[Jun 9, 2012] Dev Meeting - site, blocks, art (IRC)

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
The new site here is getting more solid tho there are still a few things to finish up. We also have a few important & related outstanding decisions to make on block sizing and art style - just how "blocky" the world will be. So I'm suggesting our first ever official meeting, yay meetings!

Picking 4 pm EST on this coming Saturday, which is a time I've aired before as a decent time to get lots of people - but if there's a better time just suggest away.

Initial agenda ideas with some small attached todos:
  • Site: forum setup review and final tweaks (still a little uncertain about exact forums justified at this point). Cervator - will try to sort out old topics into better places by then. dei, woodspeople, et al, any more suggestions?
  • Site: initial presentation and about pages. begla - could you try to get the "Nodes as Tabs" addon working? Cervator - will try to actually write an "About" article and maybe some sub-pages under the same tab. stellarfirefly - could you try to tinker with subdomains & Apache rewrites with XenPorta active on the test site to have each tab linked to a subdomain instead of subdir? AlbireoX - is the license stuff all set and do you have any additional suggestions on addons etc?
  • Blocks: it's been suggested to shrink the block size relative to the player to allow for more detail and other potential also including the ability to change elevation without jumping. Which is fraught with great peril as well on memory usage and performance. Immortius, begla, and others - can we do it? This also ties into art ...
  • Blocks: seems almost a given that we'll end up with vertical chunks eventually to help with performance (cut down on per-chunk memory usage, etc) and maybe regions ("super chunks" ?) for server-side data management. So not really sure why I mention it, but lets see if we can make it official!
  • Art: We need to settle on some official direction on an overall art style (fairly high level, see the thread for details) - would be good to get a bunch of our artists and interested contributors online for this as it is likely the core topic: glasz, eleazzaar... I can't tag any more people, argh! Next post. Any remaining bits of concept art to show on Saturday would be great :D
  • Art: In-game creation of art assets like models by shrinking large block constructions and imbuing them with life - this likely would heavily tie to art style as it narrows it a bit to what you'd be able to recreate decently in-game. Likely one of the more ambitious challenges, but start small and just imagine pulling it off!
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
So I can't tag more than 10 people in a post, so here are more artists and other involved people on that topic ;)

A'nW, metouto, woodspeople, overdhose, SamReynolds, Louis Melling. dacresni, B!0HAX, MarcNottke...

And one more for ironchefpython since he mentioned an in-game mod editor, so art editor totally relates :D

Oh, and maybe I'll also figure out how to do the permissions right so people can actually RSVP, I don't even have permission to do that myself and I'm an Administrator - fixed!

Edit: Convenience linky to IRC page in old wiki, or you could just click the chat tab
 

Cervator

Org Co-Founder & Project Lead
Contributor
Design
Logistics
SpecOps
Thanks for all who were able to make it, likewise for those who almost did as several popped up shortly after it ended - next time we'll catch more people and make more cat puns about me going afk (briefly!) :)

Log: http://pastebin.com/Zidu8bbr

Summary (bits and pieces also put into other threads)

  • Site is doing well. metouto and @SuperFunk have made us some badges and dei a logo. Also trying to get Admin working for Dei who is looking into doing some mashup type stuff for idea brainstorming together with woodspeople and myself
  • Blocks - there is a lot of potential here, but we're going to delay decisions on block scaling (in short: is player 2 or 3 blocks high?) and messing with the vertical height and make-up of the world to when some 3d wizardry can be prototyped by begla (August'ish, @KaiKratz maybe then too) and Immortius.
  • Art - we made glasz Art Lead (is Lead Artist better?) after some discussion on art style. I'm happy to have had my concerns proven needless when it comes to whether a distinct style (the disconnected/disjointed look of Jake the Dwarf) could be more trouble than it is worth - suffice to say there appear to be quite a few advantages I hadn't thought of, and it might not be too tricky for a general artist body to adapt to :)
Lots of other good stuff like the potential for in-game content creation like building creatures out of blocks, procedural plant/creature generation, etc. Maybe changing the step size to avoid having to jump on one-block elevation changes - or maybe a completely different angle on just making some of the inclines generate more mild? Terrain is currently very diagonal in places :)

August will be interesting as I could see a bit of a push for milestone 7 (world shaping) happen then, and just added a bunch of items to it (note: some might be in it just because it is the furthest one out atm) . Summer could be good too with some warm-up and more content. I actually set a date for milestone 7 of September 30th just to start playing with dates - I suspect we could do Untrue Tao / Alpha as another big milestone after that. Thinking 2-3 months, so maybe Alpha around the turn of the year - thoughts? :)

Specific to Untrue Tao Immortius suggested the two factions could be differentiated primarily through geometry - blocky steampunkers, angulon peaceniks... whatever it is angulon will end up meaning! :D

Some of the more advanced block-related optimizations I'm not sure if I should make issues for. Like the talk of (j)Bullet refactoring to help avoid some slowdown with meshes? Or "Valleys of Darkness" where sunlight propagation only really happens high enough in the world?
 
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