plush plaza
I've brought this up a few times over the last few years and been told each time that it will be sorted out, but please include any game changes that affect gameplay into the in-game changelog.
Finding things out for the first time mid-game when something no longer works/behaves as expected is super annoying. Just add then to changelog please!
(Recent examples that come to mind : Can't walk thru cortex T1 bot lab; Bigger T2 lab sizes not fitting in purpose made space anymore)
solar prairie
This right here. It was very annoying having to reclaim a bunch of stuff so I can fit the lab in because it's suddenly different, or because my com is now stuck. It's bad practise to not put game changing changes... in the changelog.
arctic fable
I'm not 100% certain but I think the devs have gotten better at updating the changelog when they make changes to the game, but the examples you mentioned I think are related to engine changes, which is a separate codebase, and aren't necessarily people involved in BAR dev specifically. Ofc those things should still be mentioned in the game changelog, but just giving you the probable explanation as to why these ones got missed.
I guess we need a better process around the changelog so engine updates that affect gameplay also get included in it going forward, but not sure how that would work because of the detachment. In a typical game setup the engine and game would be compiled together as one package/binary, which would make this kind of thing easier, but that's not the way Recoil games work so need to come up with some other idea
I don't think there's even any metadata in the game files which point to the specific engine version to use, which seems a bit dangerous to me. I guess it's just a rapid distribution thing which dictates compatible game and engine versions, or maybe it doesn't even do that much and it's a lobby or autohost thing? @meager bear
one dumb solution I can think of is Recoil including its own changelog.txt (needs writing first) which it could make available to the game, and then you have separate tabs for game changes and engine changes when ingame, but yeah not great
mint gate
wait, you can't walk through cortex t1 bot labs anymore? 
meager bear
I don't think there's even any metadata in the game files which point to the spe...
There doesn't exist a thing that specifies which engine versions are supported by engine.
I've never run into anything in modinfo or something that specifies that, maybe it exists, but I've not run into it and we don't use it in bar
AFAIU all current games running on Recoil decide themselves when to update to the new engine version and it's part of their server setup.
Engine has changelog and publishes it
Also, players shouldn't care from where change comes, there should be just a single changelog that aggregates everything in single place
arctic fable
AFAIU all current games running on Recoil decide themselves when to update to th...
yeah, figured. but it does seem like a bad idea for that link to be made outside of the game repo itself right? or at least, I feel like the game should state the earliest version it's compatible with? External stuff like servers would still dictate which exact engine version to launch games with, but I feel like not having any pointer inside the game files themselves seems a bit odd
meager bear
Meh
Works like this forever
Game decides when to update engine, game needs to test current version of game is compatible
We don't allow to play some old versions of game, only reasonable new ones
Replays are not a problem because they contain engine and game version
arctic fable
yeah it works, but I hate it 
meager bear
If there is some game functionality that's engine version dependent, I believe there are some kind of new types of apis that allow to check engine version from inside the game
TBH, it's not clear to me what is wrong about it
Because we don't need to provide some compatibility across versions or anything like that
(but anyway, that's off topic for this particular thread)
arctic fable
it's just the reliance on an ambiguous external service to know which version of the engine is supported by a given game version. e.g. if an engine changes some lua api which breaks game compatibility then the game repo alone is kinda useless
idk, I mean w/e, as you say it works - just feels dirty to me
ez derail
the engine changes are just in the gh release notes?
meager bear
the engine changes are just in the gh release notes?
Engine changelog is in https://beyond-all-reason.github.io/spring/changelogs/running-changelog, maintained by @lean yew:#🚂｜engine message
meager bear
mods killed my thread with off topic stuff i dont understand gg
Sorry xd, but I can add dev who is very passionate about changelogs! @mortal kayak 
meager bear
So overall, from my perspective (as non main game repo dev), plenty people want changelogs, devs want changelogs, but the overall pool of developers contributing to the main game repo just fails to make it happen, it basically looks like
the most likely recent "idea" is that where will be something like releases, and not just every single change gets pushed instantly to players, and then have those releases have changelog compiled
I estimate you can wait for it between 2 weeks and 2 years
disclaimer: purely my personal opinion, not overall BAR developers yada yada yada
river venture
I've brought this up a few times over the last few years and been told each time...
the lab size changes were put into an announcement
#announcements message
not sure about the changelog ingame being updated for them.
the exit only yardmap change was never announced to my awareness
river venture
I'm not 100% certain but I think the devs have gotten better at updating the cha...
the examples are all game side
pine dagger
the lab size changes were put into an announcement
https://discord.com/channels...
Forgot to ping @Notification Squad in that announcement which could explain why some people didn't know about it.
river venture
i did do that mistake
plush plaza
the lab size changes were put into an announcement
https://discord.com/channels...
