You can find a copy of the latest Development meeting log for June 16, 2007 posted below. It has been edited slightly for readability.

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12:00:25 [Myth]Drafell: "Are we going to get a new version of beta going live today?"
12:02:18 [Admin]Faustus: "maybe today... "
12:02:27 [Admin]Faustus: "I might have beta updated... but doubtful."

12:03:11 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Anyone want to start with anything? Statements? Progress reports?"
12:03:18 [Admin]Faustus: "ok, sure..."
12:03:29 [Admin]Faustus: "new movement system is implemented, but untested.."
12:03:53 [Admin]Faustus: "I worked on getting the resourcer* compiling with all the new code changes until late last night.."
12:04:12 [Admin]Faustus: "I should have resourcer updated and working today at the very least.."

12:04:31 [Admin]Faustus: "the hard-part in all this..."
12:05:49 [Admin]Faustus: "is I separated the game from the generic "World" systems... that any MMO could use."
12:06:22 [Admin]Faustus: "so I've spent a great deal of my time implementing the new "World.dll" you'll see in the distribution.."
12:06:48 [Admin]Faustus: "which is basically, the guts of the game ripped out and made generic so any other MMO could be developed with it.."
12:06:58 [Admin]Faustus: "yeah, World is medusa rather than darkspace.."
12:07:43 [Admin]Faustus: "so, the "Game.dll" will be much smaller in this upcoming release (which contians all the game specific code)."
12:08:25 [Admin]Faustus: "that's the biggest change... is this re-organization of the code into World/Game.."

12:08:32 [Admin]Faustus: "the other big change.."
12:08:52 [Admin]Faustus: "I've moved movement over to a more traditional WOW/FPS style movement system..."
12:09:07 [Admin]Faustus: "the server now sends movement packets using UDP... "
12:09:23 [Admin]Faustus: "those movement packets are then predicted on the client..."
12:09:59 [Admin]Faustus: "using linear interpolation.."
12:10:28 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "and this will hopefully fix all this lag-warping then, right?"
12:10:27 [Admin]Faustus: "from a code standpoint, all movement is handled by the TraitMovement class.."
12:10:36 [Admin]Faustus: "yep..."
12:10:51 [Myth]Drafell: "What is the tick rate per second for that?"
12:10:56 [Admin]Faustus: "coincidently, if a UDP connection can't be established, it falls back to sending those movement packets over TCP.."
12:10:57 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I think the lag-warp was a result of the TCP stream/packet being held back by the server."
12:11:04 [Myth]Drafell: "IE to keep /client server in sync"
12:11:06 Nat: "at the very least it should lessen most of the desync probs"
12:11:15 [Myth]Drafell: "ahh thats nice.."
12:11:22 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "UDP should require no authentication, so less CPU usage, and a more fluid packet-rate."
12:11:24 [Admin]Faustus: "I don't send movement packets more often than 500ms.."
12:11:44 [Admin]Faustus: "at least for this initial test... I may lower it to 250ms "
12:11:52 [Myth]Drafell: "ok, so twice per second.. same as gw and many other games use"
12:11:54 [Admin]Faustus: "we shall see once we start testing "
12:12:05 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I can't see a problem with 500ms, unless people really start seeing problems."
12:12:10 [Myth]Drafell: "it tends to work well, although ds might require the lower setting.."

12:12:37 [Admin]Faustus: "ok... so far as resourcer is concerned..."
12:12:53 [Admin]Faustus: "I fixed the materialport issues way back, just haven't checked in a binary with the fix.."
12:13:44 [Admin]Faustus: "also, all ports and wob files are now handled by SVN... so you SVN update to download the latest ports, and SVN commit to push port and wob changes into the next version of the game."

