[tsc-devel] [ANN] Schedule for the 2nd General Discussion
Quintus |
Sat, 02 Apr 2016 20:52:50 UTC
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*######################## 2nd #############################*
*######### G E N E R A L D I S C U S S I O N ############*
*###### OF THE SECRETCHRONICCLES DEVELOPMENT TEAM #########*
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- OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT -
April 2nd, 2016
After the release of the 2.0.0 version after some years of development
and fixing several amounts of legacy code we now stand before the
decision to incorporate some kind of story into our favourite game. As
of now several story suggestions have been made, but because no story
guidelines have been decided on, they naturally diverge a lot. Likewise,
we have not decided on what a consistent style of the game should look
like, and what target age group TSC actually has. Answering these
questions is the main goal of the 2nd General Discussion of the TSC
team, which, interestingly, happens slightly more than one year after
the 1st General Discussion (which was on 2015-03-21).
Another topic focused on is our project infrastructure. It has been
consent among the developers for a longer time that we ought to move off
the GitHub platform and selfhost instead, but it is unclear which
bugtracking software should be used. This will be decided on in this
meeting as well.
As a special celebration, we will vote on including two new members into
the TSC core team.
For further topics, please consult the schedule you find further below
in this message.
T I M E A N D P L A C E
The discussion will be conducted in Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It will
be held on:
April 9th, 2016
17:00:00 UTC
The discussion will be held at the following place:
#secretchronicles channel
on chat.freenode.net
It is highly recommended to install a real IRC client program to
participate. Freenode provides a web chat functionality on their
website[1], but it is known to frequently freeze, miss messages, abort
the connection, be uncomfortable to use and may be under high load at
any time. If you do not know which IRC client you should install, it
is recommended to use the platform-independant HexChat program[2]. If
you never used an IRC client before, it is recommended to experiment
with it prior to the discussion. The channel will be open before the
beginning of the discussion (it always is open) so you can try it out
there and have some informal chatting.
W H O C A N P A R T I C I P A T E
Everyone is welcome in the discussion. You do not have to be a TSC
team member to participate, but _if_ you are a TSC team member, you
are urged to take part in the discussion.
D O C U M E N T S
In preparation of this General Discussion, some documents have been
submitted. Documents are long texts with complex contents that you
will *not* be able to quickly read through during the discussion
itself, hence you have to read them in advance. The submitted
documents are available online here:
https://github.com/Secretchronicles/documents/tree/master/gd/documents/pdf
Click the "raw" button in a document view to download it in PDF
format.
P R O C E D U R E
The discussion will be opened by the project lead with a short
introduction, then the discussion topics as outlined further below
will be taken on one by one. Each topic is shortly introduced, then
everyone is free to bring to public his point of view and/or arguments
he deems especially important. IRC voicing will be used to ensure that
during this presentation period the speaker is not interrupted and can
fully concentrate on his arguments and presentation. Nobody is
obligued to speak up, but when the discussion phase is entered later
you will frequently be interrupted or otherwise be distracted by
multiple lines of discussion. It is thus highly recommended that you
bring up the points that are of importance for you during the
presentation phase so you can be (relatively) sure everyone has
recognised them.
After the speaker has ended, a short question pause shall be held,
which is not intended for deeper discussion. Use a command like
“/query <nick> my question here” to submit a question while being
devoiced to one of the discussion moderators (replace “<nick>” with
the nick of the moderator). Questions can be submitted while the
speaker is still talking, but will not be handled until he has
ended. The question will be repeated to the public, and then the
speaker has time to answer.
The procedure is repeated for everyone who wants to present his view
and/or main arguments on a topic. When all speakers are done,
discussion phase is entered. In that phase, the voicing restriction is
removed and open discussion can take place in any depth that is
required.
Ideally, the discussion phase ends with a consent that all TSC team
members agree with, probably having to take back a few of his original
points. A team agreement will most likely never be a one-fits-all
result, but some kind of compromise, which is fine and intended. In
case no consent/compromise can be found, a voting shall be held (see
below).
