Hello all, For those of you that are not on the AGRIP lists and may not know me, I am the lead developer of AudioQuake and a research student in the area of computer and game accessibility. I am writing to tell you about some recent events that have affected the AGRIP project and my work -- though this email, being sent to gaming lists, is primarily about the AGRIP project, which is overseen by myself and Sabahattin ``Sebby'' Gucukoglu. My hope is that community feedback will once again help us decide where we should be going next.
On the 23rd of August, I was hit by a car whilst on a pedestrian crossing on the way home from work. Since then, I have been in hospital for a month, then at home with my parents for a few weeks. Very fortunately, it is expected that I will be able to walk again (though not for a few months) and I did not sustain any head injuries. I'm on the way to being back online now. I'm returning to university tomorrow, to start getting back into my studies. I've been lucky to get hold of a wheelchair-accessible room in hall that I can stay in until I can walk again. This will take some time. So will catching up with my research work. I am not sure where that leaves us at the moment. I am very keen to do all the things I mentioned that we were planning for the AGRIP project just a few weeks before my accident. However, I have no idea of when I'll be able to get back into active development of AudioQuake, at the rate that such plans would require, as my research schedule has now been blown out of the water. It may take months to get back to where I was. This creates a dilemma -- I always wanted (and still do want) AGRIP to become an application of the core research I'm working on right now and that requires that we have an active community of users. But if I'm unable to do the development work to support such users right now, what will happen? I don't want to see people leave due to lack of improvements. But at the same time, I can't personally make those improvements right now. So, I propose that instead of me doing all the development work from now on, I will work only on providing the community with a completed set of documentation on how to do the development themselves. I will finish the manuals that tell you how to get, build and edit the code -- that's the gamecode and the engine, so you can make modifications to either and create new games from what AudioQuake now is. I will also try to give information on how the statistics collection works (maybe I can finish the update of the stats site too, if things go well, but I'm not sure right now). Thanks very much for your input on the survey we carried out recently before my accident. I will publish the results as soon as I can; I hope you now appreciate why there has been such a delay in doing this. The survey told me that people do want to see some things changed, and a lot of you want to make changes yourselves. Level editing was a big part of this, and I fully intend to continue work on that when I can. But for now, I think the best I can do is give you all the information and help you require to make code-based changes (game mods and engine mods). There are some very talented people in the AGRIP community who're learning the hard way and I feel I should concentrate on providing the documentation to make that an easier learning curve for all of you, now that these people (Cara Quinn being the name that leaps off the top of my head, along with Derek London) have forged the way. I would like to know what people in the community think of this -- it seems to me that this is the only way I can allow the project to evolve, as I simply can't afford the time right now to actively develop it myself (certainly not between all the catch-up I have to do, and the physio, etc). If people are interested in developing their own modifications or even versions of the game, then please let me know and I'll do my best to finish the manuals that will give you all the information on how to do it. For your reference, the current one (not entirely complete) can be found at http://docs.agrip.org.uk/ . Thanks for your time in listening to this. I look forward to becoming as involved as I once was in the Accessible Gaming community again in the not-too-distant future :-). 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.
