Please sir, can we have a Trello roadmap?

Hello.

I think that with Armory there is currently a big problem:
--------------> A lot of people is asking for some features in the forum, then every some days, in the news section appears a new rendering feature, that is unrelated with the petitions. So developers are indeed working, but not in features that the users need the most.

I think that this could be a solution:

This example is with Unreal Engine, but I think Armory could also have one.

It is a Trello roadmap. In this roadpmap the community votes which feature they need/want most. So developers can know what feature the community wants first, and they can focus on implementing it in the first place.

This good for both developers and users. Because the users who use the engine are the ones who obtain their features democratically. I mean, If most people wants one thing, most people achieve that thing. This benefits the majority, which redunts in a higher user base.

Is this a good idea? What do you think? I think this could boost the usability of the Armory engine.

4 Likes

I think this sounds like a good idea!

Totally agreeing! For being production ready, an engine needs the features the artists needs. For example, probably nobody would have missed ray-traced GI and I heard nobody asking for this feature as well (please correct me if I am wrong, that would be embarrassing). But there is still very useful stuff missing, like proper procedural texture support, more bugfixes, documentationā€¦

I. Maybe we can even adopt some ideas from the Unreal Engine Trello Roadmap, etcā€¦

II. In addition we can complete features of other Blender Engine extensions if missing like UPBGE:

  1. Paralax Mapping
  2. Sub Surface Scattering (SSS)
  3. Sky Background Render
  4. Geometry Instancing
  5. Real-Time Reflection Cubemap
  6. Refraction and Reflection in Plane
  7. XInput Joystick Support, Including Vibration Actuator
  8. Shadow Smoothing
  9. Particle Smoothing

III. There is one more thing to consider - I donā€™t want to offend anybody - but if Iā€™m right, there are some Patreon privileges, depending on the amount of money you donate per month. If we vote democratically each vote has the same weight, maybe there can be some sort of scoring system?

What do you think?

2 Likes

There is always a reason for some newly added feature. Armory is being used in projects which I am not allowed to talk about due to NDA, in those cases it may seem like ā€˜nobody asked for thisā€™. When someone contacts me with a plan to build an interesting project on top of Armory then I always try to make it happen. This may not yield immediate output but is very important to keep Armory going long-term.

Trust me that managing Armory is a complete nightmare. It spans a broad use and everyone has different needs and opinions. It pains me that I am not able to make it ready for everyone. I will still continue doing my best!

I would love to have a community road map but we need more man power to manage it. Is anyone up to task to create it and collect the features & votes there? :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I experimented a bit with trello, and I found that the community interaction is pretty limited there, and if you want more features, it will cost money. So I have the idea to mix it with triciders Brainstormig system where nobody even has to log in, but still administration tools exist and it is totaly free. So maybe vote on this page witch features go onto the ā€œWorking Onā€ tab on Trello?
here the trello site: https://trello.com/b/T7GW5xV5/armory-community-roadmap-test
and the tricider one: http://www.tricider.com/brainstorming/3N4RKRhQGd3
On Tricider there is also a little discussion fiel for every idea, I think thats quite handy

I with these two sites there would not be much to manage, only to move popular ideas into the trello roadmap.

I agree that this could be one of the nice community things that would help activate the armory community a little, especially since thereā€™s only so much a single person can do (even if you do much more than anyone can possibly expect :smiley:)

In any case, I think it would be a good idea to decide what software, and the general setup and if thereā€™s a specific Trello site weā€™re going to use? And how is it going to be administrated and by who? Especially to make sure that it isnā€™t overcluttered with thousands of features, most of which probably shouldnā€™t even be a priority at this early stage of the engine. I do like the idea of the trello/tricider mix, even if Iā€™m not a fan of having multiple sites.

The trello/tricider is the only solution I could find that was free, easy to use and has community addable feature requests. Doing the community stuff with trello only is maybe possible, but everyone involved would need to be part of a team and then they could also edit everything else. Maybe there are custom ā€œpower-upsā€ for trello as they are being called, but they would require the ā€œbusinessesā€ plan, which costs.
Everyone can create a trello and tricider board for free, so lubos could do it himself or he can contact the_beginner/me to become administrator of the site, since he is still the only one who really knows which feature is being worked on and when it is finished.

