Project Roadmap

[LeeThompson]

Goal

The developer documentation for newlife is written in an "ebook" format, this project is making "Wiki" versions of them. While the books are intended to be read in sequential order, the Wiki's goal is to present the material in more of a reference format. (The exception to this will be the Submission and Writing guides).

Scope

This began as a project for my own use but after a discussion with the game's author, Splendid Ostrich, it will now be a public wiki. As this is a game in active development, it will be updated with each version release (as needed).

Conversion Process

Initial Conversion

The initial conversion from ODT to MD, these have all been completed.

First Draft

The document is reviewed, primarily the goal is to ensure that markdown formatting is consistently applied.

Second Draft

The most complex of the conversion process.

• Data is checked to make sure it still applies to the current build of the game.
• When required, I will ask the game author for more detail. He is very busy so this is asynchronous.
• Any errors are corrected.
• Tables are added where needed.
• Hyperlinks are added.
• Text is added or rewritten to remove the requirement of reading previous sections (from book to reference document)
• Code examples added (Many programmers, including myself, get a lot of mileage out of seeing real world code examples)

Third Draft

The document is polished, errors corrected, unclear text rewritten and so forth.

Final Draft

This is where it's considered "done" until it's not.

New Documents

Indexes

Indexes which list things in a compact format (with hyperlinks) will be added as needed.

Code

Several newlife scenes will be created to act as code examples and tutorials. (Newlife already ships with one.)

Personally, I always learn new programming languages by looking at code examples, then modifying them to get a good "feel" for how it all works.

As such, I plan on adding lots of code examples, for the most part this will come from the additional content "official scenes". When required, I will write scenes for it.

Velocity Guide

Velocity

This is a brand new document going into the Velocity language. It will require a general understanding of programming concepts but will not require understanding any specific languages.

Velocity has been "depreciated" since 2021, as such, I will be seeking permission from Apache to mirror the official documentation so if the official links go dark the information will still be available to newlife developers.

Barring that it will at least cover the basics and have tricks & tips, especially when writing for newlife.

Who the hell are you?

I've been programming since 1982. I started, like many, with BASIC, later learning 6510 assembly. Later, I went to a vocational/tech college and learned COBOL, CICS, JCL, and RPGII.

In my professional programming career I learned C/C++, Perl, PHP and SQL. I also wrote technical documentation and an internal bug tracking system.

Presently, I am "retired" but still doing consulting work for several companies.