12:17:14 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "So, are you hoping to get both the resourcer and server working tonight?"
12:17:18 [Admin]Faustus: "hmmm... just a sec."
12:19:40 [Admin]Faustus: "there is a new open-source 3D object format.. that's supported by max, maya, milkshape, etc.. what's it' name?"
12:19:48 [Admin]Faustus: "something like collabra"
12:20:01 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Colibra?"
12:20:38 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Actually, I think it is Collabra"
12:22:01 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "collada?"
12:22:24 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "That's the one"
12:23:27 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If we get the resourcer tonight. ++ for us."
12:23:33 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If we get the server. ++ for the community moral."
12:23:41 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If we get both. Orgy."
12:24:06 [Myth]Drafell: "doesnt look likely for the server/client though"
12:24:11 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We can hope."
12:26:57 [Myth]Drafell: "So we might switch over to using collada format instead of requiring the files to be exported?"
12:28:14 [Admin]Faustus: "the collada format is supported by max, maya, etc... so I don't think we would lose any work done in max if I'm correct."
12:28:28 [Admin]Faustus: "I just need to add support to import those models into the resourcer port.."
12:29:23 [Admin]Faustus: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collada"

12:29:28 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Oh, before I forget - question about GCQL."
12:29:40 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Anyway, PNG support can be added to the toolbars?"
12:30:36 [Admin]Faustus: "give me PNG files for the icons in GCQL, and I can change them... they are just bitmap resourses embedded into the application."
12:30:49 [Admin]Faustus: "why, what are you thinking?"
12:30:59 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Lemme copy the files over"
12:31:02 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "My webserver is failing atm"
12:31:27 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "or just grab them from there"
12:31:24 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "http://www.jackwallace.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/01.png"
12:31:28 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "http://www.jackwallace.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/02.png"
12:31:37 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Doran and me where playing around with updating the icons"
12:32:01 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Just a bit of a test (diamonds are so 70's)"
12:32:29 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Possibility to move into a more plugable option in the future (if you plan to sell GCQL, skinable buttons might be useful)"
12:33:04 [Admin]Faustus: "nice icons.. I got them, I'll drop them in.."
12:33:10 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Problem with the BMP's is that using photoshop, it anti-an's the edges of the images, so they look a little white on the dark colours"
12:33:11 [Admin]Faustus: "and see how they look."
12:33:24 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "im quite pleased with them myself"

12:33:46 [Admin]Faustus: "anyway, so content changes..."
12:34:07 [Admin]Faustus: "so far as I know, I've only got one thing big on my list to get done for this upcoming release.."
12:35:06 [Admin]Faustus: "and that's the changes with the upgrade paths for all devices... it's MUCH MUCH more restrictive.. and we want to keep it really restrictive, but we need to setup reasonable upgrade paths for gadgets ... or decide not to allow it, and just go back to the old static ship device/designs of the original game."
12:35:27 [Admin]Faustus: "so thoughts?"
12:35:30 [Myth]Drafell: "We do need felxibilty"
12:35:31 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I've been playing around with paths."
12:35:35 [Myth]Drafell: "flexibility*"
12:35:45 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Flexibility within the device type."
12:35:51 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "But not extending it outside."
12:35:55 [Myth]Drafell: "Players 'want' to be able to customize their ships, but within sensible constraints."
12:35:58 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "So keeping missiles with missiles, torps with torps, etc."
12:36:06 [Myth]Drafell: "yes."
12:36:14 [Admin]Faustus: "yes"
12:36:14 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "It'll seem restrictive at first, but we can always add more options for players later."
12:36:21 [Admin]Faustus: "beams with beams... "
12:36:30 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "The upside of this, is that it'll be come so much more easier to balance."
12:36:30 [Admin]Faustus: "I like that much better.."
12:36:35 [Myth]Drafell: "yes, that is what we are thinking around."
12:36:39 Nat: "being able to swap out beams for cannons on some ships as a major advantage"

12:38:28 [Admin]Faustus: "so we need organize, and make sure that those upgrade paths are all flushed out... that should be the first order of business once resourcer is back up and running."
12:38:39 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "People are already loving the new system, even when it's 50% broken."
12:38:49 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Agree'd"
12:38:53 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "It should be pretty simple."
12:38:56 [Admin]Faustus: "welp, hopefully by tonight... you will be able to open them "

