A new release, a forgotten one, and a coming major one

[Cervator]

Pre-alpha release 60 is now out. 59 was actually released about two weeks ago but didn't make it past GitHub's release section as I was on vacation and then promptly got sick. Along with that our next release may well be a major one, switching to Alpha at the game-level and v1.0.0 for just the engine

First for the current release - change notes combined for 59 and 60:

• Behavior (tree) assets made available for modules
• Improvements to the module list auto-updating and downloading transitive dependencies (if you enable module A that depends on module B both will be downloaded automatically)
• Tweaks for internationalization
• UI validation for player name
• Include symbols in our font lineup
• Assorted UI improvements
• Load existing worlds with the correct game time
• Improvements to chunk loading on clients (send the chunks sooner - clients should see world faster)
• Improvements to facets and ordering in world gen
• Update to gestalt 5.0.1
• Various other bug fixes and crash hardening
• New modules included in lineup: Tasks & QuestExamples
• Fix for City World (used in the default Light & Shadow gameplay template) crashing during world gen
• Default spawn mechanic now creates a nice plateau for the player to begin on, no more ravines!
• Assorted fixes on the join server screen (avoids crashes and makes it easier to add custom entries)
• Non-existing music assets should no longer crash the game
• Replaces final old usages of Vector2i (in favor of our TeraMath lib)
• Tweaks at player targeting
• Player settings now contain your choice of language

This comes along with a ton of changes to modules, in particular JoshariasSurvival and the Cities/LightAndShadow series.

Special shoutout to @msteiger for plowing through an amazing amount of code over the last few weeks, seemingly all over the place - engine, modules, extensions like the WorldViewer, our TeraMath library, and so on. In particular his work is laying the foundation for actual gameplay in Light & Shadow, such as new dialogues and range-based interaction with NPCs as visible in the following video.

(Note that some of those changes are not live yet unless you run from the latest source)

As for the major release we're not at all saying Terasology is ready, nor really is the engine. There are still plenty of bugs to fix and features to add. Some objectives at a glance:

• Declare our intent to follow Semantic Versioning formally (pre-v1.0.0 its guidelines are looser) and maintain a v1.#.# release for a substantial amount of time without causing backwards compatibility issues. This helps provide stability for content developers
• Clarify release numbering and "reset" to an "Alpha release 1" that just so happens to contain engine v1.0.0. Future Alpha releases may include a newer engine version and/or new module releases
• Actually start release tracking modules, which should make it a lot easier to do release notes including what changed beyond the engine
• Accept that we really have been alpha-ready for some time now and need to just tear off that band-aid already then come out from the shadows

Target for the major release is toward the end of the year, maybe early December. As always estimating that is notoriously difficult since we're all-volunteer. If we get enough changes of any use we might also do another patch release before the major one.

The issues list for v1.0.0 is on GitHub and contains a ton of stuff, mostly that's for review with only a small part expected to be completed with actual serious work attached. A lot of documentation is needed too, maybe more than anything else.

As I keep catching up (and getting less sick) I'll be poking some people and doing some more organizing.

 

[chessandgo]

"Accept that we really have been alpha-ready for some time now and need to just tear off that band-aid already then come out from the shadows"

*cough* make more of a preasents in /r/feedthebeast asking for ideas, opinions, and offering work shops and guides if they want to make/covert their mods. Paul should anounce his model coverter once he's done with that *cough*


other than that, add some trees and plants to the plant library (i tried making a reed texture but ended up with bambo, so i'll need to look into the .blocks for that), moving the cores plants into that module, perhaps flesh out the soils and add some more sands, get a player and monsters, and really up the biome types, and make the terrain do some cool stuff. (also, cool amazing caves). Perhaps a planetiod generator.

In the middle of that we should have enough stuff to start getting an in game base for The Between lands (we'll first need fancy generations and terrain to really to get up to standard).

Perhaps once the plant library is really full. Perhaps once they release it and are in the dead time waiting for the release of forge for 1.9 mc (which will be quite a long time) we can get opinion and protips while creating it. (and perhaps if they want to do some stuff themselves)


an organic stone library might be of intresting . (containing organic gems, fossils, etc)



getting some fancy phyiscs like zepplins, achamedis ships mod, openblocks, etc, might be of high prority intrest.






But in anycase, keep building libraries.