News on TDM 2.04?

[MirceaKitsune]

So it's been about half an year since I last played TDM or visited this forum... most certainly I'm just as interested in watching this lovely project advance however. Which is why I'm a bit confused and concerned at the complete lack of updates since 2.03 has been released last winter! I checked the news section on the website as well as the forum, searched Google, ran the updater... yet no word on how development is going nor when the next release is estimated happen. So does anyone know when we can expect TDM 2.04 arrive, or when new test builds might become available on the beta mirrors?

 

Separately I had another question: Where do I now obtain and compile the latest version of the engine from? Apparently the SVN repository https://svn.thedarkmod.com requires a password now... although from what I remember the engine repository was open to public access, even if the assets repo is restricted to developers due to its size. I remember last time I had some issues with the engine being 32bit, but an x64 engine was supposedly on its way... hopefully I can soon get my hands on one for Linux.

Edited September 26, 2015 by MirceaKitsune

[demagogue]

FYI, the Roadmap (http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/roadmap_page.php) for new versions is publicly available and gives probably the best realistic indication of progress than any news updates could. (Not that we couldn't always use more updates & PR, but it's a small team anyway.) To estimate a time frame you could look at the kinds of open issues and probably guess a range as well as anyone.

[MirceaKitsune]

Thanks for that link. It does look like there are a lot of issues still open, so I imagine it might be a while. Maybe we can hope for test builds until then though?

 

And you can ignore my second question about the engine SVN, the solution is described in this thread and I now got it fixed.

[SteveL]

We might split up the plans for 2.04 into more than one release. There's plenty of work going on, but there's also plenty still to do and in the meantime there are some important bug fixes waiting to be released. That was being talked about a week or so ago, but I don't know whether anything's been decided: I just got back from a busy trip and I'm way behind on news.

 

Note that svn has moved on from version 2.03 to 2.04. I think the engine will run ok, but the new game code is incompatible with TDM 2.03. If you want to test that out, you'll have to patch your TDM installation while you test it. Let me know if you plan to do that, and I'll post the necessary file.

[freyk]

How about compiled nightlies?

[MirceaKitsune]

Splitting some plans into a future release sounds like a good idea. From a user's perspective, I think a minimum of one or two releases per year is important to maintain... some projects have a release every 3 years, which is so huge I often assume the projects died.

 

As for compiled nighties, I'd seriously love to see more of that as well! Since TDM has a lot of large data, full nightly builds would be difficult to have, but monthly ones would be neat. There should probably be a special mirror for this on the TDM updater, allowing you to run "monthly beta" instead of "latest release". People like me who are impatient for the latest gamecode changes won't have to wait half an year to see something new, which would be awesome if possible

[MirceaKitsune]

Note that svn has moved on from version 2.03 to 2.04. I think the engine will run ok, but the new game code is incompatible with TDM 2.03. If you want to test that out, you'll have to patch your TDM installation while you test it. Let me know if you plan to do that, and I'll post the necessary file.

 

Aha, I see what you meant now: I tried running 2.03 with the SVN engine yesterday, and it crashes to the main menu during the loading screen. So I would like the game data for the latest SVN please.