Since the departure of @erlend_sh from the team the project has had no manager. This has resulted in the slow declination of guidance and overall managerial tasks of the engine and the forum, so I am proposing some changes to improve the workflow, appearance and future of the engine.
Delegate a Manager
I propose that I be delegated as the project manager. I have mainly worked on the server side of things virtually since my arrival, but feel that my presence can be better utilized through improving the footprint of the engine on the internet through changes to the website and organizing the team we have to ensure the titles are recent and up-to-date. Iâm happy to continue with the server stuff, but itâs so rare these days itâs barely even a thing.
My proposals to improve jmonkey are as follows:
Retiring core developers that are no longer active.
Many users listed as core developers are no longer active. I propose we attempt to contact these developers and enquire about their proposed future activity. In the case the user does not respond or expresses that they no longer wish to contribute for one reason or another, move them to a new group labelelled âRetired Core Developerâ. This not only establishes the fact that they do not actively contribute (and as such arenât @mentioned for things they no longer participate in) but gives new blood the opportunity to be promoted. There are several names that speak for themselves in the github repository that warrant such promotion, and said users should be noted as such should they accept. This also means that a âCore Developerâ is an active one, not a developer we havenât heard from in 5 years. It brings more clarity to the status of active development. Right now we âjust dont knowâ who is and who isnt actively contributing.
This is the same for âcontributorâ titles.
This may take some time to get through, but as it stands now, the titles donât really mean a lot as a result of the lack of secretarial work over the years. Titles need to mean something, and they need to be as a result of recent vetting. Nobody is saying âyou need to contribute x times a monthâ - but if you havenât even logged in for 5 yearsâŚ
Clean up the github repositories
Several of the repositories arenât even necessary. Some are test projects, some arenât valid anymore. The whole area needs to be cleaned up. People that are no longer active and have no desire to be active anymore should have their permissions removed so people that are active can take their place.
Improve the homepage.
The homepage hasnât been updated since the forum migrated. Thereâs nothing âwrongâ with it per-se but many improvements have been made since then and they should be highlighted. PBR, Shader Nodes, GLTF models, etc. None of these are visible. The general consensus of the engine on the internet is that it is outdated, and while it may not be as cutting edge as other engines, it certainly isnât as old as a âglancing lookâ would suggest. A news page, features page, a page about what our license actually means for individuals and companies. These things alone will show that the engine isnât âstuck in the mudâ.
Replace the header links with an actual FAQ page. Be it a simple dedicated/locked post or a page unto itself. Weâre cramming one thing into another because we donât have the other.
Actively support the Store
We all know that an asset store of some kind has been needed for a long time. Now that one is available the community and team should take this opportunity and allow it the opportunity to improve the engine. People will have a place to display and sell products. All funding/profits go straight back into the engine in one form or another.
Promote Modern Communication Technologies
Links should be provided for the following:
â Youtube. We are just not using it. I have no idea who owns the current one, but if we canât get a hold of it, we should just make a new one and start using it. There are some really awesome videos out there and they should be put in a list so people can see how good this engine looks and what it can achieve. Nothing speaks better than a video.
â Discord. I hear its what all the cool kids use. We should have an official one.
I think if we have the support and sponsorship of the community to deliver a more professional engine with regular news, an up-to-date developer team and a more managed outlook the website will look a lot less âstaticâ than it is now and show joe public that the engine isnât âsitting stillâ and that itâs moving into the modern era with everybody else. Right now all we have are github commits. There should be way more information about whatâs actually going on, what people are doing, what it looks like, what it means and how it improves the engine.
Letâs bring this place right up to the edge of the knife already. Amirite?!?!
I 100% agree with everything suggested above - jME is an awesome engine with a very talented developer community around it, but unless youâre already in the thick of things itâs hard to see. I think @jayfellaâs suggestions above are on a great track, and if itâs relevant to the decision Iâll be the first to second his nomination to project manager.
since i agree with 80% of what you said, i mostly disagree this should be lead by one person (if yes, then this person should have big knowledge about each aspect of engine that noone have - together yes) so IMO just âCore membersâ together should decide about future of engine parts. I would rather make subranks like Render-specialist, physics-specialist, shader-specialist, since there are no people currently who are specialist in every part of engine.
thats just my opnion.
Anyway nothing will be done without current core-developer permission/help.
If I understand correctly, the âmanagingâ @jayfella is referring to is handling/planning website, community, & infrastructure, not single-handedly directing (or controlling) changes or planning for the engine itself.
