Plan for the next release

[Skorpio]

I think we should make a plan for the next release. What I'd like to see in the next version are normal maps and some sounds would be nice, too. I'm not sure about gameplay stuff.

[svenskmand]

I am up for finding sounds on freesound.org, anybody know any other sources for sounds? If you could please compile a list of needed sounds I will get started

It would also be nice to have a portable recorder for recording sound anybody knows anyone that is good and cheap? I have looked at the Zoom H2 and it looks brilliant, although it might be overkill to spend approximately 214 $ on a portable microphone if I am only going to use it for OpenDungeons :S

By the way normal maps vs. parallex mapping pros cons? As I understand Ogre3d can do both?

[andrewbuck]

Two really basic sounds that would be helpful would be an "attack" sound and a "digging" sound, as these are easy to identify with the creature's animations to see if my code properly handles the sounds. I don't remember if I ever started a list on the wiki for sounds or not but you could look there as well (I know I created a page with some voice lists but I don't know if it included sound effects or not).

Regarding the next release I want to get the room destruction by attacking creatures implemented so the room framework is fully functional.

-Buck

[Skorpio]

We could use these sounds: http://opengameart.org/content/3-melee-sounds
Would be nice to combine them with additional hit sounds.

[Skorpio]

By the way normal maps vs. parallex mapping pros cons? As I understand Ogre3d can do both?

I think parallax mapping is more suited for walls and floors. I have no experience with parallax mapping, I've only seen some screenshots and they didn't look so good IMHO. But I'd be happy to test them in-game, if we manage to enable normal and parallax mapping.

[andrewbuck]

I think it is about time to start getting the next release ready to go. Although I don't think sound will make it into this one (as I am still trying to decide what would be the best way to work it into the engine) there have been numerous other improvements to the engine and also to the models. Furthermore, I see the previous release is currently 44 days old, so I think it would be good to get something out to show the rest of the world we are still making progress (judging by the download stats there must either be a lot of lurkers in this forum, or a lot of people downloading the game who do not follow the forum). I think a release about once per month would be a good goal (not exactly every month as time based releases have some problems, but roughly once per month).

With these things in mind I think it is about time to prepare a release. The code has already had a lot of bug-fixes since the last release as well as some improvements to the combat AI. I have also got the camera movement reworked and added a function so pressing 't' will bring the camera to your Dungeon Temple. Using this same functionality it would be easy to make "hotkey" places on the map where you move to a place of interest, press something like shift+3 to store that place, and then afterwards pressing 3 will bring your camera to that location. Let me know if this is something you guys think would be good as it would be easy to add before the next release.

Last, but not least, is the normal mapping for creatures and tiles. This page has some basic information on how the normal mapping works in OGRE as well as links to more detailed information. It is all done in the materials scripts so no changes to the game engine are necessary, other than the two lines of code they show in the example on that page. I think I can easily work these into the engine (I'm pretty sure I know where they go). Even these lines are apparently unnecessary if the right info is included with the loaded mesh, however I will likely add them in to make development of models easier.

If anyone else has any suggestions as to what should be included in the release I would be happy to hear them. At the moment I am probably most interested in getting the kinks worked out of the controls (camera movement, etc). If there are any suggestions regarding how fast the camera should move, etc it would be good to get those worked out so testing the game is more enjoyable. I plan to try to add some acceleration to the camera so it starts moving slowly and then picks up speed as you travel. This makes it easier to position the camera accurately, while still letting you move around the map fairly quickly. Any other suggestions (especially regarding the hotkey idea above) are welcome.

-Buck

[charlie]

Release early, release often. Love it!

[svenskmand]

I think it is about time to start getting the next release ready to go. Although I don't think sound will make it into this one (as I am still trying to decide what would be the best way to work it into the engine) there have been numerous other improvements to the engine and also to the models. Furthermore, I see the previous release is currently 44 days old, so I think it would be good to get something out to show the rest of the world we are still making progress (judging by the download stats there must either be a lot of lurkers in this forum, or a lot of people downloading the game who do not follow the forum). I think a release about once per month would be a good goal (not exactly every month as time based releases have some problems, but roughly once per month).

