GAE Proposal

[hailstone]

Since Daniel has been out of action for a while and his site is unavailable I think it's time to find hosting somewhere else and get some proper roles and project structures in place.

Roles:
Project Coordinator
Project maintainer
Website maintainer
Programmer
Graphics (might not need this if data is separate project)
Quality Assurance
Documentation

I will be the temporary project coordinator and maintainer until things are setup.

Software maintainer definition from Wikipedia:
"a software maintainer is usually one or more people who build source code into a binary package for distribution, commit patches, or organize code in an source repository"

GAE will split into sub-projects each with their own maintainer.

Sub-Project Categories:
Base
Graphics
Tools (e.g. Map Editor, exporters)
Multiplayer (e.g. lobby, network code)
Gameplay (e.g. tech tree, various features)
Documentation (e.g. tutorials, compiling, processes, coding practices, design)

Due to the size of the data it's not going to be possible to include it in the svn on free hosting. So only source code and documents will be included.

Possible hosters:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/
http://www.tuxfamily.org/en/about
http://www.assembla.com/
http://unfuddle.com/about/tour/plans
http://sharesource.org/
http://code.google.com/
http://sourceforge.net/

Resources to help in the setup:
Game development and production by Erik Bethke
http://producingoss.com/
The Game Producer's Handbook by Dan Irish
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

If you want to take a role or have ideas let me know.

NOTE: this isn't going to happen overnight.

[hailstone]

I'm trying to decide between these three hosters:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/
http://www.tuxfamily.org/en/about
http://sourceforge.net/

If anyone has a preference let me know before I pick one in a couple of days.

Also Orion volunteered to be the website maintainer.

[mictes]

I volunteer for the website and maybee for the documentation.
The hoster should be sourceforge.net, I think.

[orion]

Also Orion volunteered to be the website maintainer.

I already volunteered to be the web designer and mantainer, but all of that responsibility would give me a lot of stress. So, why don't several of us manage the website together Mictes. I think that there was another guy who said that he would help with the website as well and he had a server of his own. I think 3 people working on a website is okay.

PS: I'm already creating a new design.

[hailstone]

I think 3 people working on a website is okay.

I agree. As long as all of you work together it should be ok. Just stay informed about the work each person is doing.

The hoster should be sourceforge.net, I think.

What is your reasoning for this?

[mictes]

Many servers in all countries - uugh, it's difficult to explain.

[gameboy]

The other guy who said he would help was ayrin, Oh and i can do the animation( some) and models.

[Omega]

I can help, QA (Quality Assurance) and Documentation (Including tutorials, manuals, and read me's)

I can also do animations, models, and images. I can do websites (HTML) but I'll leave it for Orion.

[gameboy]

hey, we don't have the most important guy in the whole team! The Programmer.
I could do graphics and gameplay,when you have Omega and me you'll never run out of ideas, right Omega?

[orion]

hey, we don't have the most important guy in the whole team! The Programmer.
I could do graphics and gameplay,when you have Omega and me you'll never run out of ideas, right Omega?

I think that hailstone was going to be a programmer. I also recall someone else saying that they were going to help as well.

[jrepan]

I am a programmer.

[wciow]

I will help out with documentation.

[hailstone]

I have decided to sign up with Sourceforge.net for these reasons:
- Easy setup
- no hard limit on svn quota and 100mb for website
- they have a good reputation (and therefore not likely to disappear any time soon)
- my ISP does a mirror of their files  
- have the necessary tools
- other glest projects are hosted there
- there are probably other good reasons

I have received approval and have done a little setting up.
Project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/glestae/
Website (needs to be setup): http://glestae.sourceforge.net/

TODO:
- Upload source to SVN
- Compile and Upload binaries and data files to release system
- Add developers to project

Discussion will still take place in the GAE forum not at sourceforge hosted forums.

The latest update on the roles:
Project Coordinator/Admin: hailstone
Sub-project maintainers:
Website maintainers: orion, mictes, ayrin
Programmers: hailstone, jrepan
Documentation: wciow, omega
Graphics/Models: gameboy, omega
QA: omega
Forum moderators: GAE team

Also in addition to the above roles we will need tracker moderators (ie managing bugs, feature and support requests, etc). Requires sourceforge user account.

