*** Minutes of the Transport Empire meeting on 20040724 ***

--- Meeting begins ---

	People present:
		chirho, Conditional_Zen, eXinion, Hellfire667, Hyronymus, Jpl,
		oliv3r
	People joined in later:
		Metalcore424

--- Agenda ---

	1. Minutes of previous meeting
	2. Categorizing the ideas - update
	3. Design documents - progress report
	4. File formats, if needed
	5. Question round

--- Minutes of the previous meeting on 20040710 ---

	Minutes are approved.

--- Categorising ideas - update ---

	All ideas have been categorized. Some of them have been split up
	because the record in the database contained more than one idea. It was
	suggested to remove doubles from the database, but it was found easier
	to do when writing the Functional Requirements Document (FRD).
	
	The ideas topic on the forum will be locked and a new topic will be
	created. Ideas entered in the new topic will be added to the FRD when
	the first draft version containing all ideas in the database has been
	written.
	
	As a sidenote: there has been a discussion around prioritizing ideas.
	To keep the speed in the project, this will only be done when doubles
	are encountered. Doubles will have a higher chance of ending up in the
	FRD.
	
	Public access to the ideas database was found undesirable. As an
	alternative a dump of the current database could be stored at a
	different website. As an alternative, it was suggested to use the SF
	tracker system to track ideas. It was agreed that first the FRD will be
	writeen and afterwards either start using the tracker for new ideas or
	convert all existing ideas to the tracker and then use the tracker for
	all ideas.
	
--- Design documents - progress report ---

	The concept version of the FRD has not been read by all attendees of
	the meeting caused by a lack of cross-platform support for MSWord
	documents.
	
	The draft version of the FRD will be written by eXinion, Hellfire667
	and oliv3r.
	
	The longest discussing on the desing documents item was about the file
	format. With four votes in favour of Texinfo and one vote for Docbook,
	Texinfo was chosen as the format for all project documentation.

--- File formats, if needed ---

	A long discussion around file formats for 3d meshes. The following
	formats have been mentioned:
	
	* 3ds
		(old) 3D Studio format.
	* blend
		Open Blender format.
	* dxf
		Autocad format. Plain text files.
	* lwo
		Lightwave format. Relatively simple TIFF file format.
	* a format of our own
		Enables us to store additional information about the models as
		we please.
	
	A decision has not been made. Arathorn has been mentioned as a
	candidate for lead graphics artist.

--- Question round ---

	* The project website will be hosted on SF, if the limits on webspace and
	database size are not too strict. Jpl will make a concept website and
	if any other artists are interested, they can send in their own idea of
	a Transport Empire website. The website would have the following
	restrictions:

		1. good-looking
		2. accessible
		3. technologically simple, yet highly informative

	Offcourse, the HTML (preferably 4.01) should pass the w3c validator.

	* An architecual team should be assembled. This team will hold separate
	meetings concerning the technical details of implementing the game.
	Minutes will be publicly accessible and discussable. Meetings will be
	held in the #tempire channel on quakenet. Meetings will be arranged
	when necessary. There will not be a private topic or forum on
	tt-forums. The sourceforge forum will be used for that.

	* Besides the arch team, we will auso need an audio team(leader) and a
	graphics team(leader).

	* Document writers use this to browse ideas:
		http://jpl.yi.org/te/show_one.php?&id=21

--- meeting adjourned at 0045 UTC ---

	Targets:
	* chirho: set up SF forum for arch stuff
	* eXinion, oliv3r and Hellfire667: write the FRD
	* Jpl: Website desing samples
	* Hellfire: scribe the log and minutes