Stendhal Developers Meeting 2011-01-12

Agenda

Updates on developer activity and goals: A very short summary of what you are working on, plan to to work on, and anything you had been working on but dropped because of difficulties, limitations or other priorities.
Client stability, maintenance and Stendhal 1.0: As per Review Of 2010#Outlook
Containers: How can we consolidate the existing work and get containers in game?; #2933768
Achievements: Which do we want from the implemented list at Stendhal Achievements; Should any existing ideas which are not yet implemented be added?; How to categorize them?; Achievement event in the client; Achievements on the website; Possibility of retrospectively awarding achievements earned before recording started; If you would like to add new ideas, you don't need to wait for the meeting, please edit Stendhal Achievement Ideas

Actions taken as an outcome of the meeting

so far

kiheru and madmetzger worked together to create client notification for reached achievement

kymara started documenting about requirements for a groups GUI

kiheru has pretty much completed the group GUI: see Stendhal Testing

martinf worked on junit tests for quests, using chatlogs from the patch tracker

hendrik and kiheru did some work to support containers

martinf added his ideas for achievements score at #3156591

kymara and hendrik have been balancing the achievements and removing impossible/broken ones

kymara is working on archived data to find out about achievements reached before they were being logged

Chat log

20:01 < kymara> --------------------------------------------------
20:01 < kymara> ---Meeting, agenda at https://sourceforge.net/projects/arianne/forums/forum/3192/topic/4045009 --
20:01 < kymara> --------------------------------------------------
20:01 < kymara> First item is 'Updates on developer activity and goals '
20:02 < kymara> madmetzger: would you start?
20:02 < madmetzger> okay
20:03 < madmetzger> recently i wasn't working that much. achievements seem to be more or less stable on the server side
20:03 < hendrik> this basicall means: What are you planning to do? What are you working on now? Have you given up working of something, becaues you lost intersted or because there were difficulties? Which?
20:04 < madmetzger> i started to implement a prototype for displaying the event of reaching an event in the client
20:04 < madmetzger> struggling there a bit with drawing and placing it
20:04 < madmetzger> maybe kiheru could give me some advice on it
20:04 < madmetzger> an early start is in cvs
20:05 < kymara> what about spells? I kind of saw some commits again recently
20:05 < madmetzger> and i also started again to work a bit on spells and connecting that to the client side
20:05 < madmetzger> there's some uncommited work but my first example isn't working atm.
20:06 < madmetzger> i didn't find the time yet to figure out where the reason is
20:06 < kiheru> displaying a notification a bit like the mockup should not be too hard (except for the translucency which is not really an option)
20:07 < madmetzger> but i'd appreciate some help there for the client side as it seems quite new for the client to me to have actions that need clicks to two objects
20:07 < madmetzger> i have a client side command to cast a spell as slash action to test it. i think i'll commit that soon
20:08 < kymara> madmetzger: that sounds good, thank you. is there anything else from you?
20:08 < hendrik> We have the content side of achievements as seperate entry on the agenda later.
20:08 < madmetzger> no, that's all
20:09 < kymara> ok, who next, kiheru?
20:10 < kiheru> lately I have been just trying to fix known and potential bugs in the client
20:10 < kiheru> I think I'm about done with those I can reproduce
20:10 < kiheru> so I'm available for other projects if needed
20:12 < hendrik> any plans on what you want to do?
20:12 < kymara> perhaps the group GUI?
20:12 < kiheru> not, really. whatever is needed
20:13 < kiheru> for the groups I really don't have a good idea what it should look like
20:13 < storyteller> maybe we can bring up some ideas?
20:13 < kymara> maybe we can try brainstorm that a bit?
20:13 < hendrik> later, please.
20:13 < kymara> after tryng out the feature in the test server
20:13 < kymara> yes
20:13 < kymara> okay, hendrik next?
