Re: [TuxKart-devel] Work to do.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

pmb wrote:
> In the network area, i'm totally lost. However, I can learn about it and 
> would happilly to that part.

Er - sorry - I lost track of who I was talking to!

IMHO, the major programming tasks are:

1) AI - The karts that are not being driven by the player(s) need to
    know how to drive around the track without crashing into stuff and
    to drive agressively enough to be a challenge at the highest level
    of difficulty - and passively enough to let the player win in the
    easier levels.  They have to know when to shoot their weapons,
    how to dodge player-launched weapons, when to go for collectibles
    and when it's not worth it.

2) Physics - The behavior of the kart on the track - the input is the
    mouse/keyboard/joystick stuff - the output is the position of the
    kart on the track.  Probably, the enemy kart AI should also drive
    the karts through the same physics - but that's not necessarily true.

3) Startup sequence - improve the present startup GUI, allow you to select
    who you want to play as, which track to drive - hopefully with little
    screen shots - or spinning 3D models.  Select difficulty level, select
    play mode (single player, two player, single race, multiple-race, etc).

4) Split-screen mode for two human players on one computer.  (I've already
    'claimed' this job - I know exactly where to touch the code - I can do
    it VERY quickly.

5) Lots of other 'detail' tasks.  Adding particle system effects to the
    karts for exhaust smoke, tyre smoke and other eye-candy.

...I'm sure there are lots of others.

> However, the network play have to use some kind of portable library 
> witch handle network devices.

PLIB has that. (PLIB has *everything*!!  PLIB **RULEZ**!!! All hail PLIB.)

Network play (which we don't *NEED* - but would be cool) entails nasty
issues like extrapolation for missing data packets, making a version
of the game that can act as 'server' and stripping out the 'client'
code so it basically does what it's told.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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