1 Like

Let me know how I could be helpful for the community. I donā€™t want to foreground myself, only would like to assist any project.

As Simonrazer and Naxela mentioned - the ultimate solution would be all in oneā€¦

In my opinion the Trello logic is not very user-friendly and limited options in the administration are uncomfortable.

What about making our own Trello. Using the tools of e.g. wix.com to create our own webpage especially for the Armory3D community with all the features we want. I think you donā€™t need to be a html-pro. Wix provides some sort of sandbox kit for different functions. I think they have lots of options for online marketing. We could use these methods to create custom accounts, etc. Iā€™m not into creating websites and of course this will take some time to accomplish, but this could be very interesting in my opinion.

What do you think?

ā€“ also publish online games, etc.

I donā€™t think that a premade voting system of a website would be better than tricider, actually the only thing that could be improved with tricider is some space to talk and a way to prefer the Patreons. Also the roadmap controls of trello are ok in my opinion, just add a cart where you need one, maybe write some description on the back of it and move it to another stack when needed. In terms of administration it could be done by just some selected ones being member of the team, who then write the mostly wished features from the vote on and move the carts, according to their state of developement. I could do that when an official plan is given.

1 Like

I found another way of asking which features people want, but it has other downsides. This forum can actually create polls! There could be a topic regarding feature-requests, in the first post is the poll, to which the topics creator can add reasonable suggestions from the replies. Here how those polls look like:

  • Feature 1
  • Feature 2
  • Feature 3

0 voters

3 Likes

I like this. Simple. Quick. Easy.
But it should be created an entire new forum section, just for featureā€™s petitions.
Also, the new featureā€™s requests threads, for people to vote in, should be made for people with enough power to create stickys.
What if I make some kind of feature request thread, and then It falls down in the forum, and then newcomers doesnā€™t see the thread, and do not vote to features they might want.

Those kind of features on demand threads should be persistent.

I would preffer something like: A thread of categories. Inside every threadā€™s category, a list of all the possible things, sticky, and people simply enter on every thread and vote on them.

And maybe all the stuff should be resetted on every new release, if the release accomplish the petitions.

2 Likes

Letā€™s build a roadmap management app on top of Armory! :smiley:

That should both fill a need and serve as a pipeline-cleaner for web-based games.

Yes, Iā€™m half kidding.

Iā€™ve used this before:

It has a very nice UI, it is simple, and it is hosted for free for Open Source projects. I think that keeping things in GitHub and just using its simple issues and projects might still be best for Armory right now, but I wanted to put this out there just in case. It is somewhat similar to Trello in some ways, but it is built more specifically for project management.

Thats looks cool! will probably have to wait for lubos to come here. It would be much more easier managing armory, was thinking about thing like this. Note that Taiga only support 200 members at max, well it would not be problem now, but members will probably hike much more.

That is only for private projects.

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There is Unlimited public projects and I donā€™t see a limit on users for that.

Ahh, I thought i read 200 members in your project and forgot that private word.
well, i know about unlimited public projects.
Well, all we need to do is wait for lubos then.

Well, sound like you can create it if you want. If you create it then i will post it on discord, so that more people know.

I could create it, but I donā€™t have a whole lot of time to manage it. If you wanted to be an admin on the project as well to help, then that would be good. I understand how to configure it ( it is really easy ) and I could help in that respect.

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I canā€™t handle that amount of responsibility lol. and donā€™t have much time too. But well, i can help too.
Would probably be good to wait for @lubos to comment on this again.

Questions.

  1. making it public (ofcourse cause it open source) would not mean that anyone can do anything?
  2. Is there any thing like adding superiority of an user like how trusts levels are here so that not everyone do as they wish?
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I donā€™t know how to use it, since you had used it before, you can created it and I will help you with it.
Lubos himself said you can create it and let community can manage it.