Tasks

This is a list of the various tasks, who is working on them, and their progress. If you start working on some of these tasks please add your nick name to the list to avoid dublication of effort. If you find something you want to do (item media for some category of items for example) that is not listed yet, just add a line to the tasklist. When something is ready, remember to update the progress and add a link to a picture or sound sample if there is one available. This list will eventually be moved to a worldforge task database.

(Previously some tasks were stored on our SourceForge pages, they have now been moved here.)

For some more recent tasks see the status report of 4th May 2001.

Item Media

The tasks here can be broad categories, individual items, or smaller collections of related items.

This lists 2D and/or 3D sprites/models for items. The goal is to have both, and optionally use the 3D model to render the 2D sprite.

Take a look at the Items Page to see what items will be in the game.

You can link to the Media Browser pages for the completed pictures.

Scythe by Gabriel

Task	Description	Done by
Pictures for food, vegetation, household items, and other things?		Uta
Tools, tool handles, tool heads	See the items section, and some of the tool related discussions on the meetings page.	Satyrkat
Bows & ballistas		Ophiuchus

Building Block Textures

See the Building Block Textures document for info about the necessary textures for a material.

You can create separate bump and color layers, and optionally a combined layer of them, or just a normal, un-bumped texture. See the examples in media-3d/collection-zzorn/textures/

Round corner template by zzorn

Paint layers are also possible, they should use bright red paint on parts of the wall that is painted. The color will be adjusted to the actual color used before the paint layer is drawn. Paint layers include the paint tag after the texture name (see the filename tag documentation [note, paint tag not yet added there]).

Task	Description	Done by	Progress
Cobblestones		zzorn	80%
Dark brick wall		zzorn	80%
Half timbered wall		zzorn, Uta	50%
Rough log wall	Horizontal logs (maybe one variant with bark, and another without?)	(Khazad)
Simple board wall	Vertical boards of different widths.
Fine wood wall	Mainly for inside walls. Can have panels and such.
Rough stone wall	Large irregular boulders fastened with cement.
Stone block wall	Large carefully cut stone blocks.
Clay wall	Wall made of dried clay strengthened with hay, possibly on a frame of twigs.
Twig wall	Wall of tightly wowen twigs
Rough tile wall
Plaster wall	Stone wall covered with plaster to create a flat surface, possibly with uncovered stones along edges.

Character and Animal Models

The models should have animations for some standard set of actions (different for humanoids and animals). Humanoid models should be done in such a way that the same cloth and skin textures can be used by all models. See a mailing list post about the character dynamics system

Skeleton by Bloodsport

Task	Description	Done by	Progress
Various human models	Maybe generic male, female and child models in a few different sizes, that can share the same skins for various clothing and appearance. The clothing skins should also be possible to use for the orcs, so some standard for the clothing and body part texture layouts are needed.	magnetHead
Orcs	See the description of orcs in the world section (under dural somewhere). Orcs can use the same clothing textures as humans.	magnetHead
Wolf		Pato	100%
Fox		Pato
Rats
Raven	(or crow.) Along with rats these would help with garbage disposal to remove abandoned items from the game.
Sheep
Rabbits	With both summer and winter coats.	?	?
Pigs	Small, medium and large ones. We can reuse the Acorn pigs.	?	100%
Deer		Garg	90%
Squirrel
Eagle	Note that the Golgotha textures included a nice skin for an eagle.
Some other birds?

Music

Also take a look at the Mason background story & music discussion.

From Bryces mail on the media page:

Task	Description	Done by	Progress	Link to music
Promo Song	2-3 min evocative tune that gives the feel of the game
Opening Movie (if applicable)	Something subtle and inspiration
Intro Theme	1 short, catchy tune
Main Themes	A dozen or more interesting songs to listen to while playing the game.
Panic Themes	3-4 short songs to play when things seek to be getting difficult or challenging.
Destruction and Failure Themes	3-4 short tunes to play when the player is having great trouble.
Victory Themes	3-4 short tunes, plus a couple longer songs, to play when the player is doing very, very well in the game.
End Themes	1-2 long, complex, and thoroughly orchestrated tunes to wrap the game up and to keep the players' attentions while they read our names and witticisms.
Docks theme	Theme for the docks where new players enter and trade with the river barges is done.
Glitterdark theme	Some music for the scary Glitterdark forest	P2E	30%	scary.mp3

Sound Effects

Sound effect are needed for the various items, mechanical nodes, building block construction, and creatures.

Task	Description	Done by	Progress
Coins	Sound of various quantities of coins being handled in various ways	alriddoch, Uta	100%
Footsteps	Walking on various types of ground	?	?

Design

Game design related tasks.

