Techdemo 3

Below is a draft for techdemo3 plans/goals. It is intended mainly to serve as a basis for additions and discussion. After the work is done, it is to be listed and linked to the Roadmap.

The article lists all tasks that are planned to be completed for TechDemo 3. Strike out completed ones. Try to keep the ticket numbers in brackets up to date.

The general plan for techdemo 3 is to introduce all the missing mechanics required to implement fighting and to make several quests that would make use of that. In addition to that, improve some of the features that were introduced before, but don't quite work well enough. Another big goal is to make the game more visually appealing to general public (that mostly means GUI).

Audio

 * Implement shuffle playback for background audio tracks (see ticket #250)

Graphics

 * Review and redesign GUI
 * Game main menu that replaces the current placeholder menu: save game, load game, new game, options, etc. (see ticket #152)
 * Based on the quests story draft (by writing department) draw the required NPCs and items

Mechanics
Some/most of those are already completed. Basically just need to make sure that we have visible links to actual versions of them on the wiki (Mechanics section).
 * Have a set of character stats, and a mechanism for "traits" and "skills" if not all possible ones enumurated
 * Have a combat system that is implementable, and tunable (for balance purposes)
 * Have basic concepts for NPC "personality" and combat AI specified
 * Describe all the basic types of items (inc. clothing weapons) and how they interact with the game

Programming

 * Review and possibly rewrite the quest/dialog engine. Detailed feedback from Zenbitz on the current one is very appreciated (see ticket #229 )
 * Introduce character stats and skills for both PC and NPC
 * Introduce fighting mechanics
 * Write a simple fighting AI for NPCs
 * Stabilize the object hierarchy and make an object db, decide on the responsibilities separation between those, get rid of multiple files serving similar purpose (see ticket #185, #76...)
 * Improve GUI both visually (based on the design created by Graphics) and functionally and usability-wise. Improve drag and drop, introduce modal dialogs and windows, more (see ticket #139, #225, #227, #233, #118, #238, #243, #244, #144, #152, #247)
 * Refactor and cleanup (see ticket #252, #82, #83)

Writing

 * Make two or three quests involving fighting; make a task for graphics dept as early as possible. We can probably stick with the two quests we originally planned for techdemo1. (Discussion)
 * Decide the general outline of the main story/main quest for the big game. This may also serve as a pointer for creating the fighting quests, although they may as well be very much standalone. For now Snowball seems the best candidate.

Project management

 * Coordinate all the above
 * Create the newbie first aid pack. Make up the list of docs needed to inform/inspire/guide newbies in all depts, most notably -- programming. Coordinate creation of those docs. Create a fancy place on wiki to serve as a starting point for newbies. Get feedback. Repeat.