Developer’s Journal: Realm Works Update

[liz]

Developer’s Journal: Realm Works Update

Rob has written a new "Developer's Journal" to let everyone know what the team has been up to following the Player Edition release, and our plans for the immediate future.

You can read the update here on our website.

 

[Pollution]

Sounds great!

This is my first Dev Journal, since I missed the KS and couldn't join in on the fun earlier (though, I did buy on day 1, you bet your life I did).

Very excited. Hoping to see the content marketplace in the next 2 months or so. (ambitious, I know). Very excited to see what happens with that. I've got a few projects of my own that I want to toss on the marketplace.

it sounds like you're planning on doing
1) QoL/Key Features releases
2) Marketplace
3) Survey results
(in that order)

All about it, though, I'll be honest, I really want that marketplace ASAP. lol. I wanna buy RotRL from you guys and get my realm cleaned up (it's ugly, not gonna lie).

 

[Exmortis]

Good stuff, very well written and very informative.

I am very much looking forward to the survey.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

.................it sounds like you're planning on doing
1) QoL/Key Features releases
2) Marketplace
3) Survey results
(in that order)

To usurp Pollution's list (enter pirate ARRGUH here) & Expand on it Its nice to see a bit more transparency by issuing this, then what we have in the past few months. The article was informative, from a 10,000 ft view. I can (& do) appreciate the challenges any small team can face with such a large undertaking.

Here's the BUT part.....

For a developers journal (as titled)

For those of you who haven’t seen one of these before, it’s an opportunity to skip the marketing and offer a candid look at what we’ve been doing, what problems we’ve faced, and where we’re going to be focusing next.

we’re taking this opportunity to re-assess everything and put together a solid plan for the upcoming months

Eh, to quote a certain Hollywood Raccoon, "That's not a plan", "that's like 12% of a plan...." Howabout less "marketing" here and more "plan". I get leaving the techo babel off for most (myself included here) would certainly get lost in the quagmire of nuance details. But we need more than "working on things, "The Plan" & Stuff.....

To take Pollution's List (Arrugh)
1) QoL/Key Features releases
To me this means "things" we are going to work on regardless of the survey. But what are "THINGS"? Other than marketplace & webshare, what does that list of "regardless what the survey says" look like?

2) Marketplace
Surely there is some idea of rudimentary structure? How things might be handled? Even a screenshot of possibles? We have all heard about marketplace for many months, but no one but LWD has any idea what that may look like, and based on this "developers view" are we to assume the developers don't either?


3) Survey results
I get two "things" from this
A>The survey is unlikely to be acted on before the end of 1st quarter of next year.
B>other than "pie in the sky" (which is there in any wish list when dealing with a client) we really didn't get "the developers view" of what this list might look like or consist of.
For example, "things" could be
We have:

• 2000 cosmetic requests
• 340 various print / export features
• 950 PE-RW to GM-RW requests consisting of :
  
  • 200 reveal options
  • 100 mapping modifiers
  • 300 technical code
  • 50 messaging and sync related

These are just arbitrary lists, and I certainly don't claim to know how LWD "piles" the various requests while they assemble the survey, but from a developer point of view.... I would hope to have more than "things" are coming.

Don't get me wrong, I am a firm defender / backer of the Success of LWD products (herolab with all its warts, and Realmworks with all its promises)

And I understand not giving us the "true developers view" for fear that the community at large would either misconstrue/ not understand, the techno speak, or worse. But this is... really.... a marketing post.
Please, Please, Pertty Please.... alittle more transparency than "The Plan" "Things" and "soon".....

Humbly & with best respect...
DLG

 

[meek75]

Does anyone remember the last projected delivery date for the survey? I was expecting to be out this week. I tried to check the last newsletter, but the LWD web site only has then posted through October. I'm sure there was one in November, and maybe one in early December.

 

[liz]

Does anyone remember the last projected delivery date for the survey? I was expecting to be out this week. I tried to check the last newsletter, but the LWD web site only has then posted through October. I'm sure there was one in November, and maybe one in early December.

Well, that's my bad. I failed to put the November newsletter up onto that page. However, it's up there now.

Regarding the survey, the culling is done. I want to give an estimate, but knowing my luck there will be some sort of emergency and I can't follow through. However, since it's mainly on my plate now, I'll say soon.

