This is going to be a bit different than the usual release planning thread (let me know if you’d like to see 0.5.9 already return back to the other way). I’ve already created the 0.5.8 milestone on Github and moved over some leftover issues, I also noticed that at least one other person also put stuff there.
I also set a tentative release date already, April 16, which we might hit, but probably it’ll get adjusted a bit to be either earlier or later.
So there’s already a good chunk of stuff selected for 0.5.8, additionally I’d like to get the following PRs to be mergeable in the next few weeks so that we have plenty of time to notice any issues these might cause (if one of these is your PR, please update them against master branch to not have conflicts ASAP):
And probably:
There’s also a few more recent PRs that need testing / had slight issues so they couldn’t make it into 0.5.8 that are now added to the milestone.
Here’s some issues that someone might want to pickup, but for now I threw them out of the release milestones as they kept not getting done:
Usually I’ve asked what features people would like to see, but it seems our backlog of those just doesn’t get done and gets rolled forward for multiple releases before getting dropped from future milestones. So this time, I’ll instead encourage everyone to post what they’ll be working on / hope to get done by the 0.5.8 release date. If those are related to an issue / open PR, please feel free to add those to the 0.5.8 milestone.
As for me, I think I’ll do a few housekeeping issues out of the way and then pick one of these (I’m thinking of letting our VIP patrons pick):
Signaling agents (to help make bigger colonies and get to the early multicellular)
Organelle unlock system (base + probably one or two specific unlock conditions)
Organelle upgrade system (proper base code and upgrades for a few organelles). Timing with this might be a bit difficult as this needs to be done after the dynamic MP PR
Procedural patch map generation (someone else might work on this soon)
Auto-evo exploring tool, this is quite badly needed to make developing and tweaking auto-evo work. I might also at the same time make a feature to create images from species to show in the GUI wherever we want.
Some more random small issues, our backlog of issues is still huge
After that I’ll try to get started with the later stage prototypes, the first step being working on the transition from microbe to early multicellular
I’ll be focusing on potential redesigns for our membrane types to make them more strategically interesting. In addition, I am going to take a look at combat and defense in the microbe stage, and see about making plans for a more fun and engaging experience.
And finally, I will be available if anyone needs my input or help with any of the issues we tackle for this version, so don’t be afraid to call on me at any time.
Even though the poll for VIP patrons hasn’t closed just yet, it looks like signaling agents is going to be the feature I’ll work on next, which is pretty good as it will make it smoother to make big colonies. So it quite naturally leads to my work on the later stage prototypes.
Regarding combat and defense, one of that I’m thinking whether we could “tweak” the way engulfment works, so this pertains to earlier talk on discord about locking engulfed things inside an engulfing cell. I think it will differently affect like how escaping engulfment and cell ingestion will work etc, it touches many things surprisingly. I may expand my thoughts in a new thread sometime.