Comrades,
I apologize for the recent latency in getting things going -- with this
programming competition looming around the corner, and not to mention
school, it's been hard finding the needle of spare time in the haystack of
my life. ;) But enough's enough -- it's time to start working. I've
included a list of the teams and the members in each, and also what each
team needs to do, starting ASAP. The member names are in the order I got
them.
Game
----
Nate Newell
Matt Davis
Tom Ouyang
Don Jordan
The Game team will need to start planning things out, coming up with a
coherent design for the game. This means a storyline (if we decide to
have one -- it isn't necessary), a menu system (for starting the game
and connecting to servers and such), the actual battle system (how much
you get hurt, what weapons you can use, etc.), scoring, characters (i.e.
do we have only humans, or do we have elves, gremlins, etc.), and so on.
Scripting
---------
Nate Newell
Matt Davis
Mike Reynolds
Don Jordan
Scripting will need to decide on a scripting language -- SeeR or Lua.
We want flexibility, primarily. The team needs to start writing hooks
for Striker, so we can test things out (i.e. hook Lua or SeeR to Striker
and use those hooks to write tests). Once the basic hooks are in place,
it's mostly testing things and putting in more advanced hooks until the
Game team gets their design in code (and then Scripting will start
hooking the script engine to *that*).
Networking
----------
Scott Burton
Nate Newell
Don Jordan
Networking will be in charge of the wrapper class (which I believe is
almost done), and they'll also manage all in-game communication. We'll
have chatting support built into the game, and this team will take care
of that (how it fits in, etc.). The necessary communication will be
connecting clients to the server, keeping all the clients
synchronized with each other, sending map data to clients, sending
updated graphics (tilesets/sprites) to clients if necessary, the
chatting, and anything else that we may need (once the Game team gets
going, we'll find more things that need to be done for this).
Graphics
--------
Tom Ouyang
Christian Moreno
Nate Newell
Graphics will provide us with draft tiles and sprites -- rudimentary
placeholders so we can start working -- as soon as possible, and then
they'll start doing the real graphics. Most of the work will either be
drawing directly on the computer or scanning artwork in (and then
touching it up in a paint program).
Audio
-----
Well, nobody signed up for this, but that's okay since it's not a key
part of the game just yet. It's a major factor, yes, but it can wait.
Testing
-------
Nate Newell
Tom Ouyang
Richard Snapp
Testing will start running everything through the grindmill once we
actually get things to test. They'll create maps and play around with
them, try different tactics with the gameplay, find bugs, and try to get
it to crash. They'll tweak AI scripts (which will be written by the
Game team), try all the different options they can, and help to make
this an awesome game.
----------------------
Just out of curiosity, let's run a little straw poll here: is anyone in
favor of having "team leaders," i.e. like patrol leaders in Scouts? Or
would you rather have just the group, with everyone equal? We need some
input here, folks.
If anyone has any questions at all, e-mail me. Or, better yet, post to
the list so everyone can answer.
Later,
Ben
--
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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