Schattenländer Repository Opened

[Hellequin]

Hey, everyone.

Here's the status of things.  After an initial flurry of offers of assistance, many of them followed by some real help, my collaborators shrank to one, then to none - often with no actual warning of their change of status.  I'm no better; when this situation led me to wander on to other things, I didn't even have the courtesy to note that it had happened, be honest with myself and you guys, and say so.

What I would like to do at this point is this.

I will open the mod up to the community.  Quite distinct from Craftmod going open-source, where it was quite functional and was being opened for further improvement, this is very much me saying of an incomplete work, "If someone wants to pick this up, do so."

It is not impossible that I'll resume interest.  Indeed, if even two people actually stepped up and started to work with the mod, to make any kind of contribution, then I bet that my interest would be sparked, and I'd be back in the game.  I'm not gone.  I'm not discouraged, even.  I'm just not excited anymore.  That can change.

Before I do so, I will try and set aside time to do two things: (1) Write a "goals document" which discusses the actual, behind-the-scenes plans for the 0.2 release.  Several of these are more than half-completed, and they'll make a big difference to the mod - they just need to actually be done.  And, (2) go over the existing code and increase my comment density by about 200% from the current, mostly-not-too-bad, levels of comment used when documenting chiefly for myself.  But if I find it's taking too long to get to this, I'll go straight to making the CVS public, and work on the docs as requested.

This will, among other things, put the potion code into the public domain.  Help yourselves, fellas.  One of the major reasons I have not opted to release this code before is the amount of tweaking it would require to be made "generic" - able to be adapted to code which does not have some of the structural underpinnings (such as every agent being a distinct troop, always) present in Schattenländer.  But I have realized that rather than do so, releasing the entire mod into the public domain will accomplish this indirectly - it will take a great deal of digging and possible modification, but interested parties can still extract that code if it's worth it to them to do so.

I'll be available to answer questions.  Indeed, few things are more likely to resurrect my joy in this than helping some keen soul who actually shows aptitude and interest through the intricacies of what's already there.  PM is the recommended mechanism for this; I'll be leaving autonotification on, so that even if I'm no longer checking the forums with any frequency, I'll still see them when they come in.

Existing contributors - if for some reason you don't want your part of the existing work to become public, please say so via PM within (say) a week.  I'll allow that long at least, before opening it up to the public.  Over 95% of what's there is my own, but you still have a legit right to control your own work.  The mod can still exist without it.

Thanks, everyone.  Even if it dies here, it's been fun working on it.  No regrets.

- Eric (Hellequin)
July 3, 2007

[Hellequin]

Okay.

I have opened up the Subversion repository for general access, and have written a doc which provides an overview of what everything is in the code, and where to find it, and more-or-less how it works.

The repository, containing the most-current version of the mod, can be found at [http://svn.hellequin.net/schattenlander].  This will require a Subversion client to access; for Windows, I recommend TortoiseSVN.  Read-only access shouldn't require a login; full access is available to anyone through userID "user" with password "user".  If you seriously intend to not just look at it but actually work on it, please let me know and I'll generate you a unique userID and password.  That way the version tracking (which is the whole point) will do us any good at all.

My summary of the code structure can be accessed at this link (PDF).  I encourage any coders who aren't sure whether anything in the mod will be useful to them, to read that file through and to feel free to ask questions.

A further doc discussing where were headed with the mod when it stalled out will be included when I get time to write it.

Now opening this topic up to any discussion or questions... I yield the floor.

[KON_Air]

I knew I kinda figured how-to on potions but didn't fanthom it was that... delicate and complicated.
Also for read only acess firefox is good enough.

[mwirkk]

I've posted a notice about this change on the Darklands Yahoo! group. It may attract some new interest. I've certainly been interested. But until now, not as motivated as I'd like to have been. But, like yourself, and your other contributors, the problem is always having enough time.   We'll see.  -mwirkk

[Ron Losey]

Guys:

I was part of some of the earlier attempts at a Darklands remake, over on the aforementioned board.  The current "Realistic Combat Model" (RCM) statistics I've been working up for half of the M&B mods just about what a DL-based mod needs.  (The original Darklands was, after all, one of the few computer games where plate armor actually protected you from something.)  If anybody does get serious about trying to get this thing back on its feet, somebody drop me a note and make sure I know about it ... I'll be sure to work up some good custom item stats for them.

[Hellequin]

Mwirkkk... thanks!  I had a flurry of interest via email shortly after posting, but nobody followed through.  Reposting it may, if nothing else, let us roll again for that critical 100 on d% that seems to be necessary for this kind of recruiting...