Hi everyone, This discussion over how artwork and units is added to the game is really a matter of philosophical differences in game design. Watching the arguments spiral downhill I would hate to see it end with one of our key developers or artists leaving. I think there are really several issues at the center of these arguments.
For one, many of us have CVS access, and the ability to edit Wesnoth can be a double edge sword. Like the wiki, if people change various parts of the code without coordinating their changes, they can have unexpected consequences with other people's projects/code and mistakes or sloppy coding can breed malcontent. As an open source project I think that sometimes editing the CVS is a bit of a free-for-all, people make changes and it Dave (or another developer) doesn't like it they may reverse the changes, but otherwise it becomes "official". Do we need a more streamlined process for vetting and okaying changes before they happen? Can we assume that the select people with CVS access are all careful enough to do changes that won't break other people's projects? I know it is popular among some developers to sidestep long angsty arguments in the forums over proposed changes by just making the changes and then seeing if anyone notices or complains. Which they usually don't. I don't have CVS access myself, so I admit that I am ignorant of how much vetting Dave (or others) do of changes made by the inside circle before they are implemented. Do people with CVS access need Dave's permissions before they change the game code? The whole point of this paragraph is that the current system seemed fine to me, but I think that we may have a problem if some developer's changes are inadvertently causing problems and making other people to be angry. Onto the bigger issue of including more new artwork with the Wesnoth applications. I'm a scenario designer who loves using new artwork and new units. While i don't need new artwork to imagine new units, (I have many units I'd love to include if I can get the artwork) it is true that new art does help inspire me to create new units. Neorice left behind a panel of random unit art (found here: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4466 ) which has been a great inspiration for tons of new units. So ignoring the discussion of more units being added to the build, beautiful artwork by great artists is always a great thing to have. Unfortunately art of Neorice's caliber is hard to find. When we talk about units, like the dwarven smith, being added to Wesnoth, we're talking about two things: Adding them to campaigns and adding them to the multiplayer game. These are two separate considerations. Any campaign can use whatever extra units they want, there's no limit on what units or stats or art a campaign designer wants to add (I'm ignoring the official campaigns whose content is nominally controlled by Dave). So of course any campaign developer can add units like Disto's elvish horse archer, or the goblin flag bearer or Neorice's undead horseman to their campaign. But adding a unit to the multiplayer game is very different. When we work on balancing units, I think people are more worried about balancing factions then they are about balancing single player campaigns. Because it's easy to re-balance a scenario to fix changes to unit's stats, but balancing multiplayer games is more difficult. So I have no objection to someone adding the dwarvish smith to their campaign, but adding him to the knalgan faction is a different matter entirely. The graphics library on the wiki is a good way of storing art but we have seen that it can be destroyed by a server crash. I think the solution to our problems is to create a repository for artwork and units that can be used by scenario designers and other people. I'm not a big fan of forking the development of Wesnoth, but since it is an open-source project, why can't people create modpacks of extra units or races that they want to add to the game. While images and files could be stored on a website, Dave's idea of a content server is probably the best solution. Easy access to the content server will mean that just like campaigns no longer have to be included with the Wesnoth app for everyone to play them, likewise new art and units don't have to be included with the Wesnoth app for people to use them. Implementing and managing a content server won't be easy, but I think that it is the natural solution to the philosophical debate over how we decide what artwork and images to include with Wesnoth. I can't decide what to include and what not to include, so in essence let's dodge the question and let the users decide what extra content they wish to download. P.S. I know that Shadow has done a lot of hard work on his Dwarven unit. I don't like the idea of feeling required to reward artists for their effort instead of based on the final product. Realistically I know that not continually rejecting an artist's work as not good enough is a great way to make them leave. I don't have huge issues with the unit idea and stats, I'll let other people argue over whether it is too weak or strong. But looking at Neorice's unit images, and Jetryl's and Fmunoz's I think there is still a Wesnoth style that Shadow doesn't have. The dwarven unit just seems wrong in ways I can't explain. I think that it is the look of the hammer, which seems to change shape and length, and is often held by the end of the handle which doesn't look right. The unit seems a bit big for a dwarf, but my biggest issue is the coloring. The armor and body of the dwarf is very busy and somewhat blurred, it's hard to distinguish his shield from his armor from his clothing. Maybe I'd feel better if someone like Jetryl went over it and fixed some of the graphical problems, but that would be unfair to Shadow. I have objection to people adding it to their campaign, but in the current graphical state, I don't think it should be added to the multiplayer game. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250