Meeting 2006-10-07

Agenda

Please clearly label who suggested each item on the agenda.

1. Recent development(s) [static point]
2. Follow up on previous meeting: Meeting 2006-09-23#Summary. [static point]
   1. Coordinators (wiki page)
   2. anyone able to create a game?
   3. remember new frontpage
   4. moving static content (do we have all-clear from infra?)
   5. remember world editing (how is ember coming along?)
   6. what do we think of the current content toolchain (seeing how instructions are available), anything need improvement?
3. Where are we lacking? [static point]

Summary

Notes taken by Demitar and summary wikified by zzorn.

Recent development(s) [static point]

AlRiddoch has released a new cyphesis version with bugfixes, api cleanups and log rotation. Rumour has it he's also working on a web administration interface.

Simon has updated sear to the current release of guichan.

Zzorn, Kai and Kai's concept artist friend have been discussing dipviras. The Dipviras page has been updated based on the email discussions.

Erik has added entity movement to ember: you grab an entity and move it with your mouse, mouse wheel will rotate it. (This can also be used to admin with the appropriate avatar.) And is currently working on the ability for admins to edit any attribute of entities. All in all focusing on providing world creator tools.

<mithro> btw - on infra news I currently hold worldforge.info....

Follow up on previous meeting: Meeting 2006-09-23#Summary. [static point]

Coordinators (wiki page) [next meeting]

Coordinators exists but still needs to be filled in by more people. One helpful thing it does is that it provides a mapping between irc nicks and projects.

anyone able to create a game? [next meeting, kai]

Kai has some ideas. In particular to make the world more alive when people log in and look around. For instance npcs going about their business. This could include an inn where the merchants go in the evening also the farmer could grow beet on the fields. The main issue right now is the (lack of) pathfinding, npcs try to walk in a straight line and get stuck.

moving static content (do we have all-clear from infra?) [next meeting]

Kai explained that Bear actually started cleaning up a while back.

The suggested procedure for this is 1) pick a piece of content on the website. 2) decide if it's still valid 3) if not, move it to an attic area. if it is, decide if it is information that changes alot. if it is, move to attic and create appropriate wiki page. History of what pages have been reviewed will be kept on ... .

A lot of discussion ensued on both technical and esthetical matters.

[next meeting]

• New website design?
• What content should be hosted where - voilatile, blog, front site?
• What website solution should we use?

remember world editing (how is ember coming along?) [next meeting]

(See status update above.)

• terrain editing; it's possible to edit the terrain
• entity creation: it's possible to create new entities of any type
• entity editing: it's possible to move entities, but not to edit their attributes
• model editing: the model editor allows you to edit every aspects of model definitions except animations. That includes creating new model defintions, adding and removing meshes, defining materials.

Given server side persistence or export we could start building some game environments.

what do we think of the current content toolchain (seeing how instructions are available), anything need improvement? [next meeting]

<kai> I'm still not happy about the work required to get stuff into the map.. but I'll need to try latest ember
<kai> a plus would be the ability to dump a python script of the objects I created in the current positions so I could put them into define_world.py.. I'll talk to erik about that

Where are we lacking? [static point]

<Demitar> Website is an open issue.
<Demitar> Map editing is one.
<Demitar> Both are in progress.
<kai> a game...
<zzorn_laptop> Yeah, a game. From a media todo list point of view I don't know what items to add to it as I don't have any requirements for a game
<kai> ok, could we do a quick brainstorm for simple things that'd make the current mason map more fun?
<zzorn_laptop> I think the castle defence sounds like a relatively entertaining game to start with, and it's easy to grow into a deeper game with subgames
[...]

Castle Defence

After the meeting the discussion continued a bit on the castle defence game. It was decided to re-use the Castlegard page for writing up the game design:

• Types of monsters attacking the castle
• Ways the players may earn money
• Equipment the players may buy
• Winning and loosing conditions, or wether to leave the game open ended.

It was discussed that the monsters would start attacking in slowly increasing waves as soon as a player joins the game. This is not possible to detect currently though, so we would need to discuss adding it to the server. Alternatively the attacks could be triggered by players attacking monsters, or exploring certain places.

Logs

The complete irc logs from the meeting, prettily colored by Brenda.