July 8, 2005 Options

[Mole]

Project Wish
July 8, 2005 Status Report
Mole, Project Manager

- Summary
Much behind-the-scenes work continues. Reorganization efforts are underway. Generation of concept art is underway for points of interest in Marr Vellis. Exams finish for many team members, and work continues in high gear. GUI concepts being generated and discussion ensues.

- Flags
Severity --- Date --- Description (*=improvement, #=decline)
RED -------- 6/20/05 ---- (*) Lack of public communication
RED -------- 6/20/05 ---- (*) Gaps identified in our XP processes

Lack of public communication. This issue was raised by community and team members and these public status reports have been put into place to remedy the situation. During the month of June improvement has been made in this area. Continuation of the twice-monthly status reports through July will see the severity drop, with resolution in August.

Gaps identified in our XP processes. Steps needed to close the gaps have been identified and tasks are in place to resolve issues. Work on these tasks should progress throughout the month of July.

- Reorg
The month of June saw the PW teams identifying various issues that needed to be addressed to better organize the way PW operates. Six major areas were identified and tasks are defined under most areas. Work has begun on various tasks. Public announcements were promised by the end of June, but some work still remains before announcements can be made.

- Status of PW Components
Game Client -- The end of June saw the wrapping up of exam time for many team members. The upcoming month should see good progress on code. GUI development is under way, and so far 14 different mockups have been created for discussion! Due to vacation, GUI development has slowed somewhat, but work continues to narrow down our ideas. Work on the World Editor continues with bug fixes, and version 0.3.0 was recently released to testers.

Game Server -- Again, exams kept the team busy for the month of June. Various internal design decisions have been made concerning the use of ICE components. This does not add any new functionality to what we currently have, but makes it more robust for future expansion.

Story -- Work on the written descriptions of Marr Vellis continues, with specific locations divided amongst team members. The team is working on a written narrative done in a ?travel guide? style that has turned out to be a great way of generating an image for the concept artists. The team is also working on compiling an ?architectural style handbook? which includes descriptions and photo references for many possible elements that will be used in the game.

World -- Team is spending time defining their process for taking ideas from thought to concept to production. Ideas are generated, descriptions are produced, and concept art is currently being created and tweaked to get things looking the way we want. The team is also working with members of the Art team to nail down the look of our first playable race.

Art -- Real life issues took center stage with the team in the last two weeks, yet PW things are progressing nicely. The team is busy building relationships with the artists of CGTalk with hopes to leverage those artists in the future to work on PW projects. Current work is concentrating on various concept sketches from Story and World team descriptions. The team is also learning how to integrate their work into Ogre, our graphic engine.

Sound -- No status update.

- Staffing
No updates.

- Vacations/Absences
Mocker -- July 4-31
Cobra -- June 20-??