12:38:56 [Myth]Drafell: "Yes. the second task, nearly as important, is re-balancing all the ship layouts to compliment it."
12:39:11 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Yeah..."
12:39:16 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We've got a lot of useless ships in 1.484"
12:39:17 [Admin]Faustus: "yeah, that's a much harder task for sure.. "
12:39:19 [Myth]Drafell: "MOSt of the ships will probably function, but we currently have many that will be totally useless under the new restrictions."
12:39:29 [Myth]Drafell: "All of kluth ships will need redoing.."
12:39:37 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "EAD"
12:39:40 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Don't forget the EAD."
12:40:07 [Myth]Drafell: "yes. we have the dread2's. and I think we should probably move command class dreads into the dread2 class"
12:40:15 [Myth]Drafell: "space bar..."
12:40:19 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Agree'd"
12:40:32 [Admin]Faustus: "so... one way to balance ships, is to come up with a value for each and every gadget... build an excel sheet and try to make ships of the same class as equal as possible."
12:40:52 [Myth]Drafell: "Yes, but that doesnt take into account fire arcs."
12:40:55 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I think Drafell has already done something like that."
12:41:01 [Myth]Drafell: "You can have the same number of weapons, but due to arcs..."
12:41:10 [Myth]Drafell: "one ship will easily outclass the next.."
12:41:30 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "WE also need to get rid of the assault class."
12:41:40 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "How it was designed just doesn't work in the game."
12:41:44 [Myth]Drafell: "not get rid..."
12:41:56 [Myth]Drafell: "but.. make it work how it should.."
12:42:11 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Constricting fire arcs to mostly forward only completely destroys the class, in a game where everyone is constantly moving, and you're only going 15gu/s and turning at 7"
12:42:42 [Myth]Drafell: "assault classes should mostly be beam ships with wide arcs. but little rear weaponry"
12:42:49 Nat: "well perhaps make the assault class a more weapons less armor/shields class within its size range"
12:42:49 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Agree'd"
12:42:57 [Myth]Drafell: "the current ones are WAY to restrictive on the arcs... which make sthem pointless to lfy"
12:43:15 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Again - that destroys the point of a dread."
12:43:25 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Removing armor / shielding is going to destroy the EAD, AD and Siphon."
12:43:31 [Myth]Drafell: "possibly nat, that was the concept in .483 with the lower rear armor.. but it doesnt work"
12:43:51 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Smaller ships are able to get behind too easily."
12:43:59 [Myth]Drafell: "yes"
12:44:08 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Might just be easier to give them the balanced arcs, with perhaps more infront."
12:44:10 [Myth]Drafell: "having a scout take out an EAd..."
12:44:11 [Admin]Faustus: "I agree with the assault ships having mostly front facing weapons, and weak backsides.."
12:44:13 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "(in terms of armor)"
12:44:23 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "The EAD is a perfect example."
12:44:26 Nat: "what i was meaning is instead of say 2 on each arc, have 1 on each and a full jst as an exampl"
12:44:32 [Myth]Drafell: "Faustus, it is good in theory, but in game-play terms it doesnt work"
12:44:38 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Three armor planets at the front are useless if you've only got one at the back, and 90% of your foes can get behind you."
12:45:04 [Admin]Faustus: "welp, we could ague until we're blue in the face on ship layouts... that's something that needs lot's of play testing..."

12:45:46 [Admin]Faustus: "so... let me go get some work done on resourcer.... I'll let you guys know when I'm ready to push a new version into beta."
12:46:04 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Richard, what's the chances of the server being ready tonight?"
12:48:50 [Admin]Faustus: "@jack... very very slim... I know I've got some matrix math problems to work out with client/server code.."
12:49:00 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Ew"
12:49:04 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Yeah, those take a while"
12:49:21 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Any ETA on solving that?"
12:49:34 [Admin]Faustus: "last time I tried to run the client (after all these changes)... my camera was all screwy... so I've got some work to do."
12:49:35 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I know a lot of old players and new ones are literally drooling at the sound of testing the new back-end."

12:50:19 [Admin]Faustus: "BTW... I might want to make Cannons more of the primary weapon."
12:50:42 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "They're already primary, LOL"
12:50:51 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "They're the most used weapon in 1.483 "
12:50:53 [Admin]Faustus: "Cannons should be the meat and potatoes of weaks..."
12:51:10 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "particle cannons at any rate..."
12:51:09 [Admin]Faustus: "torps should inflict heavy damage if they manage to hit ... slow moving."
12:51:13 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "But I agree - some of the ships I think could be re-designed with cannon-use in mind."
12:51:16 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Like the battle dread."
12:51:22 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "It's basically a cannon platform."
12:51:26 [Admin]Faustus: "Beam's should only be effective at very close ranges.."
12:51:50 [Admin]Faustus: "Missiles less effective than torps, but very long range.."
12:52:11 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Work needs to be done on torps and beams."
12:52:19 [Admin]Faustus: "weaks = weapons... don't know why I keep mis-spelling that word."
12:52:22 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Both of them don't do anywhere near the amount of damage they should be doing."
12:52:23 [Myth]Drafell: "Cannons are the primary weapons for most ships.."
12:52:30 [Myth]Drafell: "beams for assault ships..."
12:52:46 [Myth]Drafell: "and for the ranged ships. it should be more along the missile.fighter lines"
12:53:06 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We need more varied ship layouts, so people can choose the style they want to play in a select ship class."
12:53:16 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "IE, they can select a cannon cruiser, or an assault with beams and torps."
12:53:18 [Myth]Drafell: "ok.."

