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.