20:14 < hendrik> okay.
20:14 < martinf> perhaps look at the multi chat features of messengers like skype for the group gui?
20:14 < hendrik> I have be doing smaller things recently.
20:14 < hendrik> some profiling and performance optimazion that are pending.
20:15 < hendrik> And lots of projects i have started to think about but then postponed.
20:15 < hendrik> Like rewriting the perception calculation and serialization which takes about 60% of turn times nowadays.
20:16 < hendrik> In the far future i'd like to have a web client, but i am scared about that.
20:16 < hendrik> It will be a lot of work, probably for more than a year, and maintaining two clients would be very stressful for us.
20:16 < hendrik> the technology is not ripe and we have no experiance on that.
20:17 < hendrik> What I might do is porting the text client to a web page.
20:17 < hendrik> The curses client is too instable for my tastes.
20:18 < kymara> agreed, i went back to textclient
20:18 < hendrik> Short turn, i think achievements and groups/chat channels are important.
20:18 < hendrik> because they give motivation to players.
20:18 < hendrik> and i like to help with the content side.
20:19 < hendrik> that's basically from me.
20:19 < kymara> okay, who else wants to give an update? martinf?
20:19 < martinf> sure
20:19 < martinf> My last bigger thing was the refactoring and improvement of producer / merchandizer code.
20:19 < martinf> After that I solved some bugs here and there.
20:20 < martinf> That one regarding website not searching for substrings is too complex for me as beginner in apache rewrite rules.
20:20 < martinf> thats it :)
20:20 < kymara> any plans for future?
20:20 < martinf> nothing special
20:20 < kymara> can we suggest you things to help with, do you think you'll have time?
20:21 < martinf> yes, some time is always available
20:21 < hendrik> I can help with the apache stuff.
20:21 < martinf> very good:)
20:21 < kymara> yes it might be good to have someone other than me and hend understand the website
20:22 < kymara> who else wants to give an update on their activities and plans?
20:22 < Bluelads4> hmm I can go on if noone else wants :)
20:23 < kymara> sure
20:23 < Bluelads4> I made some npcs and quests and my first tiled map (wohoo) earlier and I currently plan another quest which grows in my mind at the moment
20:23 < Bluelads4> ehm yes that is mainly everything :D
20:24 < kymara> is there anything (in general) you need support in?
20:25 < Bluelads4> not at the moment, I wrote some notes down for the quest idea and wanted to start with writing the quest soon, I'm not sure about the last quest which I made, there are some errors I bet :D
20:26 < kymara> ok, we can help test, and please add it to the testing page if you didn't already
20:26 < kymara> anyone else got an update for us or shall i finish up?
20:27 < storyteller> well, maybe I could say my current project idea?
20:27 < kymara> yes
20:27 -!- monsterdhal [~monsterdh<(a)>brsg-4dbba367.pool.mediaWays.net] has joined #arianne
20:27 < storyteller> Well, there already were some questions about what I plan and what I want to do.
20:27 < storyteller> So I'd like to give a short summary here
20:29 < storyteller> Currently I plan some quests, which are based on each other. So there is a little quest- row which is build in a story
20:30 < storyteller> the basical thing is to introduce sneaking and well, let's say tactical playing
20:31 < storyteller> so these quests are not based on only killing creatures, but also not been attacked by others
20:32 < storyteller> I heard about ideas for guilds and also a thief guild
20:32 < kymara> we don't have any plans in place for the near future regarding guilds
20:32 < kymara> so please dont rely on that
20:33 < storyteller> yes
20:33 < kymara> okay, sounds interesting and ambitious. do you have an idea how to break down the ideas into manageable chunks?
20:35 < storyteller> well, I planned a building where this should take place
20:35 < storyteller> there are also some beside- quests, which I wrote on the quest ideas page
20:36 < hendrik> with such a huge project, i think it is important to do it in small steps and commit them for other tosee.
20:36 < kymara> yes, and to see the results :)
20:36 < hendrik> to see*
20:36 < kymara> let us know when you need help, storyteller
