NullQuery wrote:

So, this issue... is pretty easy to implement. I've already laid down the exact steps to implement it. I don't know about the underlying frameworks, but I do know that you designed the BYOND Pager software yourself and unless you're far less competent than I think you are you'll be able to send an extra 8 bytes to the hub.

As I said, it's not a matter of adding bytes. It's a matter of altering three different pieces of software, one of which gets mad if you look at it wrong, and thoroughly testing the changes. Adding a field to the db is the very easiest part. I know you don't believe me when I say this isn't an easy thing to add, but it isn't. The work-reward ratio is simply too small.

Security is moot. The worst case scenario is that someone claims their server is a child of someone else's. So what? They'd only be artificially increasing someone else's player count. Most people in this community aren't even capable of finishing their own projects, let alone working together with others.

Actually what could also happen is a server forcing itself in under someone else's, so that it looks more legit than it is. Probably a minor issue when not showing the child worlds. But if there's one thing I've learned about hub stuff, it's that security is never moot.

To address your faster-not-smarter point, the truth is I've learned the hard way that doesn't work. If something isn't well thought-out from the beginning, it causes problems down the road. That's 90% of the reason the code is as complex as it is already, because things weren't planned out well or weren't built to scale, and a large portion of the work I've done on the code over the years has been to address the fallout of that. I've done faster-not-smarter with the hub, and it always works out badly.

And I really do have to triage features; they all get weighed by the work vs. potential benefits. I know you're really anxious for this feature, but the truth is you're probably the only one.

I will say it's the kind of thing I'd be more interested in pursuing if it were part of a larger hub upgrade to add other new features, especially if that coincided with the release of 511; in that case a lot of the spin-up time between projects gets spread around, the testing is more of a one-shot deal, and everything's organized a lot more cleanly. But I'd be lying if I told you I had a good plan for handling the queries on the hub side of things, because as I said the hub likes to pipeline output from queries and this is more of a collect-and-organize case; it really does need planning.

Coming up with an estimated time for implementing something without having any idea of the underlying codebases is just silly.

I would expect you to know better than that NullQuery

NullQuery wrote:

So instead I'll tell you what you're doing wrong, and the real reason you're not making thousands of dollars a week off of BYOND.

...

But that's the thing: you don't have the time for it. You need to implement this feature as soon as possible, because a BYOND Member asked for it. Not just a BYOND Member, but someone who knows what he's doing, and who might attract other developers to BYOND, who may in turn attract more players who become BYOND Members. I'm a rare kind of person: someone who has stuck around BYOND for years and years and is still drawn toward it like a moth to a light.

...

You have absolutely no idea who you're dealing with.

wot

like... all my wot.

Stop been so toxic GPE for realz.

I've thought about it and I guess my problem stems from the fact that I have to take steps to work around BYOND's limitations and to put in a whole lot of effort without any guarantee that it's going to pay off. But when I ask for the sole developer of the software to work on an issue that - in my view - is easy to do given the available technologies I get hit with design questions that I can answer within 10 seconds (implying someone with more knowledge of the underlying architecture should be able to answer that far more quickly).

Every response that I give seems to make this task much more easier and manageable, but every response I get makes it seem as if working on BYOND is some sort of rocket science that requires careful concentration and planning. (And it's not like a bug would cause lives to be lost or significant harm to the community -- look at some of the insane bugs that have cropped up in the past and the fact that we're still here today.)

I apologize for my outburst but it's just frustrating that someone else isn't willing to push themselves to the same extremes that I'd be willing to do if the roles were reversed. I completely understand that you need to plan things accordingly - especially with a product that is used by 5000 people simultaneously! - but I let my frustration get the better of me.

For what it's worth I'd like to apologize and I agree that I should tone it down a little myself. Getting worked up what is admittedly supposed to only be a hobby is childish and immature. But I guess what makes the BYOND community: we're all so invested into this that we sometimes lose ourselves in these moments.

NullQuery wrote:

I apologize for my outburst but it's just frustrating that someone else isn't willing to push themselves to the same extremes that I'd be willing to do if the roles were reversed.

That's a very silly way to look at it. The reason why Lummox isn't prioritizing your unpopular, non-trivial feature request is because his plate is already full, because he's already working full-time (and probably extra) on bug fixes, features, and optimizations that are more useful to the community at large.

It's also been made rightfully clear in the past that BYOND games should be pitching their game to the communities outside rather than in. Instead of worrying over the website's hub display, I suggest implementing this into your project directly: set up a login server that displays the different worlds available, as your desired hub change would. Your potential players would probably prefer this too.