Have a "Yes, AND..." attitude

GrangerHub Meta
6

That doesn’t prove your point “that there’s no use discussing ideas.” It is a good thing that there is a difference between discussing ideas and implementing them because there is no reason to feel threatened from the mere discussion of ideas (whether they are great ideas, bad ideas, or somewhere in-between).

However, while most ideas won’t be implemented, some good ideas are needed to be created in order for anything new to be implemented, this is true of any project.

A lot of people have a hard time recognizing the value of a potentially revolutionary idea until it is fully developed, implemented, and already yielding results. The people who actually make good ideas a reality are not afraid to take risks, nor to get their hands dirty exploring through bad ideas to find the good ideas, nor to help the potentially awesome ideas mature.

That is not to say that there would still be many things implemented in projects that are found after testing that they turned out to be bad ideas, or at the very least needs to be improved, but that is all part of the development process.

I’m not assuming that everyone wants a better game, and I don’t expect everyone to participate. But everyone who does participate does have something to gain, which the two reasons I gave above (working on a fun hobby, and playing a more fun game). While currently the GrangerHub development team is working on Tremulous 1.3 with closed source development, we will be releasing that code when it is ready, and then anyone who has the skills and interest could work on the new code independently from GrangerHub if they wanted to. Tremulous does not belong to GrangerHub, Tremulous belongs to the Tremulous community.

Of course there are players that prefer playing 1.1 vanilla over new game plays and that is why we are porting 1.1 vanilla game play as a game mode in 1.3 to cater to their interests in Tremulous, but even those players would generally appreciate the tons of bugs fixes, and non-gameplay related enhancements/features that are going to be included in 1.3 regardless of the game mode.

It is important to keep in mind that one of the main reasons the Tremulous community dwindled over the years was because the original Tremulous developers didn’t follow through on a new release and stopped developing Tremulous. In order to have a chance to regain a lot of those old players, and gain even more new players Tremulous development needs to resume (which we are doing). Tremulous needs to move towards the future in order to have a future. To achieve this Tremulous needs new awesome ideas.

If someone has no interest in our work yielding new good results, there is nothing wrong with that, that doesn’t make them a bad person, and they don’t have to participate in GrangerHub’s projects.

That is not a quote from any art/philosophy class, that is reality, and any project that doesn’t understand that reality will fail sooner or later.

The “Yes, AND…” attitude is actually more applicable in some places than others. While it can be helpful to always exhibit it to some degree, it is most useful in brainstorming sessions. After ideas are formed and implementation is considered, and even tests are done actually disagreement, debate, and constructive criticism would be more useful.

At GrangerHub we created The Evil Think Tank category to be one of the designated creative brainstorming powerhouses, and the “Yes, AND…” attitude is more useful there than in many other places. People don’t have to participate in that category if they don’t want, but if they choose to participate there it is best for them to approach with an open mind and don’t have a weak stomach for the weird, the crazy, the outlandish, the revolutionary, nor the ingenious.

The bottom line is loosen up, don’t take things too seriously, and don’t be afraid to allow your mind wonder once in awhile, all of this is about a game after all.

7

Whatever sparky, just keep in mind that you reap what you sow, and if you tell people to “allow their minds to wonder” you’re going to get terrible ideas out of those people. If you tell people to just fuck around a bit with an idea, then be condescending to anyone that speaks up against said idea, you shouldn’t be surprised that noone plays on test7341.

8

I expect to see “terrible” ideas, there is nothing wrong with that, because I also expect to see good ideas and awesome ideas in the mix as well. That is how brainstorming works, even if just 1% leads to awesome results, it is worth it.

Again the “Yes, AND…” attitude is primarily about generating ideas in the brainstorming phase (which is the primary purpose of the Evil Genius Think Tank category), analyzing ideas to determine the likelihood of the quality of ideas is important as well, but that occurs after brainstorming (generally in all other categories on the forums).

Some people prefer analyzing over brainstorming, some people prefer brainstorming over analyzing, some people prefer them equally. Both roles are important and great things can result if the two roles work together harmoniously in a project.