 

[liz]

We’re taking this opportunity to re-assess everything and put together a solid plan for the upcoming months. ... Once we’ve completed this process, we’ll be able to provide greater clarity for everyone regarding what to expect in the months to come.

That's the current plan. Yes, it's not a "these are the features we're tackling next" plan. However, as Rob explained, that's because we're assessing everything so that we can put together a more specific plan to share moving forward.

If we shared anything right now, it would likely lead to some nasty "anticipointment" (one of my favorite non-existent words), as the plan would likely change at the end of our assessment. I hope that explains a bit as to why there wasn't the plan that I think you were looking for.

 

[enrious]

To me this means "things" we are going to work on regardless of the survey. But what are "THINGS"?

Unselected Picks. See, it's sorta like Gizmos and Obje...

Ok, someone had to. I'll be here all week, please tip your waitstaff.


In thinking about all of this and all of the feature requests I've wanted and discussed since the Kickstarter, it strikes me that there's one element I would personally wish for (but doubt it'd be doable) on the survey - sort of a grading scale as to the difficulty/expected time to complete relative to other options.

Putting aside the biggies that I *think* have a fairly solid consensus, like the calendar and printing, I'd sort of like to know the weights of other options.

For example, if it's thought that Item A should be fairly easy and take half the time of Item B, then maybe I'd want A more than B. Obviously I think there are strong objections to this, given past history, which is why I'd not want to see metrics expressed in real terms, but only relative to other options.

Of course, I'd expect that such guesstimates have already filled a sheet or two internally and I get that LW may not want to share those estimates, but still I think it'd help me be a more informed voter.

On the other hand, I'd hate for people to interpret those as concrete promises of delivery expectations, which may make it the most strenuous argument against the notion.

 

[AEIOU]

I'd also like to see "families" of things. If its going to require A to do B to do C anyway, group them together to make a package. A whole slew of little things may be more appealing than one monumental thing.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Unselected Picks. See, it's sorta like Gizmos and Obje...

Ok, someone had to. I'll be here all week, please tip your waitstaff.

Sweet! I got a good laugh out of this!

 

[Farling]

I'd also like to see "families" of things. If its going to require A to do B to do C anyway, group them together to make a package. A whole slew of little things may be more appealing than one monumental thing.

But some people might only want A, some might want B; and only a few might want C. So the package idea doesn't work for the people wanting only A and/or B.

 

[rob]

1) QoL/Key Features releases
To me this means "things" we are going to work on regardless of the survey. But what are "THINGS"? Other than marketplace & webshare, what does that list of "regardless what the survey says" look like?

I could spend hours delving into the details of things and still probably would sate the demands of some folks here on the forums. But I'll throw you a bone. I'll make sure the survey includes a SAMPLING (far from the complete list) of THINGS that are going to be implemented regardless of the survey results.

If you've been following the forums closely, you probably already have a clue about a dozen or so things on that list. However, I'll include a list in the survey so that everyone can see it and have an idea of what we're going to be focusing on - instead of burying it here in this thread.

Does that work?

 

[rob]

2) Marketplace
Surely there is some idea of rudimentary structure? How things might be handled? Even a screenshot of possibles? We have all heard about marketplace for many months, but no one but LWD has any idea what that may look like, and based on this "developers view" are we to assume the developers don't either?

The Content Market is going to start out rather simply and then evolve. We've mapped out a bunch of stuff, BUT it needs to first get implemented AND it needs to get reviewed by the Beta team. That's one of the "perks" of the Beta team is that they get to be lab rats, er, have the first chance to see what we've come up with and tell us how we should have done it differently. So there's not much to share about how it will look and work here on the forums, especially at this point.

Another concern is the existence of competitive products out there. We really don't want to be tipping our hands too dramatically. Heck, we already did that years ago when we first started showing off the incremental review concept at Cons. Prior to that point in time, nobody had done anything like that, and then a variety of tools decided to take the idea and use it themselves. In many ways, we did ourselves a disservice by being too open about that and a number of other ideas we've come up with, so we're actually quite motivated to avoid repeated that mistake.

I hope you understand!

