FreeOrion

This is the roadmap for the FreeOrion project. Originally I was going to pass it around to the other team leaders and then post it, but I figured I may as well just open it up.

Completed in v0.1:
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Basic galaxy map
Splash screen / save game / load game
Basic planet screen
Automated combat resolution
Fleet movement and capturing of planets & star systems

To be completed in v0.2:
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Galaxy generation routines (passed - drekmonger)
Basic economy model / planet classification (passed - Aquitaine)
(includes precise numbers for mineral & nutrient production)
Population growth model & population cap (to be passed)
Incorporation of nutrients and minerals and some manner in which minerals will feed industry
Starlanes
Stockpiles (if we'll have them)
Environmental preferences (although as there are no races, everyone will have the same preferences for several versions)
Basic Planet Specials (model for how specials will work; perhaps specials that affect resources)

To be completed in v0.3
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Buildings model
Secret Projects (add projects as we add more features)
Tech tree beginning: the current plan is to establish all of the empire-level tech stuff before we do any tactical-level stuff (so we'll have the tech tree for everything up to this point completed before we start in on anything else). This plan may be a little more 'boring' than tackling combat and governments and all that at once, but I'm convinced that we need to do the tech tree in a gradual, deliberate manner.

To be completed in v0.4
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Space combat model
Ship design model
Tech tree for both of the above

Ground combat is under discussion -- some people want to do ground combat alongside space combat. Personally, I'd rather do ground combat later, not because I want to give it less attention, but because I don't want to split our programming team up at this point -- v0.4 will be the next make-or-break point after v0.1 for FreeOrion, and I don't want to overwhelm the programmers or the artists or the FX and music folks. So consider this official word that I've recognized how important ground combat is to everyone and that I want to make sure it gets its due, and that my current means of accomplishing that is to do it after space combat.

To be completed in v0.5
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Diplomacy model (large debate regarding how much -- if any -- of an EU2-esque diplo model we want)
Tech tree update - Diplomacy

Considerable AI work around the Diplomacy model, so let's not load anything else on the programming team for v0.5

To be completed in v0.6
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Ground combat (::cheers::)
Tech tree update - Ground combat

To be completed in v0.7
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Espionage
Space Monsters
Random Events
Tech tree update - Espionage

To be completed in v0.8
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Governments (we've already settled on an SMAC-style government model, but we'll hold off on actually finalizing governments until v0.8)
Leaders
Races & Race picks
Tech tree update - governments, race-specific picks

To be completed in v0.9
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Game balancing, extensive playtesting. this will be an alpha release geared towards playability.
Translation of game content into officially supported languages. Which languages these are will depend on who volunteers to translate.

To be completed in v1.0
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Polish. Editing everything for grammar and spelling (content) and readability (code). Final graphic, FX, and music work. Ideally, there should be no new features in v1.0. If there are, v1.0a will be released and thoroughly tested before we announce the v1.0 release.

The roadmap after v1.0 will involve champagne.

--Aquitaine

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Feel free to delete this post if this is the wrong thread for discussion.

Overall, the roadmap looks good to me. I wonder if espionage is worth a whole version, but on the other hand the system might end up fairly involved. (and there'll be plenty of bugs to squish by v.7)

V2 seems a bit feature sparse compared to v.1 and v.3. A better programmer should be consulted to give a more accurate estimate, but in my mind v.2 can be bolted on top of v.1 rather quickly. This would be a good thing, except the amount of time required to design a tech tree, pass a building model, and come up with a list of facilites might take weeks or even months (assuming it's all designed by committee).

A few other misc comments and questions regarding the roadmap:

* Minerals probably should feed industry in v.2. Although there won't be much to do with industry/minerals, it makes sense to me to implement as much of the economy as possible in v.2 (so that it's in place and ready for the monsterous v.3). It should be easy to come up with a quick list of industrial/mineral costs for the v.1 ships and defensive structure.

