Community and DesignĭanShumway: Wesnoth seems like a fairly complete game, but let's say you decide to move an icon, or on a larger scale, add a new unit, or something. Usually code and engine development has a much smaller set of stakeholders though and so it makes it a little different. more important stuff with a wider scale also gets talked about on the forums or mailing list.ĭanShumway: Do you feel that the process you use for managing code/engine development is similar to what you'd use for making design decisions? Zookeeper: yes, #wesnoth-dev is where most day-to-day small-scale coordination goes on. ![]() We expect people to behave like adults though and listen for feedback on whether what they are doing works well.ĭanShumway: Do you coordinate a lot of that through IRC? Sirp_: then once somebody has commit access, they can more or less work on what they want. Zookeeper: excluding summer of code, 90% of the time the process is 1) someone shows up who wants to contribute 2) that someone does some contributions which are deemed good 3) that someone gets commit accessĭanShumway: So you try to actually get to know what the contributions are/who they're from, as opposed to someone annonymous. Then ask for something that was published in the bugzilla, trac or whichever management system. Galegosimpatico:Older systems I have seen in other projects were about: 1. Sirp_: in Wesnoth usually somebody comes along and submits enough sensible patches and says enough reasonable things to make sure they are a decent developer and probably not crazy (or at least if they are crazy, the right kind of crazy) and then we give them source control write access Zookeeper: we've only recently moved to git and github, and actual branching/forking has been very rareĭanShumway:Do you typically work with a single core team of developers? Sirp_: That happens with some software projects. People fork projects, do some development, and then request they be merged back into upstream, I believe? Galegosimpatico: I do not know, but I think that is exactly what Github promotesĭanShumway: From a software perspective, I believe you're right. So the thought process is that you can get input from people, but you don't need to implement it? OS software is developed collectively by volunteers, but (generally) not democratically voted on by said volunteers, so I can write all the patches I like to turn wesnoth into a deterministic real time game, but they'll just be rejectedĭanShumway: I think that makes sense. Tdk27: the key difference is between democratic development and collective development. Zookeeper: some of the very original features (like the game rules) have remained largely untouched, it's more like stuff being added than any core aspects being revised Community StructureĭanShumway: Basically, what I'm trying to research is how Open Source communities avoid some of the steriotypical "designed by commitee" problems that seem at first glance like they *should* pop up in development. But talking about graphics and everything outside the core, it is obviously the impact of a larger contributor base.ĭanShumway:The core game seems to stay pretty consistent, but you guys still make decisions about other elements - the most recent features for planning moves springs to mind. Galegosimpatico:If you get deeper and build an old version, you can see human wizards have changed more. There you can see elven fighters and archers had almost the current stats.ĭanShumway:So not a huge amount has changed, I guess? Galegosimpatico: There are some screens of the early versions. Zookeeper: i'm pretty sure it was just some elvish, human and orcish units at that pointĭanShumway: Was design mostly being done by White, or was there some type of community process to make those decisions? ![]() ![]() Shadowm: The 0.1 version I got hold of only had two playable scenarios IIRC.ĭanShumway: And I'm assuming only a couple of the eventual races? Zookeeper: .it was released at some very early point, but as far as i know it was fully playable The full, unedited log of the entire conversation is available online at Initial Release and early developmentĭanShumway: So, Wesnoth was originally designed by one person, I think by the name of White.ĭanShumway: Do you know at what point he originally released the game? I mean, was it a playable product, or did he propose the idea and some of the engine first? The following transcript has been both edited and reorganized for conciseness and readability purposes. The following is an edited transcript of an interview I conducted over IRC on Februwith members of the Battle for Wesnoth community, including David White ( Sirp_), the game's original creator.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |