So I'm guessing this is it then... ?

[West]

*crickets*

Really breaks my heart to see this game sink into oblivion

I have a few music tracks that will be finalized and released before the end of the year, but unless we see at least some action in other areas as well, I'm outta here.

[dezGusty]

Argh, this is so annoying. Life is getting in the way.
I keep postponing restarting the development on Summoning Wars, and it seems that, if I keep doing that, by the time I resume working on it, there will be no one else to talk to 

I'm not making any promises any more, as I failed to keep my previous ones. But I'll try to motivate myself into the project again. It would be a shame to not have the latest iteration of the Reluctant Hero track in the game. It's simply awesome.

[fusion44]

Kulik send me an email today asking if we want to make a 0.5.7 release, and I said yes! It'll be only a bugfix release but its still a release Maybe we can add one or two new tracks to the mix, this should not be to hard. I'd aim for some time between the hollidays, before that I can't devote any time to this.
After the hollidays I won't much time for Summoning Wars until June when I finish my studies. After June I really want to start work on this again!
Kulik noted this would be the right time to let a GSOC student work on Summoning Wars and I'd love to help him doing this. All ideas what they might do are welcome!

Other than this, I know Psycho has still some nice models in the pipeline which he hasn't posted yet and his brother is making himself comfortable with Blender for doing some animations.

The future for this project does not look as grim as this forums may make you believe

Anyway, life's a bitch!

[poVoq]

Uggh, June seems faaaar away... sorry to be pessimistic about it.

There was recently a suggestion on the FreeGamer forums ( http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2903&p=39050#p39050 ) if it wouldn't make sense to try and merge SumWars with OpenDungeons. As far as I can tell, they are build on a pretty similar technical base (Ogre3D and such) but the devil always lies in the details.
Anyways, the beauty would be that those two games actually complement each other nicely, where the OD part could be also used as an ingame level editor and all the monsters and heroes could be used for both types of games.

In addition this would open the possibility for a great new multiplayer type:
"I always wished there was a game with an sort of real-time editor similar to DK (either completely free to build or with game constraints like limited funds or such) where one "Dungeon Master" could play against a hero group that plays like a sort of Diablo like game. Would make for a great combination of COOP gameplay with the old pen and paper dungeon master concept."

Not sure what people think of that over here, but the OD guys seem to be supportive of this idea, however they are facing the same lack of development due to a lack of active coders as SumWars.
However with such a grand proposal it would maybe be possible to attract some skilled coders over at the Ogre3D boards... well at least it would be worth a try

[poVoq]

http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2012/12/cry-for-programming-help.html

Maybe that helps. Sorry if my merger proposal is done without official endorsement by the SumWars team!

[West]

http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2012/12/cry-for-programming-help.html

Maybe that helps. Sorry if my merger proposal is done without official endorsement by the SumWars team!

Let's see what comes of it.

I'm definitely all for a bugfix release with some added content!

[dezGusty]

Hmm... a merger might be a solution to our problems. I just hope we don't end up with double the problems.
In theory, there would be a small challenge ahead, in which some common approach should be chosen (create a common core for the game, develop each individual sub-game as a mod, use a common art repository and allow map/level creators to add the resources to their work as needed).

It's too early to have an overview of how much effort that would be. I'll have to take a look into the Open Dungeons project first.

[poVoq]

Cool that you also think it is maybe feasible.

Please join the discussion here if possible:
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=3879

[Skorpio]

Hi, I'm an artist of the Open Dungeons project and just wanted to say hello. I hope we can collaborate in some way in the future and bring our projects back to life.

[Skorpio]

I see that you have functional shadows in SW. That's something we could use in OD as well, if you have time and if it doesn't cause too much work.

[dezGusty]

Hi Skorpio. Nice of you to drop by.
So far it seems that a collaboration of the two projects is seen by both teams as something positive. That's encouraging :-)

Shadows were experimental in the last version, but we encountered no major issues. So you could say that we have shadows in SW. Developing a common core for both games would also mean adding shadows support in a generic mode.

[Dratz-_C]

Hi folks,
I still try to come up with content for Summoning Wars in the rare instances when I have the time, luck and motivation. I am definitely in it for the long term on a student's schedule. I check the Summoning Wars forums five times a week. As far as merging the Open Dungeons and Summoning Wars projects, I am open to and enthusiastic about it. Similar to what has been said in this thread, once we get over the soliciting and programmatic hump we can integrate most of the artistic content that we have produced just before and throughout the merging process. I am excited to read more of the discussion and see what happens specific to the merge idea and any other general traditional development for Summoning Wars. I have no practical programming skills but I will relish looking more closely at Open Dungeons in the near future.
As an aside, the Open Dungeons forum is hosted on http://www.freegamedev.net which also hosts the Red Eclipse forum which I check about 5 times a week and work on content for as well.
Cheers

[West]

Could we even set a deadline for a 0.57 release? Deadlines help me focus

I can only speak for myself but I'll have more free time than usual during the holidays so getting something out before/at dec 31 sounds like a plan to me.

Feasible?

[dezGusty]

Hi,

I'll be able to work on the project starting with Dec. 22nd. So, I would suggest a release around ~31 dec/03 jan.
I should have some time to look into the code base for OD in that time frame as well.

Does anyone else have some input on the topic?

[fusion44]

I'd set the deadline to 31.12.12 and use in week 1 for preparing packages and wrap everything up.
Release at the first weekend in January?