An Update!

Well, I've finally managed to get things nailed down enough that I can make some progress. The editor (and accompanying version of MG) will be released in a day or two. I've gotten a proper web host, and a pretty new Drupal site to go with it...and a domain! It's still not configured quite right, but it's a start: http://www.lukossoftware.com Things are looking up, friends. Things are looking up.

Editor Beta

If anyone is interested in participating in the beta for the level editor, drop a post here.

Thanks!

The Editor Cometh

Thought I'd share a screenshot of my latest project, an editor to create custom levels and mods for MageGuild. As it stands right now, the editor is more-or-less beta-ready. The development version of MageGuild itself can handle loading created levels, as long as they don't contain any objects that aren't present in the base game. I'm thinking a week or three to get the game up to loading custom objects, and then I'll probably roll out a limited beta.

Bugs and the Fixes That Love Them

I just released MG 1.2. I feel pretty good about this release; hunted down every bug reported about 1.1.1 that I felt I could fix without massive rewriting. All that remains are minor things, generally linked into the display code.

I'm currently waffling back and forth between working on new stuff for MG 2.0, and working on other projects. I need to focus on one or the other, I think. At this point, I'm leaning toward other projects. I've had a fairly steady flow of ideas for MG 2.0 for quite some time, but many of them aren't mature yet, and other projects are a fine occupation while they ripen.

...once more, with feeling...

Just released 1.1.1; should correct a couple of nasty crash bugs in 1.1. Need to be more careful, need to test more. This kind of stuff is unacceptable.

MageGuild 1.1 out the door

And it is done, MG 1.1 has been turned loose. Got a flood of last minute bugs in, fixed them, and got it turned around.

Two New Tidbits

Two new bits of information to share...

The first, I've released the code for the display library that MG uses, after renaming it Phasma. If you're developing some sort of tile-based (be it ascii or bitmap) game in C#, it might be worth a look.

The second...The code that will become MageGuild 1.1 is caught up. All of the ugly little bugs  that were reported about 1.0 have been caught and squashed, and I've gotten in a little bit of tweaking for balance and so forth. Added a few new things as well. The question becomes...how long do I wait before chunking it out? I'd like to give people more time to play with 1.0 before I go throwing a new version at them. Partly because I don't want to push people to constantly download new versions of things, and partly because I want more time to let the bugs sift to the top.

This really brings up a bigger issue...in a stable game, how often does one release patches and fixes? More to the point, regardless of the general process, how often do I want to release patches and fixes?