[Pingus-Devel] Pingus back in action

[Ingo Ruhnke]

Hi,

I plan to crunch out a new Pingus release in the coming few weeks. For
that I have started a few preparations over the last few days, most
notably, I switched the repository from SVN over to Git. The new
repository is now located at GoogleCode at:

 * http://code.google.com/p/pingus/

The old SVN repository still contains a few small subprojects that I
haven't yet relocated, but those are not important to Pingus. I'll
switch them in the next few days, either to GitHub or Pingus
GoogleCode page, depending on where they fit.

I also merged in some changes back into the repository that Gabriel
Rota has done, these includes a few new levelsets.

As for plans for the new release:

1) Bug Fixing

A lot of small graphical and gameplay problems have made their way
into the game, I started to document them in the issue tracker:

http://code.google.com/p/pingus/issues/list

The old bug tracker also contains a few old issue that might need some
attention:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=pingus (will be switched off
once the last bugs are gone)

2) Forest Island

This is somewhat optional and might be suspended for the release after
the next one, but I'd like to create a proper new island and continue
the story  a bit. A graphic test level can be seen in:

data/levels/forest/forest1-grumbel.pingus

The graphic set is still rather incomplete, so if somebody wants to
contribute a level or two, feel free to use placeholder art, we can
polish that up later. As this would be the first real island, after
the tutorial one, difficulty shouldn't be sky high.

3) Mod Support

Getting new graphics into Pingus is currently a mess and requires
modifying the resource files, this makes outside contributions and
modifications rather troublesome. I plan to fix that by getting rid of
the global resource files and providing small per-resource files (i.e.
*.sprite, *.music files like in SuperTux). I also plan on adding
support for AddOns that allow having overlay directories that override
data without a need to overwrite them.

4) Walkthrough

This is one where I wouldn't mind getting some help. I plan to provide
walkthrough videos for each level that ships with the game. Most
importantly of course the official ones, but I wouldn't mind having
videos for everything else we have. I have recorded some for the
Halloween island (1280x720) and have some older bad recordings for the
whole tutorial island already:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL85CB546B69E1E313

As for recording them, I documented a few steps here:

http://grumbel.blogspot.com/2011/08/some-notes-on-capturing-videoaudio-with.html

Those videos are currently rather bare bones, contain no commentary
and are not exactly ideal playthroughts, but should be enough to help
a player that has become stuck.

-- 
Blog:     http://grumbel.blogspot.com/
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