Re: [Speed-dreams-devel] (no subject)

[Kristóf Kály-K. <ka...@gm...>]

Hello to everyone,

First about the release schedule and long run plans. I think simuv4 as
a default physics engine can realistically happen in 2-3 years. Which
seems to be the same time Xavier estimated the new graphics engine, so
this might be the next big release, called 3.0. Changing the graphics
and physics engine at the same time has the advantage that it is
easier to change track and/or car format to an improved one, of course
it is hard to plan right now what will happen 3 years later.

On the short run, I think 9 -12 months/release is a reasonable target,
releasing twice a year looks too much for me. This would give us 2-3
releases with less radical changes (maybe 2.x series?).

For 2.1 I see as a priority to catch up on features required by a
player, but still missing as we started from a robot-oriented game
(for example starting a practice from the pit, and being able to setup
the car when in pit). I have started to collect them in the feature
idea wiki page under 'User experience' (sorry, did not find a better
name). IMO these features would add more to SD than having new tracks
and cars, or having a super-realistic physics engine - I think we are
good in these regards. OK, not the best, so there is still room to
improve them, but first try to improve our biggest weaknesses.

As for the contents, I think the most important is to find the
successor carset of TRB1. It means a carset, which is:
 * realistic (TRB1 misses this point);
 * balanced;
 * easily drivable by our robots (means it is not only balanced for
humans, which LS1 is, but also for robots, which it is not).
Then this carset can replace Supercars as our base carset, and can be
used as the primary carset for future robot and human competitions -
which I think is a good way to make SD more popular.

I support the idea of separating the core game and the additional
contents (tracks and cars and robot setups). For this separation
really working some kind of dependency checking is required, tracks
and cars should tell which features/engine versions they support, then
the game can hide the obsolote ones.

My personal plans are mainly working on the above mentioned priorities
wherever I can help. Additionally, I would like to add support for
turbocharged engines, seems the racing world goes towards them, so we
will need it for realism soon.

Cheers,
Kristof