[crossfire] The future of Crossfire

[Nicolas Weeger]

Hello.


I'd like to start a debate on what we want for the future of Crossfire. By 
future I guess we can say 2.0 and later versions - 1.x branch shouldn't 
change much, and trunk is still some time away.


Lately, we've been too focused on code, I think, and not enough on features 
making the game we want to make - we don't even really know what game we 
want.


IMO, we should first decide what we want to do (and no, saying "let's fix 
sounds" or "let's improve spell performance" or "let's fix bugs") is not 
deciding what we want to do, merely fixing.


I think we suffer from lack of vision. We suffer from not enough coordination.


What kind of game do we want? What kind of gameplay?


This should guide our code, not the other way around.


Example, if we want to someday have more than 15 or 20 players, threading will 
probably be mandatory. But threading for the sake of it isn't useful if we 
don't want to aim for many players.



So, what would be everyone's vision of the game?



My goal is to have a fun game, with fun quests, items, skills, maps. Fun 
meaning interesting, challenging, many many things :)
Also multiplayer, eg collaboration and/or competition. Multiplayer spells (ok, 
those exist, but haven't been much discussed), multiplayer quests, and so on.


From that we should decide what we plan to code - rewrite some obsolete stuff, 
refactor, whatever.



Sorry if the tone sounds harsh. I am concerned by where we are going - or 
rather where we aren't really going, or not all together.


Nicolas
-- 
http://nicolas.weeger.free.fr [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref 
de l'aléatoire !]