With our first release out the door, and mostly positive feedback so far,
it's time for us to decide what to do next. This project means different
things to different people, but ultimately we've gotta settle on what it
is we want to do or we risk running around in circles. We've seen it
before with other projects - it ain't pretty.
So what do you want? Now's a good time to reply with a long wishlist.
Comments on mine welcome to get things started:
- SDL sound(!!)
I'm working on that now that I have finished quakedef changes to -nq,
so hopefully in a day or so I'll have something that at least works to
share with all of you. This much needs to be in our next release!
- MacOS X support
Since we now have someone crazy enough to make it work..
- proper translation colors, especially in -nq
LordHavoc reminded us how important this is, he's right. He also
happens to have code for it, what a coincidence! =)
- one internal structure for targa, pcx, qpic, whatever
Our code uses qpic_t, glpic_t, targa, and pcx formats inconsistantly as
it is. While I'm not sure SDL_surface is the way we should go for this
(it's kinda bloated for OpenGL usage), if you look at SDL_image you
will find that it is very good at making it very easy to support just
about any graphics format in just about any place. We should do the
same.
- SDL_RWops usage
This is just such a cool design, and so simple too... Simply put, it
makes accessing a file work the same way whether the access is to a
file, a chunk of memory, a pak file, a zip file, whatever.. Given our
stated goals of 100% compatibility and simplification of the code, this
will certainly help the latter without compromising the former.
- Better particles
As fast as our engine is today, its particles are still the same, ugly,
slow particles used by the original GLQuake! Now the fact that we
still have that monstrosity has made some users very happy. They like
the dot particles, gods know why. However, the majority of people,
including myself, want to have something that runs faster and looks
nicer. We have no shortage of talented people who can provide a better
option for those of us who want it, yes?
- Particle torches
This has been done expensively and it has been done cheaply. Both look
nifty enough, but the cheap implementation should be implemented. It's
a pretty evil hack, but damn it looks so much better than those blocky,
dull, interpolated flames we have now.
- Win32 server console/tray
If you've seen Q3A in win32, it has a console which kinda looks like
XChat in Linux with a console, an inout line, and a couple clipboard
type buttons. I don't recall offhand if there were menus. This would
be much better than anything the code can currently do IMO. It'd also
be nice if the thing worked with the tray and would ask to confirm if
you try to close the window while users are connected to the server.
Similar GUI things are possible for other platforms, but for Win32 that
kind of thing is very important.
- toggle for Sys_Printf prettyprinting
The [xx] stuff is ugly, but useful for debugging purposes. I'd suggest
a Cvar between that and a translation table.
- Support for external ents
Kinda like a .lit file but for map entities. Preferably in some format
which is not insanely hard to edit. If you want to tweak a map, tweak
the map!
- Ignore feature for spammers
Just as there are morons on irc, there are morons on quake servers. An
ignore by name/usernum would be nice. Clearly unignore is also needed
and we'd have to deal with the fact that usernum may change, etc.
- Big console font
C'mon, this is me we're talking about here.
- New menus
Something preferably without 3 functions per menu with lots of
hardcodings would be nice.
- QW including a server
Seperate server is good, and I'd like that for NQ as well, but putting
the server into the client is very important to the future of basing
anything off of QW's code.
Not all of this is likely to happen for 0.2.0, but I'd like to see as much
of it as possible. Priorities have not been assigned and in fact can't be
until everything's out on the table.
--
Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Free software developer
* knghtbrd ponders how to scare the living shit out of 87 people at once..
<knghtbrd> AHH! I can do it in 3 words!:
<knghtbrd> Microsoft Visual COBOL.
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