Version 1.0 Feature Freeze

OK, in the last post I said that we had reached 1.0 alpha, but once again, I'm going to have to take that back. I've been thinking about it, and there are a few more features that we need in version 1.0. So in this post, I'm going to list those extra features here. But this is the final list of features for version 1.0. Any other new features will have to wait until version 1.1. This is the 1.0 feature freeze!

1. Change the View menu to a Window menu.
2. Add a view menu that lets the user reset the view, or view along a coordinate axis (like the x-axis).
3. Add a select menu, that has the option to deselect everything (space bar) or select more (selects adjacent objects).
4. Allow for advanced modifier/primitive options. For instance, you want to add a cylinder, which has a certain number of sides by default. But lets say you want more or less than the default of 16 sides. You can click on the little box on the right end of the menu item to choose specific options before adding in the cylinder. Many modifiers do not have this, but a few do. Wings indicates that you can do this with a simple box on the right side of the menu item.

Those are the only requirements left for version 1.0. Additionally, there are a number of other things that still need to be done before the final version of 1.0 is released, including some form of a User's Guide, the mouse cursor needs to be hidden (and not actually move) when you activate a modifier, normals need to be fixed, the menu bar needs to be readjusted to center the mode buttons and add in open, save, undo, and redo buttons on the left side, and I would like to also start putting together an art gallery of work made in The Forge. Many of these things will only come in time.

Also, one further note. In my last post, I mentioned that I had an alpha version ready, but it was extremely buggy. I said at the beginning of this post that it was technically not an alpha version yet, but I've fixed the real killer bugs in it, and it is fairly stable now. Not perfect, but reasonable. I will be releasing the first public version of The Forge within a few days. I'm just working out the details of a good deployment scheme, and the world will be able to get a free copy of The Forge! Speaking of that, let's add one more thing to the list of things that need to be done by the final release of version 1.0: a good deployment scheme.

The Forge at Initial Alpha

Good news! The Forge is at the initial alpha version! That means that all major features for version 1.0 have been implemented! There is a long way to go before there's a stable release version of 1.0, but the project has come a long way as well.

I'll be straitforward though. This version is extremely buggy. I need to get it a bit more stable before I'll feel comfortable releasing an alpha version to the world. Most of the serious bugs that I'm running into (they're bad enough to make the program alltogether useless) come from operations that leave the mesh invalid (messing up the winged-edge data structure). So I've written some code to validate a mesh, and ensure that it is valid. Once this is working for all of the modifiers and the primitives, I'll be uploading a copy to the web so others can play around with it. Even when those bugs are worked out, there will still be a ways to go. And let's not forget that version 1.0 is as simplified as it possibly can be, and only minimally useful. But this is just the first step in what will hopefully be a useful program at some point in the future!

New Changes and Thesis Plans

I've spent a little time working on the point deletion modifier over the last little bit, and added in some stuff for making sure that a mesh is valid. It is still not complete, but all I'm working on is the point deletion and face deletion modifiers, and then we'll have a functioning alpha version.

Also, I set up Mantis (a bug tracker) locally, but when my new website is built, it will be migrated online. I'm pretty excited about all of that!

Now for the bad news.... I just spent an hour doing this, when I should have been either asleep, or working on my thesis. I think I'm going to have to put a temporary ban on all of my fun projects until the end of the month, including this one. Sorry :(

Not Dead Yet

I just wanted to post a short note to say that this project is not dead yet, just temporarily on hold. I'm still trying to finish my thesis, and I've decided that some of these extra projects are just taking up too much time. So I've put many of them on hold until after my thesis is complete.

In addition, I have been bogged down with rebuilding my own website, so that I can move my tutorials off of Wikidot. I used to really like Wikidot, but they've started adding in a bunch of ads and other junk to all of the pages (which they promised they wouldn't do). In addition, Wikidot doesn't have all of the features that I would have liked, so I figure it is about time to move away from Wikidot and on to my own platform, which I've been working on in my spare time.

But within a couple of months, I should be able to move forward with this project. In the meantime, you still might be able to hope for a few small fixes, and possibly a public development release.

Once I move away from Wikidot, I'll be able to set up things like a bug/feature tracker, which will make this project much more useable in the future. Perhaps it is not still unreasonable to have version 1.0 release candidates by the end of 2009.