9

yes and i like video games

1 Like
10

Test7341 is a test server, is not designed to be played like a regular one, nevertheless the days appointed to test the new features in the server, a lot of people show up. Just last saturday we got a 8v8 game going, with most people being non admin players (regulars from pub) which wanted to see the new features that are being added in trem. Sorry for being off-topic but the above statement of noone plays on test7341 had to be clarified.

1 Like
11

And the Saturday before that we had a bunch of 20 vs 20 games.

Exactly, test7341 is meant to be a development server where new bugs are to be expected, and new features/enhancement are experimented with, which might demonstrate to be good new features/enhancements, or features/enhancements in need of improvement, or feature/enhancements that need to be scrapped completely. Development is a process that involves taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from them. It is a necessary process that yields great results in the end.

12

wtf is the right mindset ?

saying „fuck off” when i have an issue with someone sounds pretty positive for me.

what if someone is WRONG, but thinks that he’s on to something ?

what if someone is WRONG, with making it personal ?

in other words: only criticize an idea after it has been created. if u do not comply, ur life shall be wasted.

what is the prior stage of the analysis ? nah, that doesn’t make sense. here, „analysis” must include „creation of an idea (prior stage)”, and then there’s „destruction of the idea (later stage)”.

13

trollface.jpg points at an open manhole

14

If we are talking about a situation that calls for creativity, that would be the “Yes, AND” attitude.

How?

See:

It is okay for people to be wrong, without making it personal.

But even “wrong” ideas could inspire potentially good ideas.

Here wrong is primarily referring to being wrong about a concept, as opposed to taking a wrong action by implementing a wrong concept. Which goes back to how considering a concept is not the same as implementing it.

Your life may not be wasted, but the potential creative results of a brainstorming session might be.

Actually I wasn’t referring to different stages of analysis, I was referring to analysis as a stage. Analysis is about breaking something down into basic pieces and investigating those pieces and their relationships with each other. However, a concept must first be conceived in order for it to be analyzed. That is where the prior stage of creative brainstorming comes in.

Yes, AND… less build a vehicle to safely traverse that portal to heaven and bring some sandwiches in case we get hungry along the journey.

considering a concept is not the same as implementing it.

15

baseless. how about „noted (will later say whether u r awesome or should die). <creative_shit>” ? how about „<creative_shit>” ?

that’s how my personal scoring system works.

but what if he’s going on a WRONGness spree, where the WRONGness is due to the reliance on the initial, WRONG hypothesis ? waste of effort must be saved…

the „ideaness” within a message cannot be WRONG. the WRONGness comes from the claiming element. for example:

  • „flying tyrant !” cannot be WRONG; well, at most for the arguable part that the presenter should have displayed more diligence to avoid repeating frequent proposals.
  • in a game balancing thread, „make granger have +10 hp” can be called WRONG for the carried claim (supposedly not explicitly disclaimed) that the change would be a balancer.

in other words, it makes hardly any sense to say „to be WRONG, making it personal”. the text probably should have been:
„It is okay for people to be wrong, so express that he/she is WRONG without making it personal.”

now, u do realize that an idea cannot be criticized before it has been created, right ?

so first conceive the idea (first post), and wait for analysis to drip in ?

16

Again, in brainstorming, “wrong” concepts are not necessarily wasted as they can ultimately lead to the inspiration of good ideas. We have plenty of room for plenty of posts with “wrong” concepts. As long as it is all well organized we can go back and search for any good ideas that are buried in “wrongness” piles.

The guideline to post stuff related to an existing topic in the existing topic instead of creating a new repeated topic still applies. We ecnourage necroing old topics on these forums :wink: .

For creative brainstorming, in general suggesting finetuned values is kinda boring I admit, and that is more for actually testing in-game, however a suggestion along the lines of increase the granger’s speed 5 times, increase the granger’s claw rate and spit rate 20 times can be very interesting (I tried that a few times btw, complete destruction resulted from this not so defenseless granger :wink: )

That sounds approriate, although it is kinda outside the “Yes, AND…” concept for brainstorming and more related to disagreeing without exhibiting personal attacks.

