Well hello!

[Volatar]

I would just like to stop in and say hello. I am a recent X-Com convert, but I have become a fanatical fan in a matter of weeks. I am still playing through the original game right now, but I also picked up UFO:AI here, and man, this is amazing.

The work you guys have done here has far surpassed any other attempt at an X-Com remake, is already very playable, stable, and fun. Great work.

I am happy to join your ranks. I am a high school student, and prospective Computer Science major, and I will happily throw my abilities in with all of you. I am amazed that I have finally found the open source project I really can, and want, to contribute to.

I will see you all around here, and hope to get to know you all well.

[Mattn]

hi and welcome.

if you wanna contribute please join our irc channel at irc.freenode.org #ufoai .

the general way to get involved is to create one or two patches that must be accepted by us. once that is done, you can get write access to the svn.

what is your experience? programming, modelling, something else?

greetings and hope to hear back from you

[Volatar]

My experience is quite limited in anything. I have dabbled in many areas with many tools just because I love to play with that kind of stuff, but not in depth in much.

Here, I will take the list from the wiki and detail it out.

You can contribute in several ways:

Coding - I have had 2 semesters of programming class (C++), so this is likely the area I am most experienced in, but I am unsure on how much I could do, as I will have to learn many things to "get up to speed" to contribute to the code itself. I can try however.
Artwork - I love playing with photoshop, but all I have done is play really. I may be able to help right off in this area, but my skills are lacking.
Music and sounds - I don't do sound/music, sorry. My brother on the other hand...
Mapping - If I can overcome the initial hurdle of learning to tools to map, I would very happily help in this area.
Modelling - Sorry, no skill/knowledge/ability here.
Equipment descriptions - I can write rather well, and may be of help here
Storywriting - Same as above (if not more so)
Translating - I speak English only

[Volatar]

Poking around a bit, I found the manual on the wiki is very... bad. My first task will be to flesh that out. Doing so should help me learn all the intricacies of the game before I stick my nose into other areas of contribution.

[Mattn]

Artwork - I love playing with photoshop, but all I have done is play really. I may be able to help right off in this area, but my skills are lacking.
Mapping - If I can overcome the initial hurdle of learning to tools to map, I would very happily help in this area.

these two sounds very nice to me. what we need for the menu are tga images - all those jpegs in base/pics/menu and base/pics/hud should be converted to tga and the jpeg compression artifacts must be removed. they are especially visible on higher resolutions and on widescreen.
mapping is a topic where we really need someone - we currently have no real mapper that is creating new stuff for the game. if you could do that, that we be the best from my point of view.

greetings
martin

[Volatar]

these two sounds very nice to me. what we need for the menu are tga images - all those jpegs in base/pics/menu and base/pics/hud should be converted to tga and the jpeg compression artifacts must be removed. they are especially visible on higher resolutions and on widescreen.
mapping is a topic where we really need someone - we currently have no real mapper that is creating new stuff for the game. if you could do that, that we be the best from my point of view.

greetings
martin

Alright, I will look into assisting in both of those areas.

For the first I will first have to figure out what you are asking for (converting files sounds too easy, removing artifacts hard).

For the second I first need to get both a working copy of the SVN and the map editor compiled, I was having trouble with that last night but I believe I fixed it. I will see where I can assist.

To address two questions I missed on IRC after I went to bed:

[02:48] Richlv: Volatar_, do you plan those articles that you created links for in the manual page ?

If by manual page you mean this then I will admit, I did not plan to do them last night, I merely thought that they should be written by someone. I can do them however. Just because a page is not written in a wiki, does not mean you cannot link to it. Infact, linking to a page that is not written is a good thing for an in-development wiki, as it signals very clearly what needs to be written. (Even more so, the Wanted Pages page of the wiki is a very powerful tool that requires such links.)

As red links they are "on my list" of things to do I guess.

[02:57] mattn2|home__: Volatar_: if you update the manual, please do it for the latest version
[02:57] mattn2|home__: not for 2.2.1
[02:57] mattn2|home__: i've seen your create base button picture which is highly outdated nowadays

Oh darn. I was still in the process of downloading the SVN version last night while I was editing. I assumed (incorrectly) that such a basic button had not changed. I did try not to make changes that would be version specific last night.

I will complie the SVN ASAP and fix that one.