Game development meetings
Please see Game Development Section for basic information.
Game Development Meetings & Notes
We are working toward a series of future meetings between now and July focused on producing parts of the game SDK and actual games for the laptops:
- Conference call about XO Game Jam for spring in Boston : This will be a call with Boston IGDA and Boston Game Jam organizers to create a XO specific Game Jam for early June. This both serves as a goal to meet some of the development needs by then and to articulate games we'd like to see built as rapid prototypes.
- Localization [across software & content fields] : We are looking to host a small call to iron out specifics about how localization needs will be articulated for games that will run on the XO. It should be straightforward but we're double-checking things prior to finalizing a document on this.
- In-person, Cambridge, early April (10?), to set final development goals and 9-mo calendar : This will be a larger in-person meeting over a weekend in Cambridge to focus on final nuts and bolts issues related to producing initial workable game SDK (especially the pygame stack and initial libraries/engines/tools) for development. A formal agenda for these two-days is under construction.
- XO Game Developers Summit, July : This will be a first XO developers summit where there will be a release of tools , documentation, and sessions on developing for the XO. A fully articulated developer program, future schedule, and hosting of games built. E3 and GLS are 11-13 so we will not be meeting then. Perhaps the following weekend (21st?)
April 15
We are having a conference call April 15 at 1400 EDT.
We will have a simultaneous IRC chat on irc.freenode.net, in #olpc-content.
- Game Jam update: we're on for June @ Olin
- We have awards to give out: passes to Austin and GDC 2008, for starters
- Sponsorship: we need to raise ~$8k
- Sister Jams (California, S. America)
- Developers program: updated thoughts from Mark & Ben
- clarify who wants what, prepare for brutality.
- Mailinglist outreach: pygame, childsplay --> updates from andrew/oro
- IGDA - Jason Della Rocca, casual games list.
- prepare letter to send out about 1) the Jam, 2) the dev program, 3) game-platform thoughts
- App and gaming update:
- Pygame games that run quickly and not so
- Gnash benchmarks and testing; Binary game update
- Java games and mobile-java
- Kye and upcoming activities
- blank white cards]
- Go, Chess, and Cardgames
April 1 -- no joke!
We had a conference call April 1 at 3:00 PM EDT (postponed from 2:00 after a glitch).
We held a simultaneous IRC chat on irc.freenode.net, #olpc-gamedev.
- Olin schduling: Mel, Mon
- Mailinglist outreach: pygame, childsplay --> andrew
- Developers program: Mark&Ben
- igda - Jason Della Rocca, casual games list.
- clarify who wants what, prepare for brutality.
Attendance
- Noah Kantrowitz (coderanger)
- Charles Murphy
- Dan Roy
- Mark DeLoura
- Mel Chua
- Orospakr
- SJ
- Kent Quirk
- Kim Quirk
- Peter Smith
- Ben Sawyer
- Josh Seaver (Yoshi)
- Joe Lee
Agenda
- Technology
SDL -- status of SDL build; search for volunteers. It is both urgent and important to get this running ASAP, so we can't really wait for some SoC project to do it.- PyGame --
dependent on SDL but alsoimportant to get started ASAP - Support for OLPC-specific hardware (camera, mesh networking, etc)
- Do we feel comfortable telling people to build on PyGame starting now?
- JavaScript game status
- Flash game status
- Game Development
- Game Jam 1 -- (probably) at Olin campus, sometime in the spring (June 8-10?)
- Game Jam 2 -- timing? Location?
- Translation / localization system
- Documentation system
- Publishing plan -- pre-ship, post-ship
- Formalize developer program?
- Quality, quality, quality -- solid builds and repeatable results
- how to keep quality standards while encouraging newbie developers to contribute/learn?
- Display and artwork
- How to create material for this mode
- Describe colorspace and range...
- Articulate specific needs for paint program. Tux? Pixem? Blender? Anim?
- APIs for calibration (colorspace, analog in...)
- Also: design games thatfunction withlow reresh rate, monochrome mode. Serve as inspiration for tech tests, &c.
notes
- documentation -- something to go play with...not necc written docs. - quasi-official apis.
SDL and Pygame
SDL -- volunteers. kent + andrew. cant wait for SoC- PyGame --
dependent on SDL but alsoimportant to get started ASAP - Support for OLPC-specific hardware (camera, mesh networking, etc)
- Do we feel comfortable telling people to build on PyGame starting now?
- Yes. Contact pygame, childsplay mailing lists
JavaScript game status
- Test suite, good examples. Document how to tweak.
- Experts: john in #jquery
Flash game status
- Test suite, good examples. Document
- Experts: check with gnash-list, rob
Game conferences
- preJam -- May ??
- Game Jam 1 -- June 8-10
- Game Jam 2 -- mid-July? Location? onsite, online. MIT + CMU + Brasiliero?
Graphics
- Have SVG as a well-supported option
- Other blittable formats
- fast action games: display size? what is the bottleneck?
