Fortune Hunter progress update

As the school semester comes to a close here @ RIT, we find ourselves out of dedicated team members through classwork. I'll still be remaining active on the project as I always have, and anyone wishing to help or ask questions can reach me @ jam2707@g.rit.edu. Some of the critical obstacles we need to overcome are still within the programming realm, but there is plenty of work for all. To my knowledge, there are no definite future plans to continue Fortune Hunter through the winter season, though we may end up with a few CS students from Florida (crossing fingers) and a few minor updates here or there from myself. There may potentially be a class next quarter that will have the ability to work on it, but again that's speculative. I have, however, added more information to our wiki (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fortune_Hunter) and updated our trac list (https://fedorahosted.org/fortune_hunter/report/1) tremendously. Tasks are now listed for many future releases from now. This will add a lot of structure in the work-flow, which is great. There's still a whole lot more stuff to add to it, so I'll be doing that in coming weeks. The trac list will be open for public edits very shortly, with the release of Fortune Hunter 3.0, which will occur within the next day or two (will notify again after release). That's all for now - I'll post again when the release is out. This release will rid the project space of old-code (from the prototype) and begin the actual game progress track henceforth!

Fortune Hunter Update

So here is an update on progress of FH as of a few days ago. The porting of the lose-condition into the game is completed. Instead of leaving the battle when your HP reaches zero, you now successfully restart the level (with the same inventory for now). The merchant system is currently under reconstruction from the ground up. It has been redesigned and is slowly progressing on the code side. A basic class has been added to the repo in MAFH2, but it is not functional or complete yet. We are still seeking a coder or two to help us fly through the scripting part. The coding has proven to take a lot longer than expected so far. Most likely we will fall short of our Release 4.0, but not my much. We are still planning on the important aspects/elements to be there. The further changes are going to probably then trickle in, with the next major release occurring after the localization process. So again, if anybody is interested in checking out the game, please shoot an email to jam2707@g.rit.edu.

Fortune Hunter Development Track

Okay folks. Following is a development track list for Fortune Hunter to the end of 2010. Hopefully we'll be hitting all our marks, but we'll at minimum be getting to a new release soon(ish). Just to mention it, we'd love to have a few experienced python coders join on at the moment. For more info on the game, you can check out our SugarLabs wiki and git repository. If you want to mess around with our prototype game version on your XO, you can obtain it from Sugar Activities. Also note we are working on a sister application, Fortune Maker, which is a tool to generate custom user content. Info on this can be found through the above links as well.

- We are currently working on implementing the lose condition and merchant systems back into the game.

*  ~ denotes blockers to release version

Week of (10/24 – 10/30)

Continue reimplementation of merchant system ~FH4

Continue reimplementation of lose condition ~FH4

Week of (10/31 – 11/6)

            Finish reimplementation of merchant system ~FH4

            Finish reimplementation of lose condition ~FH4

            Begin reimplementation of slider puzzles ~FH4

            Begin matching content from previous FH to new FH ~FH4

Week of (11/7 – 11/13)

Finish matching content & tie up any loose ends at this point ~FH4

Finish reimplementation of slider puzzles ~FH4

            Prepare and Release FH4 on 11/12 ~FH4

            Start localization process ~FH5

            Globalization review ~FH5

Week of (11/14 – 11/20)

            Playtesting ~FH5+

            Redesign FH elements ~FH5+

            Successfully read and generate FM custom content ~FH6

            If localization finished (or ASAP), prepare and release FH5 on 11/19 ~FH5

        Fortune Maker-

            Update GUI ~FM2

            Improve functionality & redesign ~FM2

            Successfully output FH maps ~FM2

            Prepare and release FM2 on 11/19 ~FM2

Pythonistas Meeting @RIT

Hey all! Just returned from a meeting of the Pythonistas hosted at RIT's Innovation Center. I mentioned the group in an earlier post, so I won't get into it. The meeting went well, the RIT students presented projects they have been working on and tried to relay code concerns to the python enthusiasts. As such, we had a chance to talk about Fortune Hunter, which I will blog a lot more about soon. I would like to point any readers in the directions of all of the presentations so they can see some very neat open source projects and potentially help out in some way.

Here is the link to check out all of the developer's blogs at the Teaching Open Source Planet

and here is the direct link to download the Fortune Hunter powerpoint (pptx/ 1Mb) presentation given tonight. It outlines a few immediate goals we are trying for in the next couple months and very briefly talks about the project.

Pythonistas Mention

    A shout out to the Rochester Pythonistas! They are a group dedicated to Python programming language and have recently changed their meeting location to the Innovation Center at RIT in Rochester, NY. If you are interested, you can connect with them on Meetup. They meet from 7-9pm on the second Thursday of every month.

HFOSS Activity

Background :
    @ RIT, I am currently taking HFOSS (Humanitarian Free & Open Source Software), a course offered for anyone at the school who is interested in generating open source software for underprivileged people around the world. I took this course one year ago to date and now that it has a new course number, I can register again. In Fall of 2009, me and a few other students started a project called Mathematical Adventure: Fortune Hunter. This is an educational math game in being produced for Sugar XO. Long story short - we were warmly received in communities, both local and online and generated a lot of excitement and were offered a job continuing development of the game after the school term had ended. We took it. We made very decent progress during this time and when the next school term ended, the job proposal stayed. In the spring of 2009, some of the team had to take a leave from the project to continue their educational track so they can graduate on time, myself included. A few members took advantage a second time of the job being offered and even got the chance to continue through the summer! I was working for a game design company during this time and again couldn't continue work on Fortune Hunter. Now that the new academic year has begun, I am back in action!

Plan :
    I am looking to continue development of the game for the next few months, if not longer. My plan is to finish and tie up some loose ends and begin converting the game into Spanish. I will post more links to the project page (recently moved) and any pertinent information shortly, so check back soon. I am also being brought up to speed with the project from my absence.

    So please, anyone interested in joining the effort, let me know. The more, the better!

       Fortune Hunter Wiki on Sugar Labs
       Fortune Hunter Wiki on FedoraHosted
       YouTube Channel: maFortuneHunter

~KnightMearh