[Metacosm-dev] Informal IRC meeting summary 10/9/03

[Cyril Hansen]

Yesterday, three of us (Elkine, Oumph, Horus) hold an informal meeting 
on irc.
We discussed motivation, schedule and developer availability problems as 
well
as technical choices. Feel free to skip until the end for a summary,
especially if you are offended by my English.

Motivation:

It appears that we are still motivated by the completion of the 
milestones, as
they were described on the web. Oumph said he was mainly interested in the
server side, aka simulation model. Elkine expressed willingness to work on a
(graphical) client or editor, and was eager to work with another
language&library than Java.  I just said that I would like our milestones
objectives to be more graphical, more fun, to be able to do some cool 
demos, a
la World Forge.

Technical choices:

We discussed if C++ was more a appropriate language for the server. 
Every one
seemed to agree that most games were written in C++, especially the
client/server ones, and that it was kind of a standard, with a bunch of
network libs to choose from.  But no one among us has previous experience in
C++ networking or multi threading. The step is going to be huge : 
Rewrite the
code base, learn new tricks with new tools, update the specs to reflect the
language change...

On the other side we agreed that the existing framework was in some 
places too
complex (Action classes..).  We decided to reduce the complexity, in new 
code
as well in existing code as time allows it. This means that Metacosm is 
not a
framework project anymore, just a client/server project.

For the editor, we talked about SDL, which seems to be a simple / portable
choice of graphical library. Everybody was wanting to try out something more
"native" than Java and its VM.  As a language, both Oumph and I made so much
publicity for Python, that Elkine became curious about it. We checked that a
SDL wrapper for Python exists.

Schedule:

The important point... According to the planning page, for M2, remain to be
completed the Perceptions and Descriptions functionalities, which are both
relative my work. Oumph offered to help me with Perceptions, but 
otherwise was
quiet because he is more busy a the moment that Elkine and I, who have a
reasonable amount of time to spend on Metacosm. I proposed a far deadline,
then a closer one : 11/3/03. It seems to be ok to have a closer deadline 
this
time, as most of M2 has already been completed.


Editor functionality:

The editor was already planned for M1 and never delivered.  For M2, Elkine
propose to export a world creation script.  The editor will then be made "on
line" later as needed.

Summary

Three developers of the original Metacosm team met yesterday to restart the
project.  The previous planning/task list is kept in place, at least 
until M2.
Elkine starts the portable editor project with the language and lib of his
choice. (probably Python & SDL) Oumph will help Horus for the Perception
package if he has enough time. Feature complete M2 code is expected in 
CVS for
November, 3rd.


Regards,

Horus