[Scummvm-devel] Release plans

[Max Horn]

Am 06.02.2004 um 02:54 schrieb Travis Howell:

> Setting goals and rough dates for next releases seems like good ideas.
> But often it is a matter of limited time to work on completing 
> features or
> fixing issues in ScummVM, causing the longer delays.

Yes. But for most things, we could then simply postpone it to another 
release. Of course I know that all the features we add to ScummVM are 
done by volunteers, so we can't make force anybody to deliver code by a 
certain deadline. However, we can still plan better with such a 
timeline. Like, decide to hold back a feature checkin a little longer 
(if you know the branch will happen in two days, that's much easier 
than if you have not the foggiest idea when it'll happen). Or we can 
decide to (temporarily) revoke changes. Etc.


> Well there is still a lot (In addition to what you mentioned) that 
> could be

The stress being here on *could*. Of course, if we want to, we could 
add infinitely (so to say) features, and never reach 1.0, but rather 
end up at version 0.4212.0 at some point... hence why I asked what we 
*want* to have in 1.0, or if we actually ever want to reach a 1.0 :-)

> done before a 1.0 release, especially if we want to support all SCUMM 
> games.

That's the question, do we want to? Personally, I'd say: ultimately, 
yes, but for 1.0, not necessarily.

> The many bugs in various games on tracker.

There will always be bugs. If we set "no bugs" as release criteria for 
1.0, that'll be equivalent to "we will never make a 1.0 release". This 
is no different from any other release, IMO.

> Complete imuse digital support

And complete Insane support, probably. Both are things aquadran and sev 
are working on right now. Agreed here.

> Support for more Humongous Entertainment games:
> Windows version of puttmoon/puttputt/fbear.
> Freedi Fish 1-5
> Pajama Sam 1-3
> Several Putt Putt games
> Various arcade games

See above. To me, this is in the same category as adding support for 
another engine: something we an always do, but which is orthogonal to 
the existing ScummVM and as such shouldn't affect a 1.0 decision in any 
way.

> The later scumm games (Blue's Clues and sports games) made frequent 
> use of
> Bink and Smacker though, so would be best left unsupported.
> There isn't much interest in HE games development so far though. If 
> anyone
> is interested, demos of majority of HE games are available (Check
> http://members.optusnet.com.au/scummvm/humongous_demos.html ) for 
> testing
> with.

Once again, IMO a nice bonus to support 'em, but not important for 1.0.


> Better support for others versions, making them at least completable:
> Macintosh version of indy3ega needs custom code for displaying 
> inventory
> Macintosh version of loom tries to load non-existant resources after
> introduction.
> Amiga versions of atlantis/monkey2 have palette issues which can effect
> gameplay.
> NES version of Mansion Mansion, which I think _sev planned to look 
> into in
> future..
> Support for other console versions?

And again a worthy goal, but not necessary for 1.0 (and again, all of 
course IMHO :-)


> Would be good to have support for at least all PC versions of SCUMM 
> games
> before a 1.0 release.

If you make that "support for all PC versions of LucasArts SCUMM games" 
I'd sign it. But personally I don't see why we should delay 1.0 by 
another infinity time span (computed using the current development 
speed of HE support ;-). Esp. for games which apparently have not such 
a huge fan group amongst our users (at least so far I haven't seen us 
drowning in requests to support these games, unlikely the zillions of 
requests for other adventures :-)


Cheers,

Max