IRC Meeting 2

time for meeting start I guess

yup

added this page to the wiki: http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/People

anybody interested should add himself there

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so who is new and wasn't there at the last meeting?

I'm new, but looks like I've to go also :(

and especially who is seriously interested in helping of the newcommers?

i'm new... just listening atm :)

I could introduce people who'd like to start with programming...

I wasn't here at the first meeting

bye->

pifactorial: you want help with story, right?

89x128

i'm just eyeballing, i probably won't have time to contribute much.

yeah

I'm interested in helping

Godrin: gave you svn access

all those suggested helping with story I suggest to do a: wget -np -m http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/windstille-files/

and browse through the content a bit

SpoonMeiser: so what do you want to do?

it contains plenty of ideas, sketches and stuff

those people with random ideas should use this page http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Ideas in the wiki to add their stuff

I'd like to help code, but I find picking up an existing code base to work on fairly intimidating, perhaps sticking to helping out with story

as far as the story is concerned, who's the minister of information?

well you can always ask question and such to get into the code...

you could also do simpler coding stuff like writing scripts or extending/maintaining the flexlay editor

(script are written in squirrel, editor mostly in ruby)

pifactorial: the current story and sketches is done by me

grumbel is the main approver, since he does the artwork

are you also the creative mastermind?

so all seminal ideas flow from you?

I'm capable of most things code wise, but I don't want to commit to anything big, since I probably won't find the time to do anything too big

if there are small, well defined tasks, I'll take a look at those

pifactorial: currently I am a bit out of ideas, but since I started windstille and was up until two weeks ago the only one working on it for the last few years, basically all stuff so far came from me

ok

half of it shamelessly stolen or at least heavily inspired by other games I might add...

all I meant is, do we come to you and ask about the backstory

or do we write backstory and give it to you?

there really is not much back story at this point in time

so you could play a part in writing it

got ya

SpoonMeiser: well getting the editor running again would be a well defined task...

quickflash: have you written anything down of your story ideas?

SpoonMeiser: depending on your ruby knowledge this might be a small or big job...

grumbel: have some stuff at work I was playing with

MatzeB: I've never used ruby, but I hear it's based on Java?

SpoonMeiser: no

SpoonMeiser: no, its more like python meets perl

SpoonMeiser: it's more like python with different syntax

hmmm

SpoonMeiser: with a lot of smalltalk in it

I changed the boss to a large black guy who is similar to that alien obi-wan kenobi goes and talks to in the restraunt in Attack of the Clones (for personality)

for simple cases its really exactly like python, just with begin/end instead of indention

SpoonMeiser: the editor currently is a base of c++ classes that can draw tiles and stuff

SpoonMeiser: these can be used from ruby

SpoonMeiser: so you would have to write ruby code to load levels and then some logic code to handle the gameobjects available

SpoonMeiser: flexlay already has a well running supertux code which woudl be a good reference on how to do things

to me father-daughter dynamic is more interesting than girl-girl or mother-daughter dynamic

plus it's easier to get guys to do voices than girls :)

also, the boss you have is a young girl, and if you have ever worked with women you will know that women of the same age do not work well together :)

I couldn't get flexlay to compile last time I checked it out of svn, I'll give it another go though

http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Characters

add least in the 3d models the boss-women looks quite a bit older then the other one

SpoonMeiser: needs latest svn clanlib

grumbel: I did, finally, get that working

quickflash: anyway, I don't mind changing the relationships a bit

SpoonMeiser: just ask if you have problems getting stuff compiling

things might be broken in the svn versions

quickflash: give me a quick flash of the story

or at least the characters

well, really there is only the 3 currently

MatzeB: I'll take a look and see what I can do, I wasn't checking it out with regards to windstille last time I looked, so I didn't spend too long trying to get it to work

hero is kinda non-descript. Tough girl persona, she doesn't talk much unless it calls for it. She never uses her sex to her advantage...

ok

SpoonMeiser: I can give you a short intro to the map format later if you're going to work on this

boss is a big friendly black guy who is suprisingly agile, and somewhat cunning, but loyal to the people who work for him, even protective.

is he an office-type

or does he do field work?

his cunning is well hidden below his extremely friendly demeanor, so the only ones who get a glimpse of it are his workers (the hero)

MatzeB: sure

if his cunning is hidden, he comes across as shallow?

no, not shallow

just average

just willing to take advantage of a situation so long as no one he cares about gets hurt

a businessman

yes, but he's in charge of something mundane, like a junk yard, for cover

ok

and he actually goes out and get's dirty working in the junkyard, because he's not afraid of work

I think we were using different definitions of cunning

perhaps

intelligently taking advantage of a situation is what I would call it

I was thinking " Executed with or exhibiting ingenuity." as opposed to "Marked by or given to artful subtlety and deceptiveness."

ok

yes

and character #3

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AAAle: little late?