After the discussion result, be it achieved by consent or by voting,
the topic is closed. If it is deemed useful, a break can be taken now
(please tell the moderators if they don’t announce one and you need
one, it is appreciated). After a possible break, the discussion
continues with the next topic.
S P E A K I N G
Everyone is free to outline his views and arguments as explained in
the previous section. To allow all participants to estimate the
duration of the whole event, it is recommended though not required to
announce your intention to speak to the project lead. Either email
<…s@q…>, or post to the mailinglist or web
forum. You do not have to disclose what you are going to say, just
announce you would like to make your position clear. You will be added
to the list of speakers on the online site of the event[3].
You don’t have to hold a great speech as already described. Come to
the point and outline your arguments and views. However, it is
certainly useful to prepare yourself a bit.
If all of a sudden it overcomes you to speak on a topic during the
discussion, please use a command like “/query <nick> I want to speak
on <insert topic>!” to send a PM to one of the discussion moderators
(replace “<nick>” with the name of the moderator) who can then
arrange it.
The order of all announced speakers is determined by means of the True
Random Number Generator available at <https://www.random.org/lists/>
separately for each topic after the deadline has passed (see
below). See their main website[4] for further information on why this
is _really_ random). Speakers who were not announced previously and
told the moderators as mentioned above will speak after the announced
speakers in the order their presentation requests were received.
There is no hard time limit for any presentation, but excessively long
monologues tend to get boring sooner or later, so you should try to
come to the point without narrating the Neverending Story (which is a
very good book by the way).
furbot is available during presentation phase, so you can post links
which will be subtitled automatically and make use of all other
features furbot has available. furbot will also log as usual to the
public channel log[5] in case you experience a network outage.
You can also make use of IRC color codes to emphasize or explain stuff
if you deem that useful. Please read up in your IRC client’s manual on
how to enter these color codes.
If you want to show code snippets or long blocks of texts, please do
not post them into the channel directly. You may get flood-blocked by
the IRC server if you do, and it is hard to read for the other
participants. Instead, use an online pasting service of your choice;
if you intend to post source code, please use a pasting service that
supports code highlighting. In case you don’t know one, you can use
the CodeRay library’s online pasting service[6], which supports
highlighting a good number of programming languages and plain text
(i.e. no highlighting). Post the resulting URL into the channel
instead of your raw code then. This goes for non-speakers in the
discussion phase as well.
O F F - T O P I C
During the presentation phase everyone but the speaker and the
moderators (and furbot) are devoiced and thus can’t speak in the
channel. This is so that the speaker doesn’t have to fear to be
interrupted during his presentation. You can join the channel
##secretchronicles-ot (note two # signs) for any off-topic discussion
while someone speaks or doesn’t, but note that if someone strains
himself with explaining his view to you, you should listen to him
rather than post cat videos in the off-topic channel.
V O T I N G P R O C E S S
The voting process’ legal framework is formed by the Secretchronicles
Project’s voting rules[7] (VotR). This is the detailed description as
per §8 VotR:
Each vote on the schedule is called for in chat by the moderator. He
announces the voting options and then asks whether a covert vote is
requested (see below). If no such request is made, everybody votes by
posting "I vote <option number>" or "I abstain". The moderator then
closes the voting window, counts the votes, and declares the result.
A covert vote is a measure to prevent social conflicts. Only request
one if you really deem it necessary; any such request must be honoured
as per the voting rules. In covert voting everybody receives by email a
cryptographically signed voting permission containing a unique character
combination. Place it in a text file together with the option you vote
for and upload that one to the service that will listen on
http://alexandria.secretchronicles.de:5555. On
http://alexandria.secretchronicles.de:5555/results you will be able to
see the results.
