EQ2Emu Project - 2013 Planning

[John Adams]

*Based on 2012 Plan*

About this time every year, we start considering what we want to accomplish in the following year. As an extremely small team, I feel we got an impressive amount of things done in 2012, much in part to Jabantiz stepping up and becoming a principle developer on the team. We're all still learning, but the more we do, the faster this will go. That is exciting!

First, let's look at our friend; the Systems Matrix! Let's update this first, then I can start laying out a timeline in the Project Status module. This is not a priority list! Just a global "To Do".

X = completed, or as far as we're taking it for Alpha
C = Almost complete
S = Started, needs work

• Major systems
  • Alternate Advancement
    [ ] Collision Detection (Zone Geometry)
    Implied Targets
    [C] Instancing
    [ ] Map (fog)
    Pets
    [ ] PvP
    Tradeskills
  
  Minor systems
  • /Claim
    Achievement system
    [ ] Arena
    [ ] Battlegrounds
    [X] Collection Quests
    [ ] Deity Blessings/Miracles
    Knowledge Book (Research, sorting)
    [X] Macros
    [ ] Marketplace
    [ ] Mentoring/Chronomancy
    [C] Persona (DoV+ options)
    [ ] Player housing (Instancing)
    [C] Racial Traits/Training/Traditions (just needs data)
    [ ] Research Assistants
    [X] Scribing
    [ ] Slayer Tracking (Leaderboards/Achievements)
    [ ] Player/Guild Status
    [ ] Storyteller System
    [X] Teleport Portals (see Revamps)
    [X] Titles
    [X] Weather
    [ ] Zone Reuse timers
  
  Add-on functionality
  • [ ] LFG/LFM/LFW
    [ ] Additional LUA functionalities (catch all)
    [ ] Appearance Slots
    [ ] Conditional Events
    [ ] Cross-server chat
    [ ] Discovery XP (Achievements)
    [ ] Flying/Transportation Mounts
    [ ] Group combat perks/functionality
    [ ] Guild Banks
    [X] Guild Recruiting
    [X] Languages
    [C] Mail (Items/Coin functionality)
    [X] Merchants (status and token functionality)
    [X] Private Chat Channels
    Quest Functionality (Group, shared, etc)
    [ ] Raid groups
    Spell Functionality
    [ ] Waypoints
    [ ] Zone Access Flags
  
  Revamps
  • [C] Groundspawn/Harvesting
    [ ] Items (Sentinel's Fate functionality)
    [ ] Loot (Smart loot, chest drops, shinies!)
    [C] Spawn Movement
    Teleport Portals (replace Bell system)
    [ ] XP
  
  Database Changes
  • [ ] Spliting Dynamic and Static Databases
  
  Program Changes
  • [ ] Reconfiguring .ini files
    [ ] Splitting of Login/Zone/World exes

I think this post is still the wish list heading into 0.7.2 cycle. Don't faint. It doesn't all have to be done, just picking some things and doing them. Remember: For "BETA 0.8", we'll need *all* major systems implemented, which at our current rate will be sometime in late 2016

I think you can see by this post, most of our 0.7 goals have been reached. Yay! Slow, but we did it.

Current BUGS can be found HERE, and many still need to be addressed. Content bugs can probably be ignored, but remember them while developing content in this next DB/Content Milestone phase.


Full listing of archived Priority posts:

• 0.7.1 Planning
  Push to version 0.7.0
  "Priorities" threads
  Master Systems List- What We Have Left
  Preliminary 0.8.0 Wish List
  0.7.0 and DB Milestone 1
  0.7 Priorities / Wish Lists

Anything from here down is either completed or obsolete/redesigned

• 0.6 Priorities
  Emu Priorities
  Priority List
  Priorities (Jan '09)
  Task Priority

The next post will be about changes to the project direction in general.

[John Adams]

We finished our 0.7.1 cycle 3 mos late, mostly due to real-life getting in the way of us all. But everyone pulled together in Q3 to really push forward and get some major issues resolved, and start some new implementations. We're going to try and do the same thing in our Q4 of 2012, and release 0.7.2 at year's end Update: 0.7.2 is being delayed til Mar 2013 due to a priority shift.

The upcoming cycle will include things like:

• Pets
  Tradeskills
  Instancing
  Weather
  More Combat tuning
  But most importantly (I am hopeful) Content v2.0

We ran into a snag getting AoD client to function, but that's still just our learning curve - we'll get it, but not likely before the next expansion comes out so we (as a project) will likely skip AoD entirely and focus on the next expansion when it goes live. Hopefully SOE (or Steam) delivers a DVD or Downloadable static client again to make our lives easier (thanks guys!)

Update: AoD client is being skipped entirely, we're jumping straight to CoE, with DoV being our oldest supported Box Set as of Dec 31, 2012.