20:36 < storyteller> okay :)
20:36 < kymara> anything or anyone else in this section?
20:36 < storyteller> so, well, this project is basically what I plan for the near future
20:37 < storyteller> so thats it for now :)
20:37 < kymara> okay, so me then.
20:37 < kymara> Now that the quest history is finished I am not sure what to do! Other than my normal project activity.
20:38 < hendrik> may I suggest you look at the content side of achievements?
20:38 < kymara> I'll help with achievements, because the code is stable but I can help on the design side.
20:38 < kymara> yes, hendrik.
20:38 * hendrik smiles.
20:38 < kymara> as an older player who doesn't play so much now I'm also concerned about back-calculation.
20:38 < kymara> that would need some intensive database work and may not even be possible ... we'll see.
20:39 < kymara> I'm a bit concerned by the number of patches with chatlogs ready to write junit tests on
20:40 < kymara> i wrote up a little guide on junit testing for quests so it should be easy. i would rather not do all those myself as i think that its the kind of thing other people can pick up too .. so if anyone likes to help with that I'd be grateful
20:40 < kymara> i put all the patches under the same category: chatlog
20:40 < martinf> i may help a bit here
20:42 < kymara> okay thank you
20:42 < kymara> So, I think if anyone else wanted to update us they'd have said by now, lets move on, to:
20:42 < kymara> 'Client stability, maintenance and Stendhal 1.0'
20:43 < kymara> We have achieved some great things in 2010, some long standing feature requests which make me start to believe Stendhal is ready for 1.0
20:44 < kymara> They include the new sound system, rewritten client with windows off game screen, trade NPC and trade GUI, quest history, and more.
20:44 < hendrik> Yes, last year was very good.
20:44 < kymara> We still lack client stability across all platforms, and I think we'd all want to feel comfortable in the client before we announce it stable
20:45 < hendrik> I think we need to define "stability".
20:45 < kymara> Testing is really, really hard ... so what we need is enough time
20:45 < kymara> hendrik: acceptable CPU, memory usage, would be a start
20:46 < kymara> but yes, it is probably a good idea to have some criteria, and some way to measure them, that we can feel confident the client is stable
20:46 < hendrik> When i hear that term, i think of two things:
20:46 < kiheru> memory should be fairly good by now. performance is a problem as it's very system dependent
20:46 < hendrik> a) it does not crash
20:47 < hendrik> b) it does not require many changes.
20:47 < kymara> hendrik, i'll get onto b) in a moment.
20:47 < hendrik> I think it does not crash often, but i am not a hard core player.
20:47 < kymara> anyway, for the performance part, as we lack in ability to test thoroughly across all platforms, I just wanted to flag up that we may need some quiet time without too many new features in a release
20:48 < kymara> what hendrik puts as point b) there is what I meant by 'maintenance' in this section - hendrik, do you want to explain?
20:49 < hendrik> Currently we need to update the client on every new release.
20:49 < hendrik> It is obvious that the client need updates when we add new gui elements like the quest log.
20:50 < hendrik> But it needs updates when we add new images, and it needs updates when we add new kinds of items or entities.
20:50 < hendrik> My goal for 1.0 is that we have a client that will be compatible with the server for a year, despite us adding new content.
20:51 < hendrik> that is without updates, think of it being included in Debian/Ubuntu, policy would not accept our updater.
20:51 < hendrik> i think this are basically two tasks
20:52 < hendrik> - find a way to get new images
20:52 < hendrik> - make the client less smart in the Entity, Entity2DView area.
20:52 < hendrik> It does not need to know about well_source, fish_source for example, that just something a player can click with some animation and some special cursor.
20:53 < hendrik> Or stackable/useable items, it should get that information from the server.
20:53 < kiheru> for quite a few things it needs to know just the available operations
20:54 * hendrik nods.
20:55 < kymara> Could you write something about this on the wiki maybe?
20:55 < hendrik> okay
