Project Zomboid source code burgled(projectzomboid.com)
projectzomboid.com
Project Zomboid source code burgled
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/10/project-zomboid-burglary-statement/
13 comments
We're Brits, that's just how we talk sometimes (especially when drunk). Don't take it to heart. Although I do think he should have got his thoughts clear and told his mates before making a proper public statement.
As for Paypal, I'd assume they have algorithms taking care of fraud potential and detection. And for the algorithm to be correctly trained, they must have been bitten previously. The hate is just because we always hate them, like Microsoft.
As for Paypal, I'd assume they have algorithms taking care of fraud potential and detection. And for the algorithm to be correctly trained, they must have been bitten previously. The hate is just because we always hate them, like Microsoft.
I don't think being British or drunk has anything justification with acting the way he/they did.
See (Twitter Screenshots): 1) http://i.imgur.com/OrFOh.jpg 2) http://i.imgur.com/ktwot.jpg
Taken from: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/le0pb/lemmy_indie_st...
See (Twitter Screenshots): 1) http://i.imgur.com/OrFOh.jpg 2) http://i.imgur.com/ktwot.jpg
Taken from: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/le0pb/lemmy_indie_st...
Um, I dunno. Did you read his apology too?
Did you ever have your house burgled? It can be quite a lot more upsetting and emotional than just "losing some valuable stuff". It's a violation of your personal living space, some unknown person touched, threw and wrecked your stuff: "had my bedroom violated and invaded and will have to move as I can’t face sleeping in that room any more".
So yes, IMO, that's one of the few perfectly good justifications for getting shitfaced and lashing out at everyone being a cunt because the last thing you want to hear is all the really obvious hindsight "advice" from half the Internet that should bloody mind their own business and that is perfectly fine and acceptable with me. I hope he got it all out of his system.
Did you ever have your house burgled? It can be quite a lot more upsetting and emotional than just "losing some valuable stuff". It's a violation of your personal living space, some unknown person touched, threw and wrecked your stuff: "had my bedroom violated and invaded and will have to move as I can’t face sleeping in that room any more".
So yes, IMO, that's one of the few perfectly good justifications for getting shitfaced and lashing out at everyone being a cunt because the last thing you want to hear is all the really obvious hindsight "advice" from half the Internet that should bloody mind their own business and that is perfectly fine and acceptable with me. I hope he got it all out of his system.
We're Americans. We take it to heart when you say crappy things to us.
> Project Zomboid was regularly backed up from machine to machine, but rarely – sadly and infuriatingly – externally. We have lost an awful lot of work.
I don't want to be an arsehole, but COME ON. Really? No proper backup?
I don't want to be an arsehole, but COME ON. Really? No proper backup?
For years, when I saw that, I was just as judgmental. Then I realized that, in the real world, sometimes backups fall by the wayside.
It shouldn't happen, and for the people responsible for the loss of this data, it never should have. Again though, it's easy to see how caffeine induced coding sessions end up with tons of code and not much else. Those tons of code are PRODUCT, and they're building it. The idea of burglary sounds so far-fetched that it's always easy to put off til tomorrow. And backups took _time_, and _effort_. Time and effort that would have taken away from coding. From building.
Nowadays though, between Github, Dropbox, or any of the million completely painless ways to back up your code, it seems even more egregious that something like this can happen.
Admittedly, I use Dropbox as a convenience more than anything. So that I know a core set of files are available to me no matter what computer I'm on, but it was very natural to fall into the habit of making sure that 'important' documents went in there as well.
If I had to throw this laptop out the window and never see it again, I'd feel relatively assured that between Dropbox and Chrome, I wouldn't lose anything important. I've had a couple of hard drives crash recently, and short of having had to take the time to reinstall some apps that might have been slow downloads, that's about all there was to it.
It shouldn't happen, and for the people responsible for the loss of this data, it never should have. Again though, it's easy to see how caffeine induced coding sessions end up with tons of code and not much else. Those tons of code are PRODUCT, and they're building it. The idea of burglary sounds so far-fetched that it's always easy to put off til tomorrow. And backups took _time_, and _effort_. Time and effort that would have taken away from coding. From building.
Nowadays though, between Github, Dropbox, or any of the million completely painless ways to back up your code, it seems even more egregious that something like this can happen.
Admittedly, I use Dropbox as a convenience more than anything. So that I know a core set of files are available to me no matter what computer I'm on, but it was very natural to fall into the habit of making sure that 'important' documents went in there as well.
If I had to throw this laptop out the window and never see it again, I'd feel relatively assured that between Dropbox and Chrome, I wouldn't lose anything important. I've had a couple of hard drives crash recently, and short of having had to take the time to reinstall some apps that might have been slow downloads, that's about all there was to it.
Sure, it does fall by the wayside, but it's inexcusable. Daily commits to some remote repo are so easy that it basically takes effort not to do them. Installing a backup program is similarly trivial, taking a few minutes.
