My comments regarding UFO: AI development

[geever]

So, project managers like geever, take heart! You folks are doing a GREATLY FANTABULOUSLY INCREDIBLE JOB!

Oh, thank you. In fact, I'm not a project manager just a contributing programmer. Maybe one day...

-geever

[Borsti67]

And just like all those projects i have quoted above, this project, UFOAI, HAS alot of work DONE! See my quotes? Yupz. And its not exactly invisible to the world. It is quite visible. Just download version 2.1, 2.2.1 and maybe one of destructavator / muton / my SVN builts, u will see.

I believe you got me wrong on this one. *I* know what's going on. The John-Doe-User just takes a quick glance at the front page, he doesn't dig into forums or even worse, tries to squeeze some sparse infos out of cruelsome chatlogs!

So the monthly update report is a VERY valuable tool to keep interest up, even when one's not a hardcore UFO freak like the two of us. 
The idea was to present even more of the activity to the visitors without manual intervention (hey, the devs shall concentrate on the game, right?)

So, project managers like geever, take heart! You folks are doing a GREATLY FANTABULOUSLY INCREDIBLE JOB!

where shall I sign that?

[Mattn]

first of all - thanks for the feedback.

you are not wrong but stating that we should release more often. but to be honest we are not in a stage where i would like to do that. we are lacking a lot of things here and there. also there is no 2.3 branch yet as i don't see the point in creating one (don't get me wrong, there will be a branch someday). releasing 2.3 in its current shape (besides the bugfixes of course) would in no way satisfy my personal quality requirements. maybe you have seen that we introduced some nice features to increase the visual appearance of the game itself (especially in the tactical missions). the code is there, the examples of how to use the new stuff is there. just nobody (except me) had the mood to use them. there are still some missing images for the ufopedia. our storywriters still have to check the research tree - tweak values here and there and so on. creating a 2.3 branch would only result in a lot of merging work that i'm not willing to waste my time with. it was already stated that i put a lot of time into this game - that's true - but wasting my already quite rare time is no option for me .

so once the showstopper bugs are fixed we will polish the game (almost every map should have a material definition, and we have normalmaps for most of our textures) and fix some of the smaller bugs.

and once this is done we will release 2.3 - but don't expect this to happen in the next few weeks (or contribute and speed up the process).

i also agree that we would get more publicity with regular and shorter release cycles. but releasing a version that is as unpolished as trunk currently is would also not lead to good but only bad publicity.

for all of those that want to be on the bleeding edge of development some nice users create unofficial installers from the most recent trunk versions from time to time. and you still have the chance to compile it yourself, too.

and one more sentence for those that plan to contribute. i really think that it should be possible for everyone to create a heightmap (see data_source/images/textures/...) of a texture that we can use to create normalmaps, or to normalize the volume of some sounds. or even to write basic material files (though this might already be a little bit complicated). there are a lot of possibilities to ensure that the waiting for 2.3 is getting shorter and shorter.

[Destructavator]

and one more sentence for those that plan to contribute. i really think that it should be possible for everyone to create a heightmap (see data_source/images/textures/...) of a texture that we can use to create normalmaps, or to normalize the volume of some sounds. or even to write basic material files (though this might already be a little bit complicated). there are a lot of possibilities to ensure that the waiting for 2.3 is getting shorter and shorter.

I'm not experienced with normalmaps, textures, and such, but sounds and music I can fix and clean up quickly and easily, as I have lots of tools to do so as well as experience.

I've made a little more progess on the potential new soldier models, but seeing that making all the armor types and everything into models would take some time, I'm willing to set those models aside for now, work on the sounds/audio, and get back to the modeling later for the next release after 2.3.  This might get 2.3 finalized and out the door quicker, which I personally think would be good seeing that so much has already changed since 2.2.1.

Edit: Question - is the wiki currently up-to-date as to what needs to be done with sounds and music before 2.3 is nearly ready?  Or, should I look elsewhere for a better list of what needs to be done in that area?

[BTAxis]

The list on the wiki should be all.

[Destructavator]

Not to be difficult, but I didn't find much in the wiki TODO lists, I checked the 2.3 and general lists.

I did find a list of sound FX that needed to be replaced with ones that have a better license, although it looks a little old:

http://phidev.org/~dino/ufo/html/sound/696b031073e74bf2cb98e5ef201d4aa3.html

Is any of this (in this last link) still current and in need of work?

[Mattn]

i think that all of them still need replacements - you can check that by selecting the file and choose the properties in the tortoiseSVN context menu - if there is no svn:copyright and svn:license set, we need replacements.

[BTAxis]

I just did that. The list is current.

About the wiki lists, there's not a whole lot on there because we don't absolutely NEED any sounds at the moment (though any you can make would be appreciated). The same goes for music. That's one department where we're fairly well supplied.