[Scummvm-devel] A roadmap for the future?

[Max Horn]

Am 14.12.2005 um 08:12 schrieb James 'Ender' Brown:

> Hi all.
>
> I've been thinking over the last few weeks that we should begin coming
> up with a roadmap for 0.9, and the future 1.0 release. This is not
> something abstracted from TODOs, but solid and realistic targets  
> that we
> can use in defining 'help wanted' areas and short-term goals.
>
> In short, this is mostly leading up to another "What are the main
> requirements for ScummVM 1.0". While I plan to put a Roadmap page  
> up on
> the wiki, I'm interested in a bit of discussion on the list first.
>
> Obviously, the long-awaited manual is one of the more important  
> targets
> for future releases. Kyrandia support is picking up pace pretty  
> rapidly,
> and could also be considered a goal for a future release. HE targets
> seem fairly advanced (although I've done no testing with HE games),
> which would almost complete supporting all SCUMM titles.

Personally, I don't consider Kyra (or Discworld, or HE, or anything  
else) support a priority for 1.0. To the contrary, I'd very much  
prefer if we were concentrating on fixing the existing engines.
E.g. SCUMM V1/V2, as well as iMuseDigital, still contain some fairly  
heavy bugs, which sometimes even make it impossible to beat the game  
w/o cheating or at least knowing how to avoid certain problems (e.g.  
the sarcophagus bug in Zak).

My personal priority wishlist would roughly be:

1) A manual, or at least something better than our README, which,  
frankly, stinks a bit by now.
2) A better FAQ
3) Bug fixes, improved stability; e.g. fixing the SCUMM bugs  
mentioned above
4) Improved docs for some of the ports. In particular, some tables  
which show the compatibility with certain devices (the Symbian port  
is quite good in this regard: <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/ 
SymbianOS>. I would love to see similiar tables for the PalmOS and  
WinCE ports. Maybe we could find volunteers to help Arisme and  
Chrilith with this?). And not just in the Wiki, mind you; we should  
have links to this in prominent places on our homepage!


Not-so-important-but-would-be-nice:
* New GUI. Would be cool, would maybe even improve usability, but  
hey, we can do without, too (and we can always add it in 1.1, 1.5,  
2.0...)
* Auto detector.
* probably other things I am forgetting about right now.


Adding new Engines is something we can do, but also something that  
shouldn't be a stopper for 1.0. After all, we can always make a 1.1  
release for that funky cool new engine, can't we?


Ciao,
Max