20:55 < kymara> quite a few future concepts have something to refer to .. that might be good? or tracker tasks if its already broken down in some way?
20:57 < kymara> I forgot to say that I'd still hope for certain other features for Stendhal 1.0 ..
20:57 < kymara> That's achievements, groups, and a solution to player's perceived storage problem
20:57 < hendrik> it's about a year if we keep doing a release every 4-6 weeks.
20:58 < kymara> eheh, and we dont' even have to go from 0.99 to 1.0
20:58 < kymara> I dont think we should let arithmetic bother us
20:58 < martinf> what is the perceived storage problem?
20:58 < hendrik> bag too small.
20:59 < kymara> players collect too much junk
20:59 < kiheru> it's never been decimal. we just don't release patch versions often
20:59 < kymara> and chect too small
20:59 < martinf> ok, i know this problem as player;)
20:59 < kymara> they make clones to just have extra chests in semos bank, instead of using city banks say
20:59 < kymara> okay
20:59 < kymara> so shall we move onto Containers?
21:00 < kymara> How can we consolidate the existing work and get containers in game? A lot of work is already done - kiheru may you summarise that?
21:02 < kiheru> hmm. I don't know if much works has really been done. Mainly I have thought that a container from a side panel slot would be opened in the side panel (and kept open during zone changes), and those opened from the game screen should be opened like corpses and chests are done now
21:03 < kiheru> Saving and restoring an item with a slot containing other items works (nothing about that in cvs, but it's a fairly small change)
21:05 < kymara> I tended to get the sense that theres just one last piece of cooperation until they'd work in game
21:05 < kymara> is that totally wrong?
21:05 < kymara> as per https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2933768&group_id=1111&atid=973767
21:06 < kiheru> two major pieces, really
21:06 < kiheru> that one, and equip depending on slot names
21:07 < kiheru> I haven't tested the gui for containers for a good while, because I have been trying to figure out the backend problems first
21:08 < kymara> Should we think of another solution to the storage poblem?
21:08 < kymara> *problem
21:09 < kiheru> slot names are important unless we want to have different rpclasses for all different types of containers
21:09 < hendrik> the equipment code could be smarter.
21:09 < hendrik> well, that is a long standing todo.
21:10 < kymara> should we move on?
21:10 < kymara> I'm conscious that the achievements discussion could take some time
21:10 < kiheru> having "content" for all would work fine, as long the equip code can figure out forbidden moves
21:11 < hendrik> yes.
21:12 < kiheru> and would help keeping the client dumb when someone wants to add a special container for flowers
21:12 < hendrik> yes
21:14 < kiheru> I could make something based on the assumption the slot will be always called "content". it does not need to go in the game before equip is smarter
21:15 < kiheru> we can move on now, maybe
21:16 < kymara> Okay. Thank you
21:16 < kymara> The last part of this meeting is to discuss achievements in some detail
21:17 < kymara> Here's a list of implemented achievements: http://stendhalgame.org/wiki/Stendhal_Achievements
21:17 < kymara> do we want them all?
21:17 < kymara> It's helpful to consider, how many players will really have reached these achievements, and consider your own player
21:18 < kymara> hendrik has already done some work to integreate achievements into the website
21:18 < kymara> https://stendhalgame.org/?id=content/scripts/character&test=beta&name=kymara
21:19 < kymara> replace kymara with your character name, you can see what achievements you reached
21:19 < kymara> https://stendhalgame.org/?id=content/game/achievement gives an overview
21:19 < kymara> for all players
21:20 < kymara> As you can see they are split into categories, but some categories have many achievements and some very few
21:20 < hendrik> This needs work on the content side.
21:21 < hendrik> Some re-categorisations.
21:21 < hendrik> adding some others, removing some.
21:21 < kymara> Yes.For example id like to change that age achievement
21:21 < kymara> by using instead a real time value and not time spent (idling?) in game
