Info

Participants: Henri Kuuste, [~patosan]
Duration: A few hours at least
Start time: around 1800 GMT
Medium: Skype + Gobby

Agenda

Core Agenda Items

The Next Meeting (1 min) - Priority 1

• May 19th?

Project Management (as long as it takes) - Priority 1

• How can we get back to coding?
  • Tasks of a PM
  • Goals
    • Grand ideas vs "let's just make something"
  • Collaboration and brainstorms
• What's needed for [~patosan] to learn coding (fast).

Work on QMS

• Where to start?
• Meeting management

Game Engine progress review

• DreamsOfAGameDesigner review
  • conclusions?
• Where are we now?
  • What resources do we have?
  • Who is leading the project?
  • What has been done?
  • What failed? Why?
  • What was successful? Why?
• Where do we go from here?
  • What resources do we need?
  • Who should be leading the project?
  • What is the game plan for the next month or so?
  • Promises, deadlines and progress meetings

Work on TechUCs

• See what [~patosan] did on RockTechUC and discuss what the problems were
  • Finish the RockTechUC
• Continue work on various UCs

Mutable and Diverse World

• Definition
• Technical challenge
  • Never been done - spore comes close in some sense
  • Fractal data generator

Optional Items

Refine asset categories and types

• Check out the asset types in Meeting2007-04-14
• What's wrong?
• What's missing?

Security levels

• What security levels do we need?
• Are there any that we do not need?

New skill ideas

• Tactics and leadership
• Bards and singing
• Locally scripted chat
• Weather prediction

Demo GUI specification

• Add to DemoGui and make it nicer

Werewolf powers and other skills

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

Seer and cleric skills and differences

• 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

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

Herbalists

• Discuss the new Herbalists document.

Generic human project

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

Dragonhunters

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

World Development

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

Renaming Objects

• We need to rename a number of items in Laurelin, including its inhabitants.
• Needs more research before discussing...
• Naming guide for Laurelin and the Norse world in general

Outcomes / Decisions

The Next Meeting

• May 17th, 2007 (May 20th thereafter)

Project Management

Project Management Roles

• Communication hub
  • Helps w/problem solving and routing
• Keeper of the priorities
• Keeper of the one true flame ** project plan
  • making sure there is a coherent vision
• Scheduler (priorities)
• Morale Officer
  • What motivates ppl?
• Active Particpant
  • Isn't in an ivory tower (gets their hands dirty once in a while)
  • Knows when they're in over their head
  • Knows a little bit about a lot of things

Jason The Coder

• Henri's expectations
  • Most of the things below are just conveniences to speed conversations
  • An active imagination - creativity (imagination and creativity)
  • collaboration within an hour or two (if you are supposed to be available)
  • initiative
    • exchanging lots of ideas
  • openness / communication
  • no easy answers

• Jason's expectations
  • Bite-sized portions
    • If I don't undertstand something let's work on it together until we figure it out
    • No hand feeding
      • keep Henri honest when he gives you an answer
  • honest feedback
    • don't pull punches
    • paying attention when something is becoming a problem
      • some things in the book and by the book aren't practical
  • Patience
    • some concepts are more difficult
      • the student has to actually want to learn
  • Honesty
    • "I don't know is fine."
  • Collaboration
    • Constant monitoring of progress

• Immediate Things Jason should learn about
  • Design Patterns
  • General collaboration on designing
  • UML (general overview)
  • More uses cases
  • Analyze and create algorithms (just practice)
  • general stuff - asym. analysis
  • learn basic algo types

Project Division of Responsibilities

• Project Manager
  • Department Heads
    • Architects

Grand Plan Brainstorm (in order of importance)

Long Term Goals

• A demo that is essentially a "walkabout"
  • Important features include: Movement - Chat - Seeing other - Entities
  • This is important to motivate us
    • 2-3 week iterations which has a usable end product

Short Term

• Create Grand Plan
  • assess current situation
    • coding
    • media
    • PM (done)
• Team collaboration
  • How does communication happen?
  • Who has what responsibilities?
  • Collaborate on world generator idea.
• Project Mgmt Goals
  • Project Organization
  • QMS we need to develop a nice QMS system
• Coding
• Media
  • Demo Media is the only important thing at the moment.