Hello everyone and a very big thanks for the feedback so far on our survey. We will publish the detailed results when we believe everyone that wants to has had their say. In the meantime, some news from us about what we've got so far (be prepared for cool stuff to be mentioned)...
This e-mail is quite big so I will tell you what it covers. We can discuss individual parts in separate threads at a later date. That date will probably be around the start of August, as that is when I return from all the conferences I'm going to this academic year. So please bear in mind that this is all about stuff we're planning, and not stuff that will happen any time in the next few months (or even this year, for some of it). It is, however, all very cool and has been prompted by the answers we've got so far from the survey, so I wanted to share it with you soon. Please give us feedback on if you think the plans are sane, so we can avoid wasting our and your time, as well as ensuring we do new stuff that is worthwhile for the whole AG community, not just our little part of it. I'm going to briefly discuss news in the following areas: * Time spent on AGRIP * ``Customer'' Support * AQ development * Stats development * Future new engine development * Future map editor development * Improved development process Here goes... !!! Time Spent on AGRIP My workload since October last year has increased to the point where I felt it was becoming impossible to maintain, let alone develop, AQ and the rest of the AGRIP project. The same thing has happened to Sebby. However, a large percentage of answers indicated that most of our users want to see development continue and grow to realise all of our roadmap. For a number of reasons, this has meant that AGRIP's goals and those of my work may be slightly closer than I was thinking. I'm going to try spending a little more time on AGRIP when I return from the conferences I'm going to, at the start of August. If by the end of summer, things are still going well for both my work and AGRIP because of this, I will do my best to keep that time investment going. That, along with any help we get from the community (*stares right at you* ;-)) along the way could ensure that the cool stuff this e-mail's about will happen. I am interested in improving the situation further by streamlining several aspects of the way we do things and possibly recruiting members of the community to help us do things like supporting users. On the development side of things, we could look into sharing out development, or at least making better use of the contributions people have made. !!! ``Customer'' Support We are currently looking into web-based/e-mail-based systems to improve the support you're getting from us. As our time is limited, it would be handy to have some extra help here and that would definitely require a centralised system to be put in place. Even if nobody is able to help out, at least it will enable us to track what types of bugs, problems, support people require and if we've followed it up yet (currently that's more difficult than we imagined). Please let us know if you have suggestions for the support system and if you'd be interested in helping us out (remember, this is all done in our spare time). !!! AQ Development This is planned to continue, as per the roadmap. !!! Stats Development I'm working (and have been for some time) on improving the stats system. The new system is not yet ready but is getting there. It will support the authentication and clans too. It should also be more accessible. Later on I will continue looking for more up-to-date / scalable solutions for future games and projects we get involved in. I would like to see the whole thing written as a mod_python web application with a nice database back-end. This would take years, however, so we're starting small with a better re-implementation of what we've got (where better is equal to more extendable and easier to maintain and redistribute for others who want to use it). !!! Future New Engine Development We're thinking about what comes next after AQ -- your suggestions would be much appreciated. We want to do another FPS at the moment... which one should it be, and why? Bear in mind that a finished product is at least a year away, dependant on how much help we get from the community. It should also be an Open Source game engine, so that we can ensure you get all the freedoms you have with AQ (sadly this discounts Unreal Tournament for the meantime). Note that AQ is not going away any time soon -- we are looking for very early ideas as to which future games you'd like to see (or hear, touch, ...) !!! Future Map Editor Development We will be working on this at some point. It is my hope it'll happen before the above section, so it can be used for AQ. Lots of you asked for this and I would like to see it applicable to other accessible games too -- it's up to developers of those games to get in touch so we can work out how, closer to the time. I will of course be publicising this on the appropriate developers' lists when the time is right. !!! Improved Development Process There are lots of ways we are starting to improve the process; making more code available for you all, trying new means of supporting users and beginning to document cool stuff like auto-installing modifications and so on. If you feel there are any major omissions or mistakes being made, please let us know. Thanks in advance! !!! The End Once again, a huge thank you to all those that filled in the survey so far, as well as all those who are about to :-). It has helped tremendously to see exactly what we are doing right and wrong and where we should be going next. I'm pleased that I am now able to spend a little more time on the project and really do look forward to seeing these plans come to fruition. Thanks for reading this; I hope that it has allayed any concerns you may have had about what direction we're going in. I also hope it will generate some discussion about things you'd like to see improve and how, now that we seem to be at an appropriate point in the history of the project. I look forward to really getting my teeth into this at the start of August (in the mean time, I'll keep up with the discussion)... best regards, -- Matthew T. Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
