Info

The meeting will last approximately 1-2 hours. Meeting between Henri Kuuste and [~patosan]. Using skype and gobby. Meeting time 0300 GMT.

Agenda

Core Agenda Items

Next meeting (1 min) - Priority 1

• Determine next meeting date

Near future (5 min) - Priority 1

• Current situation assessment
• Plans and schedule
• Availability

Contributors (5 min) - Priority 1

• A word about the new guy(s) by Henri Kuuste

Inf3rn0 and his server (5 min) - Priority 1

• Moving IRC
• Mirroring Wiki - it's slow in EU currently

JIRA and Confluence environment setup (50 min or as long as we can) - Priority 1

• Wiki cleanup
• Moving the design doc into wiki - which parts?
• Encyclopedia layout
• Contributors and what they need to do
• What content in the wiki can contributors see? What if they have signed the confidentiality agreement?
• Workflow overview and comments
  • Are the current workflows okay?
  • What kind of steps do different assets need?
  • What does audio asset creation look like?
  • Should there be a way for the assignee to get out of the review state?
• Screens for transitions and different assets
  • Comment screens during transitions
    • Is it enough to have them just for the submission transitions?
  • What else might one want to change during transitions?
    • Timetracking not possible yet, but coming in future versions of JIRA I think.
    • Reviewers can reassign
    • Approving and rejecting requires the resolution to be entered - can this be automated?
• Asset fields
  • Location field for 3D assets
  • References field
  • Do we need a type field or something? See the issue about categories.
• Permission setup
• Security level setup
• Diving the project
  • JIRA and Confluence project layout
  • Components in JIRA
• Asset categories and subcategories
  • All asset types further divide into categories such as creatures, items, environment assets etc.
  • Could be useful for searching purposes.
  • How should this info be presented in the asset.

Optional Agenda Items

Demo GUI specification - Priority 2

• Add to DemoGui and make it nicer

Werewolf powers and other skills - Priority 2

• Werewolf powers described in the blog [RTSan:/2007/02/06/Werewolves and cheating]
• Tactics and leadership
• Bards and singing
• Locally scripted chat

Herbalists - Priority 3

• Discuss the new Herbalists document.

Dragonhunters - Priority 5

• Discuss the new document if it can be entered in time.

Seer and cleric skills and differences - Priority 3

• How do regular seers and clerics differ?
• How do seer skills manifest themselves? What's the UI like?
• How do we balance seers vs werewolves vs others?
• What are the downsides to being a seer?

Cleric guild clothing - Priority 2

• Review the images so far.
• Choose elements that are there to stay
• Think about new directions to go in
• Different uniforms for different people

Generic human project - Priority 3

• What kind of a polycount should we aim for?
• How important is sculptability?
• How important is facial animation?
• Some samples of lowpoly humans.

World Development - Priority 5

• Viking Laws and Government
• The Guild Information and Backstory
• Berrin backstory
• Pantheons for Laurelin and Vikings

Outcomes / Decisions

Next meeting

• Meeting2007-04-21

Availability and plans

• Current situation sucks
• [~patosan] is available durning next week, unavailable during the first week of May, after that things will be nicer.
• Henri Kuuste is mildly available up until june (a few hours a week). First weeks of june might be very busy, after that availability will increase a lot.
• [~patosan] will work on some project management issues.
• Henri Kuuste will work on project management and art.

Contributors

• Nothing decided yet. The potential 2D artist does not show much promise. We'll see about the 3D guy.

Inf3rn0

• [~patosan] will talk to him and get a name for his server.

Wiki cleanup

• Wiki cleanup - Decide organizational structure of wiki
• Moving the design doc into wiki
  • Will be done by [~patosan]
  • Plan on integration with future encyclopedia
  • Filter out content that already exists in wiki or is obsolete
• Encyclopedia is being redone by Henri Kuuste on his HD atm
  • twiki version of the encyclopedia is more recent than CVS. Someone will need to check what's different and what information is correct
  • Encyclopedia layout
    • Make the layout more wikipedia-like
    • Split up each of the categories into separate pages so permissions can be handled more nicely and searching would be easier

Contributors and what they need to do

• Sign confidentiality agreement - this allows for greater awareness of the contributor about the project in general. Will not give contributor access before this is done.
• How do we mitigate risk associated with revealing project details to newbs?
  • If possible give small, self-contained assignments to new contribs. We should always have a list of newb tasks handy
  • Mentor promising newbs with a seasoned dev who can give guidance while revealing as little as possible info.
  • We do not have time to mentor everyone really, so it'd be best if the wiki and jira layout allowed us to just give them the links and they can explore What is that layout?
  • Excellent infra and organization will be required to mentor newbs w/o having to work at it. What infra will be needed other than what is already available?
• Put basic info into public space
• Need a contributor space
• Revision control server or some storage for content (write and read but not delete/modify)
  • Read access to content management system (need something besides wiki)
• A mailing list (separate from dev list)

Workflows

• Review locks the status for assignee - makes them think a bit more and saves time for devs.
• Split audio asset into music asset and sound fx asset. Will be done by Henri Kuuste.
• Sound FX workflow (we need to research this one a bit)
  • gather raw sounds
  • pre-production (edit sounds to make them decent - cleanup of raw material)
  • editing (combining and refining sounds to make them interesting)
  • normalization and post-production (make sure they fit into the game nicely and final polish)
• Music workflow
  • Gather reference
  • Compose
  • Record
  • Edit
• Comment screen for every transition. Will be done by Henri Kuuste.
• PRIORITY! Test workflows before they are used. EVERYONE TEST YOUR ASS OFF!
• Asset field
  • General
    • Type/Category (multiple selections possible - like labels)
  • Music
    • Genre
    • Length
  • 3D object
    • Polycount (estimate at first)
  • Painting (concept or hanging on a wall)
    • Location (where in game is the painting or where in the world is the scene taking place)

Asset categories/types

Literary assets

• Literature
  • Stories
  • Books and scrolls
  • Poems
  • Song lyrics
  • Gossip
  • NPC dialog scripts
• World design
  • History
    • Timeline
  • Concepts
  • Guidelines and conventions
• Manuals and help documents

2D asset

• Concept
  • Character
  • Architecture
  • Item
  • Environment
• In game
  • Texture (material)
  • Painting
  • Maps
  • Book illustrations
  • Signs
  • Ornaments
  • Logos (for guilds)
  • Matte (environment)
• GUI design

3D rig

• Creature
  • Human
  • Animal
  • Insect
  • Bird

3D object

• Creature
  • Humans
  • Animals
  • Insects
  • Birds
  • Fish
• Equipment
• Static items
• Dynamic items
• Environment
  • Architecture
  • Nature
    • Vegetation
    • Trees
    • Rocks
    • Fire, Smoke and mist and such (particle effects)
• Particle fx

3D animation

• Creature stuff depends on rig - so should link to rig somehow
• Skeletal animation
• Blend shapes

Audio asset

• Music
  • Ambient
  • Featured
• Sound FX
  • Environment sounds (ambient)
  • Creature sounds
  • Item sounds
  • Action sounds

Preparation for next time

• See Meeting2007-04-21
• Think about security levels
• Think about asset categories more
• How to divide the project into components and projects?
• Think about the flavor of our game - player skill vs character skill balance. See Herbalists