[Underware-devel] Meeting 07 January 2004

[Loic Dachary]

        Hi,

        We had a meeting yesterday where we mainly debated the various
elements of the current mess. Noone found a major drawback in the
current approach and we keep going as fast as possible until all the
major building blocks are represented and working together.

        The cleanup phase is not too far away (architecture, errors,
packaging and collecting documentation), next week most certainly.
The signal of cleanup will be when a networked sample pong game has
been played with two animated characters hearing the ball bouncing on
the table. It would be a pity to cleanup something that cannot be
played, even if the gameplay is dramatically limited ;-)

        Cheers,

Meeting summary -------------------------------------------------------------

Animated characters
    CAL3D is an acceptable format for now

New test data integrated
    3DS load by OSG is limited (no dummies, no light, fog)

Data format
     An underware specific data format bind together
     3DS or CAL3D data files. It will probably evolve
     into a standalone 3D format. For the time being,
     mixing various formats has no major drawbacks and
     provides the minimal functionalities.

Ametista
     application2d is the class that launches the applications
     and displays the associated window into the game.
     The HUD display is hacked in PongScene and separate the
     scenegraph of the 2D applications from the scenegraph of
     the game.

Code is back on Savannah
     The CVS/viewcvs is available. File download area is still  
     unavailable.

Network code startup
     A server will be made based on twisted. Each pong player
     connects to the server. It sends its paddle movements and
     receives the other player paddle movements.

Graphics
     A graphical counter (a bar with balls), one for each player
     is drawn next to each player and is used to count the points.

Interfaces (prospective)
     Alternatives: Toolkit 3D, Toolkit 2D, 3D scene with
     associated behaviours. Ametista solves the headache
     of sophisticated toolkits for applications that are
     essentially 2D based such as the chat. For the remaining
     in-game interface needs, we will probably test-try the
     different approaches. 

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