Website Requirements (http://producingoss.com/en/getting-started.html):
- Needs to contain the sourceforge.net image with a link to their home page.
- Mission statement
- About the project (open source 3D RTS, etc)
- Features and Requirements List
- Development Status (I've set it as pre-alpha at the moment)
- Developer information (I've done a draft developer handbook so I will update that and upload it sometime, the current version is online already)
- Screenshots

Orion, send me an email so we can discuss getting the website up as quickly as possible, even if just a basic version. You can sort things out with mictes and ayrin once that is done.

That's pretty much it for the moment. Once I have things setup I want to help people compile it for themselves and start assigning code maintainers.

[asmodeus]

Things to keep in mind:

- Sourceforge has issues with https subversion checkout on low bandwidth connections
- if you ever decide to change project hosts you'll find that they will never delete your old code (Because of the Sourceforge Google ranking being so high people will see the old code before the new code).

[gameboy]

are we still continuing FPM? just wanted to know.
BTW who's doing the textures?

[mictes]

BTW: What is our Goal ? Make compatible with the new Glest ?!

[Ayrin Greenflag]

as i told before the mayor crack i'm  available to work with you
3d i can make some models or texture
3d some flat graphic with photoshop
site i can use html and php/mysql
or with some game idea
let me know how i can help

[Ayrin Greenflag]

we could use sourceforge as base for store files and upgrades and we could use the www.lostinn.com/glest as website or maybe another subdirectory

[ZaggyDad]

On Sourceforge, I think you can have a site, though you might have to pay for it.  

[hailstone]

On Sourceforge, I think you can have a site, though you might have to pay for it.

Yes. 100MB free storage with a MySQL database.

BTW: What is our Goal ? Make compatible with the new Glest ?!

Add more features and make the current features more stable. It will only provide the means to make games not a game in itself. I'm thinking have demos and turorials instead of a whole tech tree and tileset to save on a single large download. You would only download the demo for the feature you are interested in.

Things to keep in mind:

- Sourceforge has issues with https subversion checkout on low bandwidth connections
- if you ever decide to change project hosts you'll find that they will never delete your old code (Because of the Sourceforge Google ranking being so high people will see the old code before the new code).

Thanks for informing. The actually code for a branch is about 8MB including build files. I can provide source via their release system if it's really a problem. If you are on a slow connection it will take a while anyway.

are we still continuing FPM?

The feature will continue to be developed within this project but the tech tree is a different project, in my opinion.

I have uploaded version 0.3 linux 32bit binary and data. I haven't been able to compile on Windows yet. This release is only to have something to download and if it works for people that is good. I'm not giving support for it at the moment. The next step is to upload the source, then I will help people compile on linux.

[asmodeus]

Things to keep in mind:

- Sourceforge has issues with https subversion checkout on low bandwidth connections
- if you ever decide to change project hosts you'll find that they will never delete your old code (Because of the Sourceforge Google ranking being so high people will see the old code before the new code).

Thanks for informing. The actually code for a branch is about 8MB including build files. I can provide source via their release system if it's really a problem. If you are on a slow connection it will take a while anyway.

Realistically that would be a pain (providing source tarballs for each commit) so I'd say don't do it unless more than one person complains about corrupted repositories, just know that it can be an issue.

[hailstone]

I was meaning every release. I wouldn't do it for every commit. I'm not insane.  

[Omega]

I think we need to work on getting GAE more compatible, especially with vista. Can someone upload the source please?

[gameboy]

The feature will continue to be developed within this project but the tech tree is a different project, in my opinion.

I'm making a tech tree for GAE, hows that? its under the topic name Ardhon in Mods.

[wciow]

I think we need to work on getting GAE more compatible, especially with vista. Can someone upload the source please?

I work mainly in vista and I've never had any problems with GAE. AFAIK there are no huge bugs in the windows version, if you can't run it its probably down to your system configuration rather than the source code.