FreeGameDev

This is my first post on this forum and on this project for a very long time, so I will start with a quick introduction.
I'm Craig (aka AlienWolf) and many years back a few people, including myself, got together with an idea of an open source game based on the idea of Dungeon Keeper, we are all big fans of DK2!

I worked on some of the original code, so I have to apologise to all the current devs on how bad my code was! I was a n00b programmer at the time so I probably made every beginner mistake out there

Unfortunately due to other commitments I didn't have time for many of my various open source projects so many of them turned into abandon-ware, but recently I revived my old email account and much to my surprise saw that OpenDungeons lives on! The project looks great and I have to congratulate everyone for sticking with it!

These days I am a full time open source software developer living in the UK, I would say I am now very proficient in C, C++, Python, SQL etc and anything related to Linux and FOSS, so I would like to offer my assistance back to the project. I'm very eager to get stuck in again after many years away.

Hope to hear from you soon,
Craig

Hi Alienwolf! I dont think i have meet you before on the project but its really nice to have you back! Since im an artist i cant guide you on whats needed codewise but someone will surely do. Just become comfortable again around here and you can pick whatever you want to do.

Oh man, this is great! Welcome back!
I think we've all done many noob mistakes in the code. If you are still using the old sf account, you should still have admin access, if not, message me and I'll sort it out.

Hi AlienWolf, nice to meet you. When I joined the project Andrew Buck was the main coder and I've always wondered what happened to the creator of the project. Cool that you're back.

Welcome back. I just joined the project(1 commit) and am a c/c++ noob. I'm happy your back the commit history is looking very sad and I need lots of ordering around. :P

Thank's for the warm welcome guys
I've tracked down the bugs list and roadmap now so I will dust off the old gcc compiler and get working.

Who is taking the lead on the project management btw? I'm going to start grabbing some of the 'new' tickets and be optimistic and hope to reach milestone 0.5 soon But if there is a PM who is assigning work to devs then feel free to assign the priorities to me.

Sadly rigth now the only direction is trying to get a working exe for windows for the last version, the main issues to get into the game are these:

viewtopic.php?f=41&t=1385
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=4279

but i would give priority to:

-New exe
-Get the new tileset in the game
-Creation of a graphical map editor
-Implement the many room models (old an new)<- we are mutually benefiting a lot from Agent keeper
-Creatures with their needs (make them behave "really", hunger, sleep) and joining conditions (rooms for them to appear)
-Creature status indicator (like the life flower)<- a disscussion is needed to decide what to use here

And if all of the above could be done, a tech demo level in wich you create your dungeon, train creatures, dig, set traps... and each set time a hero wave comes to kill you, basically, to create something to showcase around.

Its a lot of work but i trust OD can get a lot better with your help.

I think the project management has always been a problem of OD. For example we've had no real decision making system, so whoever worked on something decided or sometimes no decision was made after discussions. One recent example is the 3D dungeons idea (although it needs to be worked out some more first). I'm not really in favor of a dictatorship model and I'd rather have a democratic system. We need formalized processes like: proposal -> discussion -> voting -> implementation (for the implementation we'd still need volunteers). Every team member should have a vote, but I'm not sure what we should do in case of a draw.

The leader was Svend, but since he is busy, the project is just kind of getting simpler and better overall imho, not because hes not here, but because we are adding things little by little and getting out unrealistic (or really hard to do) ones. For example simplifying the factions to two for now (of a total of four) or letting out the complex trap system in exchange for a build and forget one.

Thats to say, small things are being done paving the way to a greater objective. But skorpio has a point, there are whole rants without any final decision made and you cant make a good game if you dont take some drastic decisions some times. Democracy looks fine to me (Svend is really hardheaded ) and in case we get a draw the guy who is tasked to made the change can have the decisive vote.

Hallo, ALien Wolf,
What have been done you can see by looking at development branch. I had always doubts how to extend and modify the existing class layout and stay truthful to OD design . You can see from that there are many classes representing the game mods , some of them not even used ( and they names might be misleading cause those mods affect only how the Input is threated ) .
Still we miss the big picture , like nice UML design ( and there is a lack of free good editors ) or any other scheme, in which we could formally write our notions and translate that to cpp code , a pity that you haven't such thing from bare beginning . Do you know some UML tools for us ?
For the git and SourceForge - let it stay as may people start searching SF to learn what's new happening in the OS world .
We could switch existing Version Control System ( git might stay ) if it would offer such functions as : blocking some function api call ( old glib-C ) , and pretty code formatting .... etc.

Best would be you do some several modifications of development branch , that we knew what you don't like in current OD model .

Currently the CameraManger must be rewritten so it can flexibly held many cameras , culling techniques , Ogre overlays etc. ( especially I want to have working FppMode ... )
For the xml : would retreat from tinyxml2 cause it's poor tutorial http://grinninglizard.com/tinyxml2docs/pages.html

Actually the first step is getting actually OD data in levels dir into XML format .
http://www.oxygenxml.com/ is very good editor, mine free license expired after a month so someone else do that .
With it and some effort migration to XML could be done .

The definiton files were someone botched , but AFIR I fixed them :
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1702&p=44345&hilit=xml#p44345