CM Development and the Eternal Loop

AnCopper · February 23, 2026, 11:09pm

I want to preface this by saying I have genuine respect for the contributors and maintainers who put time into this game for free. This isn’t a “devs bad” post. But I’ve been watching CM’s development cycle long enough to notice a pattern

It goes like this:

Contributor picks up ambitious project, new mechanic, rework, overhaul
PR gets opened, looks promising, community gets excited
Testmerge happens, feedback rolls in, some good, some bad
PR gets pulled for “further work”
Testmerge again a few months later
Gets pulled again
Sits in PR purgatory for 6-12 months
Contributor moves on to a new project
PR closed due to inactivity or contributor request
Repeat forever

The graveyard of PRs that went through multiple testmerges, generated discussion, and then just quietly died is enormous. And the frustrating part isn’t that projects fail, that’s normal in open source development. The frustrating part is the cycle of hope. The community gives feedback, argues about balance, and then it just evaporates.

I don’t have a clean solution for this.

DukeofCagliostro · February 23, 2026, 11:18pm

That is life. We just have to roll with the punches and or pick up where one Dev left off.

Zenith · February 24, 2026, 4:29am

Yeah that’s sadly how things go.

You should post some dead projects here - in hopes someone sees it and wants to continue them.

There’s a few I’ve seen die over the years which looked promising, but yeah I can’t remember them off the top of my head.

Here’s a few I want to come back:

github.com/cmss13-devs/cmss13

Adds Sunsets to Roundstart, adds Sunrises to Marine Victories, and Survs can hear Evo Announcement Screeches now (#6400)

master ← GrrrKitten:sunsets-sunrises-screechs

opened 03:00AM - 08 Jun 24 UTC

GrrrKitten

+354 -10

# About the pull request I'm not gonna lie, im burnt out asf from working… on this PR, so im keeping this super brief. Adds: new special lighting system to handle z-level wide lighting modifications with consistent lighting, this can be used for stuff I made in this PR like sunsets, or it can be used for stuff like lightning strikes (hint hint for the future) -2 new sunsets, one warm and one cold, each last ~280 seconds but you lose visibility ~240 or so seconds -1 new sunrise, very warm, finishes up on a cinematic orange tone around the time the map vote thing pops up, theres a vid -1 new call for survs to hear a special modified version of the evo screech, its pretty cool, its gonna make survs piss themselves cause it kept jumpscaring me during my testing lol, its in the vids sunset is called at round start based on gamemode (only attatched to distress rn, cold maps, space maps, and chances claim get cold sunset, all others get warm sunset) sunrise is called on marine major things like getting spawned, z-transfers, leaving your body, entering a new body, changing alpha (in the case of ghosts or xenos), entering/leaving a cave is all handled within the lighting system so noone gets an unfair advantage/major disadvantage. --- balance implications: humans: pros: -survs have ~3 minutes of good visibility from round start, meaning easier time seeing items and less chance of getting snuck up on -if there is like still a lurker or something delaying but the round end thing has been called, the lack of darkness means itll get killed easier xenos: pros: -survs will probably be a lil overconfident and likely to travel alone -survs will probably be a bit more scared of caves -xenos technically have better visibility in the daytime too for whatever that counts lol the drone horde is coming the drone horde is coming the drone horde is coming --- things that I couldnt test: - I couldnt test if the delaylien marine victory actually called sunset so thats gonna require a live server # Explain why it's good for the game It just looks amazing, just flatout. even the same sunset on two different map entirely changes the feel on both cause of the interaction of colors. walking around as surv you feel yourself slowly becoming disoriented, something about having full light and having it slowly be taken from you somehow is worse than just starting in the pitch dark. the new screeches make you feel HUNTED as surv even when its bright out # Testing Photographs and Procedure Screenshots & Videos I really dont feel like getting a vid on every map but like, the exact same sunset on two different maps looks entirely different. you just gotta experience it to understand Sorry but the videos dont embed <details> **cold sunset on CC** https://streamable.com/9w1h7h **cold sunrise on CC** https://streamable.com/bf39yc **warm sunset on LV** https://streamable.com/1ihsam **warm sunrise on LV** https://streamable.com/hahm94 </details> Like the stuff I make? [![ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/img/githubbutton_sm.svg)](https://ko-fi.com/J3J6102QI0) # Changelog :cl: add: Adds Sunsets to roundstart add: Adds Sunrises to marine victories add: Adds survs being able to hear evo announcement screeches /:cl:

github.com/cmss13-devs/cmss13

New water overlay system (#1593)

master ← kugamo:WaterLayering

opened 09:55AM - 17 Nov 22 UTC

kugamo

+261 -28

## About The Pull Request This PR adds a new way of rendering humans in w…ater, unique from the legacy way of doing it (having static overlays of the turf that the human would render under -- looked especially bad while moving). This method draws the overlay on the mob itself, which looks alot better while moving. The water overlays were broken in the ambient occlusion PR. - [x] Make sure these changes doesn't obliterate the server - [x] Add logic for when laying down in water - [x] redo sprites to not look doo doo - [x] Either decide on no directional movement sprites, or create new system to handle them -~~[ ] Add logic so this all works on xenos too~~ Xenos in a later PR :C 💀 HUGE THANKS TO @fira , helped alot getting this to work nicely ## Why It's Good For The Game Visually appealing, adds to atmosphere and the enviroment of the game. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/16618648/202414163-76420021-177b-402d-9777-c2de9c9220cb.mp4 ## Changelog :cl: refactor: Refactored water overlays so that they render on mob and not on turf. /:cl:

There’s a lot more, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head sadly, and some didn’t make it to the PR stage.

lopz_174 · February 24, 2026, 8:48am

Eh having been a longtime tg player who has kept up with the dev scene and has observed projects of similar size and ambition get developed and go through, it definitely makes me think the development bureaucracy here has some problems which should be addressed and solved

Frozentsbgg · February 24, 2026, 9:32am

wyci

Zenith · February 24, 2026, 9:37am

I mean I think it has a lot to do with the scale of CM’s projects, they’re usually much bigger in scope (the large ones that is). Also compare how many pull requests CM actually gets compared to TG, there’s 137 right now, it was at 180+ a few days ago. I could be wrong but CM maintainers have a lot more on their plate.

hry · February 24, 2026, 10:02am

the bulk of our code standards/style is copypasted from tg’s. the only real difference is that we have specific approval requirements from sprite maintainers and map maintainers. sprite approval is necessary as we have a unique artstyle that is pretty uniform across most of our sprites - tg often suffers from codersprites and a mishmash of artstyles. mapping approval is also quite important with how small mapping changes can completely change the balance of a groundmap