That's not a good thing tho, if someone doesn't play for a month and wants to come back and see what changes have been made, there needs to be a single point of truth where they can go and see everything. It shouldn't be a case of having to go to multiple sources to try capture all changes.
mortal kayak
Well, as Marek said... We all agree that we suck at changelogging, but we also fail to kinda collectively agree on how we should proceed on that for some reason
arctic fable
the examples are all game side
oh ok, fair enough, my bad then. I just assumed the pass through lab thing was engine side 'cause I saw TK talking about it and it seemed enginey
PRs could have a checkbox like "Does this affect gameplay?" and if checked then it expects changelog.txt to be modified
mortal kayak
Time to only allow merging a PR if it makes a note of the changes in the changelog file
arctic fable
first thing's first, name and shame the person who made changes that affected gameplay and didn't update changelog.txt, and create an appropriate blame emoji for them
plush plaza
Well, as Marek said... We all agree that we suck at changelogging, but we also f...
idk how things work but i assume there is a process to making changes to BAR. Is it not as simple as adding something to this process before a change gets pushed such as "Does this change affect gameplay? If yes, an entry in changelog needs to be made before going live"
mortal kayak
idk how things work but i assume there is a process to making changes to BAR. Is...
Well yea but you know, ALL PEOPLE with merge rights need to agree just so nothing slips through and the whole thing falls apart
It's hard
Also
I don't think only gameplay affecting things should be listed
I think everything should be
Maaaaybe not every single tiny hotfix but anything noticeable
People shouldn't have to read through github commits to know what's going on
Or if the bug that was annoying them for a week finally got fixed
I've tried to changelog my stuff for a while but i was literally the only one so I gave up.
arctic fable
ideally changes would be categorised/tagged like gameplay, UI, refactor, and then a nice way to filter them ingame - but no idea how we'd setup a system like that
mortal kayak
EXACTLY
meager bear
I've proposed field in PR description for changelog with CI check to verify there is something there.
But I've not got either positive nor negative feedback.
mortal kayak
You know how things go in BAR
you first push something and then ask for feedback
lol
Nobody cares until they face it.
plush plaza
It feels the main thing needed to getting an accurate changelog is a massive culture change than isn't looking likely anytime soon
hollow thicket
We need a log manager who keeps track of all the changes and enters them somewhere else. It's the same thing with AI updates, you don't know what has changed.
grizzled pumice
There's effort to bundle balance changes into bigger patches this year. This should make changelogs a bit easier so stuff doesn't slip in unannounced.
Though that's only balance. Lots of other things can still slip in.
rugged bone
wait, you can't walk through cortex t1 bot labs anymore? <:PandaWorried:11436206...
The yardmaps were updated from construction to exitonly; if a unit is in an exitonly zone, it can traverse other exitonly zones, but not enter one from a none exitonly zone.
mint gate
I've always taken exit only yardmaps to be a good thing, but now I'm not sure
rugged bone
I think they are overall a net positive, since it prevents two very annoying bugs/situations
meager bear
We need a log manager who keeps track of all the changes and enters them somewhe...
Are you volunteering to do it? Are you able to find somebody that wants to just continuously do it over time for free? Because you know, you can say we need such a person, but that won't make it happen.
A good way is people that develop the change, take full ownership of that change: design, implementation, testing, communication (changelog), any post deployment feedback reports etc
river venture
first thing's first, name and shame the person who made changes that affected ga...
Where is mine
mortal kayak
tribal zodiac
randy the goat
plush plaza
@lyric sierra
lyric sierra
@south storm @tranquil zephyr
tranquil zephyr
PRs welcome
plush plaza
I see it is in the changelog now, much appreciated! 😁
plush plaza
Exploiter self-d timer has been changed and not in the log. Very frustratingly just now cost me my base in a 1v1 vs autopilot. I thought it was a 1s timer, I waited until enemy units were right next to it and started the self-d and was surprised to see a 5s timer.
Iroinically, a couple of weeks ago playing a 1v1 modulo I self-d my exploiter expecting a 5s timer and it blew up straight away lol
Replay from 30th April vs modulo where I expect a 5s timer and it goes off after 1s (around 8 mins) https://bar-rts.com/replays/f9001268a852cf3ed845557a29382ebb
Replay from today vs autopilot where I self-d expecting 1s timer and it takes 5s https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=b20e22684eeabded41db992f38488e86
I think there needs to be another look at sorting a way to have an accurate changelog, as the game gets bigger and more tournaments for money pop up, some of these examples could end up resulting in more than just a frustrated gamer.
mint gate
plush plaza
So yes looks like this was changed last week, but no mention of it in the in game changelog. Very frustrating to only find out the hard way.
grizzled pumice
@south storm this feedback is aimed at you I guess so I'll ping you in.
lean yew