It has been a while since we have posted a status update. As a retrospective of my first year as Programming Lead, I wanted to share my thoughts on how the project is going, some information about our progress, and where I hope to see us in the near future.
Since the release of 2023.6.5-Alpha, we have been working on major rewrites of some existing systems. The intent is to make development easier, better utilize original game data, and provide improved functionality to players.
New Launcher
Due to recent developments, our plans to create a new version of our launcher have been put on pause. This will unfortunately delay the release of the Alpha to macOS and Linux.
In the coming weeks, we plan to evaluate our existing launcher to see how easily we can improve it to release it to macOS and Linux. It needs drastic stability improvements in order to be released on those platforms.
Should we deem that it is not possible to improve the existing launcher in a meaningful way, or those improvements would involve too much work, we plan to bring new developers on to help create a new launcher. We will share more information on this soon.
SWF Conversion Tool
One of the tools I have been working on recently is a tool to automatically convert the original .swf files to be used in our project. These files were the files used for UI and 2D minigames.
The benefit of this tool is that I can spend tens of hours of development time upfront to save the team the possible hundreds of hours of manual and tedious work to convert those files. Once the tool is mostly complete, we will be able to bring in more developers to the team to help expedite the conversion process.
Player Models / Animation Reimports, As shown in our post in June, we have been importing original, unmodified models and animations into our game. To properly utilize these new assets, the existing player system has to be modified significantly. We have made significant progress with the player, accessories, and gear, and are currently working on mounts, companions, and weapons to bring them up to standard.
This is an ongoing effort and we hope to share more soon.
Network Code Rewrite
Also ongoing is a rework of our network code, including most aspects of the server code. This has been an area of the project that has accumulated significant technical debt over the years. Now is the best time to pay that debt back.
Our goal is to make working with the network code much easier for all developers, and as with the SWF Tool, we plan to bring more developers on once completed.
Final Thoughts
Our biggest struggles currently are the team size and the volume of work that needs to be completed. Recently, our team has shrunk to 4 active Game Programmers, all of whom are employed or a student full-time.
This raises the obvious question, "Why not bring new devs onto the team?" And we'd certainly like to. However, we need to be cautious with how we bring people on when there is so much changing all at once. We don't want to confuse new developers or make them constantly rework what they did due to changes.
This is something we will address going forward as various reworks are completed.
As a final announcement, to anyone who has applied to be a developer before September 2023, Web Developer or Game Programmer, please DM me with the email you used to apply so that I can update your discord contact information. Discord changing usernames has made previous submissions no longer accurate.
October 12, 2023 by Wald Deliglide