Questverse bimestral report: April 2013

Report extracted from the game's IndieDB page.

Questverse bimestral report: April 2013 (now with windows support)

Hello once more fellow space adventurers, here I am to bring you a new Questverse report, so, lets see the main things which happened since the last report

So, at my last Questverse report I showed the first demo(pre alpha though) of the project, and the first demo I ever made of a game since 2007 (I had 17 years back then), that is a very good, as there is a difference to the 2007 small project, which is the fact Questverse is much more than that previous demo from eons ago (which wasn't serious) was. Interestingly a couple of things from that small, old project (called Bioweapon) made their way into Questverse.

 I though the Linux version would work well for my fellow game followers, since I tested it before releasing; but I soon discovered bugs which I hadn't anticipated (big thanks to AlexVSharp for telling me one of those), a thing all software developers face sooner or later. The demo was (and is) in a pre alpha state (it is not even a alpha yet or a full game pre alpha), and will remain that way for quite some time still, so that was expected. I soon also released a windows version, first 64 bits, then 32 bits, and also found some bugs, running windows tests with 4 friends helped me to locate and already fix some of those.


I'm currently porting the most recent changes I made to the Linux version of the game to the windows one, so I can hopefully release an update this month for Windows (Linux already had his); after this I will have to fix just two more bugs on Windows, and I will get back to the interesting part of the game (this time permanently) and to fixing non indispensable and non hard to solve bugs. Needless to say I halted progress on the space map and first quest until I fix those issues, I like to first solve nasty things and only then things I find more interesting.

 So basically what happened, from older events to more recent ones were:
 

• Adapted my workflow, so it now takes in account my game now has encryption and file packing with tar (with gpgme and libtar).
• Fixed the game not even starting on Linux because the encryption key was missing
• Fixed missing libraries at Linux with static linking (tested only on Ubuntu 12.04+,  fully updated)
• I ceased to compile blender with scons, now I will use only cmake
• Removed unused libs from the blenderplayer, which reduced the game package size
• Improved the game bug collector to help myself when solving bugs
• Ceased to host game downloads on IndieDB, I'm now hosting it on the Questverse site. IndieDB had too many issues when used for that
• I had gone through bat2exe, visual basic and sharpdevelop but settled on c++ and codeblocks for the game exes (both linux and windows), this solved the false virus positives for my game on windows. Codeblocks is a beautiful program and cross-platform, the exes are now smaller, faster and uses the cross compatibility of c++.
• Learned how to use blender window manager, GHOST (blender artists Moguri pointed me the name), which only Blender uses and more sadly has no documentation or much help on the web about. The game now uses it to handle its window, which allowed me to put icons on the window, disable its maximize and resizing features (you must do that inside the game) to prevent graphics distortion and keeping things cleaner and more good looking.
• Learned how to compile 32 bits software on a 64 bits, and also learned about the existence of cross-compiling, which I may try in the future to speed development.
• Improved the process of sending a game release to the site, it is now sent automatically with ncftp (at Linux), it will save me time.
• After the purchase from a Ubuntu vostro 3560 laptop (and the use of a clean Ubuntu consequentially), I discovered bugs which were happening for everyone else but me (encryption issues, more missing libs and such). I fixed them, but please, let me know if you have problems with game, otherwise I will find some important bugs the hard way(or may even not find them).
• The character creation texture garbage on Linux caused by the blender game engine was solved thanks mainly to blender bugs Dalai Felinto (for really getting interested in solving this issue I reported and helped upon), but also to Benoit (who actually fixed the issue)
• The site download area now shows more information about the available game packages (it also update automatically the package update date), and I also fully disabled the site donation area; I think I will no longer use it, I'm now focusing on the game campaign which shall happen at the end of this year to collect some funding (I'm persistent, what can I say), and that is why it will now only show a simple art saying that until then. After that I will just change the area to reflect new yearly campaigns if any.

That is it space adventurers, visit the site downloads section of the game site at least once a month to check for new releases, as for the windows users, wait just one month or a bit less, I'm almost done with porting the Linux updates to the Windows version (hopefully). To check further updates visit the IndieDB page for graphical updates (if those happen) and check the game's Twitter @Questverse which is to the right of this news article for more detailed and frequent text reports.

Thanks for your visit, I hope to see you again at the next bimestral report, which you're liking the progress on the game and which you can participate on the game development, be it contributing with game testing data, tips, constructive criticism or/and  by talking about it with people which may too be interested on it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.