answer isn't to be abrasive or to have absolute authority. The former just rubs people the wrong way and the latter just isn't going to happen. I'll address each in turn.

First, the abrasiveness. This truly has to be toned down. There are myriad ways to address people with dissenting opinions (or shall I say "a lack of true understanding") without resorting to name calling/insults. It isn't professional and it angers or alienates people, and this just stinks. I know you've felt that you had to explain yourself multiple times. Maybe that points to a lack of transparency in your decisions? I'm not entirely sure about that one.

Second, the authority "thing". What's wrong with xonvote? I think it is a great method for conflict resolution. You having the final say over major aspects of the game is a step in the opposite direction. To be frank, you thinking that you need that level of authority shows me how much you value the opinions of the other members of the team.

IMO xonvote needs to be used more. What's more is that I think it should be broadcasted - perhaps via an RSS feed in our site sidebar or some sort of forum integration. Such transparency of both the votes being called and the teams' opinions should help direct some of the scrutiny away from *the person* and more towards *the thing* under the vote voted. Maybe that's a good start to addressing some of your grievances.

Actually the Samual's plan sounds good. Except you have no artists atm. So discussing about artwork is kinda hard.

@Antibody

I think his problem with xonvote is that some things he plans might get downvoted, then making the design of the game inconsistent. I think Samual is one of the people who try to keep looking at the big picture of Xonotic and improve it from that perspective.

@Antibody

I think his problem with xonvote is that some things he plans might get downvoted, then making the design of the game inconsistent. I think Samual is one of the people who try to keep looking at the big picture of Xonotic and improve it from that perspective.

If what you describe occurs, core team members can still veto the poll and optionally re-take it with core team votes only. That means the important design decisions are essentially under control of the handful of people in the core team. If the core team can't agree on the design directions, we have a big problem and it's not called xonvote.

Exactly. That should be sufficient.

And don't worry - we core team members only use veto power if something is really unacceptable to us, from our point of view.

If an idea is veto'd but this is because of insufficient information, then it can be called again (with more information), of course.

The problem that happens is that I then have to explain and argue in detail the reasons for such decisions, and that is especially difficult with various people on the team. divVerent, Antibody, Mirio (most of the time) etc etc I can work with as even if they disagree with my design we're able to find compromises and such... It's difficult to make compromises regarding mapping without actually compromising the design of the map though on some occasions... I ran into that with Mirio while JH0nny was working on Toxic regarding the pit in the main area of the map.

Regardless, If I were to stay under such rules, I would not want to deal with merlijn on the core team anymore. Additionally, the inactive members should be pruned ANYWAY... detrate (although I know he means well) simply does not have time for it right now, and neither does Morphed considering his job situation and recent move to another country and such. They don't need such responsibility in the first place.

BTW I had an idea for xonvote regarding decisions along these lines... We could expand it to allow "decisions" to be placed forward by core team members-- if a core team member disagrees with it, then they can easily !challenge it and it becomes reopened to a core-team-only vote. Basically for example it would allow you to put ideas forward in writing and if they're not contested we have that tracked in the voting system, and if they ARE contested then they can be voted upon. This would be equivalent to calling a vote and then vetoing it yourself, and imo would be quite useful.

As for "having no artists"-- this isn't true at all. I literally JUST posted about Sev and Soelen working on item design, and I built the playermodel design ideas with Morphed together. Plus, Hutch has been working on the sidelines on weaponmodels. Stop making claims about things you don't know about.