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#3 is the old boss

she is now a competitor that used to work for the boss but now went solo

retired?

no, she's the same age

ok

you drop that 3d models head a bit and she will look a lot younger :)

competitor = evil, or just annoying?

more annoying

she's rather good, and the hero and her go for the same jobs

where did everyone else go?

I'd say just normal hard business competition

me too

she's more willing to manipulate people though since she is on her own

evil for the sake of being evil is strange

but evil to make money makes sense :)

hey! It's everyone else!

economy-driven universe makes sense

everyone else is still here, just listening with interest

but there has to be something darker

not from those 3

but we have 3 characters, and 0 story, so we can get to that later

is the structure for the RPG type stuff in windstille yet?

maybe some jobs come from this "darker" side

but the 3 shouldn't be directly involved in that

like an organization?

well the one girl can be, the competitor MatzeB

isn't the story just that you're trying to make enough money to get out of there?

Team Rocket

I can't believe I just said that\

pifactorial: I would like the basic setting basically completly harmless and non-evil

quickflash: well I typically find stories more interesting where the "evil"/"Black" side his hidden

• SpoonMeiser slaps pifactorial

pifactorial: the evil stuff is what those guys might run into later on

I've gathered that

quickflash: just actting very indirectly through people like the competitor boss

yeah, I gathered that grumbel

who just execute jobs but don't actually know for what or whom

yes, but thinking of the competitor maybe unknowingly getting caught up with the evil stuff, but the boss keeps the hero out of it in the beginning

but we have to know how the story ends before we start writing it

Could the storyline be dependant on the jobs the player takes? So if he took "bad" jobs, he would eventually become a bad guy and fight the good guys?

than maybe go to the point where the hero is saving the competitor

quickflash: the more unknown the evil is the more scary and interesting it is

mazteb, if I run configure with --enable-debug, will it disable optimization?

pifactorial: only when you want it to be big epic stuff

MatzeB: yes I agree

quickflash: if you show the bad aliens or whatever right from the start that's plain boring

jamesg382: yes

ok, good

but only the boss really knows, he doesn't explain it

pifactorial: my plan goes more to tv-show like, so that you can add episodes wheneever you like

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ok, I think I follow

if it's TV like than it will be truelly character based

dramatic, not epic

so we need more characters

quickflash: let the competitor save the hero, more interesting

grumbel: yes, like that :)

heh

right on

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anyways, if it's eposodic, need to come up with more characters

there's the bartender already

how should he be like

if it's episode based, we're going to have to come up with unique, loosely-linked plotlines for each level

instead of one plot, split up into chapters

pifactorial: not for each level, but for each release

I fixed flexlay to work on amd64 :)

ahhhhhhhhhh

well... compile at least

SpoonMeiser: svn diff

SpoonMeiser: and send it to us

I mean I don't want to solve big fat mytsery at the end of milestone1(2) and/or blow the universe apart

want something I could build on later on

it's tough - do we want the bartender to be friendly

bartender is an information source, what would make him interesting?

like the first star wars movie

it had closure, but not much

we don't need to know the bartender's background

Isn't the most important thing at the moment, to get the structure in place that will allow us to have story elements?

no, but need a personality

but his personality could add atmosphere

bartender should for most part somebody just doing its job, not necesarry friendly all the time, but not evil in any way either

SpoonMeiser: from what I see it'll mainly be dialogs and scripting cutscenes inside the engine

kind of like most bartenders are in movies

MatzeB: but aren't there supposed to be 'adventure' areas, where you can choose who to talk to, which jobs to take etc?

I think the bartender has to be friends with hero though

mazteB, the game crashes for me when optimized but not when debug is enabled, did you say it was the same for you, too?

What's the setting of the story? Is that futuristic civilization fighting some other civilization? If so, that planet could be a frontier planet ocupied by both sides. The story of milestone 1 could end up with the hero freeing the planet from the ocupation of the enemy and it would still leave space for future stories.

friendly enough to give up information

jamesg382: quickflash had the same problem...

whoa, coming in the middle

MatzeB: oh, and the fix to flexlay is just to add -fPIC to the compiler options

PauloMorfeo: no other civilization, no occupation

just economy

pifactorial: give him money, he will give you information

makes sense

so bartender is kinda cold guy who does a lot of listening?

we can't have too many friendly characters

I'd prefer warm, but cold might be more interesting

you know, with an eyepatcjh

lol, nice sketch, grumbel

like the bartender in Monkey Island 2 :)

the characters should be 'warm', but not so warm that everybody is necesarrily best friend of each other

I was originally thinking like the Prancing Pony bartender from LOTR, but as I said, cold would probably work better

just bunch of people stuck on some dirty pile of colonie where they have to live with each other

Mazte, actually, worse than that: it crashes unless I am running it unoptimized, via gdb. So I guess something isn't initialized properly somewhere/

jamesg382: you know where it crashs?

everyone is trying to get enough money to get off the dirty colonie?

what's your bt jamesg382 ?

yes, money in itself can make for a boring motivation after a while

the backtrace when optimized is in the inline player get_state. there is no bt when not optimized because it doesn't crash.

