Time for a 1.9.0-beta6 Release?

Yagisan

<i>This post was originally made by <b>Yagisan</b> on the dengDevs blog. It was posted under the categories: Beta 6, Blog, Engine, Games, jDoom, jHeretic, jHexen, Releases, Version 1.9.</i>

I think it is time to push out a release of doomsday. We fixed a major regression with final doom, there is a lot of bug fixes, performance updates, and new features that need beta testing. We are beginning to suffer from feature creep, so its time to give birth to this baby and get to work on beta7. The biggest remaining issue is the new maploader. Once danij finishes that, we should fix any showstopper bugs, and push out. Say within 2 weeks ?

(02:17:33) <strong>hentaiyagi:</strong> I've been thinking
(02:18:00) <strong>hentaiyagi:</strong> we should really push a release out soon, and then keep working on beta7
(02:18:06) <strong>hentaiyagi:</strong> we look stagnamted
(02:18:25) <strong>hentaiyagi:</strong> and the final doom issue has been fixed, which was a major regression on beta5.1
(02:20:48) <strong>Skyjake:</strong> I think that making a release would be wise, as it would force us to fix the currently existing critical bugs. It would mean pushing most of the planned stuff on the Beta6 todo list to the next release, but under the circumstances that would be ok. I think we should discuss this on dengDevs.

DaniJ

I don't look on the recent work as feature creep. The changes that have/are being made are only possible because of newer enhancements which allow various systems to be implemented in a more efficent/dynamic manner.

However, I do agree that it would be wise to start looking toward a Beta6 release and to push larger changes to subsequent releases.

Before we start deciding on a time frame I think it would be better to determine exactly what needs to be done before a release can be made.

skyjake

I would suggest that we do "only" two things: 1) complete what is unfinished at the moment, like the player controls and their setup UI, and map loading. But <i>without revising any other subsystems or data structures</i> (otherwise we just accumulate more and more work, and the goal is that the amount of incomplete work finally reaches zero...), and 2) fix or work around the current showstopper bugs (that weren't present in the previous release).

In order to get the player control setup UI working for Beta6, I am considering porting the old setup UI to the new bindings system as a temporary solution until we revamp the Doomsday Control Panel UI in the future — it wouldn't make any sense to implement a new controls setup system with the current UI code if it's going to soon change dramatically in the next releases.

The goal is to avoid regressions in functionality in all fields: if something was working in Beta N, then Beta N+1 should have that as well, or even something better.

DaniJ

Fair enough. That sounds like a reasonable compromise for the control setup UI.

I'll concentrate all my effort on the map loading.