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

[Mathieu Lacam]

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 09:50:07 +0200
Cyril Hansen <address@hidden> wrote:

> 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.

I thought it was only going to be 10 line long. How wrong of me! :-)

> 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.

Just for the record, editor seems more important to me right now.
 
> 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.

We did not say it like that (not a framework project anymore), but in effect 
you're right for the time being.

> 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.

There was also talk of XML input/output functionality, maybe later.

> 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.
> 

SDL probably is not necessary at this point, but will be.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Horus
> 

Regards too,

Elkine