Category: spaceman

I have been working on spaceman and the designs for most of it are done. Lately I’ve been busy with other things so progress has been slower on that front.

I ran a D&D game on Sunday and this (plus some feedback I got from some others) kicked me off on picking epicmaker, my D&D (3.5/Other) DM/Player tool suite, back up. I’ve cleaned up the project and started getting some of it together. It will possibly have a similar base architecture to spaceman; I need to reorganize the architecture it has one way or another.
First thing I did was prototype some of my item/treasure generator stuff. I finally came up with a system that should work for that while being both extensible and easy enough to control at finer levels. I prototyped it in Java because that’s what I have easy to run with at the moment; and it is actually well suited to the system I designed, oddly enough. What I have designed is actually meant to be implemented in a combination of code and scripted, so java seemed well suited to simply having stuff thrown in it and moved around later. Part of it really might just be how easy it is to code quickly in Eclipse. Not sure.

And what I’m sure most of you have been dieing to hear is that I’ve started updating Mystcraft to 1.3.x. I started today and actually finished the majority of it already. Mystcraft has moved to Forge Edition only and is currently built off of the 217 build of Forge. It works and it only needs to be test thoroughly to make sure nothing is broken. 🙂 I’m going to start throwing dev builds at my QA team soon and we’ll see how that goes. 🙂
The goal at the moment is to update Mystcraft as it stands to 1.3.x with only a few bug fixes. Basically there should be no mechanical differences between this and the last release (aside from said bug fixes). I may do a few minor things as I ‘walk by them’ when running around my code, but I don’t plan on adding or modifying any features.

I hope to have Mystcraft for 1.3.2 up for you in a reasonable time frame. Stay tuned!

Sorry for the general silence. Since we’re waiting on Forge to update to 1.3.x I’m taking a break from Mystcraft. I’m still answering questions and active on the Bug Tracker and IRC, but I’m not working on Mystcraft at the very moment.

Designs for spaceman have been moving along. Lots of things to decide on. Some of the ideas in the project are a bit ambitious and I want to design it so that they can be done either simply at first and improved upon later or simply done later without needing to rewrite everything else later, too. 😉

The plan for spaceman development is as follows:

• Main Designs – try to get everything specified and planned out as best I can.  I’m paying particular attention to having a discrete, modular, and maintainable architecture at this point.
• Project Environment Setup – Putting together my workspace and procedures.  I want to try to get most of the workflows laid out at this point, including the testing and build systems.  Focus is on automation of workflow and project structure.
• Initial Test System – Build the base architecture and communication systems.  This is the framework and core phase.  Mostly interfaces and abstractions.
• Initial ‘Playable’ – Hopefully the result of the previous phase is a ‘playable’ system which can be used to start testing mechanics and content.  If not then that is the goal here.
• Game Content/Mechanics – Start work on the heart and meat of the game.

At this point I switch to a very iterative model where I basically continue adding, reworking, refactoring, and revising the system.  I’ll try to give updates as stuff happens at this point, and there will probably be screenshots/casts of the first playable. 🙂

Hope you are enjoying the Summer!

Testing is going well for tonight’s release of Mystcraft. I’ve fixed most of the priority issues for the moment and we are looking into the last big issue.

I want to try to get better distribution system for Mystcraft up. The current methods are too manual for me. I want something I can automate and control easily.
The release won’t be delayed for this, however. I’ll publish manually if I need to.

In other news, I’m announcing that I am not going to be picking up the other mod I had been planning. Since I did most of the designs for that mod with Exotria and Greychapel I’ve given them the idea to do with as they please.
Instead, I’m looking at picking up a project I have wanted to do for the past 10 years. Not a Minecraft mod, obviously. I don’t want to give out much information on this project yet, but I’ve codenamed it Project Spaceman (or just spaceman). More info will come as soon as more of it is done.
This new project will take some time away from Mystcraft, but not end its development. The other mod would have done the same, though perhaps not to the same extent. I should have enough time for both projects, though. Once school starts up both projects will get even less time, but such is life.

Anyway, release is soon! 🙂