Minutes for the meeting of Januari 23, 2005. - People present (in alphabetical order): * Hellfire667 * Hyronymus * jfs * pjaytycy * Weni * Zuu - Agenda (of the meeting itself, not the planned agenda) * Discuss minutes of the 090105 meeting * Pick new minutes man * Website/Wiki related issues * General project evaluation * FRD (comment on rewritten part) * Final discussion / comments on destinations * New featured discussion * Prototype progress * AOB * Setting new date + agenda - Discuss minutes of the 090105 meeting * No comments - Pick new minutes man * Hellfire667 volunteers to write today's minutes. * Hyronymus proposes to assign a minutes man at the end of meetings from now on. Proposal accepted. - Website/Wiki related issues * Jfs mentions a bug on the front page of the wiki. It says "251 of 246", which is actually the truth, because some ideas have been split up. It will not be changed. * Hyronymus wonders why milestones still haven't been specified yet. In the discussion that follows, these milestones have been defined: - The end of the FRD phase and the start of the DD phase * Jfs suggests to write an extra Design Document, that will describe the game in clear, easy to understand language. See http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=12992 for a more detailed description. When the document is finished, it will be like a "bible" for our project, so it will not be changed again unless really necessary. Proposal accepted. * Later in the meeting, Jfs gives the following description: The next milestone is a Design Document. The goal of the design document is to be a complete, not-too-specific description of the overall game experience. All developers will have to agree on the contents of the Design Document. The purpose of the DD is to be a general guide for the development of the game. It should be regarded as a "bible" or "constitution" for the development process. As such it can be consulted when there is a disagreement about something, and can hopefully provide an answer. Nothing can override the DD, and it can only be modified if every developer on the project agrees on the modified document. It should be written in an easy-to-read language such that people interested in the project, be it potential players or developers, can get a good idea of what the game will be like. - FRD (comment on rewritten part) * Hyronymus has rewritten the FRD as much as needed and as much as possible. He finds the Gameplay part well developed, but the other chapters could've been deleted as well, because they contain almost no data. The gameplay section still gives home to inconsistensies. It's just too much work and irresponsible either to match all ideas to get the FRD a decent status. He thought of a scutiny taskforce. Much against everyone desire we're all in the taskforce. He suggests everyone reads the FRD VERY CAREFULLY at least once. After reading it, they put their personal discoveries on the discussion page. * We should all read the FRD before next weekend. * Discoveries will be discussed on the forums, including polls, so doubles can be eradicated once and for all. * Because we don't want non-developers to vote, the polls will be held in a separate forum. Hellfire will ask Owen for a special Transport Empire Developers forum, which is visible to everyone, but can only be posted to by the developers. * Next meeting will be on the FRD only. * Voting will be done in the following way: - 67% or more in favour: Pass - 33% or less in favour: Fail - Otherwise: ask the users * The first one who has a discussion point creates a topic for it and stresses it should be ON TOPIC ONLY. * pjaytycy suggests to start the topic titles with a certain keyword to distinguish them. - [FRDF] = "FRD Finalisation" - [RFD] = "Request for discussion" * A discussion on dumping stubborn developers follows. The conclusion is not to set rules for this event. We should charish every team member we have and first try to work out our differences. - General project evaluation * Zuu comments that it has been 10 months since Chris posted on sf.net that we are back on the rails since Rein left. However he gets the feeling that the project is moving forward very slowly. So his idea is to evaluate our work. But after the discussion today, he feels more promised about the progress of this project, so he won't make that much of it. However, he would like to evaluate the Featured Discussion. * Zuu wonders what the development plan is of the project. Hellfire responds: - First, we would write the FRD, which contains the things we are now going to put in the DD. - Then, from the FRD, an Archtecture Document would be written. This ADD will contain UML diagrams and stuff. - And then, using the ADD, we'd start writing the code. - Obviously, now a DD has come in between, but that does not change much to the plan. It just adds an extra step. * This implies the following milestones: - FRD finshing - DD - ADD - Code * The team feels the Featured Discussions have made them discuss more, but it may also have caused some more difficulty. * Also, the featured discussions would be better off on a real forum, not on a wiki page. * A Transport Empire Developers group will be requested on tt-forums.net. Either Hellfire667 or ChrisCF will be the moderator of that group. All members of the group will have write access to the Transport Empire Developers forum. * All current Featured Discussions will stay on the Wiki. They will not be copied to a new forum. Future discussions will be held on the forum, but a summary will be copied to the Wiki when the discussion has ended. * Hellfire's comments on route/service finding (http://tt2.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:Featured_discussion_-_Destinations#Route_finding) was a bit too technical to understand. He will rewrite it in a less technical form when the forum is created. * For now, no new Featured Discussion will be chosen. As a result, the current discussion will stay open for the next couple of weeks. - AOB * News letter: The following text will appear in the next issue of the tt-forums news letter. - Transport Empire is finally beyond the "collect ideas" stage. Several people have created some prototypes to check how a certain "idea" really turns out. In the mean time, the most basic issues (passenger destinations, scales, ...) are being discussed by the developpers on the wiki pages. No "real" decissions have been made yet. Every two weeks there is an IRC meeting to get some "real" discussion between developpers. But, we are starting "real" decissions now as our next milestone. - Setting new date + agenda, picking minutes man * Next meeting: 05022005 @ 1900 UTC * Minute man: Zuu