February 2008 Update

Remember that v0.2 pre-alpha & associated features that was tentatively scheduled for September? As you can see, it didn't work out. Unfortunately, due to real life, I am unable to work as often as I would like. However, there is good news. My schedule appears to be opening up a bit, and as a result I will finally be finishing up the features promised in August. Unfortunately, there is still no website anywhere in site. I'll be working on it as time goes on, but I make no promises.

In other news:
Since MMOHack is an application relying heavily on networking, I have been putting some major work into increasing my skills in this field. I've pretty much decided that the networking for this project will be based on the boost::asio library (the library itself is usable, but it will not be a part of boost until the next major release.) This will allow for asynchronous request processing in a single- or multi-threaded environment without stepping into outdated, not-so-portable C-style BSD sockets.

Also, the versioning structure has been changed. The new structure will be as follows:
From here on, all release numbers will follow Autoconf's standards. Version numbers will be in the form A.B.C-d, where A is the major version, B is the minor version, C is the revision, and d is a tag (stable, svn, etc.)
Major version changes will be reserved for protocol-changing releases. They will almost always be completely incompatible with releases from previous major versions.
Minor version changes will be feature additions. These features will often affect game-play, but will not include a change in protocol.
Revisions will be changes inside of minor versions which will not affect gameplay to any drastic extent. The majority of releases will be made at this level, and the majority of those releases will be bug fixes. Releases adding administrative tools or inconsequential game changes (things that the average player wouldn't notice) will also be grouped into this category.
This versioning system will begin with the next release (0.0.2-prealpha). Subsequent important releases will be 0.1.0-alpha, 0.x.0-beta, and 1.0.0-stable. There will, of course, be account wipes between alpha, beta, and final release for those who choose to help test.

Unfortunately, all that is relatively far in the future, so allow me to reiterate what features can be expected some time in the near future with the 0.0.2-prealpha update.
#1, and most important, bug fixes. Yes, a program that's not even 10000 lines long yet still has bugs.
#2, Various character improvements (for instance, a single-block-width light around the player's avatar).
#3, Character stats system. The code is in place, it just needs to be implemented.
#4, Various UI improvements (For instance, an actual statistics readout, instead of a message where it will be.)
#5, Further additions of NetHack-style commands, (colon freezes screen and allows the player to select a block of the screen and get information on it.)
#6, Addition of objects & inventories.
#7, Addition of "primitive" monsters (I.E. monsters that stand around where they were originally set and prove that the code works)
#8, Some decent documentation (changelogs, etc.)
#9, Who can tell... More to come in the changelogs.

This release should be out well before the summer, but I make no promises. I apologize for my life getting in the way, and thank you for your patience.