IRDC 2011

Time:  April 30th-May 1st, 2011
Chat:  IRC: QuakeNet #rgrd
News:  rec.games.roguelike.development

IRDC Visby 2011

Full Name:  IRDC Europe - Visby 2011
Place: Visby, Sweden
Venue: Gotland University
Venue Contact: Jakob Berglund

Participants

• Jeff Lait (jmlait (snail) gmail (thing that oracle now owns) com)
• Happy Pony Land/Ulf ????str????m (ulf.astrom@gmail.com)
• Jolly Roger I am sorry.
• Ido (ido.yehieli@gmail.com - gmail has a decent spam filter)
• Filip Dreger fdreger@gmail.com
• Mario Donick (mario.donick (at) live (dot) de)
• Joachim de Groot jdegroot@web.de
• Jimmy Aberg jimmy (dot) aberg (at) g mail (dotcom)
• Tom Ford tom.ford@compsoc.net

Talks

• Mario Donick: Culture and Roguelikes
• JeffLait: Towards an Algebra of Roguelike Movement
• flend: [Brief] Thoughts on Progression and Interest [may be prepared on the flight over!]
• Ido: a self absorbed talk about my 2 upcoming games: the time, combat & magic systems in Cardinal Quest & where I am planning to go with it & Detribus.

Transportation

Visby is on the island Gotland, so you need to either fly or take a ferry there from the mainland.

Ferry booking: http://www.destinationgotland.se/dg/eng/farja/

Housing

http://www.destinationgotland.se/dg/eng/boende/

http://www.gotland.net/sv/boende/vandrarhem/visby-innerstad

Venue

This is the Location.

http://maps.google.se/?ie=UTF8&ll=57.639323,18.288401&spn=0.001685,0.004533&z=18

Equipment

• Camcorder: Jeff Lait
• Tripod: Happy Pony Land (unless someone has one on site?)
• Food:

How we get there and back and where to meet up

• Happy Pony Land: I'll be in Stockholm on friday so I'll be able to meet up with anyone else arriving that day. I'll take the 20:05 ferry from Nyn????shamn, return 16:45 on monday. PROTIP: You can buy a bus ticket from Stockholm along with the ferry ticket. <- LINK PLEASE <- LINK PROVIDED
• Mario Donick: I would first take a ferry from Rostock (Germany) to Trelleborg (Sweden), from there with a train or bus (?) to Oskarshamm and with the ferry to Visby. Would take at least 11 hours. Perhaps I'll fly, then. My goal is to be awake and present at April 30th at the meeting place in the University.
• Jeff Lait: I will be flying into Stockholm on Thursday, and meet up with people on Friday. I plan on taking the ferry to Visby on the Friday, and return to Stockholm on the Monday. Whereupon I fly back on the Tuesday.
• Ido Yehieli: Stockholm: same as Jeff except I fly out on Wednesday. Visby: Same as Happy Pony Land.
• Jimmy Aberg: I currently live in Stockholm, and want to meet up and travel with others on friday.
• Filip Dreger: I will be on Gotland a bit earlier, so I will drive to Visby Saturday morning.

The Great Friday Meetup

I (JeffLait) shall be in Stockholm on Friday morning. I will be staying near the central station. Those arriving by plane on Friday will find themselves a simple express train from this station. My plan is to go from this station by train to Nyn???shamn, and hence to Visby. I'm thinking of a much earlier ferry, however.

Here's the location of the central station.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=map+stockholm&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Stockholm+County,+Stockholm,+Sweden&gl=ca&ll=59.330169,18.057221&spn=0.006928,0.010879&t=h&z=17

We should probably figure out a location/time to meet near there for a joint trip to the ferry.

Are you taking the Pendelt??g (commuter train) to Nyn????shamn? I think it takes longer (detour and many stops) and the destination is some distance away from the ferry terminal (sorry, was looking at the wrong station), while the bus should take us right to it. From Arlanda (the airport) there is an Arlanda Express train but also Flygbussarna ("flight bus") and I think those are cheaper. /HPL

The train was my default assumption. Do you have a link for the direct bus? Does it leave from central station? I have also started a mass-email to try and figure this stuff out, so for those lurkers, if you didn't get an email, let me know and I'll let you into the loop.

The final plan is to meet at noon at the "hole" in the station, upper floor.

Questions - Jimmy Aberg

• What kind of activities are taking place at the conference? (beside Talks: Single-Coding? Group-Coding? Workshops? Socializing? Shorter trips in Visby?).
• Do we have an agenda/schema/schedule? If not: should we make a preliminary/sketchy schedule? I think it would help (atleast me) to visualize my expectations and preparations.
• If I want to plan for some activity, (say, holding a talk or workshop), how long should it be? (so i can estimate my planning).
• Since I don't have very much rl-dev experience, what topics are regarded as interesting?: Community managment? Knowledge/Skill/Process/Scope/Vaporware managment? Particular problems we don't seem to solve? Common problems (and related algo/datastructures)? Useful math? Common lore/Tools of the trade? General programming (applied to rldev)? General aesthetics, psychology & interaction design (applied to rldev)? General gamedesign (applied to rldev)? Overrated featues? Underrated features? Surveys and Trends (in RL)? Practical models (inside and outside programming)? etc...

--

To me it's just a chance to hang out with friends, I don't really expect anything concrete from it. It's ok if things are spontaneous, but feel free to prepare some kind of activity. We will definitely have a look at the old Visby wall, it is guaranteed to provide at least 5 solid minutes of excitement! /HappyPonyLand

PS. Don't forget to arm yourselves properly (we don't know what we'll run into out there). Longswords are fine, but for those arriving from overseas that can't bring their own gear we can probably steal a couple of fire axes or something.

--

Hang out with friends you say? I didn't know RL-devs could have a social life. But maybe you were refering to some kind of "virtual friends"? ;) /Jimmy

--

• Our plan is to meet in the mornings on Saturday and Sunday. We will first run through any talks people have. Then we'll see what else we want to do as a group.
• Length of talks? Well, as short as you can make it but no shorter :> We aren't trying to fill time with them, but we do want a proper explanation of what you're trying to say. The group is small and informal so question heavy stuff is good.