Ideas that are still in development can be criticized before they are fully formulated, which may result in the discouragement of the formulation of those ideas being completed, and thus the unavalaibility of the fully formulated idea to be analyzed.

Since we are talking about collaboration in brainstorming, and in a forum medium one post is generally done by one player, a brainstorming session in a forum topic may require a long series of posts for the idea(s) in a given topic to be fully formulated.

17

You can always use “Yes, and” in accordance with the code of conduct whilst using obvious sarcasm to disagree. “Yes, and we should have advanced tyrants with wallwalking, fireballs and 800 hps.”

18

The F server’s rants had wall walking and the Edge based gpp mods had rant that shot fire balls our of their belly region. Regarding the 800 hp, I haven’t seen that yet, but for swirl mode we are going to try something similar to the bp reserve system, as an hp reserve system for the aliens.

(sorry for ruining your sarcasm⸮)

19

Ahh memories of F back in '13, '14.

The problem with wallwalking rants was that surfaces were generally harder to climb and the camera would freak out. Also they could easily escape humans, even if they had faster jetpacks than the original qvm.

20

this convo is leading nowhere.

how to determine when a given (partial) idea has been fully brainstormed, and how to calculate the (expected) number of posts needed to finish the (partial) idea ?

how about separating brainstorming threads from analysis threads ?

if there will be plenty of brainstorming and criticism, a corrected, extracted and, most importantly, rethought formulation would need to be posted anyway. this constitutes brainstorming after analysis. why not create new, fresh versions of the thread (as subthreads) for each proposed reformulation ?

otherwise, since there will be mixtures of brainstorming and criticism, why not just ignore analysis and continue brainstorming ?

21

That can be done, but psychologically isn’t as optimal for collaborative brainstorming as pure brainstorming without analysis, if the maximal generation of new ideas is the primary objective.

“Yes, AND…” is applicable primarily to purely brainstorming to enhance the brainstorming. But analysis doesn’t necessarily have the effect of completely stopping everyone from brainstorming while analysis is occurring, as determining what is wrong with a concept before analysis is complete could inspire further brainstorming. Also, as you have suggested, the final results of a given analysis could result in inspiration of further brainstorming.

Brainstorming could hinder analysis if it gets too far away from the original topic of the analysis in a way that the analysis is distracted.

Discourse has what it calls linked topics, which allows you to create a new topic that is in part a reply to a post in a thread where such a reply would be considered off-topic. These linked topics are created by clicking on “Reply as linked Topic” locate to the right of each post.

So perhaps the best approach on the forums is to keep the topics in the “Evil Genius Think Tank” category purely brainstorming topics, allow topics outside of that category to have a mix of analysis and brainstorming, but have a/some new linked topic(s) created if the brainstorming in a given “brainstorming/analysis mix” topic starts to get off topic.

The “mixed” topics could start as a linked topic from a purely brainstorming topic (but doesn’t have to).

It is possible for a purely brainstorming topic to get off-topic requiring a/some new purely brainstorming linked topic(s) to be created, but as the subject of purely brainstorming topics tends to be more abstract, the requirements for determining if you are on-topic is not as rigid as with other kinds of topics.

22

first: which one is brainstorming and which one is analysis ?

  • flying tyrant
  • flying everything
  • not for current maps
  • needs new maps
  • make new maps
23

Real Talk:

This should be a thing.

2 Likes
24

The answer is Yes. All of these can be brainstormed, including any that are inherently analytic (“not for current maps”, and “needs new maps”, both pretext the question: “what map?”)

For instance: all flying things, including tyrants, may not need no stinkin’ polygons to walk on. Flying tyrant vs. jetpack could be in deep space (zero-gravity) or underwater even, and just use a skybox and otherwise not have a “map”.

25

that is correct ! we hereby agree that everything counts as brainstorming (and analysis, but that’s beside the point), and thus that the „Have a „Yes, AND…” attitude” rule is superfluous.