21:21 < hendrik> for each achievement, we have to think what the most effective way is to get it, and if that is bad.
21:22 < hendrik> yes, we don't want people to idle arround all day and night.
21:22 < Bluelads4> :D
21:22 < martinf> <- greenhorn :)
21:22 < kymara> I am not sure if its in the scope of this meeting to go through each achievement in that way
21:23 < hendrik> no, but it would be good if people volunteered to work on it.
21:23 < kymara> but would anyone be willing to help think about it?
21:23 < storyteller> who idles around all night and day? ;D
21:23 < kymara> and maybe we can use the wiki or something to track that
21:23 < kymara> to help balance out the categories, we can recategorise, remove, but also add new ones from http://stendhalgame.org/wiki/Stendhal_Achievement_Ideas
21:24 < kymara> so if you see interesting achievements there in a category that is a little low, and you can add them, go ahead.
21:24 < madmetzger> i can try helping then adding them to the game
21:24 < kymara> You already added all of them to the game madmetzger :D
21:24 < madmetzger> nope
21:24 < kymara> or do you mean the client side event?
21:25 < kymara> I mean all so far .. was you
21:25 < madmetzger> there are still some achievements that are not added from the ideas page
21:25 < kymara> yes, I said that )
21:25 < kymara> and I invte people to add new ones, but i think you did add all the existing ones?
21:25 < madmetzger> some are not yet possible to add yet like the martial arts achievement
21:26 < madmetzger> i wanted to offer my help for adding those new ones
21:28 < hendrik> anyone interested on the content side?
21:32 < martinf> what is still missing for the database migration, as you said kymara? the webpage you should already seems to work so far
21:32 < kymara> Well, my character has clearly already collected over 1000000 money from corpses
21:33 < kymara> But the achievements logging hasn't been in place that long.
21:33 < kymara> So I meant, calculating achievements from the database, which happened before the logging was in place.
21:33 < kymara> E.g. I know I collected a full set of black armor, and the itemlog could probably tell me that.
21:33 < martinf> any ideas how thsi would be possible?
21:34 < kymara> Yes, some crazy queries ...
21:34 < kymara> The itemlog knows when an item is registered and the first person to take from the corpse)
21:34 < kymara> Likewise fight deathmatch 25 times
21:35 < kymara> I mean, my DM points and fact that my helmet is at 124 shows that I must have done it, well, 122 times at least? (I forget what def it started at )
21:36 < martinf> i understand - that are many special cases to think about
21:36 < kymara> kills recording didn't use to record the number .. but the database still knows that
21:36 < kymara> Yes. And is it worth the effort?
21:36 < kiheru> dm counting is not working correctly even now, btw
21:37 < kymara> yes kiheru I saw your bug report, I'm not sure what the achievement is using
21:37 < kymara> You can already see why they'll encourage players to play, though? Why they're a good thing?
21:37 < kymara> I see that it claims I didn't loot 1000000 money from creatures yet, and I go out to hunt :P even though I don't get xp ..
21:38 < Bluelads4> :D
21:39 < kymara> In terms of motivation, is the webiste view of per-character, and a total summary, enough?
21:39 < madmetzger> i think a kind of hall of fame part could also be good
21:40 < madmetzger> recent events is also a good point to show it, maybe?
21:40 < martinf> ar a side-by-side view of 2 players
21:40 < martinf> *or
21:42 < kiheru> some sort of raking for them would be good. an achievement reached by 2 players could be more valuable than one reached by 1000
21:43 < martinf> i you sum op all this percentage numbers, you can calculate a over all achievement score
21:44 < kymara> martinf: can you explain in a bit more detail?
21:44 < martinf> well, if an i am one of the players, that got an achievement, only two got at all -> i get 50 %
21:44 < martinf> if i am one of 100 i get 1 %
21:45 < martinf> looking at the other achievements, we can build the average of this percent numbers
21:45 < martinf> thats the over all achievement
21:45 < martinf> for most players it will be in the 1/1000 range however
21:46 < martinf> but building a hall of fame is always interesting
