[Widelands-public] Widelands Build21 – and now?
Status: Beta
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From: Benedikt S. <ben...@we...> - 2020-07-18 09:47:46
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Widelands Build 21 has now been released. Now you can either download it at once and play for hours and hours, or read this e-mail which rounds off the release process with the Cap-over-the-Mill message prescribed by the release plan. Since the release, several branches with bugfixes and new features have already been merged to master. A number of larger features are in review already: A series of tribes-filtering branches to speed up game loading and make the game more easily moddable, a scenario editor interface, a redesigning of the launch-game screens. More goodies are under active development: An Amazon tribe, an add-on system, several new scenarios. Since the release of Build 20, only 14 months have passed, compared to 2.5 years between b20 and b19 and 2.75 years between b19 and b18. This shorter interval was greeted with positive feedback from the community, and it is my opinion that we should aim to keep the intervals for future releases similarly short. It is much too early to set a date for the next feature freeze already, but we should aim to have it in springtime 2021, and hold the next release in the summer of 2021. Is Widelands still a game in beta stage, as our wiki claims? There is some consensus that this is no longer true nowadays. We are discussing whether to mark this fact by letting build-21 terminate the series of beta builds and naming the next release "Widelands 1.0". Do you agree? Post your opinions to https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/3979. During the last year, I have developed quite a number of new features for Widelands. For the course of the next year, I would like to move my focus more towards squashing bugs. The features I do intend to implement are the remaining graphics for the new Amazons tribe; a scenario editor, an add-on system, more scenarios for the Frisian campaign; and perhaps, just perhaps, the frequently-requested feature of naval warfare. If you are a developer, or considering to join development (yay, please do!), don't hesitate to state your plans here on the mailing list or in our forum <www.widelands.org>! I'd better stop writing now, as I don't want to keep you from playing Widelands Build 21 for too long! Best regards, Benedikt Straub (Nordfriese) |