feudalistic Dynasties

We reflected the development of the past years and we came to the decision to do a great revision. First of all we worked a design document out. This characterizes fDynasties in brief containing all relevant mechanisms which made up fDynasties. So we have now a more precise goal and way for the development. We also decided that fDynasties-0.0.3 will be the first playable prototype of fDynasties. All features to be implemented and how deep were determined. The implementation design was revised too.
Since then we made good progress. However we recognized that the FTK needed to be revised too. This is what we are doing at the moment. The structure of handling events and drawing is completely rewritten and improved. FKmenu, FKmenubar, FKtextfield, FKmessageDialog, FKselectfield and FKfileDialog are the last widgets which need to be reintegrated and revised. This was for all other widgets already done. Besides a new widget named FKscrollbar was added. A FKscrollbar is a vertical scrollbar. This replaces the scroll items on the upside and downside mentioned in the news item of 24.2.2008. Furthermore the cleanup is not any longer circumvented as mentioned in the last news item.
As soon as the revision of the FTK is finished we will publish screenshots of the new fDynasties version.

The editor is now ready. Creating, loading and saving a map is now done via graphical dialogs. Besides adding a playerstartposition is done via a graphical dialog too. There you can choose the player whose startposition should be set out of a list of players who do not have already a startposition. Furthermore changing between edges and no edges within the options window is ready. The next step is that changes update the setting within the corresponding config file. At the moment only the in-game variable is changed. In addition a few bugfixes were made.
However we recognized that the cleanup at the end of the program is circumvented by the way of exit the event loop. Even if the memory the program used is typically freed we will fix this.

The directory accessing structure is now ready, called FKfilesystem. Besides the file structure was changed. Now you can open, close etc. files only via the FKfilesystem. Furthermore the FKfile class is no longer a static class. So you have now your own file handle. This has an impact to the core fDynasties part. Therefore the next step will be to update the core fDynasties part according to the latest changes of the tool-kit. Besides the fileDialog is now ready.
In addition to updating the core fDynasties part the next tasks are integrating the fileDialog into the editor and finishing the integration of graphical dialogs in general into the editor for replacing the last command-line dialogs.

The website is now based on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and frames are not needed anymore. Furthermore the language could now be changed on every page, not only at the index page as it was before. The index page has changed, too. Besides the download page was updated with the presumably prerequisites for the next releases after the reconstruction.
Here we come to the current state of development. Since last time the development of the directory accessing structure was started, but not yet finished. Besides the autotool scripts where updated. This is an important step for the next release.
Here are some details of the next release, which will be the first one after restructuring was started. The release will be the version 0.0.3.0. The main features will be a full functioned map editor and an options window where you can change between edges and no edges visible. Other options like changing the language will follow in following releases. As you can see the game window with its basic game engine will be not part of the next release, which it was in the last two ones. The reason is that the restructuring of the game engine is at the moment not beyond the concept phase.

The listbox and the menu are now scrollable. However not with a scrollbar. Either on the upside or on the downside appears an item with an arrow if you can scroll in the certain direction. If you click on one of these both items the scrolling will be done in the according direction. As soon as you cannot scroll anymore into this direction the item disappears. The scrolling of the listbox is activated whenever the listbox has more items than could be displayed within it. In contrast the scrolling of the menu is activated, whenever the menu would otherwise overlap the screen.
Furthermore a fileDialog was added. However there is up to now no possibility for accessing the directory structure, because of that the fileDialog has no real use.
So it is necessary to implement a way for accessing the directory structure. This will be the next step. Afterwards the fileDialog could be finished. Then the editor can use a dialog for loading and saving a map as mentioned at the beginning of this year.

The tool-kit is by now enabled for UTF-8 text, e.g. the German umlauts can now be shown. Furthermore the lineedit is now scrollable whenever the contained text is larger than the area for showing the text. Besides inserting and deleting acts according to this. Therefore the lineedit is so far ready.

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

The tool-kit is now an important step further. The following widgets are new: dialog, messageDialog, textfield, menu, selectfield and listbox. The other changes are less visible, so I don't mention them here. The next step is to make the listbox and menu scrollable. This means for the listbox that a scrollbar appears whenever the listbox has more items than fit into it and for the menu that a scrollbar appears whenever the menu does not fit completly into the application window, which will occur mainly for the selectfield. Furthermore it should be possible to scroll with the cursor through a lineedit.
The map editor uses now the new menu widget instead of the commandline menu. Besides the commandline dialog for creating a new map was replaced by a dialog. As soon as the listbox and lineedit are further developed as mentioned before and a fileDialog was added the commandline dialog for loading and saving a map will be replaced by this fileDialog.
Not till then the feature of setting the options will be further developed.
Besides the concept of the new game-engine is strongly planned. However this is a good peace of craftsmanship. After all the new game-engine should be well planned so that in the future no such extensive restructuring will be necessary.

