Well, just as the title says, what does the future hold? From what I'm seeing, even most of the developers have moved on from the mod, or are just too busy to get around to working on it right now. It's understandable, it happens to everyone, but why hasn't someone else stepped in to try and keep the ball rolling? Surely even minor updates right now would be better than nothing. I get that the security and privacy of the code is a big deal based mainly on trusting someone, but with the way things are going, that isn't going to matter much longer if the mod dies.
In all honesty, I'm to the point where I'm asking, as a fan, user, and community member, what can I do to help the development of this mod? Don't tell me "just keep playing it", or "nothing", because I've heard that so many times now and it only seems like things are getting worse. I'm not asking for your trust, or to see the code here...I just want to do whatever I can to assist in the continuation of this project...and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. If a developer could respond, why not let us know what you are looking for, besides programmers, and maybe the community can help you find exactly what you need. Afterall, this mod was made for people to have fun, right? Well we can't have fun if it's dead...but we can have fun if we work together to save it and help it prosper!
As for my personal part of this topic, I'm curious, who does the webmastering? There's a lot of conflicts across the site and forums I noticed. For starters, you have absolutely no link leading to the forum from the website, or vice versa. Secondly, the forum's mail system is broken. Thankfully I figured out which password I used, because it failed to mail me a new one twice. Third, (and I just noticed this one), the FAQ that's pinned in the Documentation section of the forums is not only highly outdated, but it states you can get older versions of VC:MP on the website directly, which is absolutely not true one bit. If you guys are lacking in assistance with webmastering, I can offer up my assistance if you want, considering I have quite a bit of webmastering and administrating experience, but I'm by no means trying to ask for the position. I just want to offer help wherever I'm obviously capable in order to keep this great mod alive.
Speaking of website stuff, how come you guys haven't considered a wiki? Considering the massive amounts of information you have obtained over the years, it might be easier to just make pages based on that information that is linked to specific versions so that when a new release is made or there is an update, you simply update that specific page's information and call it good. It even adds a better search functionality for users, and is easier to reference because it's all in one place, rather than across multiple stickied topics in various forum sections. Again, just a suggestion, but as I said before, I'm willing to help in any way that I can, even if that just means giving advice or technical assistance to you guys.
Anyway, I'd love to hear from the developers and other forum users. What do you guys think? What are your skills? Is there anything else I didn't cover that you think we could easily obtain or do as a community to help the developers?
Edit: Adding to the list, SMF is horribly out of date and actually presents itself with some very large security flaws because of it's lack of updating, and the forum itself also seems to have a spam-bot issue, both of which are easy fixes and I'm not too sure why they haven't been done yet...
In all honesty, I'm to the point where I'm asking, as a fan, user, and community member, what can I do to help the development of this mod? Don't tell me "just keep playing it", or "nothing", because I've heard that so many times now and it only seems like things are getting worse. I'm not asking for your trust, or to see the code here...I just want to do whatever I can to assist in the continuation of this project...and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. If a developer could respond, why not let us know what you are looking for, besides programmers, and maybe the community can help you find exactly what you need. Afterall, this mod was made for people to have fun, right? Well we can't have fun if it's dead...but we can have fun if we work together to save it and help it prosper!
As for my personal part of this topic, I'm curious, who does the webmastering? There's a lot of conflicts across the site and forums I noticed. For starters, you have absolutely no link leading to the forum from the website, or vice versa. Secondly, the forum's mail system is broken. Thankfully I figured out which password I used, because it failed to mail me a new one twice. Third, (and I just noticed this one), the FAQ that's pinned in the Documentation section of the forums is not only highly outdated, but it states you can get older versions of VC:MP on the website directly, which is absolutely not true one bit. If you guys are lacking in assistance with webmastering, I can offer up my assistance if you want, considering I have quite a bit of webmastering and administrating experience, but I'm by no means trying to ask for the position. I just want to offer help wherever I'm obviously capable in order to keep this great mod alive.
Speaking of website stuff, how come you guys haven't considered a wiki? Considering the massive amounts of information you have obtained over the years, it might be easier to just make pages based on that information that is linked to specific versions so that when a new release is made or there is an update, you simply update that specific page's information and call it good. It even adds a better search functionality for users, and is easier to reference because it's all in one place, rather than across multiple stickied topics in various forum sections. Again, just a suggestion, but as I said before, I'm willing to help in any way that I can, even if that just means giving advice or technical assistance to you guys.
Anyway, I'd love to hear from the developers and other forum users. What do you guys think? What are your skills? Is there anything else I didn't cover that you think we could easily obtain or do as a community to help the developers?
Edit: Adding to the list, SMF is horribly out of date and actually presents itself with some very large security flaws because of it's lack of updating, and the forum itself also seems to have a spam-bot issue, both of which are easy fixes and I'm not too sure why they haven't been done yet...