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[Meph]

I made it back save and sound from my latest tour, and do have access to a real PC again. I have a rather full plan for the next 2,5 months, which is the time I have in Germany, before I leave to Westafrica. I thought it would be best to let the community know what I plan to do, and maybe all those invaluable unofficial and official helpers can post a bit as well. Lately developement has been getting quite a boost: Splinterz did upgrade the GUI, Urist McTeellox started his studded with patches release, Putnam wrote many scripts for his drow-race and released an alpha version, and BillyJack improved the stockpiles. Some others have been making fixes here and there...

I will read up on everything and have a good look at the "studded with patches" release and the new GUI (which does have some problems on my XP machine), then I will update this thread with my plan.

Essentially I would like to do 1 update before 01.01.2014, do a bit of work on the drow (the things I mentioned to Putnam in his thread) then work 1 month on the new race, and on 01.02.2014 release it, and then focus on bugfixing and balancing the dwarves, orcs, kobolds, drow and the new race till 01.03.2014. After that, I will be back on the road.

If anyone who works on something for the mod, wants to help, does fixing or patches... please post here. I would hate for people to do the same work twice, and with all the different versions flying around, I dont want someones changes to get lost or overwritten. In short: If a real team has come into existance, we have to communicate to get the best results.

[kamikazi1231]

Glad to hear you made it back safely! How was the tour?  I'm excited for more updates and patches.  I've stuck to 4d for now because of the insane diseases of e.

[Vherid]

So obviously I'm working on Iteru, almost fully done with class and computer access a bit wonky right now, though I plan on getting a large amount of things done this week, maybe even a somewhat playable state. I also have some other non human based ideas for races but It would be wiser to finish Iteru enough first. I'll have a better idea this week of stuff I might need help with.

Welcome bak though.

[Urist McTeellox]

This is awesome. We also shouldn't forget that Thistleknot has been banging away at getting diseases to be more balanced.

I trust you won't mind if at some point I do a general 'call for bugfixers' at some point? I've been doing a good job of finding and tracking bugs, and some of those bugs are really easy to fix. This gives us a perfect for anyone who wants to help out, or just gain more experience in modding Dwarf Fortress or working with git. And to anyone who wants to tackle anything on that buglist as a result of reading this post, I welcome your contributions.

In terms of making sure changes don't get lost or overwritten, Putnam, Splinterz, Vherid and I are all actively using github. Provided we're all pushing our changes, we can keep track of each other's work. There's still need for communication—we don't want two people fixing the same bug at the same time—but it does make things easier.

On that note, I'm happy to add others to the github project, which means they can be assigned issues, and would make it easier to see who's working on what at any time. My main requests would be that people don't take issues until they've actually started working on them (it's easy for issues to stick around forever if someone 'intends' to do something but doesn't), and that they do any changes in their own forks to begin with. It should be noted that people can still comment on issues, submit patches, and otherwise be productive without being on the project; github just doesn't allow issues to be assigned without them being project members.

~ T

[thistleknot]

I had an unfinished idea for diseases.  My laptop took a crap on me just before my trip to Mexico, so Im limited in what I can do on my wifes win8 (not setup at all) notebook.

But I posted in halflings disease mod thread some ideas that Putnam said were indeed possible.

One of them being using disease recuperation to heal from sickness.  Putnam said r4 could do something
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=127265.msg4788458#msg4788458

syndromeTrigger was the plugin.

So in essense, anytime a disease is caught, then a dwarf would have a check based on his recuperation that would apply a medicine at a certain point to "cure" the disease.  Or something like that.

[Urist McTeellox]

I'm delighted to say that we have quite an awesome team working on Masterwork! Meph, Myself, Putnam, Splinterz, Billy Jack, Sage Ethereal, and Thistleknot have all directly contributed to recent works, and the number of contributors isincreasing! Having other people patch bugs in the software and games I enjoy is my idea of heaven, and so you all completely rock!  Thank you!

However, as Meph has mentioned in the top-post, we definitely need more communication between everyone. While not everyone *needs* to know what everyone else is working on, it would be great to have a place where people who are contributing (or thinking of contributing) can discuss ideas, announce plans, and generally make sure that everyone has the option of staying up-to-date with whatever areas they need.

I don't know if we can set up a sub-board, but I would love to see a 'DF Modding > Masterwork DF > Development' board. This means developers can more easily see what's going on, and regular players won't regularly be spammed with dev-exclusive topics.  It also means new contributors have an easy place to go to get involved.

In any case, I'd also like to propose that we use github for both change control management (ie: changes to the raws themselves), as well as issue tracking. Most people won't need to learn anything but the very basics of git, but this will make it much easier to ensure everyone's changes integrate cleanly, and to track which changes relate to which bugs and features. Obviously many of us are already using github for this purpose. I'm happy to continue in my role as Change Control Pixie, making sure everyone's work meshes together cleanly.  Using github also makes the experience for contributors much more satisfying; they can see when their changes are integrated into the main branch, or when their bug or feature has been resolved.

I'm especially eager to get us moving onto better communication and change control now, since Warlocks and other playable races are coming up, and I'm sure those will come with significant changes.

If anyone needs a hand with git or github, I'm more than happy to offer my assistance. I know there can be a bit of a learning curve at first, but once everything they make everything else much, much easier.

~ T

[Meph]

since Warlocks and other playable races are coming up, and I'm sure those will come with significant changes.

This is actually not a big deal at all. The new races are separate from each other.

The bigger issues are the soul and bone system I want to write. It changes literally every single creature file ingame.

