A word or two about a development team change…
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For anyone who has been around following BMS for a while you will know that it is the dev team’s general policy not to talk about or show work in progress in public before its effectively ready to share with the whole community in the form of a finished release.
It has come to the team’s attention that one long-time developer has recently chosen to post in public view links to video clips of work in progress and other development data/collateral. That same person has claimed to be the source of earlier and previously unexplained sharing of pre-release materials.
As you might imagine, this is a matter of some distress for many people in the development team. In spite of considerable effort, it seems that there is no way to reconcile these actions and continued participation in the team for that person. We have therefore decided, as a group, to exclude that person from any future development work. We take no pleasure in doing this and it’s disappointing that things have come to this point but the team feels like we really don’t have any other choice.
To reiterate the rationale behind policy, you first have to remember that the BMS team is a volunteer group working on Falcon4 for the love of the game.
Commercial organizations developing retail products routinely develop to set timelines and with specific feature sets driven by a formal plan for future versions of their work. By contrast, the BMS team relies on those volunteers in a relatively unstructured environment – team members work on features and collateral that they choose to rather than being assigned to tasks from a central plan. Team members give of their time as and when they can. Working around calls on their time from real life events often makes progress slower or less predictable than in commercial software development environments. What’s more, the final call on whether to include any piece of work is solely in the hands of the person doing the work. If that sounds haphazard you are right: it is! However, that process is we believe one of the key reasons that the BMS team is still working productively on Falcon4 – everyone is still doing it for the love of it and time and money constraints have not in the meanwhile turned it into “work” rather than fun.
We recognize that this is a community filled with great passion and enthusiasm – pretty amazing for a game that is now 20 years old still to be compelling to so many players! We also recognize that sometimes, just occasionally, that passion can lead to a lot of heat, and…ahem…dare I say even flames.
The development team wants each new release to be a positive experience for us and the community. And it is mainly for this reason, combined with the context of the unstructured development that you don’t see previews of release content or much if any discussion from the team about what is coming next. We do this not to keep secrets for their own sake or for our amusement – it is simply a question of managing expectations about content and release timing to avoid wasting your time and ours in discussions of things that are sometimes beyond any of our ability to control.
Which brings me back to the potential that you might see video clips or other material that purportedly shows features of Falcon BMS 4.34 (or releases beyond even that) as a result of the actions mentioned above.
I want to remind everyone that because of the way the BMS team works, anything of that sort which you may find lying around the internet somewhere should be looked at with some skepticism. I’ve seen some of the clips and I can tell you that in many cases you would be looking at work that is either very much unfinished or things that may not ever find their way into a release. It’s pretty common for the team to share views of work in progress internally to gather feedback and it’s also quite common that a developer substantially changes that work based on feedback or concludes that the idea isn’t ready for prime time and work move on to some other idea instead. Equally, sometimes real life happens and the person isn’t able to finish the feature and then we don’t get to include it.
And that is really the reason for this post being here at all.
Probably many of you won’t be concerned one way or another about how any person on the development team may have acted. There’s probably no reason that you should be concerned. The team is obviously much bigger than any one person and over the course of the 15+ years BMS has worked on the game, many dev team members have come and gone; this is just one more. In the grand scheme of things turnover on the team is routine. However, we do want to point out that any materials you may see associated with this particular person parting ways with the team really wouldn’t give a fair picture of what to expect for 4.34 content.
The real take-away here is that the BMS team is still hard at work and care enough about making a bright future for Falcon4 to comment on this sort of thing. That you might see what looks like work-in-progress, means there IS progress, even if what you see either doesn’t show up in the end result or isn’t in the form that WIP might depict. Falcon 4.34 is taking shape and yes, we have ideas for releases beyond that too [hey, that’s as close as it gets to a time frame so don’t ask for more!]. The dev team would just like to ask in the meantime that we all keep passions in check, that you don’t draw too many conclusions, and raise neither howls of protest nor songs of praise about what might or might not be depicted in supposed work in progress for future releases. Good things are coming
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Well said. Thanks for keeping us all in the loop. Best of luck to the BMS team. Can’t wait to see what you have in store.
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This should probably have been a no reply closed topic. As it is not I gotta say I hope the ex member in question whilst now excluded will get recognition for the work/time they have contributed to date. No specifics just recognition if appropriate.
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I believe the BMS devs have everyone’s best interests at heart and anyone who included something will have their recognition.
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Thanks Mark!
Sad to hear about the departure. And as Mark has so well pointed out, any pre release of WIP’s may or may not make it into any release. That is due to Falcon code and when anything gets modded within it. It may look great but it may mess up everything else which could make any features unusable. I have not seen any of these “leaked” vids yet, but if and when I do, I will definitely keep that in mind. All of the BMS team should be aware of the policies regarding WIP’s. I personally like the approach of “it’s done when it’s done” release because I then find myself exploring the sim and finding out the new features as I go. It’s a nice surprise when I go flying. Keep up the great work guys! You know that we are all with you!
