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?

MageGuild Out of Beta

MageGuild is out of beta. It's about all I can say, I'm currently too busy plastering the internet with announcements to add much to that. Check it out: http://glistenimages.com/Lukos/lukosMageGuild.htm.

Finally Here

I'm putting the finishing touches on what will be 1.0. I'm currently assembling a list of places to post the announcement about 1.0, the first non beta release. Nerves are setting in. But it will be finished, and it will be finished soon, and it will be released. And then...some other project. :)

The Last of the Bugs?

0.7.3 is out, now. So far, so good: no bug reports. I've got some balance and minor feature issues to iron out, and I think that (plus squishing any bugs that crop up) will constitute an 0.8 release. Depending on the reception for it, I'll probably just renumber 0.8 to 1.0 and make it the first non-beta release. That's if all is well with 0.8, of course.

My thoughts are increasingly turning to the next project; I've got enough ideas (both submitted ideas and ones I've come up with) to get to at least a 1.1, probably a 2.0. But I think I'd like to take a break from MG after 1.0 is released, work on something else for a while. The other roguelike that I've been toying around with is a potential to be that next project, but I'm still not sure.

Another day, another release...

I went ahead and pushed out a quick 0.7.2 release, mostly to fix a pair of crash bugs. I was hoping to avoid having too many more releases before a non-beta, but I'd like to nip swarms of people crashing at the same point in the bud.

Incidentally, another bug I ran across was one relating to the game pegging the CPU at 100% usage (or less, if you had a multi-core processor, but either way, it pegged whatever core was running the game). Apparently, this is normal behavior for an application that uses a loop of Application.DoEvents calls to simulate a pause for user input. I found a quick hack that works well enough, but I'd like to do better for the next roguelike project. .NET has some support for asynchronous method calls, maybe I can get some traction there. Hmm.

Too long in coming...

Well, it's been a while (again) but 0.7.1 is about ready to roll. I'm doing some last-minute testing, then it'll be out the door.

I've been banging around a little with what I think will follow the GA release of MG; a roguelike of a more epic scale, more focused on number-crunching...more Angband, less NetHack. Is that actually going to be the next project released? No idea. Time will tell.

MageGuild v0.7

Finally! MageGuild 0.7 is released. After this, it's bug-fixes and balance-tweaks left and right, and then we'll be into full-on public release...And on to a new project, for a while.

Slowly, slowly...

More progress. Two large features down for 0.7, and the other three mostly done. At this point, I'm plugging holes, fixing bugs, and cleaning up messes. Release date? Soon. (Ah, vagueness...the final refuge of the terminally busy.)

Progress!

Well, for two nights running now, I've made some headway on MageGuild. It feels good to code again...it's funny how easy it is to lose track of how much one enjoys a hobby. I've been working on adding fixed content to the end of the game...yeah, sure, I'll raise the cone of silence: boss levels.

I'm...extremely hesitant to put a timeframe on 0.7, still. I'm not 100% sure how long things are going to take, nor how much longer I'll be able to dedicate time regularly, and I'd rather not issue a date I can't keep. Regardless; MageGuild is not dead, development continues.

On The Lack of Time

Progress on MageGuild has slowed to a crawl, alas. My real job's been hammering me pretty badly, and I've been lucky to find time to eat and sleep, let alone to work on MG. Regardless, there is progress. The game plan for 0.7 was a big pile of content and a small pile of rebalancing.

The rebalancing is largely done; hopefully, this will curtail the grotesque HP/MP gaining that was going on, as well as weaken some of the most overused spells. Some edges were changed and added in this, so there should be some new options there, as well.

The content...is coming along. The new item type that I'm adding is taking quite a long time to finish. They're relatively rare, but they're quite powerful, and they do things that MG hasn't seen before. Which means that I'm forging quite a bit of new territory, when it comes to coding.

So, in short, progress continues. I'm hesitant to put a date on release for 0.7 until the work situation settles down a bit, but when I know, you'll know.

A chapt! A chapt! My dingkom for a chapt!

I've released a v0.6.1, a quick patch for the nasty little crash bugs that snuck into v0.6. Made the save/load code a bit more stable in general, and fixed the weird little bug that I introduced into the AI code when I optimized it. (A weird little bug that, as far as I can tell, is responsible for the nearly-random crashes that have been reported.)

A fair bit of the new content stuff for 0.7 was already in place; some of it I left, some of it I hid or removed (due to incompleteness, not due to sheer bloody-mindedness, I assure you. :) ). There's a special kind of irony to having to remove content in order to release. If I had a proper SCM system in place, I could have simply fixed the bugs in the v0.6 branch, released a v0.6.1 off of that, and then integrated the bug fixes back into the development trunk. It's what I would have done at work, in fact. Getting an SCM set up for my personal projects is certainly something to think about, I'm just unsure if the (hopefully rare) occasions where it would be handy are worth the hassle the rest of the time.

The Game Plan

So, I think I've decided what the plan is, for the rest of MG releases through v1.0. v0.7 is going to consist of a few fixes and modifications, and a number of New Things. In fact, anything that I want to go into v1.0 is going into v0.7. There will be no new content after v0.7; only bug-fixes, UI changes, balance tweaks, etc. Depending on how badly v0.7 is bugged/unbalanced, there will either be a v0.8 or we'll go straight to v1.0.

The issue now becomes, what new features are going into v0.7, and what's going to wait until v1.X?

I'm currently struggling with MageGuild's identity a little bit. I was shooting for somewhere between "coffee-break" roguelike (i.e. DoomRL) and "epic" roguelike (i.e. Angband), in terms of game-length, complexity, etc. I thought I'd hit that mark pretty well, so far. However, a lot of the feedback I've gotten has been suggesting pushing things more toward the epic end of the spectrum. And there are a lot of very cool ideas in there, many of which I'd like to use, in some manner or another. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'm currently sitting too close to coffee-break, or if I'm already in about the right area, and could easily topple over into epic territory.

The current plan is to start adding things, lowest-impact first, and kinda feel my way along. Hopefully, I'll end up in the right spot.

Release Part Deux

v0.6 just rolled out the door. I ended up cramming a few more New Things into v0.6, because I'm addicted to coding content. Mob descriptions and amulets, primarily, were the two big things that went in that I didn't expect to. Some other smaller things. And the cycle begins anew...time to plan for v0.7, and to start figuring out where the v1.0 line-in-the-sand is.

Good Reviews, and Lots of Work

Well, the response for MageGuild v0.5 has been extremely positive. I'd like to thank everyone for trying out my pet project. :) There have been a lot of bugs found, and a lot of good suggestions for things to add.

I've got a rough plan for v0.6 outlined:
- Assorted small bugs
- Clarify a couple of points in the help file
- Couple of small UI tweaks
- Add spell descriptions
- Improve pathfinding efficiency
- Overhaul for Mono/non-Windows compatibility
- Clean up and add more invertible mobs

There are a number of other items lurking on the "some later release" list, as well as the "might do at some point" list, but these strike me as the top priorities, so they're going to get banged out first. As always, when v0.6 hits, check the changelist file for all the details.