Sparky's To Do List

[Sparky]

Yes. It's been on my mind: making a real, working vehi out of the human and covenant space ships. I can do that in my spare time sometime in late October or early November, probably. Stay posted around that time.

The Eschaton plugins are finished, version 4.0 has been released. Now I need to take about 2 weeks to break for some other work that needs to be completed.

I will not be available at all for the next two weeks, starting Thursday. Contact me now if you need anything between now and two weeks from now.

After I finish that other work that I need to do, then I'll come back and get down to serious work on Zeus. During that time, I will also be able to work on some of the larger modding projects, like those space ships and Star Wars mods and whatnot.

Galaxy Wars will be my first mod created entirely with Zeus.

See you in two weeks!

- Sparky, over and out .

[Sparky]

This To Do List needs updating, because plenty of new tasks have come to bear. That's all fine and dandy, but the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Zeus, which is what you guys have all been anticipating.

I look forward to finishing Zeus for MGM's 7-year anniversary. With 7 being a significant number to Bungie, the creation of Zeus would be very appropriate this year. This will be really fun for me to make. I did find it beneficial to announce its development here before any substantial release so that I could foster discussion and encourage modders who might be getting bored using Eschaton and SwordEdit. With Eschaton, I made a definitive mapping of the game's tag types for similar reasons, and to streamline the modding process. Even though SwordEdit is open-source, and I totally respect what Samuco is doing with it and what sword had done with it before him, and what the developers of SparkEdit did, I see a need for a new application and a more immersive approach. I'm generally on-track when it comes to ascertaining the values of consumers and predicting and developing future technologies, and I see some patterns with Apple's approach to creating more full-screen computer applications. I want to do the same, and Samuco has brought such great ideas to SwordEdit also. So in a way, I'm predicting what Apple will be doing and learning from the coding techniques Samuco is using in SwordEdit. What should result is a really great application experience with Zeus.

Most of my coding experience has been with procedural programs in C++, but I sought more object-oriented possibilities with my programs at the time. Cocoa and Objective-C seem a little quirky, but I will enjoy diving into the coding process in early May. The plans have mostly been laid-out; now the coding process can begin. (But I am still accepting suggestions!!!)

...and then I can get back to other to do list items like making new spacecraft and the larger mods like the StarWars themed mods and Galaxy Wars. And I actually look forward to deciphering the Halo 2+ map files and gametypes and so on later this year, maybe in the Fall.

Breakdown of Zeus's Development Track - NEW! (sorry, it gets vague in later stages, but I know what to do)
1 - Create classes for all supported Halo games
2 - Create advanced mapfile parsing code for Halo 1 maps for all consoles
3 - Include basic features, such as meta editing
4 - Create an ideal OpenGL fullscreen environment
5 - Develop sbsp parsing and viewing code, and convertability through .obj format, so that the sbsp can be eventually manipulated in full-screen mode (yes, that means you can make hills and valleys and edit the sbsp in basic vertex/plane raising/lowering ways)
6 - Further interface development and bug fixing, if necessary
7 - Profit (ha!)