21:46 < kymara> i wondered about an overall achievement score for the player, when you said that
21:47 < martinf> for the example above with only 2 different achievement categories i get 25.5 %
21:47 < kymara> although the individual ones are something to work towards its still meaningful to be able to compare a single number (and much easier)
21:47 < kymara> ok
21:47 < martinf> to explain the calculation
21:48 < madmetzger> but it means your score can fall which might cause confusion
21:48 < kymara> hehe
21:48 < martinf> yes, like the score at ohloh.org
21:49 < kiheru> it's sort of fame rating. players who does not do anything noteworthy for a while, should not be surprised when his fame fades
21:50 < madmetzger> maybe yes, if we don't declare that as absolute points just a kind of rating and explain what is considered like it is done in the hall of fame part
21:50 < madmetzger> not necessarily the whole formula of course
21:50 < kymara> thats how the best and strongest etc is too
21:50 < kymara> that can change if you don't play
21:51 < kiheru> sum(1/n) style rank has the advantage that we do not need so much effor for trying to judge the wort of various achievements
21:51 < kiheru> *worth
21:51 < kymara> yes its a bit more dynamic
21:52 < kymara> and is it okay now to show achievements in the client when they are achieved?
21:53 < kymara> at first it seemed that had to be done on login.. i like instantaneous better though
21:56 < madmetzger> my approach was showing reached achievement at both times
21:56 < madmetzger> to avoid getting spammed with a lot of messages on login after they were introduced
21:57 < madmetzger> and to avoid confusion to get the rat hunter achievement for killing 15 rats when killing a bear
21:59 < kiheru> should we skip showing old achievements at login anyway, and just give a message with a pointer to the player's web page
21:59 < kiheru> an old player will get a massive amount of achievements at the first login
22:00 < madmetzger> atm it should do just that. it gives a summarizing message with a hint to the web page (could be easily changed to the player's page)
22:00 < storyteller> can there be an symbol in the menu panel?
22:01 < madmetzger> that was the point, old players will get a massive amount of achievements on login
22:01 < madmetzger> okay, the message is disabled unless you have a system property set
22:05 < kymara> So, some will help on content?I'll try coordinate that
22:05 < kymara> the client needs work, kiheru will help mad
22:06 < kymara> any new ones to be written, mad will help with
22:06 < kymara> and there are some more ideas for website..
22:06 < kymara> Martin would you make a tracker entry on your score idea please?
22:06 < martinf> ok
22:07 < kymara> and no decision on back calculating them?
22:08 < martinf> who are the long-time-players? :)
22:08 < kymara> you can see 'eldest' on hall of fame
22:08 < martinf> as its in their interest
22:08 < kymara> but that doesn't tell you who played most
22:08 < kymara> maybe look at the most xp, then
22:09 < martinf> ... to have an accurate back calculation
22:09 < kymara> yes, like me :)
22:09 < martinf> well i meant which of the people here in this channel :)
22:10 < martinf> i am not *g
22:11 < kiheru> some are easier than others (for dm you can do an educated guess by the helmet). dunno if all achievements are worth the trouble
22:12 < kymara> maybe we can capture that too
22:12 < kiheru> those that look reasonably doable should be probably done. we should not annoy players who have been around for years
22:13 < martinf> in which category should i write the achievements tracker entry?
22:13 < kymara> none, if none fit
22:14 < martinf> ok
22:14 < kymara> it could be calculated by website but I guess we shouldn't assume?
22:15 < madmetzger> a fast idea could be using the halloffame table
22:16 < madmetzger> but that is maybe not the best idea, but it would mayb allow an easier adding to the hall of fame section
22:17 < kymara> we can think about that from the tracker
22:18 < kymara> okay, I think that's all for now as I don't want to tire everyone on a work night?
22:18 < kymara> any other issues related to achievement or anything else?
22:21 < kymara> ----------- end of meeting then! ---------------

Stendhal Developers Meeting 2011-01-12

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