12:53:25 [Admin]Faustus: "fighters, I fear, are the biggest cause of massive lag in the game..."
12:53:40 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We're removing the missiles from them."
12:53:42 [Myth]Drafell: "they are... partly due to the missiles they currently fire"
12:53:44 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I know that's a major problem."
12:53:46 [Myth]Drafell: "we are removing them"
12:53:50 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "ICC fighters fire 4 every salvo, PER fighter."
12:53:58 [Myth]Drafell: "yeah"
12:54:00 [Admin]Faustus: "If I can't really pair down the data that has to be sent for fighters... we may want to consider just pulling them for technical reasons."
12:54:06 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Kluth fire two per salvo, and UGTO fire one."
12:54:33 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "I think removing the missiles from the fighters will help a great deal."
12:54:43 [Admin]Faustus: "that's for sure.."
12:54:47 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We'll need to do a fighter test once we remove them."
12:54:51 [Admin]Mersenne Twister: "just stick level 0 particle cannons, rail guns or psi cannons respectively on the fighters"
12:54:53 [Myth]Drafell: "remove the missiles and just give them a cannon each.. should cut down a lot on latency for them"
12:54:55 Nat: "well, as a suggestion remove fighter bases and make them ship only"
12:55:08 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Yeah"
12:55:10 [Myth]Drafell: "eh nat?"
12:55:14 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "DEFINITELY need to work on fighter bases"
12:55:17 [Admin]Faustus: "@ nat.. that might be a good idea"
12:55:20 [Myth]Drafell: "Yeah, that is a possibility..."
12:55:28 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If a ship stays in orbit long enough, there's about 40+ fighters in space."
12:55:39 Nat: "base launch 3 fighters per base"
12:55:42 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We could put a limit on the amount of fighters per-base allowed out at one time."
12:55:58 Nat: "and dont mind me i've almost been up 24 hors my typing isnt the best"

12:56:24 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Oh, that reminds me."
12:56:31 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "What's happened to the Quad Xeon?"
12:57:25 [Admin]Faustus: "Hehe.. ok, Quad Xeon has FreeBSD on it, and is sitting in my closet currently, because it sounds like a jet fighter if I turn it on.."
12:57:43 [Myth]Drafell: "lol"
12:57:49 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Richard, what if we just replace it with the current one?"
12:57:58 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Ignore the FreeBSD route, and just replace it."
12:57:59 [Admin]Faustus: "Since I haven't converted our servers over to FreeBSD yet... I'm considering installing windows 2000 on it so it can actually be used for DS."
12:58:13 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Yeah..."
12:58:41 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If you can just allow different threads to run on the different cpu's, then that should ease up the load A LOT"
12:59:05 [Admin]Faustus: "Fighter poly counts are not the issue... it's all the network traffic each fighter generates ..."
12:59:53 [Admin]Faustus: "Anyway... time for me to get some coding done."
13:00:00 [Admin]Faustus: "AFK"
13:00:05 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Richard, thanks for the work you've done btw."
13:00:10 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "We know it's not easy "
13:00:15 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "And he's off."
13:00:22 [Myth]Drafell: "Yes, thanks here as well."
13:00:33 [Myth]Drafell: "So... we still have other things to discuss."
13:00:36 Nat: "same "
13:00:43 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "If we get the resourcer today..."
13:00:44 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "Well..."
13:00:50 [Myth]Drafell: "Audio effects, possibly music."
13:00:52 [-UN-]BackSlash *Jack*: "That's pretty much 1.484 done and dusted content-wise."

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