First of all, happy holidays to all! And thanks very much to those special few who donated recently. As some of you know, I'm back early from my overseas trip, due to some medical issues. In the interest of staying sane, I've been looking at D2TGP and the new project I've been working on, and decided to make some decisions (that I will actually stick to this time). They are as follows:
- My next project (see previous blog post regarding that) will now get almost all of my free time by priority. D2TGP is full of so much legacy code, I don't even want to look at it any more. :) This is the main reason so many bugs keep popping up as I add new features (or even fix other bugs). It's time to start over completely instead of plastering half the body.
- There will be only one more major update possible for D2TGP. That will be upgrading to a new network library as previously mentioned, and possibly one final change with the Fremen. No other new features will be added now that waypoints and the new zoom effect are in place.
- New versions will be less frequent, and as stated, will involve a beta test period available only to donators. They will be focused on fixing bugs and occasional optimization.
- The source code may someday be available, but hasn't been up to now for the following reasons:
- I don't know how to manage an open source code project while protecting against version splintering
- I code in Blitz, which not many others know, and I have almost no knowledge of C, so working with others collaboratively is difficult
- It has always been possible that some of what I created for this project will be used in a future commercial effort (i.e. the next project)
- In short, I have not decided to release the source, but I have decided to make a decision on it some day. :)
So effectively, I am declaring D2TGP as being out of the design stages. If you wanted, you could say it is out of alpha, and halfway through beta. Any changes to design at the moment would be minor and will run through the beta process.
So please, continue to report bugs and help the project along. Good things will come in the future, both for stabilizing this project and for an entirely better system in development.
Cheers
