From Unknown Horizons - Wiki

If you are new to Unknown Horizons, this is the place to start. You will be presented the tools used at Unknown Horizons and be given information on how to get further involved with the project.

The idea behind Unknown Horizons

Our intention is to create an open source realtime economy simulation game with strategy elements in an isometric 2D engine loosely oriented towards Sunflower's Anno / A.D. series. Unknown Horizons however is not an Anno emulator and you cannot play Anno with it. Unknown Horizons is not able and not supposed to use content of the Anno series. Therefore, you don't need Anno to play Unknown Horizons.

Unknown Horizons is based upon the FIFE game engine. We have agreed to help the FIFE developers integrating features we develop for Unknown Horizons, but which could be useful for other games as well, into their engine.

Project design & planning

Design Document

It's important to know that a design document is not just a description of the current project status but also a vision of what the game should become in the future. So it serves as a kind of roadmap for the Unknown Horizons team and gives us general orientation on what concepts need to be integrated and what features are already implemented as planned. You can find the Design Document on our Main Page.

Roadmap

After the feature list tells us what features we want to have in Unknown Horizons and the design document gives us an idea on how to implement them, it's time for a roadmap. We use the trac project planning software for this purpose. Trac is comparable to other tracker systems like Bugzilla although it offers many additional features for project planning and organisation. You can use Trac as project wiki, online source code and git revision viewer, roadmap and milestone system. The basic idea is to create "tickets" the developers can take and resolve. Bugs are also tracked as tickets. You can find our trac-based roadmap there too.

Epydoc Code API

We provide an Epydoc Code API of the Unknown Horizons code.

IRC channel

You might often like to know what the other developers think about a certain idea and in this case "live communication" is often easier and faster than e.g. posting in the forums. We operate a public IRC channel (#unknown-horizons @ freenode) where the developers meet.

You're quite likely to meet one or even a whole bunch of the developers in the channel in the evening hours (GMT). So if you're interested in Unknown Horizons and have questions about the project, it's a good idea to visit our channel to have a chat with us! :-)

We expect that active developers spend their time on the IRC channel when they're working on Unknown Horizons. This eases the communication, makes brainstorming possible and boosts our overall productivity.

Forums

If you're not a developer or want to discuss aspects that are not strictly development related, our forums are a good place to post.

Without registration, you can only post in a guest area there.

Getting involved

You'd like to get involved by actively contributing to the development? Well, that's an awesome idea! :-)

IRC activity

The best way to get involved is to visit our #IRC channel. You don't need special applications, we provide a web applet to join it! Although you could also get in contact with the developers by posting in our forums, IRC communication works faster, you can directly ask upcoming questions and we can often answer them almost immediately.

You will get a feeling for the personal chemistry between the developers. That might not sound important but if you intend to spend a lot of your time on a project that can't pay its developers, you surely like to enjoy the stay at least. Being around at the channel will give you a good impression of the team atmosphere and should help you to decide if getting involved would be not only work but at least also a bit of fun.

Getting Unknown Horizons from the git repository

If you're an interested developer, the best way to get into Unknown Horizons is to take a look at our current source code. We offer public access to our git repository on github so you can always get the most recent code.

To get familiar with git, we recommend our git cheatsheet. You will only need clone right now.

Programmers

Starting to work on Unknown Horizons

First, clone a local copy of the git repository and make it run. You should be able to do this using the instructions found on the download page. In case you cannot, feel free to pop into our irc channel or send an email where you explain the problem. The forums are also open to any question you have.

After you have successfully run Unknown Horizons and played with it, you possibly want to contribute to Unknown Horizons. In this case, you should first take a look into the Programmers Guide. After you are familiar with the code you can pick an open ticket from an active milestone on our Roadmap.

After you have solved the task, meet us in IRC or send the patch to team@unknown-horizons.org and present your solution. If your patch has been reviewed and approved, you will become part of the team and will receive commit rights to our repository.

Graphic Artists

Check out our Information for artists page!

Sound Artists, Design Document Writers etc.

Please join our #IRC channel to discuss any further work. In case you already have a piece of music finished for Unknown Horizons feel free to post it on our forums.