Hiho, since you are searching for developers I have a few things to suggest, if some are offending, wrong or already explained just ignore, just shooting a bit into the blue since I don't really know much about the current state of development. I am already rather busy with other project (Windstille, Feuerkraft, Pingus, Flexlay, Construo, SuperTux, ...) to contribute anything of greater significance, but I might be able to give a helping hand here and there.
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. 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 Engine/Map: ----------- Same as above, how far is the engine in general? The TODO lists a bunch of point which make it sound like its still mostly a blank sheet of paper, but on the other side there is Wasteedge which is already fully playable. So how much of the old stuff can and will be recyclable? Is there already spec for the map format, tilesize, number of layers and such? How about the display target, plain software rendering or 2D OpenGL based rendering to get fast alpha blending and such? Editor: ------- I know there is a dialog editor, but how much else? Has anybody already planed anything in the case of a map editor? As suggested in some other mail some month ago I might be interested in helping. I have a scriptable game editor which has already proven usefull in SuperTux, netPanzer and a custom paint app, its however not without flaws, still quite hard to compile, based on OpenGL and really for most part more an experimental toy, even so a usefull one, for myself then a release ready thing: * http://flexlay.berlios.de/ Any work on this of course needs some spec for the fileformat first, anything based on multi-layer tilemaps and objects can be patched together in a matter of a few days to be basically working and then slowly grow together with the engine itself. Story: ------ How much is that done, how far is the character development, dialog lines, etc? 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? 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. 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? Short Summary: -------------- I have basically absolutly no idea what the actual status of the 0.4 game is, have enjoyed 0.3 a lot, and might be able to offer a little help when it comes to graphics and the level/map editor. -- WWW: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/ JabberID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 59461927 _______________________________________________ Adonthell-general mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/adonthell-general
