Contribute
We are searching for contributors who can help us to extend and improve Summoning Wars in several fields of work. If you are interested in sharing your talents and experience this is very welcomed and appreciated. A good starting point to join the team is to post a message to the forum or visit our IRC channel. The list below gives a brief overview over potential areas of work. Please note that this is not a complete list. Whenever you think that you have skills that might be useful for the project and want to contribute something, feel free to contact us. A good possibility to get in touch is the IRC #sumwars at freenode.net (online client) during the evening (GMT +2 ;-)).
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Programming
Clearly, a game programming project needs programmers. The core programming language is C++. If you are experienced in this language and want to see some new features implemented, consider to join the programming team.
Programmer's Guide
Modelling / Animations
To fill our game with monsters, NPCs, items and environment, we need a big number of 3D-modeled meshes. Contributions in this area will make the game more visually attractive, increase the variety and speed up story development. So if you are skilled with 3D modelling join the team and be assured that your work will be highly appreciated. The file format we use is defined by OGRE engine, but there are exporters available for big modelling programs like Blender, Maya and 3DSMax. Furthermore, movable models need animations as well. In addition to animations for newly created models, more or improved animations for the existing ones are required as well in several cases.
Modeller's Guide
Animator's Guide
Music
Good music is essential for setting up the right atmosphere. In addition, a variety of pieces is required to avoid that the music becomes boring or even annoying after a while. So we are constantly searching for new music contributors.
Musician's Guide
Sound
At the moment the project has a sound engine, but almost no sound content. So we really need some members proficient with sounds.
Sound Creator's Guide
Scripting and Story Development
Although we have a rough outline for the main story, there are many gaps to fill concerning interesting side quests, additional dialogs off the main road, little jokes and surprises and similar things. After developing a quest or a dialog it must be implemented in our scripting language. These two steps may be done by different persons. The language we use is lua, which is well-established as a game scripting language and very easy to learn.
Story Writer's Guide
Scripter's Guide
Content integration
Turning a completed model into a monster or item in game requires some more work. We use XML files to supply the required additional information and turn the raw resources into in-game objects. Aid with content integrations helps the artists to concentrate on their main talent: art creation. The XML formats are easy to learn and do not require any special programming knowledge.
Content Integration Guide
Translations
We are looking for translators to help ensure the quality of our current translations or add other languages.
Translator's Guide
General Infrastructure
For quite a long time the work on this game was done by a very small, local team. Transforming it into a project with many contributors from several countries is a very challenging aim. We are just building up the required infrastructure and could need any help we get by experienced participants of free and open software development projects.