D I S C U S S I O N S C H E D U L E
- -- Block I: Introduction --
1. Introduction, Greetings, Explanation of How It Works
- -- Block II: Organisational --
2. Voting Rules changes voting
3. Team membership votings
- -- Block III: Project infrastructure --
4. Bugtracker software
5. Translation software
15-minute break
- -- Block IV: Game content --
6. Audience + Target Age Group
7. Depth of Story
8. Themes
9. Level of Cuteness
15-minute break
10. Narration, cinematic scenes, and story formatted text
- -- Block V: Game Mechanics --
11. Life energy system
12. GUI system to use (CEGUI / SFGUI)
- -- Block VI: Closing --
13. Closing
1. Introduction
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The moderator will open the discussion and explain the main points of
what has been outlined in this document. IRC voicing is explained. Then
discussion starts with the first topic below.
2. Voting Rules changes voting
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponents: Quintus and datahead
Speakers: (none)
If it has not already been completed on the mailinglist, we will vote on
the acceptance of the new voting rules.
3. Team membership votings
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: (none)
We will vote on the addition of skarfester and kirbyfan to the TSC core
team.
4. Bugtracker software
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponents: Quintus and xet7
Speakers: Quintus, xet7
Since we want to move off GitHub, it needs to be determined where to
move to. In this topic we will be discussing the different alternatives
and decide on which one to host on alexandria.
5. Translation software
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: (none)
This topic has already been on the last GD’s schedule without
result. The conflict mainly cycles around the question whether the
proprietary Transifex website is a tool we should endorse by using it for
TSC.
6. Audience + Target Age Group
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: datahead, Quintus
Old SMC was mainly perceived as a children’s game, and TSC currently
still is. It has long been in the discussion to introduce a story into
the game and make the levels (and styling) fit that story. However, a
story greatly depends on which target age group is focused, as young
children often have problems following a complex story. This topic is
thus to decide which target age group to focus on.
7. Depth of Story
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: datahead, Quintus
Likewise, once the target group is defined, we need to define the
depth of the story. Even for adults, different levels of story depths
are enjoyable.
8. Themes
°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: datahead, Quintus
Once the general direction of the story is decided on, we ought to
find guidelines for theming to use. Repeatedly suggested have been
Shakespeare quotes and Food theming. There might also be other themes,
which to discover this topic is set out to.
9. Level of Cuteness
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: datahead, Bugsbane
This is a topic specifically directed at the graphical appearance of
TSC, which currently has a rather cute and inconsistent style. When
fixing the styling, we need to determine how cute the result shall be,
which is at least partly depandant on the kind of story the game is
heading for.
10. Narration, cinematic scenes, and story formatted text
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: datahead
Whatever the story might be, it needs to be conveyed. It has been
discussed to use voice narration, cut scenes, text boxes, and a kind
of visual novel without texts.
11. Life energy system
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: datahead
Speakers: (none)
The current life and powerup system in TSC is basically still what the
Super Mario games use. In an effort to depart from this heritage, we
intend to move to another system based on hitpoints, life bars, or
similar. Other suggestions are welcome and are to be discussed in this
topic.
12. GUI system to use (CEGUI / SFGUI)
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Proponent: lambda
Speakers: (none)
Currently TSC depends on CEGUI 0.7.9. This is clearly
undesirable. Shall we upgrade to CEGUI 0.8.x or move away from it
entirely and instead employ SFGUI?
13. Closing
°°°°°°°°°°°
Finishing of the discussion.
F O O T N O T E S
[1]: https://webchat.freenode.net/
[2]: https://hexchat.github.io/
[3]: http://team.secretchronicles.de/~quintus/general-discussions/2nd-general-discussion.txt
[4]: https://www.random.org/
[5]: http://chatlogs.secretchronicles.de/
[6]: http://coderay.rubychan.de/rays
[7]: https://github.com/Secretchronicles/documents/raw/master/votingrules/votingrules-2015-08-15.pdf
- --
#!/sbin/quintus
Blog: http://www.guelkerdev.de
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