[Wesnoth-dev] Dwarvish Runemaster and Wesnothian Philosophy

[David White]

Well, I guess I have to come out of hiding and deal with this subject at 
some point :)

On our policy for adding units to the game:

I have considered this, and I don't think I can support a proposal to 
add units to CVS and the distribution simply because they 'might be 
useful someday'. I think any units that are added should have an 
imminent use. Every file in the Wesnoth distribution does have some 
maintenance effort associated with it. Every file we add adds to the 
complexity. Sure, a few more images might not seem like much, but it is 
more files to be managed, more files that need to be converted if we, 
say, wanted to convert all image files to a new format (this has been 
done several times already in the project's history, so we can't rule it 
out from happening again). Every file adds complexity to our 
substantially-sized project for newcomers.

However, that's not to say that the Wesnoth developers can't find new 
ways to support building up libraries of images and other content for 
campaign developers to use. This was in fact the original model that 
Francisco and I used: he put his images up on a web page, and I would 
pick and use any I liked and had a use for. The system worked well.

The Wesnoth tarball doesn't have to be the only file the Wesnoth 
developers distribute. We can make another package that we distribute 
which contains additional content intended for use by campaign 
developers. A developer could volunteer to maintain this, to collate the 
data into a package, and regularly make releases of it which would be 
posted onto the website. Alternatively, the developers could maintain a 
web site which accepts submissions of content that would be made 
available for campaign designers to use.

If any developer(s) wants to work on creating and maintaining a content 
library, then let us know. I think the Wesnoth development team should 
and will support any such effort.

The Wesnoth releases though, should be kept relatively lean: only 
containing content that is actually used directly in the official 
versions of the game.

On development processes:

Every developer has a 'mandate' for areas they have free reign over. 
Jetryl is certainly our current lead artist. We must be careful not to 
pigeon-hole developers though: Jetryl obviously has talents in areas 
other than art, and his mandate may expand in the future.

For areas not covered by their mandate, developers are indeed best to 
consult the list. If I'm not mistaken, that's what Jetryl has done: he 
committed changes to the Elvish art, but he consulted the list for 
committing the Dwarvish Runemaster line of units, since that is only 
partially in the area of his mandate.

On the topic of the Merfolk/Naga commits, I believe I told Jetryl to 
proceed with committing them. There had already been quite alot of 
discussion about it. I completely concur with Shade that developers 
should be prepared to promptly fix any problems that their commits 
cause. As the project grows bigger and bigger, it is more and more 
important that we are dilligent about being careful with not adding 
numerous bugs with every commit.

I'm afraid I can't really comment on the 'friction' that appears to have 
been caused by some of these commits, since I was previously only 
vaguely aware of it. If any developers have problems with changes other 
developers make adversely affecting them, then please send me an email 
and let me know about it, and I will try to work to resolve things.

On the specific issue of the Dwarvish Runemaster line:

This unit line is not something new; it has been discussed for close to 
a year already. I am kinda sympathetic toward it, because I have never 
liked the outlaws and dwarves being lumped together in the Knalgan 
Alliance. I think it looks contrived and silly. The outlaws were 
originally meant to be 'neutral units' -- weaker units that aren't 
really part of any faction.

On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly how much closer the Runemaster 
will take the Dwarves to being able to 'declare independence' from the 
outlaws. It seems to me that we'll basically have five dwarvish units 
that all have similiar movement and defense values, with one being a 
basic fighter, one being a ranged fighter, and the other three simply 
having different 'cool' abilities.

I'm really not sure about it.....what do others think?

David