[Discuss] BattleMaster War 2.0

[Tom Vogt]

= Introduction =
After seven years of organic growth, the BattleMaster codebase has 
become more and more difficult to maintain. The number of bugs is way 
beyond what I consider acceptable, and new features are more difficult 
to add than they should be. More importantly, changes to the game 
structure result in breakage all over the place.

The only way out of this mess is a code refactoring, and a cleanup of 
some game structures. And while we're at it, let's bring BattleMaster 
into the 21st century:


= BattleMaster meets "Web 2.0" =
A proof-of-concept already exists. BattleMaster can be:
* XHTML 1.0 compliant
* well-structured according to the MVC concept
* gain added functionality such as client-side table sorting or some AJAX
* and still remain the same easy and accessible game

After some searching, I have decided upon the 
[http://www.codeigniter.com/ CodeIgniter] framework as the base for a 
refactored codebase.



= BattleMaster needs You =
And this is where I can't do things on my own anymore. Look at 
[SLOCCount] and you see that we're talking almost 50,000 lines of code 
here. Refactoring that is more than one man can do while retaining job, 
girl and sanity. :-)

If you are either
* a PHP programmer, familiar with CodeIgniter or at least with MVC and a 
quick learner,
* or a HTML/CSS/graphics designer who believes in standards and always 
wanted to improve the BM user-interface

Then yell. Yell loudly and yell to [mailto:tom at battlemaster.org] - 
because I need you. BattleMaster needs you. I can not do this on my own.


What's the deal? I can not yet say for sure, so if you have specific 
ideas, talk to me. You will:
* be a part of the team that brings BattleMaster to the next level
* get full credits for your work
* be among the first to see (and shape) the new BattleMaster
everything beyond that will be discussed among the team once we 
assembled it.


You must be:
* reliable and trustworthy
* willing to accept that I'm giving you access to what took seven years 
of my life to create, and that means I'll seem protective and weird in 
some aspects
* put everything you ask for your work on the table up front. If you 
want goodies, special credits or money, we can talk about that 
''before'' we start working with each other.


So again, if you can and want to help, mail 
[mailto:tom at battlemaster.org] and let us see where we go from there.



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