Good idea , have you had further thoughts about which sound engine to use? I would recommend OpenAL, as it is used by most game developers, so it is compatible with most gamer-soundcards.

With these things in mind I think it is about time to prepare a release. The code has already had a lot of bug-fixes since the last release as well as some improvements to the combat AI. I have also got the camera movement reworked and added a function so pressing 't' will bring the camera to your Dungeon Temple. Using this same functionality it would be easy to make "hotkey" places on the map where you move to a place of interest, press something like shift+3 to store that place, and then afterwards pressing 3 will bring your camera to that location. Let me know if this is something you guys think would be good as it would be easy to add before the next release.

That is a brilliant idea, we should have that!

Last, but not least, is the normal mapping for creatures and tiles. This page has some basic information on how the normal mapping works in OGRE as well as links to more detailed information. It is all done in the materials scripts so no changes to the game engine are necessary, other than the two lines of code they show in the example on that page. I think I can easily work these into the engine (I'm pretty sure I know where they go). Even these lines are apparently unnecessary if the right info is included with the loaded mesh, however I will likely add them in to make development of models easier.

Nice

If anyone else has any suggestions as to what should be included in the release I would be happy to hear them. At the moment I am probably most interested in getting the kinks worked out of the controls (camera movement, etc). If there are any suggestions regarding how fast the camera should move, etc it would be good to get those worked out so testing the game is more enjoyable. I plan to try to add some acceleration to the camera so it starts moving slowly and then picks up speed as you travel. This makes it easier to position the camera accurately, while still letting you move around the map fairly quickly. Any other suggestions (especially regarding the hotkey idea above) are welcome.

-Buck

I think we should have a PPA, as this makes it so easy to install the game in Ubuntu, and we would then reach many more people, that way you can install the game with just three terminal commands, namely:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:user/path
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opendungeons


where user is the username of the maintainer of the PPA, and the path is the sub-path of the PPA.

[andrewbuck]

Good idea , have you had further thoughts about which sound engine to use? I would recommend OpenAL, as it is used by most game developers, so it is compatible with most gamer-soundcards.

I think I probably will go with that as it seems to have some integration with Ogre which is a big benefit, the fact that it is a standard is good too. I mainly haven't gotten around to it because, truth be told, I have never done any coding involving audio stuff before so I a bit unsure of the best practices, etc.

With these things in mind I think it is about time to prepare a release. The code has already had a lot of bug-fixes since the last release as well as some improvements to the combat AI. I have also got the camera movement reworked and added a function so pressing 't' will bring the camera to your Dungeon Temple. Using this same functionality it would be easy to make "hotkey" places on the map where you move to a place of interest, press something like shift+3 to store that place, and then afterwards pressing 3 will bring your camera to that location. Let me know if this is something you guys think would be good as it would be easy to add before the next release.

That is a brilliant idea, we should have that!

I got this implemented tonight as well as making the camera accelerate when you press a movement button, it also coasts a bit after you let off the button. I played around with the acceleration/deceleration speeds a bit and I think they are pretty good but we can fine tune them once more people have a chance to play around with it. I also switched the rotate left/right buttons back the way they used to be (I had reversed them a couple days ago but now I think the way they were is a lot more intuitive).

I think we should have a PPA, as this makes it so easy to install the game in Ubuntu, and we would then reach many more people, that way you can install the game with just three terminal commands, namely:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:user/path
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opendungeons


where user is the username of the maintainer of the PPA, and the path is the sub-path of the PPA.