- Hardware image scaling. graphics/display gurus: adam jackson, jordan crouse [cosmicpenguin, ajax]
Translation / localization system
- python - docstrings, code are english. How towork on this?--> localization at laptop
- Documentation system - how to write; how to localize / expose strings
- Publishing plan -- pre-ship, post-ship
- Formalize developer program?
Quality
- how to keep quality standards while encouraging newbie developers to contribute/learn?
- Define a quality gauntlet. 1) review for running/bugs 2) general fun and approval 3) country / locale
- Use element of content stamping for this ...
Display and artwork
- How to create material for this mode
- Describe colorspace and range...
- Articulate specific needs for paint program. Tux? Pixem? Blender? Anim?
APIs
- Design test frames for var APIs
March 18
Our March 18 conference call focused on the following questions and subsequent notes:
[This was revised to show more the decisions coming out of meeting]
- What big picture decisions can we make about each of the above needs?
How can we get them properly developed in unison?
- Weekly meetings. We are working on weekly meetings both online and via conference all - looking at weekend (Sundays?) We don't yet have a set schedule.
- What do developers really need and by when?
Goal: A reasonable first pass SDK, future development doc, and developer program by July '07 Documentation: Docs should have guidelines for 2D, 3D graphics, networking, working w/sugar, size/footprint, common libraries, etc. Have started Game Developer Docs to begin this process.
- Deadlines: April: All core plans for year in place, June: Developer Jam @ Olin College, July: OLPC Game Developer Summit
- What process and structure needs to drive the next 12 weeks forward? (deadlines, updates) <-- this still needs work.
- Where should development be centered and how do we create a means for making tough decisions?
- Who houses this work? Who makes sure builds are working and certified?
- Who does documentation?
- Kent: SDL, Ben & Peter: Khronos,
- Ben: high-level games, general notes
- Ian, Rob, Gnash-doc-writer: Gnash
- CMU ETC: Housing integrated platform, helping with key holes as identified?
- <Java... Stefano?> What will be the Java VM and when will it be finalized?
- What are the preferred file-formats? Can we make a common resource file format? common XML format for translation?
- Kent: SDL, Ben & Peter: Khronos,
- How do we link this work into the core XO OS design group / get involved with that development?
- Docs on how to take part.
- What should a developer program look like?
- Specifically what should we be able to tell developers now, in a few months, in the future, and what do we want them to make, to build?
- Ben? get Jason dlr to talk about XOs; accept pro bono liaison offers. Have a site-section to sign up... laptop.org?
- Places to gather to show off; SF/CMU/CAM?
Timelines
First 2 weeks in April
- Meet in person; Cam / CMU (both?)
- Turn out a document to show the world what we want / expect
- Set 9-month calendar. Compare boston gamejam; indy gamejam for the XO in May?
- Get every game co in Bos/NY to come out.
- 1 artist & sound guy for every 15 devs
- Figure out how this would work - separate conf call, with Darius/DanR [startup]
- Olin --> good for an offsite
- MIT --> available; harder to reserve
May-June sprints
- prep for a v1.0 in July -- have sprints in Cambridge? school's out. cf. CMU's 2-wk sprints all fall.
- articulate 9-month cal including Austin, for full-game devs.
July XO dev conference
- Something to prepare for / develop for
- Set up piggybacking on fall events.
attendance
- Kent Quirk
- Ben Sawyer
- Mel Chua
- Kal
- Peter Smith
- Mark Prensky
- Chris Murphy (online)
- Jeff Keller
- j, dustin, more.
specific platforms
C/++
Gnash and Flash
Java
[Other] Low-level APIs
|
Game platforms
3D and animation platforms
Audio
Inputs
Network
|
New platforms components
Define requirements: physics, tiles, animations, sound, events... glass legos Emulation
|
High level languages
visual programming
story engines
arcade and spatial
|
Notes
- Cameras : Ben Sawyer checking with Jamil. Kent Q. put camera on SoC call.
- Shadow Garden, from GDC '03, SIGGRAPH '06 : cameras --> projection --> distance detection
- David Chait - x games dev; gl es
- Note from the Khronos group : open source tools 'facing group' for marketing. Send memos to khronos.org...
- Ben S and Peter -- update on Khronos support next week
next steps
- schedule another meeting to go over specifics, with devs from related projects.
- First week of April? Can Carnegie-Mellon host?
Writing a spec of what we need for SDL, andother low-level implementations: Kent
PyGame implementation spec here: PyGame ImplementationSDL implementation spec here: SDL Implementation- Writing about network and mesh offerings (P2P size, limiting factors): ??
- Note what server apis might be interesting/useful here [available within some network distance, reliability, ...]: <>
- 3D update : Ben S & Peter
- Server spec (beyond networking): <>
- Have Ian work on Flash games this week.
- Talk to Jamil now about Austin & the next GDC