Buy A new Server For Cantr 2

[buddyhall]

No more lag!

[Jos Elkink]

I don't believe it's the solution.

[jexter]

Jos and what about using that money you have (well from the donations... or there aren't any?) for hiring a programmer? If you lack money we could arrange some propaganda to donate for a very good deed

[joo]

Why hire a programmer, when there are existing ProgD members. If they aren't doing their job, dismiss them!

[Piscator]

Errm, even a mostly inactive staff is better than no staff at all, don't you think?

[Chris]

Why hire a programmer, when there are existing ProgD members. If they aren't doing their job, dismiss them!

Someone said recently that ProgD members need to be trained, and Marol doesn't have the time to train them. I don't know whether a professional programmer would require as much supervision time as current ProgD volunteers. Is there a Cantr programming Wiki or tutorial?

[Jos Elkink]

Why hire a programmer, when there are existing ProgD members. If they aren't doing their job, dismiss them!

Haha - yeah, that will really solve the problem ... I mean, for clarity purposes, we do sometimes remove inactive staff from our list, but in terms of Cantr being in trouble, this is not really a solution ...

And about training: even professional programmers need training into Cantr structure etc., but of course much less. Writing a wiki or something to assist the programming would certainly help, but is also a lot of work, which we rather devote to actual training ...

[Dogonabun]

I think some ad banners should be added to the top of the game. I know it's a bit brutal, and might be against what Cantr's about, but anyone with firefox can just disable them. I think it would help quite a bit to be able to hire a decent programmer.

[Voltenion]

as long as they are green ^^

[Solfius]

Writing a wiki or something to assist the programming would certainly help, but is also a lot of work, which we rather devote to actual training ...

phpDocumentor can be used to turn comments in code into technical documentation. You could start using this immediately to produce some documentation, and although it requires the comments to be structured in a certain way, any new or updated code could use the system so at least part of the system is documented.

After all, you put comments in code, so why not make sue of them?

I mean, you do comment your code, right?

If the code isn't commented, well, after all the volunteers that have come and gone I imagine the Cantr code is pretty bloated, but if no one even commented their contributions.... the state of things would be far worse than I'd ever thought... because failing to apply that simple good coding practice suggests other even more important practices wouldn't be adopted...

All that aside, on topic, throwing more processing power at the problem is an expensive fix that in all likeliness not address the real issue.

Consider an unnecessarily heavy car, that has very little power as a result.

To make the car go faster, do you just put a bigger engine in? Well, perhaps you solve the problem, but what you end up with is a massively inefficient and expensive car (just think of the petrol).

The wise solution, is to make the car lighter, and thus more efficient, using the same engine to achieve greater performance.

If you're still with me, hopefully you'll see why a new server isn't the solution.

I'd be interested in having a go at the problem, but it conflicts with a future project I have planned, and at this stage, I don't have the depth of knowledge to attempt what is undoubtedly a very, large complex task

[Jos Elkink]

There is some, but limited comments in the code. I like the concept of "self-documenting code" ... But even that is not consistently applied. The Cantr code is most certainly not an example of good coding practice. Don't forget that it is a project developed over many years, which has grown well beyond what its basic design was intended to handle and during which time my coding abilities and practices have improved a lot ... If I were to start Cantr from scratch, it would look all a lot better.

That said, I still hate too much comments in code ...

I certainly agree that it is about improving the code, not about replacing the server, at this stage. Furthermore, financial resources for Cantr are going down, not up - this is a direct effect of the number of players being half what it was a while ago. I haven't updated our administration recently, but I suspect that the current inflow of finances can barely pay for the server we already have, so let alone investing in a new one or paying programmers to do our job. The latter would be really cool, but is simply not really an option.

[Pie]

Why hire a programmer, when there are existing ProgD members. If they aren't doing their job, dismiss them!

Someone said recently that ProgD members need to be trained, and Marol doesn't have the time to train them. I don't know whether a professional programmer would require as much supervision time as current ProgD volunteers. Is there a Cantr programming Wiki or tutorial?

ehem... I have time on my hands, so I could teacheth people.

just have to re-learn it myself...

[Joshuamonkey]

I want to be teachethified!

[Armulus Satchula]

... If I were to start Cantr from scratch, it would look all a lot better.

There is always room for another roman numeral.

[Joshuamonkey]

There is always room for another roman numeral.

I disconcur!