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Yet, happy I can post a word or two about that. Being one of the “lucky spectators” of the leak, even though I can’t but speak for myself, I can tell you one word - but before, I’ll say the other one: what happens internally, and what rules BMS goes by concerning rules of publication, is not my (our) business, nor how you deal with it.
And I see the existence of this thread as a form of recognition. Could have been a silent removal. I somehow appreciate that, for what it’s worth.
This word is, beside the respect of internal rules, as a user and modest modder, leaking about 4.34, or .35, is no difference to me. Doesn’t make the slightest difference about anything. I’m not saying that to defend this ex-dev; my point is to say that, in my humble opinion, there is no consequence for the community itself, as I feel it for myself. 4.34 aim to be better than .33. How it looks, what will be better and all that jazz, honestly, I know I won’t know what’s in it until it’s there, and even when it is, there’s still a risk that testing by massive population can end up on, why not, feature removal, so… All that leak did is reminding me of the tremendous job, love for detail, work in the dark and personal investment BMS represents. More than a leak about 4.34, it was a tribute to the devs. That’s how I saw it. And damn, it didn’t but increase the respect and love I have for the team.
May a man be thanked for his (huge?) input. Valar Morghulis.
And take care
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Hopefully he’ll also leak the source , too :roll:
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Let him leak it doesnt hurt anything bms team needs more transparency. Open Beta testing should also be allowed. Your not a commericial team exactly why you should not be so closed in development.
Do a blog for gods sake keep us all in the loop and ask for beta testers.
FALCON ONLINE IS DEAD BRING IT BACK!
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Let him leak it doesnt hurt anything bms team needs more transparency.
Since when decides which is good for a team an outsider? I think BMS Team knows which is best for the team…
Open Beta testing should also be allowed. Your not a commericial team exactly why you should not be so closed in development.
Same as above…
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Your not a commericial team exactly why you should not be so closed in development.
commercial teams are opened in development since SELLING their Beta test versions seems to be a fashion those days.
as you said, we are not a commercial team, and we are not influenced by fashion
we CARE about our community so that you can enjoy a stable, unified and most complete version
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im glad the man in question at microprose chose to ignore discipline on leaking… BMS wont exist if it wasnt for him.
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im glad the man in question at microprose chose to ignore discipline on leaking… BMS wont exist if it wasnt for him.
Good point, but you forget that he leaked it after MICROPROSE was dead - BMS is alive! I also believe it’s not good for the community if the BMS source code would be available. Again, there would be different versions, as one group of Diva Devs thinks it can do better than the other. Unfortunately that would split our community again.
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im glad the man in question at microprose chose to ignore discipline on leaking… BMS wont exist if it wasnt for him.
Wrong if you wish to say these are similar things. BMS Team is alive. In 2001 F4.0 was far from a good and finished state when the whole team and support was cancelled for a payware game. Is a big difference between leak about an ongoing development or leak the code of a “left for dead” product.
Without the F4.0 leak F4.0 likely would be known as one of the biggest fail in development while today F4.0 BMS is one of the oldest or the oldest still in development project FOR FREE.
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im glad the man in question at microprose chose to ignore discipline on leaking… BMS wont exist if it wasnt for him.
True, and I believe even Kevin Klemick (the guy that gave us the dynamic campaign) said years later that he was glad it happened. However, that doesn’t mean all leaks are good or right.
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Wrong if you wish to say these are similar things. BMS Team is alive. In 2001 F4.0 was far from a good and finished state when the whole team and support was cancelled. Is a big difference between leak about an ongoing development or leak the code of a “left for dead” product.
Without the F4.0 leak F4.0 likely would be known as one of the biggest fail in development while today F4.0 BMS is one of the oldest or the oldest still in development project FOR FREE.
Perhaps. I was only 13 when it released, but I still have super fond memories of the original. The manual alone was an epic task to finish, and whilst the game was buggy and a prone to CTDs, it was very much ahead of its time.
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@Nick:
I also believe it’s not good for the community if the BMS source code would be available. Again, there would be different versions, as one group of Diva Devs thinks it can do better than the other. Unfortunately that would split our community again.
Yes but nothing like that happened in the present case though.
I was sad to see how pissed off the guy was when he learned about the dev decision to exclude him, not angry at the devs but at its own naive to think that secret would be kept into the circle he was leaking in, and it was as if he lost something really worthwhile in his life. It looked to me like he just wanted to give some thrills to a bunch of fanboys, not really looking at the consequences of someone leaking back out of this fanboy base. Based on that I founded the decision a bit harsh but that’s just a feeling from someone really new here, so I’m really glad to hear devs point of view, it helps me accept it.Anyway I’ve been flying dcs for just a few months, and now BMS for just a few weeks, and wow, seems like I founded the real thing, so, much respect to all those that make it possible for us all to enjoy
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I do agree with the team to keep everything unified and not leaking is a good thing as far as source code.
