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.