Re: [Adonthell-general] Some general suggestion

[Kai Sterker]

On 4/21/05, Ingo Ruhnke <address@hidden> wrote:

> In my experience stuff is hardly ever in final states, there are
> always bugs, missing information or simply open question left, with a
> Wiki one can easily add the necesarry information, fix the bugs or use
> the 'Talk' page associated to ask questions.

Your arguments seem valid to me. One reason to chose PDF over say HTML
or a Wiki was that it recorded a conclusion/compromise we reached
after endless discussions on the mailing list(s). While this approach
may be inefficient, I always found that it leaded to great results in
the end. (One reason why there is a new mapengine with every release).

The problem with that approach is that (a) the result was often lost
somewhere on the ML or (b) discussion started all over again. Having
the information written in PDF format, it was as good as set in stone,
everybody could look it up and see what we agreed on. While a Wiki
will be easier to maintain, I fear that the ML discussions will
continue there, so that reaching a common agreement will be much
harder.

As the LaTeX sources to all docs are in CVS, everyone can make
additons or improvements just the same, with little more than the most
basic knowledge of LaTeX. It's not much harder than starting to write
or edit Wiki pages.

OTOH, I'm open for anything. Maybe we should try out the Wiki. In the
worst case, we can update the PDFs from the Wiki content from time to
time and use the Wiki as a replacement for the ML. That way,
information would be easier to find than on the ML (and it is hard to
find, as I found out when writing those task docs). At the same time,
the stuff we agreed on could still be preserved in ston^M^M^M PDF.


> I know, but I still don't consider it a good idea. It should be made
> clear that after a certain link you enter developers territory and
> probally get some spoilers for the story and such, but first of that
> link shouldn't be that hard to find and secondly any obscurity you add
> just raises the bar for new developers, a lot.

I tend to agree. The thing that James suggested in the other mail
would be great for that. Seperating pages for developers and players
might help both groups to find more easily what they want. As the
website needs some work in any case (all CGIs are broken since
linuxgames.com no longer allows Perl scrips), it might be a good
opportunity to split things up.

> > In brief, it's not tilebased; instead objects of arbitrary size can
> > be used. A 3D model is used internally to allow different height
> > levels, but all objects are 2D. Objects themselves can be composed
> > of multiple graphics, respectively animations. All this needs to be
> > properly coded though.
> 
> I am still not really sure if I understand this one. 3D model or
> navigation-mesh sounds like overkill, but then it depends on what you
> exactly mean by that, since you can more or less easily mix tilemap
> based approached with different height levels and the like.

Imagine a very, very simple vector model of the 'ground'. Just enough
to allow walking over and under the same object (a bridge for example,
or a cave), to fall down or climb up and to jump over obstacles or
chasms. Pretty much the stuff that was possible in Ultima 8, in case
you played that and possibly some other games as well.

Then 'stick' your ordinary 2D graphics on top of that. So character
movement and collision detection is 3Dish, while the look is much like
Waste's Edge. If we can get that demo from Alex running again, it will
show what I mean. Unfortunately, I no longer have the required data
files around. The code is in the adonthell-0.3 CVS module with the
Branch_road_to_0-4 tag. When Alex retrieves the data, we'll certainly
release that stuff as a little demo.

> >> IRC Meeting:
> 
> Just for the record, I have added back #adonthell to my autojoin, so
> in case anyone is intersted in joining, I'll be there ;)

I'm at the office right now, but I see that I pay a visit in the
evening. If more of you could come, that would be nice.

Kai

P.S.: as to my free time: I'm working during the day, but I usually
have some time in the evening and every other weekend. Unless my
girlfriend visits, in which case I might be unavailable for some
weeks.