The map editor is now ready. There is a new icon for the player startpositions too. The new one is a sign containing the color of the player whose startposition it is. The icons of the buttons on the sidebar have the sign with a color which is not used for players. So it works as a general player startposition sign. The settings resolution and edges are part of the configuration files. The next step will be to make changing the settings available.
Besides I will add dialogs and menus to the tool-kit. At the moment the menu of the map editor is command-line based, which will be changed as soon as dialogs and menus are available.
Primary I hoped to finish a first development release at the end of this year. Unfortunately there are only two weeks left. So I cannot promise anything.
Besides the progress is at the moment really slow because I have very little time during the week. So there is only the weekend left. However there is other work on weekends too. So I try to make much progress as possible.

The new structure of feudalistic Dynasties is ready for the central parts. For the game engine part exists a draft and for some detailed parts the structure will be created short time before they are needed. The reimplementing of feudalistic Dynasties is still in progress. The map editor is nearly ready. The next step will be to set up an options window where some settings can be set like resolution, edges and no edges etc. . After that the game engine will be implemented. The game engine will implement some old things in a new structure, but also some new things.
So all in all there is still quite a lot of work. I think there will be a few development releases before the next full release.

Once again I will anounce some news after a long time. The tool-kit is now based on SDL_sge in addition to SDL, SDL_image and libsigc++. For that the SDL_ttf library isn't used anymore, because SDL_sge supports in addition to some graphical things also TTF fonts. The available widgets of the tool-kit are: button, label and a lineedit. Other widgets will be added when needed while reimplementing of the game. The game will be reimplemented after it will be restructured. At the moment we focus on restructuring of the game. We already made some UML diagrams about the old structure. With the help of these diagrams we develop at the moment a new better structure, which will be easier to understand and to handle.

After a long time I will announce some news. Last month the development of a tool-kit was started. This tool-kit will replace Paragui and the internal library The_Gui. So the announced restructering from 29.4.2007 has already been started. The basic structure is already finished. Now it is time to add bit by bit the several widgets. At the moment label and button are available. The rest will follow within the next one or to months. After the tool-kit will be finished the game itself will be restructured. Details will follow then.
Besides I would like to note that the tool-kit is still based on SDL and libsigc++. Therefore the game will still be based on these two libraries.

The website structure has now changed. For the information of each site is used an embedded frame. This was done, because there was in the news section in some browsers large space between the links (vertical direction).

We decided to restructure feudalistic Dynasties. First of all we are searching for an alternative GUI for paragui. This GUI should use SDL too. We made this decision because paragui is not developed anymore. So we cannot expect that there will be a new stable release after the 1.0.4 release. The 1.0.4 release is provided by many distributions. However from 1.0.4 to 1.1.8 there are many major enhancements. This is why we use 1.1.8. Unfortunately as I said there will be most likely no new stable release and because of that distributions will not provide a newer version than 1.0.4. Furthermore there are a few problems with paragui.
The other part of restructering is the game itself. The new structure of the game should contain of an engine and data files. So it is much easier and faster to add new items, make scenarios etc. . So it will consist of two parts: engine and data files. Unfortunately I'm bogged down with exams up to the middle of June.

Finally I can announce the release of fDynasties-0.0.2, the second pre-alpha release of feudalistic Dynasties. Please test it and tell me all about bugs and your opinions of the gameplay.

Certainly you have recognized that I was a little bit overhasty in the last news block with the assumed release date. Fortunately the new release is ready except of the changelog and a few changes in the documentary files. So after I wil have finished this and tested it on different computers and distributions I will be able to publish the release.

The second release is now in the last phase of the development, so it should not take more than a few weeks until the second release is ready for download. Besides there is a screenshot update, because there is a new image for the meadow terrain.

The second release will be later than asumed, because of my computer was not usable in the last days. However I can now work on the further development of the second release. Besides there is an update of the screenshot of the map editor of the second release.

The second release of feudalistic Dynasties will be presumably released at the end of december.

paragui-1.1.8 is now available from our sourceforge site, too. So you can choose the place were to download paragui between the official website, the link you can find in the download section, and here on our sourceforge site.

I am happy to announce the first release of feudalistic dynasties. Please test it and tell me all about bugs and your opinions of this game. You have to remember that this is a pre-alhpa release.

I am sorry that the planned release is once again later. The reason for it is that we have decided to wait until the configure script is ready. Now it is ready. At the moment were are fixing a few bugs. I hope we will be able to release it in the first weeks of October. This time it is more probably, because I will have autumn holidays from 2nd to 16th of October.

fDynasties 0.0.1 will release in August.

I am happy to announce that the homepage of feudalistic Dynasties is now available.