Meeting 2006-10-28

Agenda

Feel free to add any agenda point you think needs discussion. Please clearly label who suggested each item on the agenda.

1. Recent development(s) [static point]
2. Follow up on previous meeting: Meeting 2006-10-07#Summary. [static point]
   1. New frontpage [zzorn, demitar?]
   2. Moving content from main page to wiki, sorting out old content
3. <Antagonist> Hmm, an agenda point: 'what do we still need to make a playable game?'
4. Where are we lacking? [static point]

Summary

Recent development(s) [static point]

• Glass (formerly ChienNoir) has been making background music for the Mason setting, see this thread on the forum.
• A new version of skstream (networking library used by cyphesis) is available
• zzorns latest craze is algorithmically generated sound effects and background music. <zzorn> The results with just white noise modulated by other white noise at different frequencies sounds very promising. I'm planning some kind of granular synthesis / sound particle effect next, and after that an UI allowing anyone to create these kinds of sounds.
• As for the webpage (re)design Demitar and zzorn were working on, the CSS is more or less finished (perhaps some small touch ups to fix IE bugs still), and the textures are half finished (content area is done but background is only a temporary sketch currently). This is how it looks at the moment (the background will be dark green instead of bright blue in the final version, probably)
• alriddoch is buying some ads for WF on Google adwords, possibly going live this weekend.

Moving content from main page to wiki, sorting out old content

• We decided to start sifting through the content, moving some of it to wiki, and archiving outdated things and removing it from the homepage. No objections were heard from the infra since the previous meetings on this.

• There's a lot of zzorns old design documents dealing with blueprints, physics, and machine systems on the main website. They are still mostly valid as a vision to work towards. zzorn has graciously volunteered himself to move them into wiki.
  • It was also noted that they give a somewhat unrealistic image of the current state of the WF project, so they could be marked in the wiki with some 'Head In The Clouds Vision' tag.
  • At the same time, it was recognized as important to have a vision to work towards also.

• zzorn has been lazy and busy, and not moved the media section from the old website to the wiki yet.

What do we still need to make a playable game? / What are we lacking?

• We do have a fair amount of media
• We do have some simple game design ideas (Hunter Gatherer / Castle Defence)

• The real issue might be the current user/developer friendliness of the current tools / servers / clients.
  • For example, a good entity type editor, skill/action editor, and map editor could make creating games faster and easier
    • Ember currently does a lot of these things thou
  • AI coding is also time consuming, as updates require a Cyphesis restart.
  • <Demitar> The tricky part might be game logic.
  • <zzorn> I guess we also lack world persistency, and the ability to save a world from e.g. ember?

What we plan to do until the next meeting

• zzorn
  • Continue developing the algorithmic sound generator.
  • Create background for new website design.
  • Move design visions and media pages from old website to the wiki.

• Demitar
  • Is working on the site layout for the new static WF site.
  • <Demitar> Well I'm having two exams so I'm kind of busy. :) <Demitar> But I'll try to keep an eye on the website.

• Kai
  • <Kai> Ok, I'll try to be a good boy and get that darned castle into cyphesis

• jae
  • Build WF from CVS (Cyphesis, Ember) and get them to work (unslacking a bit ;)
  • Install with stow (I stow everything in /usr/local)
  • The instructions will be put on the wiki when done, or the current notes can be requested earlier from jae also if needed.

• Glass
  • <Glass> at least making 3 music loops city theme, city ambient, glitter dark theme and ambient, orcish theme and ambient
  • <Glass> and the rest on request

Logs

Colorific logs