0.8.2 Release Planning

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I’m again making this usual release planning thread after the latest release for talking about the plans for the next release.

First off, due to a major multicellular bug we need to have a patch release early next week to fix it and make multicellular playable. I’m aiming for Monday or Tuesday so if there’s any other critical fixes those also have just a day or two to be made to include.

After that it is time to then start on 0.8.2. I’m naming the release that as I don’t foresee the planet map generator being done so we are stuck in the 0.8.x milestone due to that. And as for timing I think early May would be quite optimal as that gives us again the usual couple of months. Additionally this year I’m thinking I would take my summer break already in June so that I would be available in July when it seemed last year that people on their summer breaks wanted to contribute to Thrive so it was a bit unfortunate timing when I was away. So let’s hope people stick to that this year as well and don’t suddenly decide to switch when they want to contribute to exactly when I’m on break.

So then features finally, I’ve moved some stuff to the 0.8.2 milestone, but for many long open issues that have been moved from milestone to milestone I’ve finally given up and not put them in the next release milestone. Here’s the milestone and its current list of issues:

I will be personally still focusing on finishing the easy stuff (for me) on the roadmap from 0.8.x and probably starting also the 0.9.x portion.

But I also have some more “backend” and technical stuff to take care of which I hope to do during this release cycle:

  • Finally making the Mac version official. There are a couple of general improvements I’d like to make first that are really beneficial for Mac.
  • Refactoring the MP calculation system as it is just too complicated to try to use right now and I almost totally failed to make the tolerances work with it. But at least it seems so far no one has managed to trigger the infinite MP exploit with it that was in the RC
  • Maybe an asset preloading system to reduce during gameplay frame drops from chunk types and other graphics spawning in for the first time

Also next week I plan on creating a thread about how to finish the tolerances feature. I think we are still missing proper auto-evo for it and we need organelles to give bonuses to certain tolerances (and maybe even negatives?)

So what are everyone’s plans?

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If I find some time I will try to implement some new patch events (but I can’t promise anything). I don’t have any other plans so I will probably be resolving some random issues from github as well

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I’ll be taking a (hopefully short) break soon, to get my laptop fixed. This is badly needed, as my ability to do anything - including writing this - is really being hampered right now. Once it’s fixed, I should be much better able to speedily work through my to-do list. I’ll be focussing on:

  • Adding in the large sulfur chunk.
  • Adjusting iron chunks - increasing variety.
  • Adding the Hydrogenosome.
  • Adding the Nematocyst - just as a basic projectile, for now.
  • Other small graphics additions and improvements.

Then, possibly:

  • Improving the crystal shader, which currently looks rather poor in certain contexts (glowing in the dark, and barely visible in bright daylight).
  • Further improving membranes and organelles.
  • Adding background terrain models.
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I am taking a bit of time here to add a couple of Planet Customization features for the current planet generator before getting back to the full world generator. I have mostly finished adding in the World Size parameter, but I haven’t figured out which setting to add in next. Perhaps a Temperature setting, or a Ice World preset? I just want to add in a few of the most useful parameters right now to keep it simple.

Also, the patch map generator abandoning regions seems like less of an issue because the number of regions is now directly controlled along with the canvas size, so I think that has been solved well enough before the full world generator is implemented.

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I plan to be more involved with the development cycle this time around, where I’ll take a major focus on balancing; there’s a lot that’s been added in the game which needs polish.

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I won’t consider that issue gone until the code that can trigger the abandoned region print is entirely removed…

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The coordinate generation code will need to be replaced with a more general graph drawing algorithm like Force-directed graph drawing - Wikipedia in order to replace the current generator with the full world generator. I don’t consider changing the current patch map generation method to be worth it just to fix the abandoned region problem; so that won’t be entirely removed soon unless someone else wants to do it. If the “Change patch map generator to not need to abandon regions” issue isn’t sufficiently resolved to mark as done for the 0.8.x roadmap and is blocking, then I could see about working on it earlier.

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