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.

Alea Iacta Est

MageGuild v0.5, the first public beta, has been released. I have absolutely no idea what the reaction to this is going to be, or if there will even be one.

Let's see how things go.

Zeroing In

Well, we're within a stone's throw of 0.5 and the public beta. Been trying to get back the professional polish that went down the toilet when the tiles got added, and have largely succeeded. I think I'm pretty much done adding content for 0.5, and I've gotten all the bugs I know about nailed down. The real stumbling block for releasing 0.5 is now making some updates to the Lukos Software website to make it something vaguely approaching presentable. Once that's done...we're on the road to public release!

My, My, How the Time Does Fly

Alas, I've been neglecting this space...been busy enough that I'm lucky to have time to develop, let alone to write about development.

Anyways. Big news in MageGuild-land. Despite my better judgement, I've implemented bitmap tiles. There are still some kinks to iron out. It required a near-rewrite of my display library, which has created some unexpected fallout, such as the message window being much slower, now. There are some pretty serious gaps in the Gervais tileset as pertains to my purposes, which I've already started addressing, but I'm not really in the mood to spend lots of time building/fixing tiles. This change has required me to remove some of MG's dynamic symbol and color changes, which I'm not really OK with; I've got some ideas on how to resolve it, but that's another kettle of fish.

I'm also having some issues determining the proper way to translate some of MG's visual quirks to tiles. For example, in non-tiles MG, it colors the lines of effect when you go to aim something in red. Which is fine. When that happens with tiles on, it becomes either eye-searing or simply confusing, depending on how bright I make the red. But, that'll get fixed.

I'm actually glad that this is taking longer than I'd planned, as I'm not ready to release 0.5 to the public yet, beyond the feature list. Right now, I just don't have time to keep my finger on the pulse of the response. Hopefully, more time will coincide with 0.5 being done technically, and we'll get a release.