New entities

[BeRsErKeR]

Cgg has finally answered my mail. His time for defrag development is still very limited. His plans for defrag seem to be the following (as I understand him right): make a few amendments to the 1.91 codebase. Some code fixes are done as well by mark. Mark and me are the only two guys that work on the code by now. He (mark) does general code fixes and I basically focus on the new entities at the moment and improving/fixing some of the existing entities.

Cgg is glad that there is some development but as I get him right a real development that lead to a release in the near future seems dubious.

He assured his support to me but as I said his email is not very promising though.

I'll keep you up to date.

[BeRsErKeR]

My reply to cgg:

Hi cgg,

I don't know if I've got you right. Do you mean a defrag release in the near future is off the table?
Maybe you can tell me something more about your plans of the defrag future?

From my point of view the current defrag version is quite aged and the community waits for an update for a long time now. I don't know exactly if the community grows or shrinks but I guess the second case is true.

I understand that you don't have much time for defrag but if we won't release something in the near future I fear that there is no community left at all to develop defrag for.

Maybe we could release a pre-version or alpha-version that is stated as "unstable" and the community can test things out. This would also help to find bugs and people who don't want to use this version can still play the stable 1.91 version. If people know that a version is "unstable" they can play around with it, create maps for it and try some cool new stuff. And successive we can fix bugs, improve things and finally finish a stable version in the far future.

The release of this "unstable" version will have some positive effects:

- the community realize that there is still a defrag development with their own eyes
- bugs will be found (we have many testers)
- we got feedback for new features and could decide to keep, discard or change them
- we stop the shrinking of the community and possibly the community will grow

And I don't see any disadvantages by doing that. Think it over.

Greetings BeRsErKeR

[AL!EN]

It sounds not promising but let's just wait for Cgg reply. New Defrag version can be released by you and Marky since it seems to me that both of you are only hope for Defrag development.

[BeRsErKeR]

He already replied. But his answer was like "I don't have much time but good to see that someone is working on the defrag codebase". I don't know what I should think about this reply ...

[AL!EN]

Make some additional codding and just release 1.92.02 for tests. Then make some fixes and just release 1.92.03. You huge amount of work cannot be wasted.

[|PsY|Shio]

F1
I agree with AL|EN, this is ridiculous..
Cgg doesn't even play defrag, nor does he care wat happens to it.
it's about time to hand the baton over.
Who are the 99% ? Right, the Community of course..

[esc?nebuLa]

Sounds good, guys. Looking forward to the next alpha or beta release.

[BeRsErKeR]

I'm torn between releasing it without cgg's agreement and hoping for this agreement because he gave me access to the code on trust and he also spent a lot of time on defrag in the past too. But on the other hand it can't go on like that. I included mark who also works on the defrag code currently into my thoughts.

As the development till a release will still take some time, I'll give cgg the chance for a decision till then.

Coding will continue no matter what and as you said I won't accept that my work was useless in the end.

[BeRsErKeR]

Good news guys. Defrag 1.92 will come! After several emails cgg finally replied as follows:

Sure, I agree. I can help with the release process, that's not in itself a problem. My concern would be to leave 1.91 as it is and use 1.92 as an experimental/future releases branch. I also agree with your idea of having the players involved in the process.

[AL!EN]

Hoorreeeeyyyyyyyy