Task	Description	Done by	Progress	Link to document
House building design	Document the house building process, including how block shapes and materials work, rotating blocks and the rendering of building blocks.	zzorn	85%	House Building
Item creation	Design the process by which items are created from other items, including how various operations can change the state of an item.	(meZmo)	25%	MICS
Design Information Object editing framework	Design a system for edit information objects on the clients. Some work for this has already been done in a system that transmitts dialogs to uclient. Expand on this if possible. t should be possible to implement on all clients (possibly excluding text clients). Is python scripting needed, in addition to the UI description? How can editors for information objects such as text, pictures, spells, blueprints and composite documents be implemented? Can specialized widgets be used? Design and optionally implement a simple editor for textual information objects using the framework.
Blueprints and Information objects design	Design information objects that allow in-game items to contain various types of information, including blueprints for buildings.	zzorn	30%
Write Mason Requirements	Specify the requirements for Mason to reach 1.0. The current requirements might need to be updated slightly if new issues arise.	zzorn	90%	Requirements
Mason Mechanical System design	Design the Mason Mechanical System, which will allow building of machines and other active mechanisms in the gameworld.	zzorn	50%	MMS
Design and implement a blueprint editor	Using the UI framework for creating information object editors that run on the client, design and implement an editor for blueprints. The blueprints must be able to handle structures created from building blocks, machines constructed from mechanical nodes, and items placed out in some pattern. The mechanical nodes have ports that should be possible to connect to other ports on other mechanical nodes with connections. It should also be possible to add comments to any point on the blueprint, and to building blocks, mechanical nodes and items on it, as well as metadata such as author, name and description. The blocks/nodes/items on the blueprints should be possible to arrange in hierarhcial group, that can be moved about and handled as atomic items when desired. It should also be possible to have many blueprints open at the same time, and switch between them, copying things. Block operations should also be possible, such as replacing all stone materials used in building blocks with bricks. A translucent preview of the final building over prospective building sites in the world is a bonus, but not a requirement.
Mason game goals	What are the basic objectives of the players? These will probably include the need to gather food to stay alive, but some other objectives could add more interest to the game. An idea could be clans that compete in building houses or castles. Some ideas for game goals are listed in the Game Objectives section on the Mason pages.		80%
Items	The items in the game need to be fleshed out and described. The Items section lists some properties of items, and basic raw materials that are used to create other items. Item categories are tools, weapons (combat will not be implemented in Mason, so these are not neccesary), food, clothes, building blocks, containers, art, entertainment and misc stuff. In addition, all intermediate forms, like axe heads and handles, have to be described too.	TheedMan	75%	Items
Item states: Solid, liquid, paste, powder, gas.	Plan the item states and explore the effects they will have on other parts of the game system. What special support do they need from the game engine?	zzorn	40%
Piles of items.	Design how piles of items will work and how they will be represented graphically.	zzorn	95%	Piles
Garbage collection	How will discarded and surplus items be removed from the gameworld, so that the Server doesn't become overburdened with items?		70%	Garbage Collection
Mason background story	The game needs a background story that explains the motivations of the players and describes the geographical and cultural enviroment the game is set in. See the Acorn background story for a starting point. The game should probably take place somewhere in the Dural world.	zzorn	80%	Background story
Additional Mason Mechanical System nodes	When the MMS documentation is ready, additional node types can be invented, described and eventually implemented.
Economy in Mason	Read through Bryces excellent article on control of economics in WF. The idea is that with various feedback loops the economy can be kept in bounds. In Mason we want to try out these ideas. The echonomy would probably be based mostly on exchanging items, but coins might be used to some extent when trading with the river barges from the outside world. How could the echonomic control structures described in Bryces article be implemented for Mason? How can we avoid inflation? How do we keep the echonomy alive?
Structural Strength calculation	We need a way to calculate if a structure, consisting of building blocks with some strengths and masses attached to each other, holds together or if some attachment breaks or a building block crumbles under the stress placed on it.	mathfox	10%	Structural Strength Calculation for Worldforge
Draw the Map	Plan the layout of the game map, using the Background Story as reference. When the map editors are more complete, draw it (using the blade format, or a later, semantic map format).
Mason Milestones	Define a number of milestones for Mason implementation, describing the featureset that should be implemented for each milestone, and a sample scenario demonstrating it. The milestones should coincide with version numbering, leading up to a final 1.0 version that fills all the requirements.
Implementation Plan	The Mason implementation plan should address the following questions: What allready is available (acorn/cyphesis)? What is esential for mason? What is NEW for mason? In what order to implement the new features?

Implementation

Task

Description

Done by

Progress

Link

Game

Items. The items in the game need to be fleshed out and described. The Items section lists some properties of items, and basic raw materials that are used to create other items. Item categories are tools, weapons (combat will not be implemented in Mason, so these are not neccesary), food, clothes, building blocks, containers, art, entertainment and misc stuff. In addition, all intermediate forms, like axe heads and handles, have to be described too
Mason Mechanical System nodes. When the MMS documentation is ready, additional node types can be invented, described and eventually implemented.

Web pages

Someone to maintain or tidy up the Mason web pages would be most welcome. Here is a list of some web page tasks:

Move each separate subsection on the design page to its own page.
Add a News section somewhere on the Mason front page. The news can be picked out of the main news database.
Go through the Mason pages and design documents and look for technical terms coined there, and add them to the glossary page. A good place to start might be the Mason Mechanical System documentation, it conatins a nice table of defined terms at the beginning, just copy & paste it to the glossary page.