Gonna toss this out and see what people think. The current "suggestion" thread is way to information intense, too much stuff is there. Also, I have noticed the suggestions themselves lack any consistency, so, I had a brain fart.
We will be working this week to get the "requests to date" into an automated system, we are currently favoring using bugzilla for automated bug reports AND feature requests, so we can assign things to people, report status on things, etc. However, that's not done yet
For new suggestions, if you could do the following (I am only using the asteroids as an example cause someone is already working on it, and some of these things will be obvious by illustration):
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* Verbally sketch the feature, describe it in as much detail as possible as it appears in your minds eye. If it is a GUI thing, maybe even sketch on a piece of paper and scan that in. Saying "I want more asteroids" is not sufficient, describe it like it would work:
"3 types of asteroids, SMALL_ASTEROID, MEDIUM_ASTEROID, LARGE ASTEROID
I want to display dense asteroid fields, 100 onscreen at once, of various types
etc"
* Describe the benefits this feature would have, and who they would benefit.
"This would benefit mod and campaign makers by allowing more realistic environments
etc"
* Tell us how important you think this feature is, High, medium or low, compare it mentally to things like fighter beams, glow points, *nix ports, cutscene video. I'd personally label the asteroids as "Medium to High" because it has immediate benefits to people and is likely to be done before say a new video player. Something like "fix the music bug in the main hall when I am at 1024 resoultion" would be a low priority (I made that up, I don;t know there is a music bug in the main hall at any particular resoultion).
* Write some "fake code" for things that are conditional (I saw lots of examples in the suggestions thread).
"if LARGE_ASTEROID is destroyed, create 2 SMALL_ASTEROID"
* Describe which source code files you think might need to be touched.
This one will obviously not be for everyone, but if you have a guess, make it. Otherwise, leave it blank till someone replies.
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This will accomplish a couple of things. First, it makes you think about what exactly you want, and prevents
of back and forth about what you mean. Second, it helps people who can code, think about how this would fit int the over all architecture. Third, it focuses the discussion on your feature request in a constructive manner, people have a complete picture of what you mean, and can then figure out if someone can do it
I'd even go so far as to ask people as they begin new feature independently, that they at least walk thru this excercise mentally, rather than diving write into the code. It will help you explain and present it to us, and will likely guide you in your efforts. Of course, unless I am sitting in your coding room, I can't STOP you from just starting to write code
But, rather than asking people to "stop asking for things" I thought maybe, this would focus our creative juices a bit. Basically, I am asking you to write a short design document for your feature.
Final request: Till we get the "list" up, PLEASE scan the threads for redundancy. If you see one that is on there, go ahead and post it in this format, might as well have the discussion, but just be mindful of repeating ourselves
Thoughts?
