# How to contribute

dopewars is open-source software, meaning that it is free for anybody to use. However, this also means that the quality of the software is dependent in part on you the user. You don't have to be a programmer to help out - in fact, dopewars currently needs people to produce sounds and graphics rather than to write code.

- Sounds are urgently needed right now. dopewars-1.5.7 and later support sounds, but at the moment users must supply their own sound files, as none are included. If you can provide copyright-free sounds, then short files are needed for various effects in the game. For example, gunshots, bullet hits, ricochets and subway trains are obvious candidates for sound effects, although pretty much any event in the game that you can think of can conceivably have a sound (e.g. when players join or leave the game). These sounds should be in WAV format, and should probably be no more than a second or two in length. Later versions of dopewars may also be able to play longer repeating sounds (i.e. music) if you're interested in contributing this. Use the SourceForge Data forum to see what sounds other people are working on.

- Suggestions for future improvements are always welcomed at the SourceForge Open Discussion forum. These can be anything from "the game interface is confusing" through "more game locations are needed" to "what about a hospital". (I can't guarantee that such suggestions will ever make it into dopewars, but it's a lot easier if I know they exist! Also, it's far more likely to happen if you write the code - see the tips for developers page.)

- Bug reports are always useful. Register them with the SourceForge bug tracker. If I don't know the problem exists, I can't fix it... The more information you can give here, the better. In particular, I need to know your operating system - e.g. Linux or Windows. For Linux, gdb stack traces of the core file are most useful.

- Configuration files can be included in future distributions. If you run a customised game, and think others might want to play with your configuration, or at least use it as an example, then post it to the SourceForge Data forum...

- Translation of dopewars into your language will enable you to play the game in your native tongue, and will also help others that speak the same language. It's pretty easy, too - all you have to do is edit a simple text file! See the i18n pages.

- Main index

Last update: 22-07-2002
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