And please dont ask Toady about a sub-sub-board. We can just use a thread, we have enough space. Its not like 100 people are working fulltime on this. I find it confusing enough as it stands.

[Urist McTeellox]

Warlocks and other playable races are coming up Meph is going to change everything, and I'm sure those will come with significant changes.

There we go. Fixed that for me.

Opinions on using git for change control, and setting up a Dev board? I'm happy to contact Toady/Threetoe if that process required.

~ T

[Meph]

I am against a dev board. Like I said, there are not enough people working on the same things at the same time to merit one. Even if 5 people would work on 5 races... its all on their own sets of raws, on "reaction_racename" and "weapon_racename". There are no compability issues.

I finished adding the bone system btw. Next are souls.

[Urist McTeellox]

I am against a dev board. Like I said, there are not enough people working on the same things at the same time to merit one. Even if 5 people would work on 5 races... its all on their own sets of raws, on "reaction_racename" and "weapon_racename". There are no compability issues.

Sure there are! I've had developers ask me about taking the existing raws and splitting them into separate files, or changing the formatting, and those will affect everyone. Things like upgrading DFHack affect all developers, and if any race uses reactions from another race there needs to be coordination there. Diseases can currently spread between races, so we've seen that changes in one race can definitely impact others. I've been writing various linting tools and other things to help with raw management, and they affect all developers. I'd love for there to be a contributors guide that's longer than we have now, and I've been asked about things like recommended formatting and layout for files, so there's developer-wide scope for discuss stylistic issues. Plus it's really nice to see what people are working on, new modders (like myself) will always have questions to ask about how things work, and there's absolutely no reason why we'd only see one person working on each race; I'm going to take as many contributors as I can get for fixing general bugs and doing the orc rebalance.

If a dev board isn't warranted yet, can we get a pinned developer post that gives people an easy-to-find starting point if they wish to get involved, and to discuss general dev issues?

I finished adding the bone system btw. Next are souls.

Awesome! Can I download a zip/7z of your work, because I'd love to make sure my orc rebalance works cleanly with this. Does this mean that itemcorpses are gone?

~ T

[Meph]

Itemcorpses are not yet gone.

Bonesystem is in.
Reactions for "use separate bones" are deleted, from all three races.
Souls work. I got a setup that allows any creature that is being butchered to leave a "soul".

Souls cant be stockpiled, so it does not add more micromanagement to anything.
Souls are created automatically while butchering creatures. No extra worksteps.
Souls will be used in many reactions, for example Armoks Altar, or the Warlocks.
Souls... and this is the best part... will wither after 2 weeks, disappear completely after 4 weeks. Automatically. So even if you dont want to use the soul-system for anything, no worries, just ignore it. Same goes for races that dont use souls (lets say no one mods in a system for kobolds to use souls... no problem, they wont stack up like the itemcorpses atm)

Next todo:
Add souls to all creatures that should have some.
Remove itemcorpses.
Add specific ebo-items again, like frostgiant bifrost.
Remove itemcorpse reactions.
Add race-specific ebo-items, for biology. => Use specific souls?
Rewrite all reactions that used itemcorpses to use the new ebo-items instead.
Playtest.
Bugfix.

It will take a while. I wont upload anything till I am finished, because I dont want to upload something thats half done and might be broken.

[Urist McTeellox]

It will take a while. I wont upload anything till I am finished, because I dont want to upload something thats half done and might be broken.

I would love to have the copies of things which are half-done and broken; that actually makes my life easier. Nice, small chunks make control engineers happy, whereas large, sweeping changes make us cry.

I'm happy to receive said changes privately, and not upload them to github if you're worried about people trying to use something which is a work-in-progress. But I would really, really love to see them.   (Or more specifically, I want my tools to see them; I'm just a thin meaty interface that sits on top of them.)

Just so I have a baseline, you're making all these changes off the 4f release?

~ T

[Meph]

I...

I dont know what to say.

Code: [Select]

Next todo:
Add souls to all creatures that should have some.
Remove itemcorpses.
Add specific ebo-items again, like frostgiant bifrost.
Remove itemcorpse reactions.
Add race-specific ebo-items, for biology. => Use specific souls?
Rewrite all reactions that used itemcorpses to use the new ebo-items instead.
Playtest.
Bugfix.
I was on the playtesting part, with a clean errorlog. Genning worlds. While deleting the save folder once again, my PCs harddrive made weird noises, krrkrrrkrrr. Then everything went black. When I try to start it up, I can go to BIOS, but as soon as it tries to boot from the HDD, it goes krrrkrrrkrrr, I can see a bluescreen of death for a tiny part of a second, and then its black again. ... ... ... apparently my harddrive just died one me. The one with my OS. The DF stuff. The website I was working on. And all the research for Westafrica.

This has never happened to me before, my PC is holy. 

Ironic, that you just asked about a copy. But I wouldnt have had any time to upload it anyway, it happened too fast.

... 

(Edit: I'll go to bed now.)

[mahrgell]

omg that sucks so hard for everything that was on it...

[Urist McTeellox]

I was on the playtesting part, with a clean errorlog.

Firstly, woah! I was expecting you'd still be days before finishing that TODO list. You have mad-fast modding skills.

Apparently my harddrive just died one me. The one with my OS. The DF stuff. The website I was working on. And all the research for Westafrica.

Oh crap! Drive crashes are the most horrible experiences, and I know how hard they can be. I am so, so sorry to hear this. I don't really know what to say, I'm so sorry to hear this has happened.

~ T