I can't fathom developers not having backups. Hell, I back everything up to SpiderOak and then to my RAIDed NAS at home which, again, goes to SpiderOak and S3. It's not that I'm paranoid, it's just that they're so easy to set up and cheap to run that I just left them there when the new thing came.
I can't fathom developers not having backups. Hell, I back everything up to SpiderOak and then to my RAIDed NAS at home which, again, goes to SpiderOak and S3. It's not that I'm paranoid, it's just that they're so easy to set up and cheap to run that I just left them there when the new thing came.
Outside of the first sentence, I do nothing but agree with you.
Edit: I just re-read what I posted in this comment, and I think I was unclear. Just stating that my initial response was in agreement with yours, though that might have been easy to miss if you were skimming.
Edit: I just re-read what I posted in this comment, and I think I was unclear. Just stating that my initial response was in agreement with yours, though that might have been easy to miss if you were skimming.
Well, they're so easy once you've taken the time to get your head around how to set them up. Before you've engaged in that minimal amount of shaving, though, it's just one more freaking detail you don't have time for.
Well the point is, he said they DID make backups, so they did set it up and made time for it.
It's just that making backups is kind of useless if you don't store them in a separate physical location. For just about every scenario in which you'd conceivably need a backup, except for "oops I accidentally did `rm / -rf`", they might as well have backed it up to `/dev/null` and save themselves some diskspace.
That said, I know how much this sucks (actually not because I've always made proper backups, but let's say I can imagine), I'm saying this more as a warning to everybody else who might be reading this, not to bash them over their heads about their mistake.
They got burgled, FFS, I feel for those poor fellows, that really sucks.
It's just that making backups is kind of useless if you don't store them in a separate physical location. For just about every scenario in which you'd conceivably need a backup, except for "oops I accidentally did `rm / -rf`", they might as well have backed it up to `/dev/null` and save themselves some diskspace.
That said, I know how much this sucks (actually not because I've always made proper backups, but let's say I can imagine), I'm saying this more as a warning to everybody else who might be reading this, not to bash them over their heads about their mistake.
They got burgled, FFS, I feel for those poor fellows, that really sucks.
> They got burgled, FFS, I feel for those poor fellows, that really sucks.
Yes. For the avoidance of all doubt (and I thought it went without saying) I feel sorry for them too; being robbed is really rough and losing a bunch of work because of it is also really rough.
And insurance is such a scam that I'd be curious to know if they get any money or if their insurance refuses to pay out.
Yes. For the avoidance of all doubt (and I thought it went without saying) I feel sorry for them too; being robbed is really rough and losing a bunch of work because of it is also really rough.
And insurance is such a scam that I'd be curious to know if they get any money or if their insurance refuses to pay out.
I'm installing (among other things) backup systems. People simply don't backup, unless they've suffered an important data loss at some point. Sad state of the matter.
I assume this is game source?
Why was it not in an externally hosted repository?
Why was it not in an externally hosted repository?
Because game source is huge. Absolutely huge.
A bunch of friends and I wrote a rather simple game in Unity3D and our repos went to become more than 2GB.
It is not the code which isn't usually that large but you have to consider the assets, especially images (3D models usually aren't that bad, but they can still run up in a couple of MB), sound and (if you are unlucky) uncompressed video.
At too it that the binary assets can't really be stored in a version control system except as snapshots and you can see the problem.
A bunch of friends and I wrote a rather simple game in Unity3D and our repos went to become more than 2GB.
It is not the code which isn't usually that large but you have to consider the assets, especially images (3D models usually aren't that bad, but they can still run up in a couple of MB), sound and (if you are unlucky) uncompressed video.
At too it that the binary assets can't really be stored in a version control system except as snapshots and you can see the problem.
Come on now, size is no excuse, we're using subversion and git with Unity projects that are well north of 2 GB.
Use git-submodule for your sounds and videos and other binary blobs.
Unity makes their own asset server for people who aren't comfortable with git or svn -- there's plenty of debate on the quality of this option, and it's more money, but it's definitely cheaper than losing your entire game.
Use git-submodule for your sounds and videos and other binary blobs.
Unity makes their own asset server for people who aren't comfortable with git or svn -- there's plenty of debate on the quality of this option, and it's more money, but it's definitely cheaper than losing your entire game.
Isn't that the problem that version control has solved? Once the first commit is done you're just uploading deltas/changesets, so the size of the project doesn't really matter.
The deltas weren't exactly small either. Change one animation or move one arm a bit and the model file change completely.
And you often have more than one change at a time.
As for two gigabytes not being much I don't think their repos is that small. Most of us would properly have no issue downloading it, but you have to upload them (and DSL isn't symetric) and you have to find some place that is willing to host those gigantic repositories.
And you often have more than one change at a time.
As for two gigabytes not being much I don't think their repos is that small. Most of us would properly have no issue downloading it, but you have to upload them (and DSL isn't symetric) and you have to find some place that is willing to host those gigantic repositories.
Most version control systems are only suitable for smaller files, not for graphical assets which tend to be much bigger and even if the system supports large files, files using these formats generates big diffs even for smaller changes.
