Hiho everybody!
I just wanted to remind you that I did plan to start a feature freeze in the
next time. So what is this mail about? I wanted to ask you how much time anyone
of you still needs with the features you plan for 1.4. If I get no responses at
all to this mail, I will start the freeze between christmas and new years eve.
So if you got something on your shedule, better answer the mail and list some
stuff and how much time you need until features and strings can be frozen.

As a short listing, this is what the freeze does mean:
1) No new features to be added from this point onwards until 1.4 has its own
branch (which will not happen before the first RC of it).
2) No new/changed strings, so get your stringadditions/changes/whatever in
before the freeze or tell me how much more time you do need. In the first two
weeks of the feature/string freeze, the string freeze is only "soft" meaning
that grammar and spelling corrections are still allowed, but thats it. After
that period of time there are *NO* stringchanges/additions/fixes/whatever
allowed. All mistakes are to be listed on this wiki page so that they can be
fixed after the release of 1.4 and are not forgotten:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/SpellingMistakes
3) The *hard* string freeze will start about two weeks after the start of the
feature freeze. It will at least take 4 weeks so that the overall string freeze
did take at least roughly 6 weeks.

So when there will be no new features in that time, you probably will ask "what
else can we do". That is rather simple:
1) Fix bugs. There will be many left and they really deserve to be fixed before 
1.4.
2) Help to improve the balancing of the campaigns. The campaigns can probably
need some good testers to find bugs and balancing problems. That is the perfect
time to do so.
3) Try to improve the game speed wherever possible. We probably had some changes
that with some love could get faster.
4) Fix bugs. (Hey, that is what a feature freeze is basically for...)

I don't know exactly about the mp balancing, but probably it will be fixed with
the start of the freeze, too, so that basically all beta versions will be
compatible with each other. But that is of course the main area of the mp-devs,
they do have the last work about this.

This is what still is possible even though trunk is frozen:
- Graphic updates / new animations. Those things do not add new features and/or
new strings.
- Sound updates / additions. The same as above...
- Translation updates. Hey, the freeze is meant especially for those...
- Balancing changes (only for campaigns?) that do not require new/changed 
strings.
- Bug fixes (yeah, lovely...).

So here is what you should do now:
1) Think about things you definatly want to add to the game before features for
1.4 are frozen.
2) Write a mail telling me and the other devs what your plans are. That is
listing what you do want to add before the freeze and stating how much time you
need.

Okay, that's it already. Please write some mails to inform me about your plans
and do not say "I have not been warned about this..." ;).
Cheers,
Nils Kneuper aka Ivanovic

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