Oolite Bulletins

Is there a description of the various recent oolite versions somewhere?

Basically I'm playing 1.69.1 at the moment and want to know if i should get 1.70 to get the shading and allow me to play some of the new OXPs (random hits and military i think) or if it will break the OXPs I'm in the middle of (UPS and Trident down).

As I understand it a rough summary is:
1.65 stable full release
1.68 stable full release with shaders
1.69 test release: shaders disabled, some new stuff, some new bugs
1.69.1 as 1.69 but less bugs and eject cargo gives debug message
1.70 test release: new scripting stuff but breaks some old OXPs?
1.71 in development, will be a full release

am i about right? should i go to 1.70? or should i wait for the next full release ie 1.71?

The only stable release from the list you mention is 1.65. 1.68 is a test release, which happens to be solid enough, hence many prefer downloading this to 1.65, so that they get stability plus all the goodies that were added since 1.65.

As far as I can remember 1.69 has shader support. It had also some serious bugs that prevented many scripts from running properly. Most of these were fixed when 1.69.1 came into play.

1.70 has many improvements, including but not limited to, the new scripting stuff. However, there are still some issues. Off the top of my head, some of these issues are the now famous laser purchase bug (you get insta-rich by buying a laser if your cash is less than double the laser price), equipment trade-in bug, problematic switching to/from strict mode, sub-entity related crashes, etc. I am not sure it breaks old oxps though, unless you refer to this particular version being more rigid in terms of syntax checking than previous ones. Usually this indicates a problem with the oxp and not the game itself.

Anyway, as far as I am aware, the current plan is that at some point, before the 1.71, there will be a 1.70.1 bug-fix-only release, that will be stable enough to be considered the Version Of Choice, at least until 1.71 makes it out. The decision regarding the if and when this will happen is at Ahruman's hands.

ok, so it sounds like i should stick with 1.69.1 for a while yet. Perhaps 1.70.1 will be stable enough to tempt me or perhaps I'll wait for 1.71.

cheers

it's proably a bit late now but perhaps stable releases should always be 1.x and test releases 1.x.y ?

Just to be clear, although 1.70 has its share of problems (just like 1.69.1 and everything before that), it also carries a lot of improvements over previous versions. The full list of these improvements is laid out in the announcement posts for the three supported platforms and it is up to you to weigh whether it's worth the upgrade or not. My advice would be: If you are starting with Oolite just now, use the stable version which will allow you to enjoy the game most. If you are a seasoned player, go ahead and use the latest versions and help us make them better.

right ok, so there aren't any real show stopping bugs in 1.70. i know about the laster buy/sell one but that's not a problem - if i wanted to cheat i'd just edit the savefile

To your initial question of a description: That's the release notes. Just go to the forum for your OS, and you will find a couple of threads like "Oolite version 1.67 is out", "Oolite version 1.69.1 is out" and so on. Just read the initial post of each thread and you will know exactly what was implemented in this version. Below that you will usually find some bug-reports.

As far as naming the versions is concerned: Each newly released version gets a version number that increments the previous number. There is no such thing as "1.n0 = stable version", "1.n1 = development version". For instance the last "official" version previous to 1.65 was 1.58. And before that it probably was 1.41. The general rule is: The "official" stable release is the one that you can download from Aegidian's website http://oolite.aegidian.org/ (which is currently 1.65). Everything discussed in this forum is about development, not end-user packages.

And third: God bless your confidence that 1.71 will be stable! I personally would not expect this too firmly. The only thing we know for sure is that through this dark and shady valley of development- and test-versions we are somehow on our way to the MNSR*. But none of us knows which version-number it will have. After all it's just a myth yet! Mind you, we could well see five of six more development versions, before perhaps Oolite 1.77 will be considered as an "official" release. So, in order to avoid disappointment, don't rely too much on waiting for 1.71. It may be as buggy as everlything else since 1.65. (1.66 for instance was so buggy that it was quite instantly replaced with 1.67; and has since then sunk into the "deep abyss of lost memories". )


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* = the Mythical Next Stable Release

i just wondered if there was something a bit shorter than the release notes for each. I guess I'm in the minority as most people just download the latest and get on with it or were actually involved in writing the release notes!

I've not had much time to play recently so didn't want to spend too much 'playing time' reading up on things

The problem is the last stable version misses a LOT of cool stuff. I'm getting worried that I'm missing out more cool stuff in 1.70. Once Trident down and UPS are finished I'll have done all the pre 1.70 missions so will be looking for something new. I believe that the new missions need 1.70.

There's so much good stuff that not in a stable release that it's perhaps beginning to feel like it's worth releasing it sooner rather than later - I'll keep my fingers crossed!

I'm basically decided to upgrade to 1.70 once my current missions are done anyway

Commander McLane wrote:

And third: God bless your confidence that 1.71 will be stable! I personally would not expect this too firmly.

I know I don’t…

Commander McLane wrote:

(1.66 for instance was so buggy that it was quite instantly replaced with 1.67; and has since then sunk into the "deep abyss of lost memories". )

Actually, it never existed at all, at least not as a binary release. Small mistake on my part.

what's the definiton of a stable release? is it just a case of everything on the to do list (up to a certain point) is done and nobody has found any more bugs in it whilst testing?

It’s a combination of not having a bunch of features in flux, having concentrated on bug fixes for a while, and having the energy to update web sites. ;-)

have you looked at using something like cruisecontrol to automate the build and publication to the websites?

If you have a suggestion for automating the bug-fixing process, I’d be interested.

Ahruman wrote:

If you have a suggestion for automating the bug-fixing process, I’d be interested.

Personally I would suggest an army of monkeys with typewriters. If you let them type long enough, they will produce a completely bug-free version eventually (and the complete works of Shakespeare on top of that!).

basically cruisecontrol is a program that monitors (a configurable area of) the source repository and calls a script if it changes.

You use something like NAnt, Ant, MSBuild etc to write the script which does something like the following:
- Gets everything out of the repository
- calls the compiler etc to build it
- runs any tests, validation etc
- packages up the build
- copies the packages to wherever

in practice this means whenever i check in at work the updated website (as that's what i'm buidling) appears on the test server a few minutes later so anyone in the company (and the customer) can have a look at what i've done.

Ahruman wrote:

It’s a combination of not having a bunch of features in flux, having concentrated on bug fixes for a while, and having the energy to update web sites.

Is there actually a set of features and bug fixes you and the other developers want to implement, or does everyone hop from new feature/bug to new feature/bug at their fancy? Without a destination, one tends to reach comfortable places mostly by accident .

Not that I am unhappy with new features that have come out, obviously...

Best wishes,
Oscar