Yep. Works really well. For example we the community can already put out some patch notes for you if you'd like, or actually read the thread I linked earlier. This one is good too: http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/we-patching.59154/ If we can do that why can't you?
To be fair, isn't there usually a shared document/list where the devs from different "departments" jots down what they have done/changed, and that document is what you later look at to compile the patch notes on patch day? (And yes I saw that "the patch notes guy" was on vacation ) Oh and you said to throw insults at you, uuuhhhh, here have some ANGRY MARINES
Man at least you get shinies. As CSM we get...a poison knife. Two placeholder weapons that can't even be used or viewed. One disappointing autocannon that can only be gotten with dollarydoos and I forget what else.
It's cleaning, parsing, and validating all the data, what changes were done and were they changed afterwards, did others change these things as well, what is the end result that is deployed. It's not undocumented stuff. You don't make patch notes by playing the actual patch and figuring out what changed But totally right on the relationship. However, I was home on Steam News all night yesterday monitoring and responding, quite transparently. I'm sorry I wasn't able to read all the forums as well when I was home.
Paper is fine actually. SVN? Git? Any form of version control with changes decription? Srsly? Latest release revision with latest changes in every branch, described in relevant field? Is that really that hard? Ok, if it is, then maybe generalised description of the patch, like we players could do at a glance? We dont need to know every last detail you must know internally, we need to know only things relevant to us. I remember Houman making a patchnote thread with raw patchnotes, he said they are exactly as they are inside a team, and these were best patchnotes for EC i read so far. Official forums are #1 source of info, aint they? At least there should be thread like this one with apology about notes.
Look, you wouldn't be the first software shop to have no version control, no issue tracker, no release engineering process, or whatever things you're lacking. My day job is actually to charge people like you guys lots of money to use my own basic common sense to create a structured process. It's a basically parasitic job that only exists because there is no sense of discipline in the craft of programming - I'm not really proud of what I do, and I'd rather the whole profession become more professional so that it wasn't needed. Still, though, paying me or someone like me a few thousand dollars to diagnose your organizational issues starts to look like a bargain compared to getting into public fights with confused paying customers.
We actually have a far more advanced system for that. We "jot" down things into a project management, bug tracking and and source repository system.
I think that I'll need some whine to go with all this salty cheese... Thanks for the update on the patch notes, the kids where getting out of hand when mommy and daddy arnt home. You could have called us you know?!? Now what about bling? The kids love shiny objects!