SpoonMeiser: some of them might be happy where they are

my error was with fonts jamesg382

SpoonMeiser: not everybody wants to live in all-happy StarTrek universe

I meant, get_movement_state

quickflash: but since these people aren't going to look back once they've gone, they don't really care about anyone else there?

some like toget their hands dirty every once in a while

they have to care about each other, otherwise it just get's too "mean"

maybe the planet is in quarantaine or something, basically noone is allowed to leave it

hmm, the concept of a failing colony would be interesting though

I don't think it should be dispirited

so that we have a "fixed" universe for the story

MatzeB: that could be an idea

Me away... Going to do something for my mother!

or getting tickets to somewhere else is simply really expensive

don't think we need quarantaine

my idea was more that mankind moved out into space and colonized a bunch of planets

or traveling needs 10years because you don't have faster than light travel :)

are we looking for an excuse to keep people on the planet?

some of which turned up providing more resources than others

there needs to be some overall conflict that makes it interesting though

and this one is one with less resources

of course

even tv shows slowly reveal information to make it fun

why can't people just come and go from the planets?

I'd like to have an excuse to keep people on the planet...

we need some kind of motivation why Jane stays on this not so nice place

MatzeB: hunt for gold?

needs something else besides resource gathering, because the people need to be conflicted between that and whatever else we think up

just like people move around here on earth

well, she doesn't stay there all the time

hmm gold hunt would be an interesting thematic too

she stays there because the boss is there

and she likes the boss

so the people on this planet are people hunting for gold and the bit of economy around that

(like the bars, shops)

they all stay there for that reason

Jane stays on the planet because that's where the company office is

but she gets off the planet as often as possible to do missions

and the bosses actually "own" a bit of land that they can explore for gold?

(maybe we should introduce a different material than gold...)

have you guys ever seen a bar where the same guys come everyday

ahh, social structure

"bosses"

well, I don't have sunshine all the day where I live, doesn't mean that I suddenly move to the caribbean

maybe even feudal ;)

so I don't think we need much to keep them there

that's the same reason they stay on the planet, it's there "bar"

grumbel: well gold hunt would be an interesting motivation

I don't get it - obviously some people will stay on any planet, but why can't lots of people come and go

gold hunt is also good for introducing conflicts and twists into the story later

pifactorial: of course they can come and go

pifactorial: just we've been thinking in terms of a not so nice palce

pifactorial: so there has to be some motivation why people move there at all

ok

and how hostile is "not so nice"?

most planets would be very hostile, come to think of it

compared to any place on earth

half of them could simply be employes of "big-evil company" which were moved there to hunt resources

well staying with that gold hunt theme people wouldn't be hostile when they sit in the bar or so

but when someone actually finds a bit of gold they'll start to be hostile

relocated against their will?

or the usual fights about who owns which territories

pifactorial: well the typical gold hunter is a poor person

pifactorial: that has it's hope to become rich by finding gold

pifactorial: not against their will, its simply their job

I think entire societies would form around the "mines"

like I hinted at earlier

maybe each mine is owned by a different "boss"

yes that would be a good idea

but Jane's boss also does bounty stuff on the side

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and the gold mining is his cover

maybe the bosses provide material and machines for mining

and own the land

but they allow the miners to work there

and get a cut

as long as they get 50% of the profits they make or so

bosses each run their company their own way

there are some stories floating around about people that have become really rich by finding alot of gold

while in reality the only ones getting rich there would be the bosses

ahh

people come to the planet and get trapped

I'm not sure if we should do this as "companies" or more boss + 5 miners style...

if we talk about companies I'm thinking about hundrets of workers...

pifactorial: it's not really trapped

that's a tough one

depends on the sizes of the mines

pifactorial: it's just playing the illusion to them that they could get rich by finding lots of gold

pifactorial: there probably is a really small chance that this happens

maybe there are also some people who live there for a longer time

MatzeB: well, you know the scenario where they come to get rich, and then they are stuck there getting other people rich (but staying poor)

who have understood that you can't get rich by doing this

but they just live along with the small profits they make

pifactorial: yes that's what I mean with gold hunting

pifactorial: I just wouldn't talk of a "trap"...

well, being that it's the future you don't need as many "human" workers

but I mean, most people can't even afford to leave

perhaps Jane isn't top of her game, and this is the only place she can currently find work? maybe she's new to this?

pifactorial: they don't want to leave

might be a lot of robots per company, but like MatzeB's suggestion of maybe like 1 boss + 5 guys

pifactorial: has little todo with money

what's the story behind Jane's powersuit?

pifactorial: if you have stayed there for years hunting for 'gold' you might actually start to like that place

robots or just futuristic mining equipment...

perhaps most places in the universe are the same, the living costs in the nicer places far too high

that "powersuit" could be the normal mining equipment

pifactorial: after all those workers there have build the colonie or a part of it

maybe Jane has done some personal modifications to it...

pifactorial: its @home

about the hostility of the planet - is it hostile because of people, or because of environment?

make the powersuit something usually used for mining, but janes is modified for bounty hunting

MatzeB: like the A Team :P

to make it more usable for fighting

pifactorial: environment

SpoonMeiser: not like making an A-Bomb from a trashcan in 5 minutes...

