Re: [Adonthell-general] Some general suggestion

[James Nash]

Wow!
Lots of good advice! Thanks.

I'll comment on a few bits I know about...

> Documentation:
> --------------
> There seems to be lots of it, however most seems to be scattered a bit
> far across the webpage and hard to access, ie. the API-docu comes in
> form of a tarball instead of being directly linked, some other docu
> comes in form of PDF files instead of HTML and some task list stuff
> comes in the form of txt files. There also seems to be some secret
> repositories for story and artwork floating around somewhere not
> directly linked from the webpage. To sum up its a bit hard to find out
> what is going on, what the status is and what exactly is to be done. A
> sitemap is missing too, so its a bit easy to miss a link deep down the
> road.
>
> I would suggest to move most or even all development documentation
> into a Wiki, that way it is grouped together and easily editable by
> anybody who wants to help, much easier then LaTeX files which need to
> be converted to PDF. The massive crosslinking nature of Wikis also
> makes it easier to get an overview over a topic. Beside from that a
> Wiki would also allow a clear cut between the main gamer related
> webside and the developer documentation. If needed I can help a bit
> with installing, far from being an expert on the topic, but still have
> a little bit experince with Wikis.

I agree with providing documentation in the same format(s). IMHO there 
should be an HTML version of everything for quick and easy access and 
possibly some PDF versions of some of it too for comfortable offline 
reading and printing.

Not too sure about the Wiki, but perhaps that's because I don't have 
much hands-on experience with them.

However, I have had some thoughts in the past about some neat web 
repository for storylines, characters and graphics. Basically an 
extension to Andrew's plotweb, but perhaps powered by some PHP and a 
database so we can add stuff easily and so people can browse things 
sorted by different criteria (which would be especially useful when we 
have lots of gfx). it would be cool, for example, to have a page for 
each (set of) map graphics with links to related map-graphics, the 
source PNG files, concept art, related map designs, related plot-lines 
and so on.
It's just a vague idea at the moment but when my exams finish in June 
I'll try to come up with something more concrete.

Since I'm a bit of a web geek, I'd be happy to try making something 
like this if there is interest. (I doubt there's any off-the-shelf CMS 
that does this exactly AND uses clean XHTML and CSS (I'm really anal 
about web-standards! :P))


> Graphics:
> ---------
> How far are the graphics for 0.4? I have spotted a few test graphics
> here and there on the mailing list, but how much of the overall
> graphics have been done, needs to be done and is already planed for?
> Not much a great artist myself, but I might be able to give a helping
> hand here and there:
>
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/male9-4.png
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/stone2.png
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/women9-3.png
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/women13-2.jpg

Hey hey! Lookin' good! :)
(Some lucky person has a graphics tablet ;P )

My university work is very demanding at the moment (and has been for a 
long time) so I didn't have much chance to make stuff. I finish in mid 
June and don't start work until October so I should finally have some 
time to devote the Adonthell once again! :D
Hopefully things will be better than now when I work too since there 
won't be asignments and exam revision lingering in my mind after I've 
left work! :D

> Status of Development and the Devolpers:
> ----------------------------------------
> In general, how far is the devolopment, what is readily usable in CVS
> or close to be usable? What would be the estimated time till 0.4 is
> ready for release or how long would it take to get a basic prototype
> up and running? And whats the status of the developers, all busy with
> school, studying and such or is there any larger free timeslot
> available in the coming month?

I'm very busy at the moment but it should get much better in June.

I also had some thoughts for improving the developers' diary (which is 
a nice tool to let ppl know what we're up to):
- Make an RSS feed of it
- Provide some mechanism for developers who have their own personal 
blogs to link them to the diary (if they wish). Again, just a vague 
idea at the moment, but I'm thinking it would be nice that if someone 
had their own blog and they posted something adonthell related they 
could make it automatically appear in the dev diary too (to save them 
posting the same thing twice) - perhaps some kind of SOAP or XML-RPC 
service could do the trick. (I can look into this when I have more 
time)


> Happypenguin's Help Wanted aka. 'GotM':
> ---------------------------------------
> In the Happypenguin forums there is a little project running, called
> 'GotM', every few month 'we' (ie. whoever is interested in helping)
> picks a game and we improve it by various means, new graphics, new
> GUI, fixing bugs, etc:
>
> http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1243
> http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=21
>
> The goals are more or less clearly set before we start and once they
> are reached we move sooner or later on to the next game, normal
> timeframe for the development is ~3 month. The success with that
> approach has been mixed, while SuperTux has made great progress in the
> time and resulted in a fully playable, Pingus hasn't much progressed
> at all (lack of developers/ideas/coordination), Tuxkart on the other
> side has progressed a lot again, but didn't made it into a playable
> release (lack of 3d and physics programmer), currently we are working
> on Lincity which so far runs ok, but we are actually lacking players
> who have experince with the original game:
>
> SuperTux before: http://www.happypenguin.org/images/supertux-shot.gif
> SuperTux after:  http://super-tux.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
>
> TuxKart before: http://tuxkart.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
> TuxKart after:  http://supertuxkart.berlios.de/screenshots.html
>
> Lincity before: http://www.games.ru/games/linux/screenshots/lincity.gif
> Lincity after:  
> http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/lincity-2005-04-21-1.png
>
> Adonthell 0.4 might be a good canditate for Happypenguin's Help
> Wanted, however currently Lincity is still running and a bunch of the
> regular 'Help Wanted' developers might be busy with SuperTux in the
> coming month, so the amount of help might be limited.

Sounds like a good idea.


> IRC Meeting:
> ------------
> To tie it all up I would suggest to have a IRC meeting, say Saturday,
> 30.04.2004, 18:00GMT or whenever it fits most current developers. The
> IRC meeting should also be publically announced on happypenguin.org.
> Channel: #adonthell, Server: irc.freenode.net
>
> BTW. Are any of the developers around in that channel regularly these
> days? I had it in my autojoin quite a long while back, but beside from
> the sporadic meetings it was basically all empty for the rest of the
> time, is that still the case?

Probably. We used to have monthly IRC meetings. Maybe we should bring 
that back - it was fun and productive!


        - James
--
Personal site:
http://cirrus.twiddles.com/