On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 12:57 AM, Chris Frey <cdf...@foursquare.net> wrote:
Hi Chris, thanks for the input. Gets me thinking ... :-). > I hear ya. :-) I don't have time for much programming these days besides > work related stuff, and general life can be sometimes more interesting > as we get older, or more distracting, or even more demanding. :-) Definitely. Priorities are quite different these days. And so are the reasons for spending time on this project. For me it's no longer something that helps me learn new stuff or to express my ideals, it's more the social component that counts. > As much as it may not make sense to the developer, tarball releases > seem to be an important tangible item for the end user. Source code > is just too scary for them unless it comes in a tarball or a precompiled > binary package. [...] > I've seen the dangers happen in 3 projects just over the past few years. > And redesigns can be project killers. Not much to disagree here. It's obvious that we did fall into the redesign trap and it is kind of the reason why there have been so few releases. It makes not much sense for endusers to update if the changes are not visible on the outside. And especially for a game, if it is not somewhat playable and polished, there isn't much of a grateful audience (unless perhaps there are new features added in regular, short intervals, to keep people interested). I am sure that with the Waste's Edge remake done, we'd have reached a point where additional features could be added at fairly small intervals. E.g. the item/inventory system. The low-level code is all there, just the GUI part is missing. Would not be difficult to actually add items to Waste's Edge that are only mentioned in dialogue. Similar with the Dun Barethsol world map. Just expand around Redwyne Inn and release that for people to explore, even if there is not much to interact with at first. But with that in place it might be a good time to implement combat and once there is something to fight and gain XP, implement leveling and skills. But first, the state were we have Waste's Edge again needs to be reached, at least in my opinion. > Not sure if that helps, or just adds more pressure, but I can testify > that after making an official release... man, the pressure is gone for a > while! :-) And developers need that clean slate every now and then too, > to make developing fun again. Staring at a long todo list that never > seems to budge can wear you down after a while. > > How far away is Adonthell from a release? Any release, even an experimental > one. Something in style of the previous three 0.4 alpha releases (worldtest) could be done anytime. And with an official engine release it would also be possible to have an official tools release (as the tools require the shared libraries from the engine. With a bit more effort, one could possibly build part of the Waste's Edge map using cirrus' new graphics and release a 'game' package as well that could be used with the engine instead of the included test data. The requirements for an actual 0.4 release are listed on the Wiki: http://adonthell.berlios.de/doc/index.php/Tasks:Road_Map#Recreate_Waste.27s_Edge During the website move, I had thrown out the 0.4 alpha releases, as they had been quite dated by that time. So offering another one might be something useful. But will it help to spark interest in contributing? Kai _______________________________________________ Adonthell-devel mailing list Adonthell-devel@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/adonthell-devel