SpoonMeiser: more like fiddeling on it for years

SpoonMeiser: every now and then a few hours after work

ok so no need of evil bosses/companies that rule the planet with an iron fist

I had the wrong idea

you can still have a evil company or many of them

yes

its after all a new born collonie so many parties will try their luck

what would make such a company evil?

I thought maybe the powersuit was a gift from Boss

but the general feel of the planet isn't dystopian

using slaves to do their work?

not caring about its workers

yeah

they can make more money that way

I would imagine that law enforcement would be weak in a new colonie, allowing the 'evil' people more opportunities in these places

but is it dystopian or not?

Back!

is it a happy place, or a hellish place?

pifactorial: something in between I'd say...

because "somewhere in between"

is kind of vague

pifactorial: you can live okay inside the colonie

but it's not nice if you walk around outside the colonie

is the colony one of many on the planet, or does everyone live in the same place?

in that you can't live long without such a miner suit

dome?

there surely are some others I'd assume

always a good possibility to introduce new places/characters later

some dome type thingy might be there for air and protection against environment...

are the settlements in domes or something like that?

About keeping people in the planet, it could be a directive of the empire. The Empire could determine that no one could change from the panet they lived in without permission, in order to control the population on the planets. So, we would have the workers coming to work on the planet and leaving when the comission was over, leaving the locals angry for wanting to leave also. We could have ilegal attempts to emigrate. We could have su

I hate to sound negative, but surely at the moment we just want to put in place the elements that will allow us to tell the story... have at least one 'walk around and talk' area, and linked with at least one 'powersuit' area?

is there an "Empire"? What's with inter-stellar government?

SpoonMeiser: current plan is VR training program for powersuit

SpoonMeiser: the bar and janes apartment to walk around and get a first job

wouldn't make the planet that badly suited for humans

and a first job in a wood type environemnt with spiders...

pifactorial: is there an "Empire"? I don't know! Is there?

just maybe hostile enemies out there or so

I think they talked more about the engine last meeting

hmm yes

MatzeB: my point is, shouldn't we be discussing getting that section done then? we could talk about story, literally forever

that way we could do without expensive domes

you don't walk barefoot through the desert either, but it doesn't instantly kill you either

but just with electro walls around the colony or so...

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SpoonMeiser: this game should be for a lot of part based around the story, so its quite important

you need more safety equipment underground anyway

I prefer to see the cities as somewhat fortified places to keep nasty creatures from getting in!

SpoonMeiser: currently we have good brainstorming, I'd hate to interrupt that now...

MatzeB: true

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SpoonMeiser: ie. more like, now we have a conflict between these and that party, how could they resolve it? and not, we have a gun implemented, who do we shoot?

grumbel: so what about it? Is there an Empire?

it's also a good base to write interesting dialogs

pifactorial: there might be one, but its not really evil or anything

the empire might just not have much might inside the colonie

yeah, I would think lassez-faire

ie. it's there but they have nearly no milita/police there

a "rim world"

grumbel: is it going to be easy to implement the different game 'modes' wuth the current code though? seems that this might be a big job

letting the people settle their disagreements themselfes

that's why nearly everyone has a gun...

ok, via the tedius method of absolutely zillions of debug cout statements, I am now quite sure that is crashes at if (player->get_movement_state() == Player::DEAD), line 140 of game_session.cpp

SpoonMeiser: it requires a bit of work, but its not rocketscience

jamesg382: I can take a look

SpoonMeiser: I'd like to drive development by a story

Will there be "cut-scenes" (or whatever you want to call them) or "movies" or something to present us with story elements?

SpoonMeiser: not drive the story by what the engine currently can do

PauloMorfeo: scripted cutscenes

ok, let's say this for the basic premis: Space travel is expensive. The current windstille planet is a mining planet. There are many companies on the planet, and they mine for things in different ways

PauloMorfeo: most stuff should happen ingame

yeah

we already have the groundwork for I couple

some ways are high tech, some are not

btw is there some basics or is it mostly non-linear(well semi linear) type of game????

s/is/are/

PauloMorfeo: in-game as in in-game cutscene, not like now we switch to random render movie

I played "Pachi el Marciano" yesterday, it has some cartoon like screenshot instead of movies. It doesn't work bad!

