Goblin-King
June 13th, 2006, 09:03
I'm out of the coding cave to give you all a little update on the progress of the next version. The development process is taking a bit longer than we initially planned, due to some design issues we had to solve.
The actual engine coding is getting very close to being finished, and we are at the moment working on getting the d20 ruleset to take advantage of the new features and to work with the new stuff. I think we are getting confident that the system works very nicely overall, and I'm very much looking forward to getting more actual details out as we get closer to the goal.
The delays we've experienced have had to do with two things that weren't actually apparent to us on paper, before we actually got to work on the ruleset itself. First, it turned out that we had to delegate a bit more functionality from the engine to the script implementation than expected, to get a nice scripting interface that would not require users working on rulesets to succumb to little tricks to get around some things that turned into annoyances when exposed to the flexibility of scripting. The downside is that we need to work on getting that part of things from the engine into the ruleset, the upside is that most of it will now be customizable. Second, we had to make some revisions to the way some data is processed on the sheets, to better take advantage of the new features available.
We have decided to call the next version Fantasy Grounds version 2.0. There will be new features and changes that are sufficiently significant a change in what can be done with rulesets and how to be reflected in the version number. Another thing that we feel very important is to make sure this next patch will not in any way cause major inconvenience or discontinuity in games users are currently running. Version 2.0 will install parallel to 1.05, and users will be able to both copy over existing campaigns and use them, and to keep using their existing campaigns while they get ready to move to the next version, if necessary. We plan to keep both versions available to new and existing users in order to keep things moving smoothly.
As we have hinted earlier, we plan to release the patch first as a public test version, that is not officially finished and which will be ready to undergo quick releases of new versions if required. The purpose of this testing phase is not intended to be focused on bug hunting, but rather on feedback on the new systems. We will be interested in the opinions of the users who probably already have ideas about new stuff they want in their rulesets and how they manage to realize or not realize them using v2.0. Of particular importance here will be the templating system, that allows more advanced users to create ruleset snippets, typically containing all scripting and any complicated data processing, and exposing that to people who don't want to or don't have the programming expertise to do it all themselves but want to take advantage of the new possibilities. Also, of course, we will be open to any ideas about the default ruleset that will be available.
In order to support the community's ruleset modification efforts, we will also be releasing documentation about it. The most important will probably be the scripting interface reference, which details all the xml and lua elements and functions available and how to use them. We'll also be working on a general modders' guide type of document, which will probably see development mostly during the testing phase based on user impressions of the system.
At the moment, we're working on getting the patch ready for testing. We are planning to release a first version of the script interface reference as a preview before the public beta testing period starts. We'll be back with more updates as we get the patch ready for internal testing and we can start locking down some dates for the next phases.
The actual engine coding is getting very close to being finished, and we are at the moment working on getting the d20 ruleset to take advantage of the new features and to work with the new stuff. I think we are getting confident that the system works very nicely overall, and I'm very much looking forward to getting more actual details out as we get closer to the goal.
The delays we've experienced have had to do with two things that weren't actually apparent to us on paper, before we actually got to work on the ruleset itself. First, it turned out that we had to delegate a bit more functionality from the engine to the script implementation than expected, to get a nice scripting interface that would not require users working on rulesets to succumb to little tricks to get around some things that turned into annoyances when exposed to the flexibility of scripting. The downside is that we need to work on getting that part of things from the engine into the ruleset, the upside is that most of it will now be customizable. Second, we had to make some revisions to the way some data is processed on the sheets, to better take advantage of the new features available.
We have decided to call the next version Fantasy Grounds version 2.0. There will be new features and changes that are sufficiently significant a change in what can be done with rulesets and how to be reflected in the version number. Another thing that we feel very important is to make sure this next patch will not in any way cause major inconvenience or discontinuity in games users are currently running. Version 2.0 will install parallel to 1.05, and users will be able to both copy over existing campaigns and use them, and to keep using their existing campaigns while they get ready to move to the next version, if necessary. We plan to keep both versions available to new and existing users in order to keep things moving smoothly.
As we have hinted earlier, we plan to release the patch first as a public test version, that is not officially finished and which will be ready to undergo quick releases of new versions if required. The purpose of this testing phase is not intended to be focused on bug hunting, but rather on feedback on the new systems. We will be interested in the opinions of the users who probably already have ideas about new stuff they want in their rulesets and how they manage to realize or not realize them using v2.0. Of particular importance here will be the templating system, that allows more advanced users to create ruleset snippets, typically containing all scripting and any complicated data processing, and exposing that to people who don't want to or don't have the programming expertise to do it all themselves but want to take advantage of the new possibilities. Also, of course, we will be open to any ideas about the default ruleset that will be available.
In order to support the community's ruleset modification efforts, we will also be releasing documentation about it. The most important will probably be the scripting interface reference, which details all the xml and lua elements and functions available and how to use them. We'll also be working on a general modders' guide type of document, which will probably see development mostly during the testing phase based on user impressions of the system.
At the moment, we're working on getting the patch ready for testing. We are planning to release a first version of the script interface reference as a preview before the public beta testing period starts. We'll be back with more updates as we get the patch ready for internal testing and we can start locking down some dates for the next phases.