A PPA would be good. I have not set one up myself but I know they are handy. Bodsda had been talking about it a while back and user Andrew (not me but the other one) has one for his Hardwar game; if someone wants to put something together that would be cool but I have more than enough to keep me busy with the code. In fact it would probably be good to designate someone as the "Release Manager" who is responsible for periodically bundling up the latest build of the game plus the artwork and getting it onto sourceforge and/or the Ubuntu PPA. If anyone is interested in this I can help them get both the Windows and Linux build environments configured. It is a bit time consuming but if we get on skype I should be able to walk them through it easily enough.

-Buck

[andrewbuck]

I just got a windows EXE file built and I will attach it to this message. It is built from the latest code (what was 'development' but I pulled it into the 'windows' and 'master' branches so all three are at the same point now). Standard practice so far has been to bump the version number by 1 minor revision with every change to the level file format (since the game checks this when loading levels for compatibility reasons), but there have not been any changes to the file format since the last release. As such I am suggesting we bundle this EXE along with any models Skorpio has made changes to since the last patch and release this as a patch to version 0.4.2 (patch number 6 if I recall correctly).

If you want to check out the game right away you can download the exe from this message (it should be quite small) but it would be better for the project if you wait until Skorpio gets it bundled and uploaded to sourceforge since the number of file downloads helps our project ranking and this helps attract new people to the project.

Also, Skorpio, if you could either pull the latest code from git, or just go here and download the latest OpenDungeons.layout file (which is what specifies the GUI design) and put it in your 'Media/gui' folder in the patch that would be cool. I haven't really changed the layout file other than commenting out all of the room buttons which are not yet implemented, so only the quarters and treasury buttons are available.

EDIT: I have removed the attached exe file from this post since it is now available on sourceforge here.

-Buck

[Skorpio]

I worked only on my ugly crawler monster and some other models (which are not usable for OD) in the last days. My main concern atm is my workflow, since I needed way too much time for the monster, and it's still not done. I also need to get more experience with normal mapping. When we manage to enable normal maps in OD, I'll have to create high poly models for all creatures that we already have and generate normal maps for them. That'll be a lot of work, so I want to make sure that I don't have to go back and change the models again and again.

So no new model updates atm, you can just upload the exe.

[andrewbuck]

Ok, I'll upload that in a few minutes after I get done reading all the other posts from today. Looks like it was a busy day in the forums.

EDIT: I got the file uploaded to sourceforge. I named it patch6 and moved patch5 into the "old releases" directory. I also rolled the changes from patch5 into patch6 so people can download just the main game (~40 MB) and patch6 (~1.9 MB) to be fully up to date.

-Buck

[Bodsda]

Hi Guys, I'm back!

First off, let me apologise for my sudden dissapearance. I had some failry urgent personal matters that I had to deal with, but I am now ready to get involved again. After a few days of reading, I will be ready to start helping again.

I started work last night on an installer for OD that will provide a one click solution to download and build the latest release of OD. I will also be adding support for uninstallation and debian package installation. I also have an Ubuntu server which I can set a ppa up on to have the working packages needed to build the game. With everyones approval, I would be honoured to take on the role of release manager.

Thanks,
Bodsda

[andrewbuck]

Bodsda, great to have you back. I think you would be a good choice for release manager so I have no problem with that. Since no one else has volunteered I don't think anyone else would have any issues with you taking the position. Regarding the PPA, I don't think you need a server yourself; I think you can do that right on Ubuntu's servers which is better since they have better uptime/bandwidth than you would have. Also, do you have a windows box to set up a build environment, if so I can help you get that set up; it's not hard but there are a lot of steps involved that I can walk you through.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Nice to see you again Bodsda there has been some development of the backstory that you might also want to have a look at, over at the wiki

I say "hired" regarding the release manager

[Bodsda]

Bodsda, great to have you back. I think you would be a good choice for release manager so I have no problem with that. Since no one else has volunteered I don't think anyone else would have any issues with you taking the position. Regarding the PPA, I don't think you need a server yourself; I think you can do that right on Ubuntu's servers which is better since they have better uptime/bandwidth than you would have. Also, do you have a windows box to set up a build environment, if so I can help you get that set up; it's not hard but there are a lot of steps involved that I can walk you through.

