Daggerfall Unity Feature Lock

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Daggerfall Unity Feature Lock

Post by Interkarma »

Now that we're over the bump of reaching alpha, our focus must change from rapidly building gameplay features to incremental bug fixes and refinement. Work has also begun on roadmap items assigned to alpha cycle.

At this time, I will implement a broad feature lock on the Daggerfall Unity code. The only changes that will be accepted are as follows:
  • Bug fixes.
  • Minor refinements to an existing system. Examples might be a small QoL change, fixing unclear behaviour, or adding a simple quest action for custom quests.
  • Features explicitly scheduled on roadmap.
  • Mod system progression, as directed by TheLacus.
My goal now is to iterate on the quality and stability of the base game through beta into 1.0.

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall Unity HARD Feature Lock

Post by Interkarma »

I'm looking towards reaching 1.0 by the end 2021. While I have several small milestones to reach before then, and dozens of bugs to address, this is happening and it's coming up fast.

I want to release 1.0 in the best possible stable state. So come July, I'm placing Daggerfall Unity into HARD feature lock. This means the only code changes accepted are:
  • Bug fixes to core and mod system
  • Final features explicitly scheduled on roadmap.
That's it! This gives everyone in our amazing community plenty of time to get everything in order before release. Modders can rebuild their mods against the Release Candidate builds and feel confident that some last minute change isn't going to break their mod before release day.

And to limit the potential for bug fixes to break mods, I intend to solve as many bugs as possible before implementing hard feature lock in July.

If you have changes in mind for an upcoming mod, please raise your PR before the start of July. Thank you! :)

Once DFU has passed 1.0, and the attention this will likely bring, we can move into maintenance mode and once again start introducing new mod support or refinements.

I hope there's a long future of maintenance releases for DFU and want to stress this stage of hard feature lock is only temporary. Post 1.0, we'll continue fixing bugs, refining game, expanding mod support, and improving localization capabilities. Daggerfall Unity doesn't end at 1.0. The goal is simply to have the best release day possible for our developers and modding community alike.

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Daggerfall Unity HARD Feature Lock

Post by Interkarma »

I've initiated hard feature lock stage of beta. This will will last from now until 1.0 release. While I'm aiming for 1.0 at end of 2021, no firm date has been set at this time.

Here's what happens next:
  1. Outstanding PRs submitted before today will be reviewed and merged. Any future PRs that aren't bug fixes or very minor tweaks will be closed. Contributors are welcome to resubmit their new feature PRs after 1.0 has settled.
  2. Live Builds will be retired and redirected to GitHub Releases page.
  3. 0.11.5 will be released. This is the last build under Unity 2019.4.10f1.
  4. I'll then step up engine to latest Unity 2019.4 and increment version to 0.12.0. This will be marked as a pre-release so that modders can work on fixing potential compatibility issues due to engine change. Other than engine upgrade, this build is intended to be identical to 0.11.5.
From that point, I'll start work on the following (in no particular order):
  • Resolving open bugs in Bug Reports and Issues. While I want to fix everything, some minor issues are still acceptable as post-1.0 fixes. Help is most welcome here to clear off these items.
  • Work on Lighting review as outlined here. This will be another pre-release like #4 above so that modders can also tune lighting and materials in their mods (if applicable).
  • Finishing Localization as much as possible before 1.0. This will continue to be worked on post-1.0 until I've taken it as far as I'm able to. From there, it will be up to wider community to progress Localization.
  • Migrate technical pages and posts on Workshop blog to GitHub's Wiki pages, e.g. the modding and localization tutorials.
  • Create a better README and About Daggerfall Unity page on GitHub. Create new Wiki pages for installation, upgrading, common troubleshooting, and so on.
By the time 1.0 launches, I want the GitHub repository to be as independent as possible from the Workshop blog and forums. My goal is to unify the project to a common point of collaboration so that GitHub hosts all new Releases, Issues, and has a Wiki filled with relevant information.

The blog will remain for news and development stories. I want a return to posting about work in progress rather than just posting patch notes every month or so. You can read more about this here.

That's all for now. Lots of work to do still, but it helps to write it down. :)

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