Monthly Review - August 2004

[Wijitmaker]

The following are the outstanding accomplishments by the 0 A.D. Staff Members for the month of August.

Philip Taylor aka Ykkrosh and Jan Wassenberg aka janwas for their excellent accomplishments in improving the low-level code this month, in particular Philip's robust localisation system, and Jan's versatile VFS file handling framework.

Simon Brenner aka olsner for successfully implementing the game's world simulation layer (aka The Scary Classes) including multiplayer network support.

Aviv Sharon aka Jeru for his patience and willingness to adapt to so many recommendations to the GUI work he was tasked to, and then ending up with a fine product.

Also special thanks to Rich Cross aka notpete for his welcome enhancements to the Scenario Editor, and Gustav Larsson aka Gee for his ongoing extension of the GUI engine.

I also do not want to forget a few of our department heads who accomplished a tremendous amount of work this last month: Paul Basar, Stuart Walpole and Bobby Ognyanov.

Behind-the-Scenes news for August

• Virtual File System vasty improved (now fully supports packed, loose and mod files).
  
• Activated handle manager caching.
  
• A localisation system was implemented.
  
• Significant improvements were made to the GUI Engine, particularly the text renderer and supporting floating point coordinates.
  
• Additional features were added to the Scenario Editor, including a propping and animation interface, terrain flattening, and deleting actors.
  
• 17 build updates of the game
  
• Updated pmdexp (model format plugin).
  
• The font builder tool was improved.
  
• Main menu, resource icons and initial statistics were added to the GUI.
  
• The network protocol was implemented (remote users can send chat messages and join a shared game).
  
• Fixed more bugs than last month.
  
• Created more bugs than last month.
  
• Integrated music code.
  
• Started making arrangements to switch to Subversion version control.
  
• Added 32-bit translucent cursors.
  
• Improved error logging mechanisms.
  
• Significant updates to simulation code.
  
• Started on reference documentation for various high-level systems: GUI, entity, networking, camera, console.
  
• Random Map visualisation examples have been started
  
• PASAP Phase 2 art was completed.
  
• Entity and Attribute based design document has been initiated and is well underway.
  
• Roll over entity descriptions for the 200+ entities has been started.
  
• Over 100 new actors were created.
  
• A new music track was composed.