Yeah that has been my gripe with P99. I've offered to fix things and write code but the answer is basically "if you care enough you'll figure it out and make a bug report and show us the code changes" or something along those lines. It has also been said "YOU try writing C++ code, it's not easy!" or whatever. So you're basically left to go spend your time making EQEmu changes that may not even be transferable to P99, then you have a bug report and hope someone responds, etc. Except it's obvious that isn't how it works. It's more like you need to go hang out on IRC or Discord or whatever and buddy buddy with people and all that bullshit if you ever want a chance to contribute or even worse go through the Guide program doing tedious bullshit. This is based on anecdotes I've read.
There are hundreds of developers who play on P99 and would contribute but there is no contribution process. Everything is tightly held and controlled for seemingly no reason. For example I make a "bug forum" suggestion that maybe in the year of our Lord 2021 we should be using a bug TRACKER not a bug FORUM for tracking P99 bugs. That way people aren't resubmitting bugs and finding out there is a 3 year old bug report with the same info and no one has anything to say about why it isn't getting fixed. Is it too hard to fix? Not enough proof it needs to be fixed? Nothing. The community gets no input on what bugs are bothering them or even insight into what bugs exist and why they aren't fixed. Is there any response to the bug tracker idea? No. Is there any response to the vast majority of bugs in the bug forum that have evidence? No.
Everyone wouldn't be just arbitrarily making code changes. You fork the code, make your changes, prove they're good and submit it for merge into the master branch reviewed by Nilbog, Rogean, lead devs, etc. This INCLUDES data, zone files, and anything else which can also be managed by versioning tools in this same way.
It seems the only reason this isn't being done is because the information is "secret" but why exactly? Obviously it's their choice but why? Everyone on P99 is known and rehashed now. The project is basically stale. Also a lot of the value on P99 is whatever system they have setup to recreate the patches along classic timeline. That whole part doesn't need to be made public to allow the army of nerds who play here to improve the mechanics, quests, etc.
Like I said it seems rather strange because P99 will die eventually either from stagnating due to this kind of ridiculously slow progress or legal reasons. If the goal is to recreate classic EQ things would be coming along a lot better if people were encouraged to contribute and community was leveraged to help rather than told to wait endlessly.
Here is how you contribute to P99, this one post has all the info from 12 years ago:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=6897
I following that process and proposed revised code in the channeling bug reports thread and got no response. Even if my code is absolute shit for whatever reason a, "Hey, thanks for following the intended process and trying to help submit a code change, your code is shit though, better luck next time." would be nice.
I don't do that because I KNOW it's just ignored. There is this constant lamentation of the lack of help, there are only a few devs, they're volunteers, blah blah blah, but the only effort towards allowing community contribution is a 12 year old bug forum post that is frankly obvious bullshit and is not how you go about becoming an approved developer or getting changes made.
As an side when I reverse engineered the spells file to prove we could change spell effects that was eventually included but why? Things are so arbitrarily chosen for even minimal response. What is the incentive to put in the effort? The spells file change actually took me minimal effort, I put more time into researching the channeling issue, reviewing the code, and talking to others in the bug thread about it. Why bother when it's so unclear if your work will ever get even a passing mention from someone who can use it?
Jibartik talks about UI changes and even mentions "it was a gamble", it shouldn't be a gamble that you invest time in changes and just have to hope it's considered. He even mentions he made it for himself. Well, I can't make channeling source code changes for myself and hope it pays off. There is no use for the work if it just gets ignored. If I'm going to make channeling source changes "for myself" that means I might as well scrape the P99 data and just recreate everything myself and not even bother trying to contribute anything. That is the level of commitment, to me, that I'd have to make for it to be worth it to make any changes that can't be applied without P99 staff otherwise it's just wasted effort like 90% of the bug forum posts which are ignored for years.
P99 is great but man is this shit frustrating and seemingly dumb as fuck. We would have a 10x better server if we got a better contribution pipeline than a 12 year old bug forum post that isn't true.