0.8.0 Release Planning

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With 0.7.1 out now and the roadmap for 0.7.x looking very short (I updated the roadmap today and removed done items) let’s talk about making the next release 0.8.0. I think we can make it as there aren’t any other difficult open tasks other than the dynamic compound production (which I’ll consider done well enough if we can make a few of the other compound types and chunks to dynamically vary in their amounts).

Also I split up the remaining microbe roadmap into two parts: the “easy” stuff I can do relatively quickly and the things that are much harder (for me) and would take disproportionately a lot of time to either do or tweak to be good. So I will greatly appreciate anyone helping out with any of the things categorized difficult. Of course also if anyone wants to work on the easier items, that’s also fine, but check first on github that I haven’t already assigned that to myself and started working on it.

I’ve created the milestone on GitHub:

I kept quite a few of the open issues from 0.7.1 that have been hanging around for multiple releases already without being picked up. Those would also be pretty awesome tasks if someone wants to pick them up.

I tentatively set the release date for 0.8.0 to be 21st of December so that we have a good chunk of time to work on it and we’ll still get the release out this year. Here’s the remaining roadmap items, which I think we can complete in time:

Hard

Of course also taking any of the 0.8.x roadmap items already is totally fine.

I think I’ll start by finishing the PhotoStudio stuff I started (in 0.7.1) with the disk cache, and then quickly put the miche tree in the editor (though I think for general understandability it should get a different node graphic for species versus the miches, though this can be made into a new issue that might some day get done). Once those are done pretty quickly, I’ll either do the organelle split order or suggested organelle in the editor. And then the other one. If no one else has taken the hard issues by that point, then I’ll need to work on them to get them done. But I think it is doable to finish these items by December.

So any takers for the stuff I’m not immediately working on from the roadmap / what is everyone planning on working on?

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I have seen a few people complaining about organelle split order lately, so I would like to vote that it isn’t skipped if possible.

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I think I can work on the compound production. I also hope to keep tweaking the auto-evo as I always seem to do, but that’s technically a 0.8.x problem.

I’ll have time to code this weekend; by late Sunday I hope to have a yes/no on if I can work the compounds issue or not.

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I have soundtrack themes in progress for several biomes including the Coastal and Estuary, and I may finish one of these in time for 0.8.0.

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You can if no one else manages to jump in and start working on it this week. I’m not aware that anyone is working on this right now.

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I will probably work on more loading screens for future stages

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I will focus on trying to make sure we have as little holes in our concepts as possible since development speed has picked up immensely.

Along with that, I will commit to what I previously committed to: trying some balance tweaks. I’m going to be specific in what I want to achieve this time, to make it more likely for me to actually do it and because balancing as a whole is a bit uncertain with the current implementation of dynamic compounds:

1.) adjust glucose consumption a bit so that glucose burns just a bit more slowly. I notice that people on discord and the forums very frequently mention that they transition to photosynthesis as a eukaryote, so making glucose burn a bit slower could help encourage diversity of playstyle. I will likely also have to decrease the efficiency of photosynthesis a bit as well.
2.) adjust storage so that players have more of a reason to use certain parts, such as the vacuole.

Also, it’s been mentioned before, but I think we ought to implement some sort of scaling with hydrogenase so that it becomes less powerful with increased oxygen. Currently, hydrogenase is much more useful than metabolosomes and even mitochondria at some points since it’s a constant energy bonus, so having it decrease with oxygen could balance that transition out.

We’d probably want a cutoff point with hydrogenase’s minimum energy, in which further oxygen doesn’t affect it. This will make it easier to balance it.

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There’s no feature nor GUI display logic for how a process that scales inversely to a compound would be defined. So adding that would require extending the process system and GUI parts quite a lot.

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I’m almost done with making all the organelles each use a single mesh, as well as redoing models, textures and animations.
After that, I’ll work on adding or updating floating chunks and scenery.
And I’ll try making a load of small tweaks.

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