by andrewbuck » 17 Feb 2010, 07:28
I've read a lot of the stuff on AIgamedev and it is quite a good site, I'll have to check out the wolfire blog entry though, that looks interesting. As much as I hate to put a damper on things though not only do I need help with the AI aspects, what I REALLY need is help working on the code itself. For a game of the complexity of what we are hoping to do it is not possible for a single person to do all of it. There are already things I am having trouble doing in the code that a second person to bounce ideas off of/contributing code fixes would greatly improve the situation; and these issues will only become more common as the development progresses.
The code is layed out pretty cleanly and is very thoroughly documented. Between this and me helping via skype, etc I think I can get any co-developers up to speed very quickly. As i said, I hate to be a downer, but I cannot justify any further contributions of my time to the codebase without the knowledge that there will be others sharing the burden. I am fully aware that this project is too big for me to handle alone so if no one else steps up to help then I am just wasting my time (and all of yours) because we will never be able to finish it with only me coding.
When I joined this project alienwolf was the one writing the code. He disappeared and so I decided to take over the programming, and I made this decision based on the interest in the project, both in the content development and statements by people who were also interested in coding. Although many people have provided a lot of help with game content and the build system (both of which I am truly grateful for) there has been no one else working on the code itself.
I don't want to give the impression that I am unhappy with how the project has progressed, I have been continually impressed by the dedication that others have put into this project. My only concern is one of my own limitations, without coding help all of the beautiful models, gameplay ideas, and story development we have put together will be useless as I will be unable to pull all that together with the codebase by myself. I hope we can resolve this issue so the code can start moving forward again, but as I said IF the project is destined for failure than I cannot devote any more time to it.
-Buck