@quickflash: Boss owns one of these companies

our hero works as a bounty hunter for someone who owns a say junking company.

ruskie: its not linear, but not really non-linear either

I like the idea of driving development by a story, too, as long as everyone who is developing the story realises that due to technical constraints quite a lot of it won't make it into Milestone 1, if it makes it in ever. I.e., story si good for background and inspriration, even if much of it doesn't get used

as said semi-lineat

-t+r

ruskie: ie. you might change missions, talk with different people, but you want have simcity-like do whatever you want

it's a linear storyline with non-linear gameplay

or maybe it isn't ;)

MatzeB: if I'm being counter productive, just tell me to shut up :) but, we know that the story will call for walking around and talking to people, and moving between different game modes, my opinion is that we should work on getting that working

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SpoonMeiser: we sure will

SpoonMeiser: just most projects I did before had this story driven by the engine

most jobs involve in some way these other companies, either they need someone to help them get back to work, or in general they just need something cleared out

SpoonMeiser: which is not good...

so how futuristic is this?

SpoonMeiser: I'd like to think of it as a movie

SpoonMeiser: we wanna tell a story

SpoonMeiser: not just show our special effects...

let's say there aren't too many bounty hunters on the planet, so jane always has a job

ruskie: quite, rather

If it is going to be movie like, it must have a very non-linear story, me thinks.

PauloMorfeo: currently we're mostly talking about background setting...

quickflash: yep, sometimes the companies might need capable motivated local people instead of their underpayed not always motivated workers

PauloMorfeo, semi-linear... yo uget to do linear missions I assume but pick them at random and so on

ruskie: Alien-ish tech level I think

MatzeB: I agree, but we have a general idea, enough to get working on the engine with - changing scripted elements is likely to be easier to do later

grumbel: well workers just can't do it, they are workers, not warriors

will there be a concept of people "owning" land?

will the bosses own the mines?

quickflash: that too

will bosses just get out and start mining at some place noone else mined yet?

hmmm I wouldn't go with bosses except where necesary...

that

there should be mission objectives and such

that would allow some "evil" companies trying to take over mines that found gold...

Does the planet have nasty creatures? If so, many of the jobs could revolve about rescuing some valuable equipment or person out of a mine that has been overrun by those creatures. Or maybe even overrun by pirates and bandits.

quickflash: but sometime they simply might not want to do it, "Hey, my contract didn't list that, no way..."

how are we planning to introduce the VR tutorial? force players to do it, or have it as an optional 'quest', perhaps a hardware shop offers free powersuit orientation to customers?

PauloMorfeo: yes, thats the plan

PauloMorfeo: http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/windstille-spider2.png

SpoonMeiser: IMO we should make it so that you can complete it in 1 minute if you know how to control the character...

:p I missed most of the beggining of the discussion...

lol

SpoonMeiser: thats where the game starts

SpoonMeiser: farcry did that quiet nicely if you know the game...

MatzeB: how did farcry do it? know the game, but never played it

it basically instructed you how to get through the obstacles in the first level

but if you already knew how to control it you just walked forward and were done

back to the question - do you make the suit, or get the suit?

MatzeB: wouldn't it be nice if a player didn't have to do it at all? but it was linked in via the 'walk about' game mode, like other missions?

pifactorial: get it and improve it

they also introduce a small bit of story to make the tutorial interesting

so Jane is a merc...

like mans watching you so you had to duck...

grumbel: if that's the decision, then it's difficult to link the tutorial into the game

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how does the story start, is there a particular point we start with? something significant? or do we start with 'just anothre day in the life of Jane'?

pifactorial: why so?

I'd say another day...

the monthly VR training on the schedule...

because Jane already knows how to use the suit - she made it and has owned it for a long time

why does she have a training program?

The tutorial could hapen in home! We start at home and we get tooltips telling us what to do to leave home out to the town

to stay fit :)

pifactorial: somebody improved the VR programm so that its now actually usable for suit training

hmm, that might work MatzeB

MatzeB: if say, she's coming back to work after being injured, or just starting employment with the boss, then we also have a reason why she might have to do the tutorial

pifactorial: or otherwise updated it

hmmm

I like the idea just starting the work

physical therapy?

pifactorial:

pifactorial: good idea

or maybe she's running the tutorial to test her latest suit modification

leaves the ability to improve the suit and other stuff...

the idea of recovering from an injury is good

something like broke a leg a few weeks ago and has now to get back to work

afk

had to be rescued

if we make it so taht Jane doesn't really remember what happened we have a nice element for later stories again :)

by her nemesis

mazteb, for some reason player == 0 in GameSession::draw

:D

jamesg382: player never inited, use Player::current() maybe?

jamesg382: that might have to do with 1 of my hcanges...

I'll check it

didn't know GameSession keeps another ref to the player

I wonder why it never crashed for me

seems like we're out of story ideas now

are there some details in this setting we missed?

will someone summarize the setting and write it down?

well, I think we have enough groundwork

that the story guys can start meeting

and set some stuff in stone

most important thing would be to derive some dialogs, cutscenes and first jobs from this setting...

