douga's Application

[greebo]

Well, we have as many different "working cultures" as we have team members in the mod. Overall I think most people are focusing on one topic for a certain amount of time and then move on to the next topic. Working on a topic also implies feedback rounds and possible discussion, sometimes several people work together to solve a particular mystery, it really depends on the problem.

 

Generally, it's best to share thoughts and talk to your fellow team members about your specific problems. Do not chew on stuff on your own until you get burnt out. Not only somebody else might have a good clue or guess, but also formulating the problem helps yourself getting specific about it - sometimes posting about the problem brings a possible solution to mind(*).

 

As for the mod progress in general, we're pretty much tying up things for release. The remaining large coding tasks are nearing completion as we speak. Right now, Ishtvan is working on the AI combat system, which is already in good shape, and angua is mostly focusing on AI coding. I've been working on finalising the lockpicking code, after working for almost three months on DarkRadiant. OrbWeaver is now working on DarkRadiant's renderer. The rest is hundreds of small issues, some of which might be solved in time, some of which might stay for the time being. To make a long story short, you definitely can work on almost anything without coming in the way. Ironing out small issues is what will push TDM from a good state to an excellent one.

 

(*) that's actually Leonardo da Quirm's theory: each problem, if properly expressed, contains the solution in itself.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I'm not sure how many "self contained" tasks we have left, compared to random bugs in existing systems. Jumping is one, getting the vine arrow to work as intended to paint a climbable texture across geometry could be another. There's also some AI issues that are probably more involved, like having neutral/friendly AI turn against you if damage them enough, different levels of security in different areas (maybe including AI that warn you off rather than immediately attack).

[angua]

having neutral/friendly AI turn against you

I'm curently working on a way to set "personal relationships" to other actors on the AI, so maybe it is better to wait until I'm finished with that before starting to work on how they're going to switch to hostile or the warning behaviour.

 

Welcome to the mod, douga! Good to have some fresh programmers in here.

[Ishtvan]

I'm curently working on a way to set "personal relationships" to other actors on the AI, so maybe it is better to wait until I'm finished with that before starting to work on how they're going to switch to hostile or the warning behaviour.

 

Ah okay, didn't know that. A while ago I added to idAI a placeholder variable for a personal relationship to the player, and a boolean for whether it differed from the team relationship. I figured the player was the only actor we really need a personal relationship with, because AI are not in the business of intentionally backstabbing their teammates and stuff (and if the author wants them to, that can be done by putting them on a different team that is initially friendly and changed later to be an enemy).

 

I guess it can't really hurt to consider other actors as well. So if you've already written stuff, that's great.

[douga]

I'm curently working on a way to set "personal relationships" to other actors on the AI, so maybe it is better to wait until I'm finished with that before starting to work on how they're going to switch to hostile or the warning behaviour.

 

Welcome to the mod, douga! Good to have some fresh programmers in here.

 

Thank you