-Buck

Cheers -- I think I can host a ppa on launchpad. Regarding the windows environment, I have a win7 64bit on a dual boot on my main machine. I would prefer a VM if possible because it removes the need to reboot my machine, but if i remember correctly, there were some opengl issues with running OD on an xp vm guest.

Nice to see you again Bodsda there has been some development of the backstory that you might also want to have a look at, over at the wiki

I say "hired" regarding the release manager

I'll be sure to check it out

-- Bodsda

[andrewbuck]

As far as playing the game in the VM you may or may not have much success with that, I did get it to work on mine (albiet somewhat slowly) but it was good enough to prove that it built successfully). You can definitely build the game with visual studio running in a VM though and most of the time this should be all you need to do, just build exe from the latest git code and bundle it with the updated content from SVN. Let me know if you want help getting this set up, I can probably try to duck out of work a bit early if you want to work on it tonight or sometime later this week.

-Buck

[Danimal]

Hello, you see i want to try the game, but i also dont want to pass trough the hell that is getting OGRE working, so, did you manage to make an install package? That wouldd help a lot to extend the game popularity

[oln]

We got a zipped version out for windows, we are working on deb packages and a windows installer. The progress has just been halted a bit because of xmas/exams (atleast on my part). Will get back to working on that after new year.
Not very far from having "working" packages for both platforms.

[Danimal]

The installer would be really nice, a zipped version is no good if you have to build the whole thing with Visual C + OGRE.
On a side note, never thougth about changing engines?, for instance Unity admits C code and is MUCH easier to work with, and since this is not commercial you dont need to pay for anything.

[oln]

By zipped version I mean a compiled version which you can just unzip and run. It's up on the sourceforge site.

Unity is not really usable for this project, as it is not open source, does not run on linux (which several of the developers use) and would require us to rewrite everything.

[svenskmand]

The deb packaging is going somewhat slow, but that is due to me not knowing anything about packaging, hence I am learning the basics about it currently. I have working scripts for making a tarball and compiling on a clean Ubuntu install. But there is also allot of stuff to sort out before there will be any official deb package, one of the most important things are a correct copyright notice (who made what). For that I thought about simply extracting username information from GIT and SVN to show who made which file, but we of course also need a real credits list for stuff done on the web etc. to thank e.g. xapantu who have help allot with the website stuff, and other stuff.

On a sidenote we actually switched from some custom OpenGL and SDL hacking (from the time when the project started with AlienWolf as lead coder) to using Ogre3D (for graphics) combined with OpenAL (for audio) which I think is the best choice if we should not use a pre-made engine (I do not even know if such a thing exists for our type of game. I mean like there exits Cube/Sauerbraten, etc. for FPS). But we are currently so far in development that a switch would be suicide (like oln said we would have to rewrite everything) and also the Ogre3d+OpenAL mix is really the best I think we can hope for anyway, and it is working pretty well already . Also we will never switch to a none FOSS platform like Unity.

[Danimal]

OK, i see changing engines is not a good option, and sorry, but i dont really know which forum to use for this, but when i unzip the packet the only exe i can see is "MapEditor.exe" the rest is just ogre dependencies and game files. Which one am i supposed to use to play?

[oln]

MapEditor.exe is the one you use, the name might be a bit misleading.
When the game is started, hit F12 to bring up the console, write

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

nick something


and

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

host


To start a game.

(Starting with a menu etc. will be possible at some point, but not yet.)

[andrewbuck]

Yeah we should really rename that executable. I originally intended that to be the map editor and for the game to be a separate exe however after I got into it it made more sense to just put them into one program, but I never got around to changing the name. Also, it would be good to have a README file to help people get the game running as the user interface is not at all obvious. It will be better once we get the CEGUI interface working to start games, etc.

-Buck