I think it's not my fault, but if in Europe you are given a number in the form "013-310330", then you type "013310330" and nothing else into the phone, right?

yes

there is no - on the phone

indeed

jamesg382: svn should be fixed

it's usually an area code before the dash...

must jist be engaged or something

they are in the same area, I think

• paxed is actually in an area whose code is 013 :P

grumbel: do you want to take the aspects of the story info we came up with and write that down?

quickflash: yes, we need to move that into the wiki

if you tell us what exists, we can fill in the dialogues

we just create the a whole nice setting here in irc

Who here will be willing to do real voices into the game?

someone would just need to place that in an logical order and write it down

PauloMorfeo: me

I can do 1 female voice and 2 male voices

lol

haha...

I don't want to know

you know someone female who would speak?

my wife does the female voice :)

ah nice

I will do voices also if required! Nobody else?

Everybody shy?

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I would if somebody would ship me some recording equipment

well for milestone2 we don't have that many characters anyway...

I'll do the boss, have a voice for him

pifactorial: I used my builtin soundcard and a cheapo micro

I wouldn't mind but I'm not sure if I can get a mic to work with my PC, as the sound card only has a digital in. So if there are enough other people already I won't bother, but if you need more voice people, or if an English accent could be useful, I could maybe try to get my parents to send me one of my super-cheapo sound cards from hoem in the post

pifactorial: but works quiet well

hmm every character will have a different accent

heh

That's not bad! That is nice.

we want a pretty high standard for sound quality

which is hard if everybody's using a different mic

pifactorial: we could simply try it...

That might be hard... Keeping all voices with similar quality...

it's worth a try

pifactorial: I added an experimental file to svn which I did

while sound quality might be a problem, getting proper voice acting itself done is also far from easy

I'll do the voice mixing stuff too, I have some software that's nice for that

person with a mic doesn't make a good actor

Sure is! How often we get a game with real voices...?

yep

Sound quality is nowhere near as important with voice as with music. You have to really concentrate to tell the difference between a good mic and a bad mic with voice.

how you speak the stuff is important

but if anybody uses homestarrunner.com, you know the low quality of Marzipan's voice, for example

what are the changes that need to be made to flexlay?

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SpoonMeiser: need to decide on mapformat and implent that properly

SpoonMeiser: then adding all the gameobjects, triggers and stuff

well should I do intro do flexlay now?

SpoonMeiser: mapformat will be based on lisp structures

grumbel: did you come to a decision from your HP forum post about tilemaps?

SpoonMeiser: that is you basically have a list that contain symbols strings, int, floats and other lists

maybe for voices we should have a single piece of text that everyone reads out and submits, and then we could discuss which voices are best for which characters?

a trigger mmight look like this in this format:

(trigger

(name "blup")

(x 202) (y 100) (width 50) (height 59)

)

is there a web interface to our svn?

yes

moment...

MatzeB: yeah, I get the idea, similar(ish) to a hash in perl

jamesg382: sounds good to me

SpoonMeiser: yes, going to use the first aproach, the classic one with 32x32 tiles

SpoonMeiser: and then need automatic tile-adding

http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/windstille/

SpoonMeiser: and some way to mark edges

grumbel: soo we put in the impassable blocks, and the decoration is automatically added?

good stuff

SpoonMeiser: that's the current level in svn: http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/windstille/trunk/data/levels/newformat2.wst?rev=511&view=markup

SpoonMeiser: the ground blokc is basically a list of properties and a (objects list

that contains all the GameObjects

SpoonMeiser: half automatic I would say, ie. editor has a function to mark non-tiling tiles and automatically add decor tiles

GameObjects are TileMap, background images, triggers, spawnpoints, ...

badguys other people

everything that is somehow on screen or forms a logical unit for gameplay...

the thing that some people call "Entity"

in the engine we basically have 1 class per GameObject

this class has own loading code

you should model it like that in the flexlay editor as well

MatzeB, you sound like my boss

nice accent

heh :)

well it's not a perfect recording yet

but I didn't want to do it again after 8 tries

but it's a good example

I just needed something for testing

oh man

the word ability has too much expression

as I had spoken it wrong 7 times before :)

the "suit" also sounds a bit wrong...

I'm Canadian, and everybody knows Canadians speak perfect English ;)

Where you downloaded it from? I want to hear it too :(

I'm german and only know english from school, movies and irc...

http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/*checkout*/windstille/trunk/data/sounds/speech/vr_intro.ogg?rev=504

pifactorial: I'm British with a Canadian girlfriend, I know Canadians don't speak proper English :P

lol, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies

eh?

he's a senator so he has to speak good english, doesn't he? ;-)

s/senator/governor/ or whatever

MatzeB: How old are you? That voice sounds very deep.

it's funny hearing British people try to do a Canadian accent

PauloMorfeo: 23

pifactorial: I can imagine

PauloMorfeo: yes it's a deep voice

PauloMorfeo: I'd like to speak some character that matches that

SpoonMeiser: vice versa, I would think

we could make boss german

haha

:)

Tha boss with tha german accent!

and I though the evil bosses are always french

but that is probably after the movies have been translated :)

but if you think I'll be talking in nazi-accent, forget it ;-)

this is no WW2 game...