You can even put 2GB on a SD card that you keep at home. As long as you keep the backup in a different location as the original.
Or use an external HD, which are a bit faster and also bigger.
Though SD cards are nearly indestructible, you can drop em or drive your car over them, the one in my camera even survived my house burning down, so yeah.
Or use an external HD, which are a bit faster and also bigger.
Though SD cards are nearly indestructible, you can drop em or drive your car over them, the one in my camera even survived my house burning down, so yeah.
Why is 2GB a problem? I use more than that almost every day downloading movies & TV shows...
Then you can't afford not to pay for Dropbox's, or some other service's, 50GB or 100GB plans.
People only learn the value of backups when they have their first significant data loss. This is their time.
Multiple copies, multiple locations.
Multiple copies, multiple locations.
Definitely. It also becomes a nightmare you really don't want to lose quality development time to when you try and introduce a new workflow system mid- or late-project.
We have this problem at work where our repos aren't set up right (basically everything going into subdirectories of one monolithic repo) and a side-effect is it's difficult for us to figure out a good backup and deployment system (so we do it by hand).
It's an easy thing to sort out when just starting a new project, but when you're half way through it and the deadlines are coming close it's no longer a priority, just an annoyance you think you'll get around to later.
Add to that the fact that you might not really consider burglary to be a plausible threat, and that they say they did do backups between computers, it seems they just accounted for the more real threats (hardware failure), thought that system worked well for them, and left it at that.
We have this problem at work where our repos aren't set up right (basically everything going into subdirectories of one monolithic repo) and a side-effect is it's difficult for us to figure out a good backup and deployment system (so we do it by hand).
It's an easy thing to sort out when just starting a new project, but when you're half way through it and the deadlines are coming close it's no longer a priority, just an annoyance you think you'll get around to later.
Add to that the fact that you might not really consider burglary to be a plausible threat, and that they say they did do backups between computers, it seems they just accounted for the more real threats (hardware failure), thought that system worked well for them, and left it at that.
I can understand if this is a personal project that you'll eventually release for free, but the day you begin accepting/taking money you need to be more responsible.
In this day in age there are hundreds of options available whether it's backing up online, storing on an FTP, emailing it to yourself, or copying to CDs, DVDs, thumbdrives and storing it elsewhere (security notwithstanding). The last step would have even worked onsite because people are less likely to steal the little stuff like this.
In this day in age there are hundreds of options available whether it's backing up online, storing on an FTP, emailing it to yourself, or copying to CDs, DVDs, thumbdrives and storing it elsewhere (security notwithstanding). The last step would have even worked onsite because people are less likely to steal the little stuff like this.
Looks like one of the team has offered some apology / explanation: http://www.theindiestone.com/lemmy/index.php/2011/10/16/fina...
Yet another sad lesson in backups. As they've now learnt, you need offsite backups. It's not just burglary. What if the building burnt down? What if there was a simultaneous hardware failure? Flood damage? There are any number of things that can affect an entire site. You gotta have important code somewhere else, so if one day you turn up and the entire building is a charred, smouldering shell, you're still OK.
I back up important code to Dropbox, and if your content is over 2GB, you can't afford not to pay a little for the 50GB or 100GB plans.
I back up important code to Dropbox, and if your content is over 2GB, you can't afford not to pay a little for the 50GB or 100GB plans.
I spend $12/month on github. I think Atlassian now even has free private repos. You're simply not taking taking basic precautions by not doing an offsite backup.
If you work on a laptop like me, for example, just assume one day you'll be in a public place and when you turn around your laptop will be gone.
If you work on a laptop like me, for example, just assume one day you'll be in a public place and when you turn around your laptop will be gone.
That's a crying shame. Project Zomboid is shaping up to be an excellent game. I was looking forward to seeing the next update.
Absolutely related to this: Use an automated off-site backup system. Something like CrashPlan[1] - automatic, cheap, both on-site and off-site backups.
[1] http://www.crashplan.com/
[1] http://www.crashplan.com/
There is quite a bit of plausible speculation (on reddit, et al) that this is just a story invented to get out of finishing the game. This sort of thing happens fairly often in the indie game & game mod scene.
This sort of thing happens fairly often in the
indie game & game mod scene.
Judging from the post on their homepage they're not stopping development.
What the hell, not even one external git repo?
Didn't push the repo to an external host?
Fucking amateur; if these kids are twice as good at designing games as they are developing code, the main gameplay mechanic will be your characters ability to shit in it's own hand.
Fucking amateur; if these kids are twice as good at designing games as they are developing code, the main gameplay mechanic will be your characters ability to shit in it's own hand.
Unrelated to that, the linked developers' Twitter accounts seem to be full of pretty nasty anti-customer messages [2].
> Fucking amazing. Apparently, it's our fault for being burgled. Fuckers can keep their FPS's, what's the point? Fuckers.
> Don't like our game? Don't fucking buy it. Revelling in us getting fucking burgled is a bit fucking low.
1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3088284
2: http://twitter.com/#!/CaptainBinky