I wouldn't really put a big emphasis on language translations either. They would be nice, but if they've come to our site, or visited us on IRC, they probably have at least passable English. Besides, after getting used to a game, you mostly just remember where stuff is and not really read it. It takes too long to actually read stuff while you're playing.
If we're going to patch, then we need something we can actually fix to patch. Maybe new levels and such might be worth a new version up for download, but that sort of work doesn't really need to coincide with a new version release. People can always download levels seperately and play them. It jsut might be easier to distrubute them packaged with a new version, particularly for multplayer levels. Patches can also be seperately applied, provided they don't affect client compatibility. The only real fix I can think of that we can currently make that affects compatibility is to do with the meteor defense vulnerability. We could patch it so the meteor defense always gets a chance to fire.
I've spoken to at least one person that just wants to play an occasional game of Outpost 2 to relax, and wouldn't mind a strategy guide of some sort.
My main interesting is in the programming side though. That's one of the things I've always enjoyed about this forum, is the number of people actually interested in some sort of development work.
It might be nice to release a new SDK. There are certain things about the old one that seem a bit dated now. Particularly with the OP2Helper files. The original version was just to get easily started on really basic levels, or the sorts of things already in the game. However most level designers seem to want to try something a little bit new, and for many of the things they're going for, the current helper files are inadequate.
It would also be nice to write a new level making guide. Something nice and clean, well organized and all in one place. There's plenty of stuff on the forums about making levels currently, but it's kind of all over the place, and it can be hard for someone new to it to find all the relevant stuff and piece it all together. Plus as new topics are started, the old ones move around. If the information can all be collected in a good way, then the topic can at least be pinned, but even then I'm not sure that's enough. I find pinned topics start getting ignored pretty fast. I usually don't even notice they're there anymore. But, new people do tend to take a look at pinned topics at least once, so they are still good at getting the word out about something, or pointing people in the right direction. Plus if the topic is important enough, people seem to at least remember there was a pinned topic pointing them in the right direction.
I don't really feel the wiki is necessarily the place to be pointing them though. Back when lots of people were into reverse engineering Outpost 2, and there was new info comming out all the time, it seemed like it might be a nice way for people to combine and share that info. But now there aren't too many people still working on that sort of thing so the wiki has kind of lost it's group effort appeal. It's also terribly organized and indexed, which I think is very important. Another thing that people don't seem to consider is the amount of time it takes to access the infomation you need. If I want to know some small detail quickly, I want to know it withing the next 10 seconds. I don't want to have to wait for a web browser to load, connect to some website with the large network delay, search for what I need (which is not only a pain and slow with the wiki, but also not obvious how to get at what you want), and then finally read it. If I have to go through that much trouble, I probably won't make much use of it. That's partly why most of my info is kept as .txt files on my harddrive. The forums is also a little slow to search, but was generally easier than the wiki. Also, the wiki seemed more suited to seperate articles, but I feel we need more of a guide that takes you through many different topics in some logical teaching order.
I've thought for a while that a collection of webpages would be the most suitable form for such a guide. That could allow us to organize and index the information nicely, and people could quickly find what they need from some central index page. It could also list the topics in some reasonable order for new people to read them and learn the stuff from. Plus, I started getting an extension to that idea, and thought of compiling the pages into a Compiled HTML file (.chm). Then people could download them to their hardrives, and eliminate that annoying network delay, plus the chm reader that comes with Windows is pretty fast loading. (I'm not too sure about the one I've heard of for Linux, but would anyone really develop OP2 code on a Linux box?). The chm viewer is usually much faster loading than a web browser. It should also be a minimum of work for both an online version, and a downloadable version of the docs.
As for the types of guides that should be written, there's plenty of topics on level making, even before you begin to discuss AI. We could also write something on how the SDK was created. It didn't just come out of nowhere afterall, and some people might be curious how to go about making the base SDK themselves. We could also write stuff on reverse engineering, although, this is usually not as hot of a topic. It'd also be good to post details on file formats, and guides for editing things other than levels, such as colors, tile sets, graphics, sounds, music.
It might also be nice to do more development with shell related stuff, such as what got put into Outpost2App.h. Or more work on the network code. Currently most people seem to rely on Hamachi to play, but a number of people either don't like Hamachi or just plain won't use it. Ideally the only person who should require some sort of special setup for direct play with routers involved is the game host, and then only if the host is behind a router. The earlier NAT patches allowed this to be possible with port forwarding setup for everyone, but continual work may remove the requirement for all but a game host who is behing a router to have port forwarding setup. It would also be nice to integrate the game hosting/joining with the chat. Basically something like SIGS/WON would be nice and would help get games going. Although, most people who play seem to be fairly content with Hamachi, and any built in chat client would likely be a poor replacement for IRC (or at least a lousy IRC client), so this area doesn't seem to be such a high priority for work.
An Outpost 2 remake would be nice. That would allow many of the problems with the current version to be solved. Also, if the existing graphics, sounds, and music were used, then the majority of the work just becomes the programming. This would be a much easier task to accomplish than a new game, particularly one that involved lots of 3D models and skins, etc. Plus, as many people have been saying for a while, including me, it'd probably be easier to rewrite the code for the game than to continually hack the current exe to do what we'd like it to do. (Such as the network code issues, and various small bug/glitch fixes).
As far as development goes, I basically think we should be mainly concentrating on Outpost 2. Either with new levels, patches, or editing tools, or possibly a code remake using the same graphics and with the same gamplay.
