Valzargaming's Dev App

[valzargaming]

Byond ID: Valzargaming

Age: 22

Gender: Male

How would you define yourself? (Coder, Mapper, Spriter):
Coder & Mapper

If Coder, what languages?
DM, C, C++, C#, JavaScript

Any previous experience developing with SS13?
Yes

Proof of any previous or current work:
I remade Donut Station 2 from scratch and made it Baycode compatible: http://puu.sh/dCIzT/693b7d0905.jpg
Also added several classes for this custom game mode. Essentially, this was Colonial Marines before Colonial Marines.
I was the Head Developer behind Heaven's Gate's launch, and let me tell you, I had to deal with some serious programming bullshit, one which converted the server from paracode over to baycode during the time when paracode was bugged to the point where compilation was impossible due to a hard limit set by Byond's code at the time.
I've worked on several other smaller project as well, but my memory escapes me as to what those were as of writing this.

How well do you know Git?
Use it all the time!

Your primary job is server development, not policing the server. You may be given Moderator-level of access but you should *not* be invoking any administrative actions unless there are no moderators or Admins online. Do you understand? (Yes/No)

[apophis775]

You didn't answer the last question...

[valzargaming]

EDIT: The pre-filled app when you create a topic is not up to date. One moment.
EDIT2: Nope, can't find anything I missed!

[Rahlzel]

Oh boy. This might be a bad sign.

[valzargaming]

Actually, I did. The "Yes" is bolded. Perhaps you can't see it with your contrast settings?

Perhaps the bad sign is the one that says that it's time to get your prescription checked out

[Rahlzel]

[valzargaming]

Fucking love you Rahlzel. That picture made me shoot water out my nose.

Took another look on my laptop, still looks pretty clear to me.

[apophis775]

Spoilers: Being a dick in yer application, is not the best way to get accepted...

[valzargaming]

You're missing the point that I don't give a damn whether you accept me or not. I don't get anything out of this, I'm helping YOU to develop your codebase. The only reason that I'm applying is because I have made some friends within the Colonial Marines community itself and I would like to accommodate them with a more pleasurable experience by providing them with what they want most: A more diverse universe in which they can roleplay and explore.

Multiple suggestions that are code-related are made on a daily basis and I know for a fact that there is no way that a couple of coders can keep up with the demands of an entire community, especially when those requests become large in number and vastly complex in nature. If that was the case, I would not have a full team of developers behind me in the production of Project Iris, and the frequent assistance of Kaos Sorenson/Khorne, the programmer who made the first edition of Minecraft's Skyblock mod possible, a professional sound studio with one of the best audio technicians and musicians that I know, and a team of mappers and artists who have dedicated many long hours in a crowded Skype chat room organizing the project and prioritizing our goals.

But you know what the most amazing part of it is? Everyone pitched in without expecting a damn thing of anyone else in the group. Nobody expected to get famous, nobody expected to make thousands of dollars, and many did not get along with others on the team, but that didn't stop us from working together to have an amazing experience. That's not just what ValZarGaming as a production studio is about, it's also why I use that name for my byond ckey, because that's what the core ideology behind Space Station 13 is about, working together with your crew to fight against the seemingly impossible task of fighting off the inevitable with your fellow crewmen, and if you can't get that through your skull, then there is nothing that I can offer you.

[Rahlzel]

I personally don't think he was being a dick. He was just poking fun. I didn't take it offensively. However...

You're missing the point that I don't give a damn whether you accept me or not. I don't get anything out of this.

This is not something I'm used to seeing. Typically when people apply for a position - especially a volunteer job - there's some psychological fulfillment that comes from it. If you don't give a damn, why should we?

I was the Head Developer behind Heaven's Gate's launch, and let me tell you, I had to deal with some serious programming bullshit, one which converted the server from paracode over to baycode during the time when paracode was bugged to the point where compilation was impossible due to a hard limit set by Byond's code at the time.

I'm going to try to make this sound inquisitive rather than accusatory: Your Github page doesn't put out much evidence of the claim that you did anything more than 3 commits to Heaven's Gate. Why is that?

You've made some claims that you're a strong developer. Is there anything you can show us?

[valzargaming]

First off, let me praise you for your prevailing objectivity. More admins need to view the world and act with those same standards.

The Github for Heaven's Gate was never fully utilized during its implementation as I found that I was doing the work far more efficiently by myself with one copy of the files than it was utilizing the github to push/pull and having to wait for other developers. They toyed with the idea of making their own expansions off of Paradise for a long time, but it was eventually discarded in favor of Baycode. The entire project was a wreck and nearly failed once before it's launch with the host verbally abandoning the project and leaving the chatroom. I had their entire codebase converted for use with Baycode with all of its custom content available and compiled within four hours of Static's announcement. You'll have to ask her for more details on the project as I have not followed the various changes that have occurred since it went live, as I left the development team on the same day to focus more on my financial stability in the real world.

As for coding developer, I would refer you to Project Iris, though the source code has since been made private and the GitHub taken down as per a request from several contributers that we not make their content open source under Creative Commons licensing. You are free to follow up and contact any of the founders or long-standing admins of Heaven's Gate for more information. As I have alluded to in prior posts on reddit, I suffer from a form of memory loss where I effectively lose snippets of my long-term memory in favor of others that I cannot forget. Frustratingly, things that I work on for extended periods of time happens to fall under the category of "can't remember, happened by magic" in my mind. I do not have the original source code saved either as I passed the code onto the host and deleted it shortly after.

