[Divunal-devel] release criterea

[Michael Dartt]

Well, you covered a lot of what I would say, so this is going to reiterate
things a bit.

I think that we should start by getting a big wishlist--a brain dump of
features, fixes, etc.--from everyone.  This should include specific
technical stuff (e.g. "Add a StringHandler class") as well as general
ideas, (e.g. "figure out what to do with amounts of items, like water and
gold").  Personally, I think docs should be on this list, too.  I'd hope
that people would be comfortable speaking their minds on this, even if
they haven't done a lot of development.  (They may still have ideas for
what would be nifty to have in a game.  This is why I CC'd the author
list; though everyone may be on both at this point....)

The list could then be culled for stuff that's already in and things that
are bad design ideas.  (This could also be handy for a reference on what
needs to be documented and/or what people need to be informed of.  If lots
are clamoring for a feature that's already in there, it's time for some
communication.)

What remains should then be prioritized, putting those "API-breaking
changes" and related stuff at the top of the list.  Then, break the list
into bite-sized pieces and make those releases.

Of course, people can (and should) continue developing stuff that they
really want to develop, but this would at least give some direction to
development and releases and might help out anyone who's been wondering
what's needed on the server side.  Also, I'm sure the pieces would be
adaptable to stuff like unforseen problems and the like.

This doesn't really answer the versioning number question, but I think
that's secondary to establishing what's going into the releases.  Also,
since TR 1.0 is going to be so fanstastically better compared to what's
out there now--much of which is in much later version numbers--I have
trouble saying what the gradations should be.  (I'm also more familiar
with the principle of incremental development than the mystical nature of
the version number, too.)

That's my $0.02


--Mike


On Sun, 8 Aug 1999, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:

> 
> I've fixed a bunch of stuff in TR in the past few hours, and I think I
> know why we've got such heinous feature creep on 1.0 ... we don't really
> have any sort of criterea for when it's "done".
> 
> What should our release criterea be?  Now that it's pretty clear that TR
> is "feature complete", we should be focusing on what needs to be completed
> before the release.  Any ideas?  Release discussions should include a
> wishlist of major, API breaking changes (I want to get anything basic in
> there NOW, before we have 1000 more verbs to go edit), as well as a list
> of things that need to be done to make sure that our "perspectives" stuff
> is 100% pervasive.  As always, bugfixes are good.  Phil has been having
> some damn weird problems with the server, although after a reboot
> everything appears OK... it appears that using 'sketch' can sometimes have
> *very* unusual your-mileage-may-vary type results.  I can't figure out for
> the life of me what the problem is though.
> 
> In other news -- there is now a file called 'socials.txt' in the CVS
> repository under 'resource'.  It's sorta-kinda linked in to the currently
> runnning pump (it's very easy for me to update it, I'll automate it fully
> in a little while).
> 
> Some of you may have noticed that Jedin (mike) has submitted a new
> divunal.door.Door, Open, and Close.  These are *much* closer to the actual
> final versions of these verbs that will be in the release version,
> considering they actually check properties and stuff.  Class_Door has also
> been modified in the 'official' map, so you can scrutinize it and get a
> look at what kind of properties you need to be setting on your doors.  I
> think he'll be posting something to the author list tomorrow.  I'm really
> psyched about this particular addition, considering the importance of
> locked and obstructed doors to the game (doors were easy to create before,
> but not terribly interactive.  This adds a few properties which make them
> appear much more interactive).  A good example of what this looks like can
> be found in the "grand history book room".
> 
> This gives us 5 developers (me, james, dave, phil, mike) on an "active"
> status.  Things have been looking up after that barrage of emails to this
> list :-)
> 
> Thanks again to everyone speeding development along. Divunal needs some
> more publicity, so we need to do a release soon -- get the webpage hit and
> thereby get some more development/authoring interest.
> 
> Speaking of authoring interest, there should also be some thought given to
> what kind of infrastructure we need to start accomodating larger numbers
> of players for when large groups of people are going to be logging into
> the game.  Is there anything that needs to be changed in the server's
> code, etc?
> 
> Hopefully this message hasn't been *too* meandering.  It was written late.
> Happy August 8, everybody.
> 
> --glyph
> 
> 
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