I didn't knew nazis had a special accent...

well in most english movies they surely have :)

Anyway, speaking english, you'll hardly sound anything similar to a nazi accent.

things like "Ah mein Leben!" when they're dying...

I don't supose we have any scotish dude around? That would be fun!

you sound like the german guy who buys the powerplant in the simpsons

pifactorial: are you going to write down the background stuff from irc?

I can't believe I have a like $3000 PC and 4 state of the art mobile phones on my desk and a microphone and I can't work out to get my voice into my computer

if anybody here watches the simpsons

obsessively

:)

everyone does :)

but only the first few seasons ;)

MatzeB: I suppose I could, but I'm not sure I'm aware of the final decisions

or just a brainstorming summary?

And what about recording into the hard drive something that is going out to your PC speakers!? I've never managed to do that :S

pifactorial: simply do some or ask again :)

pifactorial: I think we were pretty fixed on:

- gold hunt athmopshere (maybe something else than gold)

- we're on a small mining planets

- people get there in the hope to get rish

Definetly something less common than gold, no?

- you have to work for "bosses" that provide you with mining facilities but you have to share your profits with them

- the planet is a not so nice planet, but you can easily live and breath there

- there is few police/law enforcement present

most people settle their issues with themselfes (that's why everyone has a gun)

- There is some economy around the miners, like bars and shops

ARG! I've worked out the problem! My microphoen is broken!

- Jane will be the main character of the story she has worked as miner in the past

but now is a bounty hunter or something

- She has a modified miner suit

on which she added some weapons and more armor and other extras...

She mostyle works for miner boss #1...

In milestone2 we'll also meet the barkeeper

and eventually boss#2 that often is in competition to boss#1

http://www.fileuniverse.com/uploads/lada.mp3 Just as a note, that voice is not mine!

- Bosses typically use a place on the planet and start mining there

- If the mine has found gold you have to be carefull and guard the place

as other "evil" miners will try to overtake the mine

or people trying to steal the mined gold and such

though most mines only find small amounts of gold and are not interesting

Bosses typically switch mining places from time to time...

There are other planets but we don't know much of them

Traveling is expensive and people mostly feel home on the colonie after living there for years

ok that's all I remember for now

- windstille releases will have episodic character like a TV show

woo I got my microphone working!!!

- colonies just places where people live on the planet

there are electro walls around colonies

anybody posting that to the wiki as we speak?

the story will start with jane recovring from some injury

she doesn't really remember what happened, just somethinge with a type in text here

this will not be revealed in milestone2 but in later episodes

she has to do the VR training program again because she was recovering

she talks to boss and gets a new job about retrieving a miner who has been lost in the wood or so...

The miner will be captured by a big spider

how about this for the start of the story: intro is Jane as a miner, some mining accident occurs and Jane attempts to rescue her co-workers, game starts with Jane recovering from injury and boss recruits her into a new role of mercenary/bounty hunter/whatever?

do mines exist inside or outside of colony walls?

pifactorial: outside

there'll be shuttles that transport miners to the mines

SpoonMeiser: how do we explain then that Jane has all the extras on her mining suit already?

SpoonMeiser: also I'd prefer not to tell from the past...

MatzeB: uhh... she's a hobbiest?

only revealing this from time to time in some episodes

MatzeB: OK, that makes sense actually, not to get bogged down with history

SpoonMeiser: well she does it for a living

SpoonMeiser: but she likes working with electric stuff, tuning her suit

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SpoonMeiser: that's why I prefer this "can't remember what happened on that accident" thing...

MatzeB: So long as we don't have a cliched 'total amnesia' story :)

--- bob4rrttt is now known as quickflash2

not total amnesia

more like I remember that shuttle crushing on me...

but no idea how I got there and why...

but her boss or someone might be able to tell her later

it's just a few minutes lost in the mind

because of the shock

makes sense

any more techinical things people want to talk about?

so will someone write this down?

would be a good thing to get involved ;-)

ok

I got a first draft in the wiki

http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/IRC_Meeting_2_Brainstorming_Summary

looks good

the windstille specific changes that need to be made to flexlay, should these be mentioned on the flexlay wiki, or the windstille wiki?

as long as you link to them it shouldn't matter I assume...

SpoonMeiser: windstille one is probally better, since thats where peoples focus is

anything else to discuss?

