Destroying Textures to free system resources

Engines, Libraries and Tools Xith3D Forums
#21

I thought about this today, too. But I’m more for a 1.0-beta release.

I guess, when the model loaders are all ported (btw. Could you please port the Cal loader, Amos?), the HUD is ready (List, ComboBox, TextField) and Terrain code is complete, the API is stable. Then we should release a 1.0-beta1.

I also thought about modifying the download section on xith.org. There shoud be three versions for download: “current stable release”, “current beta release” and “community build release”. I think we should build a community buld release very soon, so that people can make use of the current API and features. And as a careful guess I think we should be able to release the first beta of 1.0 this year.

What do you think?

btw. I have concrete imaginations about hte new download section and would like to design it. I hope I can do this this night together with the community build release.

Marvin

#22

I would suggest a short term poll of users first to identify any killer problems prior to a release. the failures of the OBJ loader is a killer problem.

#23

Yes, it is. And I’ll now have a look at it. But this is not a problem of the API, but implementation. And it is exactly, why I suggested to first release a beta version with a stable API and when we sorted out all the implementation bugs, then we can release a final version.

Marvin

#24

Please explain differences between “stable”, “beta”, and “community”. I think these names aren’t really appropriate. I like Mandriva’s naming : “cooker”, “community”, “official”.
“Cooker” means Warning ! it’s very likely to contains bugs of all sort but on the other hand you have the latest and greatest features, and can report bugs quickly…
“Community” means it’s reasonably stable, though you don’t have lots of things to adjust for each release, it’s nearly stable, no feature in “community” is newer than eg. ~2 weeks (of use)…
“Stable” means that you can use it for your game release : it has been thoroughly tested with several community releases with less and less bugs.

#25

Well, names can be discussed :).

stable = stable API, tested, can be used in games
beta = stable API of the coming stable release, but not totally bugfree
community = very fresh build from SVN. Latest and greatest features

I think, “stable” and “beta” are very common names for what it is meant to be and should be used. OK, “Community” is not so common and Cooker is ok. Some projects use “unstable” for this, which says exactly what it is, but doesn’t encurage users to try it out. So Cooker is better. “Alpha” would be anther good solution. If nobody has a better idea, I think, we can use “stable”, “beta” and “alpha” or “Cooker”.

Marvin

#26

I’m for “stable”, “community” and “cooker”.
“alpha” and “beta” terms refer to a linear progression in one’s program releases. You have pre-alpha, beta, and then final release. Xith3D is being developed as lots of small cycles.

Well, just my 2cents, what do the others think ?

#27

But “community” does not mean, what I want to achive with this release. A beta version is a version “promising” to include all the functionality the final version will include. But is not fully tested and not fully bugfree. We need such a version. We can test everything on our own, but will never find any bug. Only by encuraging people to use this version (and not the latest stable), all bugs can be found. Beta also means “almost ready and more features than the latest stable”.

Maybe it sounds like we need four versions: “stable”, “beta”, “community”, and “cooker”. But who wants to maintain all these versions ??? And everybody would be confused by all these versions. So three are just enough. And we will certainly continue to develop the way we did: Just code everything we want and once decide to to release the current code. Only by doing this beta stuff to encurage users to try the version we can get a branch really stable.

So I am for: “stable”, “beta” and (“alpha” | “Cooker” | “Community”).

Marvin

#28

OK so I am for “stable”, “beta”, and “cooker”.

I modified the site, have a look

#29

Wow. looks just great. Except one thing. The sidebar is not wide enough the display all the content in it without overlapping. Maybe the sidebar needs to be made wider. And is it possible to make the page take the whole screen width? I hate pages being fixed to 800er width. Our audience is not built by our grandmas using with an 800x600 resolution. Having with=screen-width would espeacially help in the board.

Marvin

#30

I’ll see what I can do with the template file (may be easy, may be hard, you never know…)…

#31

OK, thanks.

#32

My issue with using the latest SVN code is that there always seems to be some incompatibilities between my code and the latest SVN… so i don’t use the latest unless there is something i absolutely need.

#33

Fair enough. It seems you “beta releases” are the best for you (“stable” don’t contains enough features, and “cooker” are too quickly changing…)

#34

Yeah, the next beta is the right one for you. It will be released this year.