Erlend was âbarelyâ even a software developer and was the community/project manager for a long time. Managing a project doesnât require any coding knowledge at all⌠just being able to wrangle cats.
well i know, since i were under Project Manager before who had 0 knowledge in programming.
then i belive you had a very good communication so he knew every wrong moves he might do.
Communication is very important in case like this. Also i thought simple apps / sites is one, but 3d Project where need to know what are special terms and how it works, here this âbarelyâ was required as minimum i think. Im surprised it worked anyway.
We can think a little about the points that all are agreed with. They are important points as well.
The homepage made me thought that the engine is outdated for a long time.
A video to a new or planned feature on the engine will be very exciting and a record of some powerful games will make the engine more famous (many of java programmers donât know about the engine).
Well said. 100% agree with everything written, but I have some comments.
Itâs a nightmare finding anything that still works in jme-contributions github, so this gets a big from me.
Currently, jmeâs Youtube and Twitter havenât been active for a couple of years. That said, according to my Youtube view data, there is some potential for someone making jme content. My PBR tutorial got 8 views from people searching âjmonkeyengineâ on Youtube in the last month, even though itâs not a beginner tutorial. Thatâs above average for my channel. Given that most jme youtube tutorials are outdated at this point, a new one might not be a bad idea.
Even though there already is a community discord, I kind of disagree with @RiccardoBlb about making it official. Most of us there have been there for so long, that we poke fun at each other for no real reason, like friends do, and new people joining often get confused and/or turned away by it.
Yeah, and while itâs nice chatting there⌠it also tends to be super negative a lot of times. There is a place for something like that (which is why it exists) but probably not good for an official JME channel.
Right, but the point of having a discord server is to have unfiltered direct discussions, i think, otherwise it wouldnât be much different from the forumâŚ
Where and what would they be @mentioned? On the forum? GitHub? Because currently we donât have âthatâ dedicated place to discuss the future of the engine (like maybe a category âcore developersâ). But when here and when on a github issue and why one or the other? which is best?
So thatâs a thing for you to think. I always handled it like this: small things, relevant to a tiny problem â Issue. Otherwise: here.
âCore Developerâ is a title that I wouldnât feel confident to wear. It sounds like youâd have to write large parts of the engine to be âthe chosen oneâ like kirill, paul and remy were. I donât know if that is âtheâ title. Maybe just have âContributorsâ and section specific âMaintainersâ. However for the short term we probably will only have Contributors, because:
While these changes sound good, they are a thing for the future, because the reason we still have the âOld Godsâ is because we effectively lack new blood, there is like no one contributing, which could be promoted. However I guess the plans for Social media Presence as well as a clear guidance (like what should we work on next), will definitely help attract, because nobody knows where he/she could help atm, so that noone offers his/her help.
Yes, I also would be against it or to say it more drastic: If it became official, I would be less less active. I know these Discords and having a more direct way for problems will be like providing personal support for everyone with their tiny issues.
I like the Discord because as grizeldi said itâs a place to hang out with like minded monkeys and be silly. Maybe share some experience, complain about common issues, maybe also sometimes discuss ideas and solve problems, but the main point is:
The forum is better for problem solving. A well put post is much more informative than asking back and forth a few hours, most problems get solved while structured typing and formulating the problem and when not, they are ARCHIVED for the future. As soon as this discord is âofficialâ, it will be the 24/7 support group where you can even annoy people and tell them to stop playing a game to help them asap.
So yeah, it kinda shouldnât replace the forum. Not sure how a non-negative official Discord would look like and what the topics would be then apart from support
I mean, yeah, but sgold has been âcore developerâ in everything but name for a while now.
In the âErlend daysâ, the âcore developerâ team would have already been turned over twice by now⌠or his pushing to refresh would have kept people active.
Unfiltered direct discussions is one thing. 80% of the traffic being local politics, engine bashing, and âIâm writing something under Unity/unrealâ is another.
There is absolutely a need for something like that⌠which you already have.
But it might be nice if someone wading into the JME waters looking for direct access to other JME folks could count on things being a little more on topic.
Many discussions happen on that channel that I wish were forum posts so that I could respond better.
As a developer who cares about the engine, I find it almost impossible to hang out there, though. Half the âquestionsâ start âThis engine sucks so bad, I canât even get it to do X.â So maybe not a good place for core devs to hang out.
from me.