Back From Vacation

Work

Just got back into the 'hot' seat and going through my emails and post histories, and I am in full agreement with the posts in the forum that the next few releases should be heavy on core stuff. Personally, I would like to focus entirely on core to the exclusion of all else, but development life is rarely that pure 

I'm downloading the HOOD demo now, posted on the Reloaded forum, to get a feel for the feedback first hand, and reading the thread you will get no argument from me on the items mentioned. More performance and proper AI seem to be high on your list, and mine too, so I'll be looking to push these as the highest priorities in the development weeks to come. I have also extended the testing period for the next update, so you only get it once a few more eyeballs and a few more days have tested the release. I have a development meeting Wednesday to discuss the exact order of importance on which core issues will be addressed for the next release, and in the meantime I will be knocking on the head the 'easy to fix silly ones' that crept into the beta since the last version.

I would like to post on the forum more, and I do jump in once a week to reply to every post on the first page (when I am not skiing), but I feel going to the forum every day might detract from actual coding and I usually end up repeating myself after a while.

Hopefully this blog provides enough information on the daily stuff and a 'once a week' appearance in the forum will fill in any gaps from me. If you have any recommendations how I could further reduce the apparent communication gap without adversely affecting my coding hours, please get in touch!

I came back from my vacation with a few more ideas how I could get more speed from the engine, so unless I am molested by higher priority items, I will be spending today and Tuesday trying those out (along with fixing those silly items I mentioned).

We also had the foresight to get some parallel developments coded in my absence, so I have returned to a new installer revision which will cleanly uninstall all your installed files from the next version onwards, but leave your user content and levels in tact. 

We've also rewritten the LUA scripting engine module, which now gives us full control of the underlying source code, not to mention adding some nifty extras like multi-scope LUA scripting which will eventually allow you to create scripts for HUD and interface displays, plus other independent logic within the game (more on that in the future). Other work has been done for the Construction Kit and Object Importer, but I am strongly inclined to defer these releases as there is an integration cost that would distract me from the singular pursuit of core work.

Time for me to open up the engine now and start working on performance and the sillier core issues in there. If you feel I should be working on something else until Wednesday (as it's very likely I have forgotten stuff since the start of this post), please let me know by posting here so we can get a general overview of how you would prioritize my next two days  I will post again after the Wednesday meeting to let you know what priorities were decided (or you can read the blog post on that day as it will be repeated there as well).


For those with some patience left, thanks for sticking with us. For those who just ran out of it, welcome to the world of game engine development and I'll see what I can do to restore your faith. To take the guesswork out of it, please post here by Tuesday PM, one item that you would like to see in the next update and I'll add it to the meeting on Wednesday.