SpoonMeiser: unless you want to write some long interesting guide into flexlay that would be usefull for other projects as well, then thats better placed in flexlay wiki and linked

grumbel: in the windstille wiki then :)

quickflash2: lets check the checklist :) http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Design_Discussion_CheckList

were 3d sprites discussed at all?

quickflash: so far we mostly discussed about setting

quickflash2: so what about the 3d sprites?

are we planning on using them in milestone 1?

quickflash: yes

don't see any reason why not

will we call this release milestone2?

after all we already have one rotating around

as there already was some release...

quickflash2: should be possible to get 3d chars working

wondering that as well

quickflash2: if we hit unexpected problems we can still go back to sprites

could be milestone3 from the number of releases, but then the first one was really 'basic'

milestone2 with version number 0.3.0 might be confusing

we could also simply give it a uniq name

well, I was working on the animations from an in game perspective, so using whatever method is going to be used by default would help a bit

like "Windstille - The Beginning"

making animations outside the game leads to some ugly animations- like the running one :)

Episode One?

that one has some baaaaadddd karma ;)

:)

man, I just recorded myself, I'd forgotten that my voice really isn't cool. Anyway, http://galaxyhack.sourceforge.net/rec1.ogg

• SpoonMeiser shudders

quickflash2: I don't see how 3d sprites would look different from prerendered ones

jamesg382: sounds good to me

it's more matching up the movements in player.cpp

jamesg382: you should probably speak a little slower...

it's not Canadian English, but it's workable

jamesg382: Don't know what you're talking about! Sounds like a good enough voice to me!

yes, I did speak too fast

jamesg382: sounds pretty good

jamesg382 I like it

Sounds like the voices of those dudes that comment those documentaries of wild life in Africa.

jamesg382: would make a good character

if you need a nature documentary presenter character, I'm your man

lol

jamesg382: it's not too fast if you ask me, it's normal for an english accent

well depends if a character speaks it it's probably ok...

for background story it was a bit too fast for me...

but maybe that's because I'm not a native english speaker

At least that's easy to change. Just speak slower if needed... :p

grumbel: What's the story behind the name Windstille? Is it the name of the planet? Does it mean something?

Is that word German?

it's a german word

pifactorial: calm air

so is that the planet's name?

Similar to english: Still Wind

pifactorial: no

Name of girl?

lol Still Wind is an oxymoron

just a cool name for the game I assume...

pifactorial: indeed :)

pifactorial: its basically two things, a word play on Turrican which again is a word play on hurrican

but a nice one

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oxymoron? What's that? It has anything to do with moron?

I figured the link to Turrican

pifactorial: well in german it's not really an oxymoron

pifactorial: and in addition to that it refers a little bit to the amount of the athmosphaere in a sommer night

I meant in english

pifactorial: it just means the state when there is no wind...

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=oxymoron

quickflash2: why do you need to adjust the animation to the game?

quickflash2: is that in terms of speed of the animation?

or how fast the character moves?

might also refer a bit to "Die Ruhe vor dem Sturm" - "silence before storm" (or however you would translate that)

I need to see how they look in game

"the silence before the storm" - yeah, that's a saying in english

like matching the jump straight up to hanging and such

anyway the 3d sprites should mainly make it easier to get the sprites imported into the agme

and they would save some memory

in 2d you do it in pixels, 3d you do it with a vertice

yes, 3d is much easier :)

that's why I'm curious about it's priority

grumbel: are you actually working on the 3d sprites?

grumbel: I could take a look at them...

frame animations are missing from what I see?

yep, animation are missing

What did he say in rec1.ogg?

have a piece of proof-of-concept python script that gets the vertex data from blender animation

netsrot: I think it was not windstille related :)

oki

ok I'll take a look then

jamesg382: what was that text from BTW?

ok

hmm, I guess I'd better go soon

I'm hungry

but before I go

jamesg382: I remember some techno songs I don't like that had a very similar text...

does anybody here have experience with Ogre?

In English it is "the calm before the storm", not "the silence...."

not really

jamesg382: I think I've heard it both ways

mazteb, it is the opening paragraph to War of the Worlds

MatzeB: let me commit some changes to the heroken.blend file

take me a few minutes, it's on the other computer

anyway, they're thinking about porting vegastrike to an ogre backend

http://vegastrike.sf.net

pifactorial: we just want to bring some vertices on screen

pifactorial: not use yet another big framework

no

I didn't mean that

I'm just recruiting

for the VS project

sorry

the top google link for "silence before the storm" is someone who has translated the German "Die Ruhe vor dem Sturm"

"the calm before the storm" is the common english phrase

yeah, but it wins in a googlefight!

MatzeB: http://windstille.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Graphics

MatzeB: there is the snipped that does export the vertex data from animation

ah

I was searching it in the svn and couldn't find it :)

svn only has the mesh-exporter without animations

needs to get a bit more complicated than that, since thats just supports a single mesh, while we might need multiple meshes

Dudes, I must go! Bye all. Have a nice work, fun, or whatever you're gonna do!

yes should be no big problem

cu PauloMorfeo

I'm gone

well we can finish the meeting now :)