* Are food numbers going to look like the ones NF showed me (as implemented in freeorion.xls)? If so, might have to re-evaluate them (or consumption) either in v2 or v3. Currently (at least to my understanding) there doesn't seem to be any strain at all in feeding your population--mix in the v3 techs/facitilies and we end up with a constant large surplus.

* Speaking of surpluses...are stockpiles in v.2 economy, nixed, later, or undecided?

* Concerning planet enviroments, are the effects to be implemented in v.2? If so, are the effects already defined?

* Planet (and other) specials fit into which version? If I'm right about the relative ease in which v.2 can be implemented, I'd suggest coding the nuts and bolts of the specials in v.2.

A few other things that aren't in the roadmap but probably should be:

Leaders
Space Monsters
Secret Projects
Random Events
Planetary Specials

No numbers have been finalized for v.2; most likely we'll tweak the freeorion.xls stuff until we get what we want, and I don't think we have decided on stockpiles. probably that should get a DESIGN: thread.

Let's do planet environment effects for v0.2, so we'll need to figure those out. You're right in that we could do with a little more meat in v0.2.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Do you think deep space exploration and such could also be incorporated somewhere into free orion as discussed in this thread?? I think that would give this project a distinct edge, and really "make" the game for some people... (also, maybe there could be an exploration type victory??)

I've played GalCiv, and I have to admit that I'm not a fan.

In MOO you're either in a star system or moving between a star system. In GalCiv you're in a hex and that hex may contain something.

I don't see us having so little to do that we'd need to think about this before v1.0, but if your brainstorming thread gets a lot of attention and people go nuts about it, we can look at it a little more officially. But it doesn't strike me as something we need to run out and do.

-Aq

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

What about those 5 things you mentioned as "should be on roadmap but aren't"? Will they find themselves there before or after 1.0? While they're not really crucial to the game, I feel they sort of need to be there for the game to be complete. (At least the giant space fish needs to be )

I mean let's insert them somewhere. where should they go?

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Leaders: fit governement as they have similar effects (I'm guessing)

Space Monsters: can be put in together with Space Combat and Ship Design.

Secret Projects: dunno, V0.9? These things might affect just about everything so they need to have all those other things defined.

Random events: Same things as Secret Projects.

Planetary Specials: Depends on what we want these things to do. Probably pretty late, too.

Wonders of the galaxy/secret projects/big buildings: v3 and onwards. There's nothing so special about the implementation of Wonders that we can't start to include them in v3, and update the list as more of the game is defined.

Leaders: v.8. Along with the gov'ment. If at all.

Everything else: v.7. We'll call that the "Misc Version." .

Edit: One more thing missing: Moral or Stability or whatever. Obvioulsy belongs in with Government, v8.

I'd like to see planetary specials in v0.2, since there's not that much to v0.2 anyway, and it would be nice to get as much of the universe generation finishaed at once (and early on) as we can.

something else for v.2: starlanes

Looks good, good to have the roadmap back up.

Add to 0.9/1.0 translations for other languages - this is the point where they are important, though for those willing it may be useful to contain translations through all the versions.

Since secret projects will essentially be a special type of building, much as in Civ or SMAC, we should add that to 0.3 discussion, and implement the actual projects available much the same as we update the tech tree - at intervals as project ideas come up.

I second tzlaine's suggestion to add planetary specials to v0.2, along with starlanes as drek said.

Yeah, I have another question to the translation aspect.
How will you (or have) implent the textes in the game.
I am very interessted to translate the game into german as soon as possible. Therefore I would appreciate a modular form of the texts in text files like in Master of Orion III (ok it suckz, but it was translated...).
Is this festure implented or how will it work?

This feature has been built in to the project from the beginning. We are not yet at a point where we have a lot of content that needs to be translated, though, but we'll make an announcement when we are.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Not sure just thought it might be nice to bump this post!