Some of my custom code, however, has survived throughout various different projects that have come up, including Donut Station 2&3, Military Station, and ValZarstation which was the first to ever host Mutiny and Masks of Nar'sie gamemodes, first to feature the differentiation of Phoron from Plasma when Baystation was making the change, "ZAS 2.0" (as it was then referred to), and custom jobs that mirror the Marines on Colonial Marines as we know them to be today. I am familiar with all current code and can mentally reverse engineer several implementation that have been made (and find pleasure in doing so in my off-time and comparing my methods to how they were actually done via Github later). My ability to code has never been the question, it has always been how well do I know the code that's already in place and what can I do to adapt and expand upon what's already here. I would encourage you to download Military Station and Donut Station 2 and examine them for yourself as both were made from scratch using nothing but standalone Baycode (in fact, I made Donut Station 2 from scratch dedicating no more than 2 hours a day over the span of a week. Those are the best examples that I can think of that are easily accessible by searching for them respectively on Reddit. Did I mention that I went to college for Computer Science? It's my major.

Edit: Oh yeah! Message Shiverwulf and Dalekfodder about Military Station. We were the only three actively developing it when it started off before I took it over as the sole developer. IIRC, a large deal of the code we developed actually went on to be part of the official codebase for... wait for it... COLONIAL MARINES! That's right, THIS SERVER! This was before Apophis took it over, I am struggling to remember the name of the prior host right now.

This is not something I'm used to seeing. Typically when people apply for a position - especially a volunteer job - there's some psychological fulfillment that comes from it.

Well, putting it simply, I'm not your typical person. I don't seek some type of psychological fulfillment, I just want to see the Space Station 13 codebase expand and better itself. The entire thing is reliant on being open source. Had it not been, it never would have reached the state of being that is has. In fact, ValZarGaming as a game studio is non-profit, which means that we have absolutely no benefits from our projects. We make games because we are gamers and we do what we love because we love what we do. If you enter a project with a closed mind, you aren't going to leave it with anything more than what you brought to it in the first place.

[Juninho77]

We make games because we are gamers and we do what we love because we love what we do.

Well, there you go, lad. That's your psychological fulfillment, no matter what you decide to call it. You might not get money from your work, but it pays off because you can help better something you like very much. And isn't that why we're all here?

[valzargaming]

Nailed it.

[slayerplayer99]

well if you can atleast contribute as much as me.....well thats not something to be proud of lol. even if you get accepted or not we should be fine now that we got an Abby

[Allan1234]

hm.. from what i remember you where accepted once.. and quickly removed for being horrible at inter-staff cooperation

[valzargaming]

hm.. from what i remember you where accepted once.. and quickly removed for being horrible at inter-staff cooperation

You're definitely thinking of somebody else as I was never part of the Colonial Marines development team.

[apophis775]

Military Station?

How long ago was this?

[valzargaming]

Military Station?

How long ago was this?

The last changed date I have was 11/16/2014

[apophis775]

Really? That was after I was head developer.

I actually have the entire development history, from a bit before that, let me check.

Edit: I don't see any commits.

Our codebase records, start October 20th, 2014. Prior to that, we had a month of stuff under sgt.marine but it was all wiped out (during the "dickmageddon 2014"), and we reverted to a backup jagger had made of the code we got from NSS-Gamers. For the history with that, I'd refer to CoronelJones, as he's the ONLY staff member who was actually staff, when CM was on NSS those many years ago.

It's possible you did work for Sgt.marine, but all that was wiped, when he pulled his shit-fest.

[valzargaming]

IIRC, this was just after sgt.marine was removed and Moraak wanted to try to steal the code and have me and shiverwulf build a new codebase ourselves. Neither of us knew this at the time of course, and the project was abandoned when we found out, but I kept much of the code and a lot of things were still kept and reworked in the current code. An example of one of the many things that I can think of is the ability to put a knife in your boot, but in our rendition the knife was a stun-knife and could be toggled to act like a stun baton. The knife-in-boot was kept, but the knife was reworked and resprited.

But no, I never worked with sgt.marine, in fact he banned me from the server for "talking smack about the server" on reddit. Shortly after this occurred, he was completely removed from the Colonial Marines team, and that's when I believe that you took over. IIRC, ofc.

[apophis775]

I know that sgt.marine was going to "pay" people to develop CM as a new codebase, but we never got any of that.

Our boot-knife (and combat knife) code was done by infernus (i believe) in late november during a big update to our uniforms and weapons.


I can't actually find any evidence or code that you contributed to our CM source.

[valzargaming]

In that case I would ask Shiverwulf and see what he remembers. Most of the changes that I did were on the side of changing spawn-in jobs, map refinements, fixing the outdated atmospheric system, optimizing server performance, and implementing previously non-working pieces of code. I know for sure that at the time the knife in the boot was not functional and I had to make changes to make it work and added said features to it, but I don't remember much from that time as I was dealing with other real-life issues at the time. Most of the coding I did for item-specific stuff and special interactions were code I had thrown at me and say "Fix this shit and make it to this and finish this piece of code that never worked."

[apophis775]

Yea, I think you were working on sgt.marines "source", which was a branch of ours, not ours.

Shiverwulf, does not appear to be a person on byond.

[valzargaming]

I don't believe that Shiverwulf uses the byond pager, he's on reddit though.

[Rahlzel]

I don't believe that Shiverwulf uses the byond pager, he's on reddit though.

Accounts still exist in Byond whether or not the person is logged into the pager. This is mine. Here's Apophis'. Here's yours. So who is Shiverwulf?