Week 12

Saludos!

A truly complicated week has passed. First thing first: I'm still not ready with the Coat of Arms scene. But, the complications have been fought through.

While I'm sorry for that, my focus has been continously distracted throughout the week; I've spent a great deal of time trying to cut the waiting time for our licenses, and I also had to decide whether to help Sándor proceed with his tasks related to the world map, or focus on my own topics at the cost of significantly raising the chance his works would need to be re-done or that he could have gotten stuck. I chose the first, and I was making him custom world map test runs (and do some related tweaking / coding) for most of my remaining time. On the plus side, it also means that our game map section is getting better and better.

The recent Unity update also became a bigger problem than it initially seemed. More detailed tests showed that most of our third party packages didn't play well with Unity's new, optimized render and there are also dependencies where the source library isn't updated yet, so the dependent packages don't work correctly. Our login screen, for example, seems perfect in the Editor, but cannot be compiled to nearly anything and some libs start throwing exceptions immediately when called. I have updated some of these packages, but there are still open issues, waiting on the assets' developers to fix and update their packages. Fixes are promised to be rolled out in a week or two, and none of the remaining issues block the CoA scene (though there is some negative impact).

As per the server and other licenses; we've already hinted that our releases are hindered by waiting for things. But as the weeks come and go, and we're still just waiting - even with a Plan B -, this uncertainty grows into increased frustration. This all is linked to Phase 1 - while we have the signed documents, the proper return of some of the Unity assets, software and service licenses or hardwares from some former 2Pence members to the original investors are still in progress. Some of those assets Project Feudums bought from the investors when we re-launched, but because the investors still haven't received them, we're just... waiting.  Their arrival has been due for months. That's the background in a nutshell.

Now, the decision is, it's not worth waiting any longer - we want to publish our first releases in a timely manner, so we started to re-invest in all these resources even if it's more expensive. These purchases I've started this week, and should be completed through the next one (though in some cases it might be a bit tricky as some parties changed their ToCs or have been acquired by new owners in the meantime). I just hope the "delay" can be at least scheduled this way again.

I've also created an extra issue for myself by updating to Win10's Creator Update. Due to all the stability and driver issues, I wish I had waited for it's first patch. Just like Microsoft now also suggests (albeit a bit too late for me), don't update if you haven't already or unless you're prepared to spend a day fixing your OS.

That's for the weekly complications and their resolutions. Our progress in listings:

Weekly Status

 Game Client

1. Updated both the Selection and the Actions bar of the Coat of Arms scene - I hope it's more clean than it was. Some related coding and fine-tuning is due on the scene, like the filter's icon, and I feel that part a bit crowded. Also, buttons should still find their final places.
2. I've made some tweakings and smaller fixes on our Game Map code and it's random map generator, and tested and updated the map with new graphic assets from Sándor.
3. I had to test every scene again due to some of the most important packages turning out to be broken under Unity 5.6. I've updated those that already had a new version available, and also fixed our localization code & assets. 

^{This how it currently looks like. Maybe a "bit" crowded on the right... But there is so much to show! :)}

 Platform & Game Server 

1. Steve now has a working Player Module - website integration on the clone site. After some refactoring (and once the Player Module is hosted on a live server), it could be uploaded to this live site.
2. Gabor finished enhancing the Bugreport feature and wrote unit tests for the new services (unit testing is a standard software testing / code quality assurance method in business development. Unit tests can automatically check each existing unit (ie. features) upon changing anything in the codebase, or can be ran at regular intervals, ensuring existing units won't get accidentally corrupted by a new feature or a seemingly unrelated fix). 

 Website 

1. No updates yet.

^{Overview mode is getting it's facelift.}

 Next Step 

• Next week is once again a 4 days one for both the Instait developers & Sándor.
• We still continue on Plan B, but once the licenses are bought again, we'll immediately upload the servers to a live environment and start tying this site to the Player Module. This hopefully begins next week.
• On client side, I still have to replace one of the most important packages as it has been recently discontinued as a paid package and their free one isn't compatible with the older paid version. This means all the related works should be backed up and manually re-done. This, and the remaining tasks on the CoA release are my priority.
• We still want to publish the offline CoA Creator update for Vanguards next week. If you're a Vanguard, please visit the Vanguard Barracks section of the Meeting Hall for more details.

See you in May!