Im talking about updates like a blog update or some roadmap would keep the buzz going. It does matter.
And for gods sake somebody get in contact with Archer and fix whatever it is that is killing Falcon Online.
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I won’t judge on whether the leak was good or bad, since there are arguments for both. I may also be biased, as I too was one of those “lucky spectators”, as Lorik called it.
Just to make my position clear from the start:
I would welcome it heartily if the BMS dev team decided to be more open about what they’re working on, instead of working endlessly behind the scenes until they deem it ready for release. Not only would it show people that progress is being made, it also helps virtual squadrons and modders prepare for what is to come.
E.g. it took our squadron 6 - 7 months to fully transition from 4.32 to 4.33, as some of our older pilots had a lot of problems (and were extremely close to giving up) because they couldn’t wrap their head around some of the new features. From what I’ve seen of what’s supposedly coming in 4.34, I know for a fact that those pilots will struggle again, and we might have lost them had we not known ahead of time. But because we now do, we can already dig up the necessary information, prepare our academics and get those pilots prepped as best we can in 4.33, which will hopefully make our transition to 4.34 a lot smoother.Obviously, when you’ve shown something that doesn’t make the release (yet), there will always be people that are disappointed, maybe even salty, because they were really looking forward to what was in the pipeline, but if you give an explanation or allow us the space to discuss why the item was abandoned or not (yet) implemented, I’m certain the majority of this community would not hold anything against the team. (most of that majority probably even without the need for an explanation or discussion)
Let him leak it doesnt hurt anything bms team needs more transparency.
Since when decides which is good for a team an outsider? I think BMS Team knows which is best for the team…
The now ex-dev wasn’t an outsider, and he decided to show parts of what’s being worked on, so there was at least one in the team that is of the opinion that more transparency wouldn’t hurt anyone. I never got the impression that he was doing it as some sort of rebellion against the dev team, or increasing the size of his e-peen. What started this entire situation was someone asking a question related to his expertise, to which he replied how he had changed things, so as to make sure that the person asking wouldn’t spend (and lose) a massive amount of time and effort on something that would be obsolete the moment 4.34 released.
That outed him as a dev, and after that, in my opinion, his pride in his work, and his mindset that the development shouldn’t necessarily happen behind closed doors (which he was open about from the start), was in a way “taken advantage of” by some, and what started as a source leaking droplets, was eventually manipulated into a torrent…. From my point of view, I honestly don’t know if I can blame them, however. Perhaps it’s too easy or cheap to say that this might not have happened if the dev team had been (a bit) less secretive from the get-go, though in my opinion, it did play a part in why so much attention and interest was paid to it in the first place.Actually, as some bits of information about what’s (not) being worked on for 4.34 or 4.35 have already been publicly shared on this forum, I dare say there are more within the team that lean towards the opinion of sharing stuff while they are still WIP. From my point of view as an outsider, that does come across as a bit of a double standard in who is allowed to share something and who isn’t.
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Regardless of this being a right or wrong scenario a person went against the rest of the group. They knew what was agreed upon when they were let into the community and decided against it anyway. It would be awesome if there was more transparency between the devs and the community but they have chosen to work the way they do and I respect that. I pay nothing for this and get a ton of enjoyment out of it so if that’s the way they want to work the more power to them.
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The now ex-dev wasn’t an outsider, and he decided to show parts of what’s being worked on, so there was at least one in the team that is of the opinion that more transparency wouldn’t hurt anyone. I never got the impression that he was doing it as some sort of rebellion against the dev team, or increasing the size of his e-peen. What started this entire situation was someone asking a question related to his expertise, to which he replied how he had changed things, so as to make sure that the person asking wouldn’t spend (and lose) a massive amount of time and effort on something that would be obsolete the moment 4.34 released.
That outed him as a dev, and after that, in my opinion, his pride in his work, and his mindset that the development shouldn’t necessarily happen behind closed doors (which he was open about from the start), was in a way “taken advantage of” by some, and what started as a source leaking droplets, was eventually manipulated into a torrent…. From my point of view, I honestly don’t know if I can blame them, however. Perhaps it’s too easy or cheap to say that this might not have happened if the dev team had been (a bit) less secretive from the get-go, though in my opinion, it did play a part in why so much attention and interest was paid to it in the first place.Actually, as some bits of information about what’s (not) being worked on for 4.34 or 4.35 have already been publicly shared on this forum, I dare say there are more within the team that lean towards the opinion of sharing stuff while they are still WIP. From my point of view as an outsider, that does come across as a bit of a double standard in who is allowed to share something and who isn’t.
I answered to shisabandit’s post and AFAIK he is not member of the BMS Team. My point was BMS Team knows what is good for the Team.