Year 2013: Primary Tasks
As for general "Priorities" for the whole of next year, this is still my primary wishlist:

• Content, Content, Content!
  Finish the EQ2PacketAnalyzer tool
  Finish both a web-based and stand-alone DB Editor or World Builder program
  Implement systems up through 0.7.5 as defined on Project Manager

Secondary Tasks:
There are 2 main areas to focus on:

• unfinished stuff

  Critical, crashing, locking, freezing bugs I am wanting to get resolved before 0.7.5. Me personally, I would love to see systems that are currently implemented become FINISHED finally, rather than be all half-ass and partially working (loot, ground spawns, guilds, mailboxes, combat/spells (which I think are almost done), etc).

  planning 0.7 stuff

  Reminder; this thread was born as a review of all our previous stuff, and what we might consider accomplishing AFTER 0.7 is released. However, there are still a few things on this list that might squeak into 0.7, but that depends on our Devs

The Big Content Decision: Going with DoV+ zones
We are dropping support for RoK, TSO, and SF clients at the end of 2012. They will still function with the ServerPacks, but the public LoginServer will prohibit anything less than the DoV Box+Patch after Jan 1, 2013. This means our Content (for Core DB) will focus only on DoV+ newbie zones.

• Reasoning: RoK-SF clients do not support the advanced functionality of the DoV-CoE game, and for Core development, we're focusing only on Live-like emulation. When we're done with all base features (0.8.0 Beta), we can attempt to go back and teach world to behave differently for older (classic) clients.

Depending on our progress of DoV+ zones, Content developers may find the time to go back and add the classic starter zones (DB Milestone 1), but it is unlikely anytime soon.
Update: We have decided we're leaving our DB Milestone 1 database as-is, and in Milestone 2, only adding new content from level 10+. We will fix/finish content for levels 1-10, but DoV+ clients do not utilize the old starting content anymore (QC/OO), so to save time, we will not do that work over in 2013.

I am still working on a way to deliver bulk content data to remote servers, but for now we're sticking with Xinux' suggestion of admins utilizing eq2content SVN.


Items, Items, Items:
With all the revamps to Items made by SOE, we're going to re-collect all items either through game links or pull info from data.soe.com Items feeds. This is a 2013 task. DONE!


Implementing New Systems:
If we start something new, let's be sure it's something we can complete so your time is not wasted.


Discuss, this is a rough plan that will be changed based on YOUR input.

Understand not all suggestions will be accepted, but all will be considered.

Thanks for a GREAT 2012!

[alfa]

My suggestion list (Most part credit goes to J.A. ^^)

Critical, crashing, locking, freezing bugs I am wanting to get resolved before 0.7.5. Me personally, I would love to see systems that are currently implemented become FINISHED finally, rather than be all half-ass and partially working (loot, ground spawns, guilds, mailboxes, combat/spells (which I think are almost done), etc).

- Finish Players engine, by that I mean finish some features, health/mana regen fix, and some data missing, like /played. And stat calculations :p Since J.A. has talking about recollect items, would be nice to have benefice of it cause it also allow to proprely finish combat/spells to take in count player stats.

Not sure if for you it is combat engine so add it

- Heroic Opportunity support

As John say I would love to see systems that are currently implemented become finished, and this going to unstress John, not have to revamp data again and again .
Also, it really nice to see how project grow up this year, hope in end of 2012 and 2013 I can "Apporter ma pierre à l'édifice" (And YES use google traductor if you want to know what this mean (for one time isnt me to do) !

[John Adams]

Good ideas, alfa.

"Vos commentaires sont toujours appréciés."

[John Adams]

Wanted to let everyone know that with the CoE efforts taking top priority, 0.7.2 code delivery will be pushed out a few mos into 2013. The affects no one except developers (our scheduling), as the community still gets weekly updates on Public SVN.

Also, Team Members, I need to hear from you on this plan, hopefully before 2013! Either you agree, or you have alternate suggestions. Which is it? Let me know.

[Zcoretri]

Looked over the plan going forward and it looks fine to me.

As alfa has suggested, I think we should be doing more in getting data to the character window, I have actually been thinking about that lately myself. With a lot of the unknowns found in the 1096 (DoV) character sheet struct, it should be pretty easy to add some data in.
And from the feedback from both Jabantiz and Xinux, the 119x (CoE) character sheet has been overhauled a bunch. But if I have faith if we continue to work together we can figure this stuff out and move forward with the CoE client.

[John Adams]

Also, Team Members, I need to hear from you on this plan, hopefully before 2013! Either you agree, or you have alternate suggestions. Which is it? Let me know.

Let's not start 2013 by ignoring my requests for feedback. It is imperative that you all are on the same page as me.

Jab is kicking ass getting some of our ancient bugs sorted out, but I need to hear from you all on completing these systems that "are not fun to work on" but still need to be completed anyway.

Look at the and [C] status items above, update the post if you will, and report back on those items as far as whether or not we can complete them in the next 3 mos or so.

Thanks

[Jabantiz]

My bad, this post completely slipped my mind. I agree with it and mainly content and bug fixes/finish partial systems.

[John Adams]

Thanks, Jab. Soon as I get out of Item hell, I will gauge the feasibility of finishing these systems. Probably will require you to talk to me on IRC tho Bring aspirin.