 

[rob]

3) Survey results
I get two "things" from this
A>The survey is unlikely to be acted on before the end of 1st quarter of next year.
B>other than "pie in the sky" (which is there in any wish list when dealing with a client) we really didn't get "the developers view" of what this list might look like or consist of.
For example, "things" could be
We have:

• 2000 cosmetic requests
• 340 various print / export features
• 950 PE-RW to GM-RW requests consisting of :
  
  • 200 reveal options
  • 100 mapping modifiers
  • 300 technical code
  • 50 messaging and sync related

These are just arbitrary lists, and I certainly don't claim to know how LWD "piles" the various requests while they assemble the survey, but from a developer point of view.... I would hope to have more than "things" are coming.

The 1000+ items on the task list cover the entire spectrum of requests. I've spent WELL over 100 hours sifting through it all over the past many weeks. The list used to be almost 50% longer than it is now. I went through and found duplicates, related items that needed to be merged, ideas that are no longer applicable (e.g. we solved it a different way), etc. I also spent copious amounts of time thinking through all the ideas to figure out how best to approach them at this point in the evolution of Realm Works. For example, I came up with an idea for calendars that could allow us to get them into your hands faster than before. But we have to find out (through the survey) whether the idea will be acceptable to users.

To give you a rough breakdown, about 15-20% of the tasks are relatively simple ones (e.g. a few hours apiece), about 10% are bugs and usability rough edges that need to be addressed, another 15% are internal steps focused on infrastructure and robustness (e.g. using specialized batching logic on SQL inserts and updates to the database for improved performance during syncing), and close to 10% of the tasks are major undertakings (e.g. months of work apiece). However, the vast majority of tasks range from a couple days to a couple weeks apiece. In other words, the entire spectrum - just what you'd expect in something like this. For the longer tasks, our first step in tackling them will be to spend the time to break them up into a bunch of smaller tasks that comprise the one big task.

So the task list is not just 1000 small tasks - it's 1000 conceptually identifiable tasks of any size. For example, printing is just one task on the list, even though there are a host of aspects to it that will ultimately need to be broken out when we finally get that effort underway. Similarly, the request to get rid of the confirmation message when closing a tab is also a task on the list. Both are conceptually complete and convey what needs to be done for the task, although the scope of work involved for each is dramatically different.

Quite a few tasks have a bunch of bullets detailing various aspects of the task. Each of those bullets typically represent one to many distinct development tasks that are involved in completing the overall task. So a single "task" in the list of 1000 is often comprised of dozens of smaller tasks that will actually need to be implemented. In other words, there's a LOT on the list that we will be tackling - YEARS worth of things we want to add.

For reference, Hero Lab was very similar on many levels. There are STILL things waiting on the wish list for Hero Lab that we came up with when we first started working on that product. And Hero Lab has been continuously evolved for just shy of TEN years now. It's a constant evolution. And Realm Works is still in its infancy for all practical purposes.

Hopefully, that gives you a better sense of things. No, it's not a definitive, concrete list, but it should give you a bit more to wrap your head around. When you see the survey, keep in mind that each item on the survey will typically translate to one task on our list, although the survey will be blending a few similar things together in places to keep the list smaller while still giving us the data we need (i.e. relative demand). The survey will ideally provide you with a more tangible sense of the scope and scale I'm talking about here.

 

[rob]

@enrious: Very funny! @ShadowChemosh was just giving me grief about that very subject last night on the Hero Lab forums.

You pretty much answered your own question. There is significantly more for us to lose by sharing details like complexity assessments than we would gain from doing so. There are armchair developers who will argue with us about whether X is comparatively hard or easy, even though they lack any context on what's truly involved to make it happen within Realm Works. So that's a huge timesink that isn't worth it. And if our assessment is wrong because we overlooked something nasty, that will also work against us. The bottom line is that we need to keep that information internal only. Sorry.

 

[rob]

@AEIOU: One thing we're striving to do in the survey is include a small number of tasks for each of a diverse set of grouping. Each grouping will be focused in a very different area. Based on the results, if one particular grouping is significantly more popular than others, we're going to assume that a variety of related tasks in that same area will be similarly of keen interest to a large number of users. So we'll be extrapolating the results, which will allow us to keep the survey to a more manageable size for maximum participation by users, yet it will also enable us to get useful guidance on user priorities. This should hopefully yield a result that's similar to what you're proposing.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I could spend hours delving into the details of things and still probably would sate the demands of some folks here on the forums. But I'll throw you a bone. I'll make sure the survey includes a SAMPLING (far from the complete list) of THINGS that are going to be implemented regardless of the survey results.

