Imperial Winter - where things stand, and how you can help.
Posted: 14 Jan 2011, 07:14
Many people have been wondering what has happened to IW, as there has been little news of late.
First let me assure everyone that it has not been abandoned.
Things simply slowed down for the last year largely because of RL issues; I went on exchange for 6 months, and then had my thesis due at the end of 2010. Similarly my time currently is also limited by RL roles, but not enough to prevent me working on IW. But let me get to the point.
Currently, IW has not been updated for a while and Spring has moved ahead in a number of ways. In its current state, IW is not playable, and the team as it stands lacks the knowledge to update it. Gnomre has indicated he lacks the time and motivation to continue in his prior lead-coding/management role, and my involvement has always been as artist and designer (ie: my technical knowledge extends primarily to fiddling with text values), so we lack the ability to make the necessary changes at the moment.
Therefore, this is an earnest request for help from the Spring community to help us modernise IW for Spring. ForbodingAngel and Googlefrog have already been assisting me a little, but it is a complex job for them alone to shoulder given they have their own projects as well.
Primarily the work needed requires an updating of the lua rules, fixing some gadgets, conversion of some cob scripts to lua, mending the GUI and hunting some nasty bugs that are lurking.
Many people have been concerned in the past by IW's closed development model. The reasoning for this has always been that we wanted to avoid releasing a game that would always appeal to those who are interested in Star Wars, but are not used to the 'rough-around-the-edges' nature of a typical open-source development. We wanted to have a polished product before chasing those curious people off.
However, given the already very lengthy time of development, and the need for some new blood on the IW development team in order to finish the final 15-20% or so of work that is left before it can be considered 'complete', if the community can help us get IW into a playable state, we would be happy to release IW in its current, unfinished state, as a playable open-beta. Although perhaps 'demo' would be a better term, as we would not be releasing so much for balancing feedback as much as to encourage people to join us to assist with the final development push.
If you're interested in helping out, please send me a PM noting your experience and how you can help (I've been out of the loop for a while so I don't really remember who has made what and I haven't been keeping track of all the talented new guys that are around) and we'll get you access to the SVN.
I can't exactly pinpoint all that is wrong with IW currently because it is outside of my knowledge to really know what's going on. Forboding and Frog will hopefully chime in with what they've seen that needs to be fixed.
To clarify, I am making two requests:
1) To any Spring mod or engine developer who can help us modernise and fix IW so that it is as playable in Spring as we had it several months ago in order for us to release a public demo
2) To anyone who would like to join the development team to help finish the final 15-20% of work.
In terms of what needs to be done for the final completion list (not for modernisation of IW), here's a quick summary:
- Many advanced units need to be animated, some such as the Imperial heavy walkers, need quite complex/sexy walk animations
- All advanced units need to be implemented, some needing some custom lua for their behaviour
- General mod management, implementing new units, creating buildpics, organisation etc
- The GUI needs to be fully implemented (I'll happily post images of the designed GUI but in another thread)
- Ideally the sound set needs to be made IP free (an on-going project, currently some of the soundset is 'borrowed' from old SW games)
- Creating a custom installer and bootscreen
First let me assure everyone that it has not been abandoned.
Things simply slowed down for the last year largely because of RL issues; I went on exchange for 6 months, and then had my thesis due at the end of 2010. Similarly my time currently is also limited by RL roles, but not enough to prevent me working on IW. But let me get to the point.
Currently, IW has not been updated for a while and Spring has moved ahead in a number of ways. In its current state, IW is not playable, and the team as it stands lacks the knowledge to update it. Gnomre has indicated he lacks the time and motivation to continue in his prior lead-coding/management role, and my involvement has always been as artist and designer (ie: my technical knowledge extends primarily to fiddling with text values), so we lack the ability to make the necessary changes at the moment.
Therefore, this is an earnest request for help from the Spring community to help us modernise IW for Spring. ForbodingAngel and Googlefrog have already been assisting me a little, but it is a complex job for them alone to shoulder given they have their own projects as well.
Primarily the work needed requires an updating of the lua rules, fixing some gadgets, conversion of some cob scripts to lua, mending the GUI and hunting some nasty bugs that are lurking.
Many people have been concerned in the past by IW's closed development model. The reasoning for this has always been that we wanted to avoid releasing a game that would always appeal to those who are interested in Star Wars, but are not used to the 'rough-around-the-edges' nature of a typical open-source development. We wanted to have a polished product before chasing those curious people off.
However, given the already very lengthy time of development, and the need for some new blood on the IW development team in order to finish the final 15-20% or so of work that is left before it can be considered 'complete', if the community can help us get IW into a playable state, we would be happy to release IW in its current, unfinished state, as a playable open-beta. Although perhaps 'demo' would be a better term, as we would not be releasing so much for balancing feedback as much as to encourage people to join us to assist with the final development push.
If you're interested in helping out, please send me a PM noting your experience and how you can help (I've been out of the loop for a while so I don't really remember who has made what and I haven't been keeping track of all the talented new guys that are around) and we'll get you access to the SVN.
I can't exactly pinpoint all that is wrong with IW currently because it is outside of my knowledge to really know what's going on. Forboding and Frog will hopefully chime in with what they've seen that needs to be fixed.
To clarify, I am making two requests:
1) To any Spring mod or engine developer who can help us modernise and fix IW so that it is as playable in Spring as we had it several months ago in order for us to release a public demo
2) To anyone who would like to join the development team to help finish the final 15-20% of work.
In terms of what needs to be done for the final completion list (not for modernisation of IW), here's a quick summary:
- Many advanced units need to be animated, some such as the Imperial heavy walkers, need quite complex/sexy walk animations
- All advanced units need to be implemented, some needing some custom lua for their behaviour
- General mod management, implementing new units, creating buildpics, organisation etc
- The GUI needs to be fully implemented (I'll happily post images of the designed GUI but in another thread)
- Ideally the sound set needs to be made IP free (an on-going project, currently some of the soundset is 'borrowed' from old SW games)
- Creating a custom installer and bootscreen