If you've been following the forums closely, you probably already have a clue about a dozen or so things on that list. However, I'll include a list in the survey so that everyone can see it and have an idea of what we're going to be focusing on - instead of burying it here in this thread.

Does that work?

Yep Spot on.. and was thinking of this from a "non-forum user perspective" for clarity... Since you have made that a point to me in the past I try not to look at things solely by what is within Forum walls... so to speak.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

................. Prior to that point in time, nobody had done anything like that, and then a variety of tools decided to take the idea and use it themselves. In many ways, we did ourselves a disservice by being too open about that and a number of other ideas we've come up with, so we're actually quite motivated to avoid repeated that mistake.

I hope you understand!

Ah point taken.... and certainly amplifies the difference in our perspectives... Company vs Customer. I can certainly agree with your stance.
thanks for that clarity.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

The 1000+ items on the task list cover the entire spectrum of requests. I've spent WELL over 100 hours sifting through it all over the past many weeks. The list used to be almost 50% longer than it is now. I went through and found duplicates, related items that needed to be merged, ideas that are no longer applicable (e.g. we solved it a different way), etc. I also spent copious amounts of time thinking through all the ideas to figure out how best to approach them at this point in the evolution of Realm Works. For example, I came up with an idea for calendars that could allow us to get them into your hands faster than before. But we have to find out (through the survey) whether the idea will be acceptable to users.

To give you a rough breakdown, about 15-20% of the tasks are relatively simple ones (e.g. a few hours apiece), about 10% are bugs and usability rough edges that need to be addressed, another 15% are internal steps focused on infrastructure and robustness (e.g. using specialized batching logic on SQL inserts and updates to the database for improved performance during syncing), and close to 10% of the tasks are major undertakings (e.g. months of work apiece). However, the vast majority of tasks range from a couple days to a couple weeks apiece. In other words, the entire spectrum - just what you'd expect in something like this. For the longer tasks, our first step in tackling them will be to spend the time to break them up into a bunch of smaller tasks that comprise the one big task. So the task list is not just 1000 small tasks - it's 1000 conceptually identifiable tasks of any size. For example, printing is just one task on the list, even though there are a host of aspects to it that will ultimately need to be broken out when we finally get that effort underway. Similarly, the request to get rid of the confirmation message when closing a tab is also a task on the list. Both are conceptually complete and convey what needs to be done for the task, although the scope of work involved for each is dramatically different.

That's more transparent. I get (even more so from the clarity of the above post on protecting your product path (honestly hadn't put on the LWD CEO hat for that view, thanks for the wake up on that one))
by not "listing details and resolutions".

The percentage approach to anticipated work load is enlighten enough (I think), while some may want that definitive list, the real answer there isn't one. nothing is set to stone, MOSES has not been called to have it chiseled in.. but we do see (from LWD) is these percentages are the workload infront of us. A backlog if you will. and a rough order of magnitude of the challenges those "things" represent by examples. Perfect response.

Quite a few tasks have a bunch of bullets detailing various aspects of the task. Each of those bullets typically represent one to many distinct development tasks that are involved in completing the overall task. So a single "task" in the list of 1000 is often comprised of dozens of smaller tasks that will actually need to be implemented. In other words, there's a LOT on the list that we will be tackling - YEARS worth of things we want to add.

For reference, Hero Lab was very similar on many levels. There are STILL things waiting on the wish list for Hero Lab that we came up with when we first started working on that product. And Hero Lab has been continuously evolved for just shy of TEN years now. It's a constant evolution. And Realm Works is still in its infancy for all practical purposes.
.........

I agree, this will be years in the making and evolving. Remember we are making this journey together.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

Unselected Picks. See, it's sorta like Gizmos and Obje...

Ok, someone had to. I'll be here all week, please tip your waitstaff.
.......................

LOL shaking head....

Colen need more EMOCONS!!!!