Adam's Lair Forum

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

After all this time without development news, I guess it's time for a big changelog at least:



It's a big wall of text like that, so let's try to sum it up a bit and name the few big things that were going on since my last update on Duality development:

• As reported earlier, former indie studio BatCat Games have released their Duality game Onikira on Steam Early Access. But not only did they do that, we've also talked a lot in the mean time about their internal Duality fork and the stuff that can or should be merged back. In the above changelog, you will notice a lot of entries with a "BatCat" note sticking to them.. these are the ones that were done either completely by or in collaboration with them. Performance improvements, Bugfixes, Screen Resolution changes at runtime and there's more! Summing up: Those guys are awesome.
  
• The former "temp wasteland" Duality folder "Source/Media" is no longer a wasteland, but carefully organized by Duality to mirror folder structure and file names of each files imported Resources in the "Data" folder. It has achieved the state of a folder that can safely be checked into version control systems and act as an actual source folder for your game Assets. You can also import new Assets by dragging their files from a "Source/Media" subfolder directly into the project view. Duality will never modify your source files on its own.
  
• Several small usability improvements, like the ability to double-click on a Log View entry in order to highlight objects and Resources that were passed as parameters of that log entry.
  
• I currently have no "big new feature" tasks going on and will likely focus on general improvements, more documentation and samples in the near future, as I realize that a lot of potential users might simply be "scared away" by the lack of some easy "How to do X" samples.

Please note that most of these changes are only available on GitHub right now - binary release will follow once it's tested thoroughly!

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

I've published a new binary release via NuGet. When updating, I would suggest to do a full update by hitting "Update All" in the Package Manager dialog.

Since this is a rather big update, please let me know in case you're experiencing any problems during or after the update process.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

Warning: Breaking Changes

I've just released an important bugfix-update that required an API change in the IFileImporter interface. All editor plugins that provide new file importers will need to be updated in order to work again.

Duality Users, do not update your Duality version unless all third-party editor plugins you're using have been released after this date. The Package Manager dialog provides this information.

Duality Plugin Developers, please update your editor plugins accordingly and release a new version depending on AdamsLair.Duality.Editor 1.3.0.

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Sorry to break your stuff - I try to avoid this as much as possible, but certain changes can't be done without doing so, and unfortunately, this was a semi-critical fix. I will try to come up with a better solution for situations like this in the future. Suggestions appreciated.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

Just pushed another Update with some small but neat tweaks and micro-features:

• Added more intuitive update compatibility icons to the Package Manager and some tooltips explaining them.
• Added a "Re-Install all Packages" function to the Package Manager, in case the package system gets screwed up. This should be a nice reset.
• Duality now loads debug symbols of its plugins when they're located in the Plugins directory, allowing it to include line numbers in logged stack traces.

Let me know if you spot something unusual.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

Opened, Modified and Closed a lot of issues in the tracker. If you'd like to weigh in with your opinion or ideas on future changes, feel free to have a look

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I have pushed some new Duality binaries dealing with license agreements for third-party packages. When installing one that requires an additional agreement, a dialog will be displayed, with a link and transcript of the license text. Not agreeing will result in not installing the package.

This should allow plugins to add proprietary binaries (such as the Spine library) as dependencies without getting into sketchy territory by not informing the user about non-OSS licensing.

There is also a first time startup dialog coming up for Duality in general. It also displays a license agreement which the user is required to accept. Don't worry it's just the MIT Open Source license text. It is there because of not being a lawyer and wanting to make sure everyone has seen that "can't be held liable" clause from the license text before using Duality.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

In case anyone wonders what that new Documentation package is: I have moved the external help file DDoc.chm to an actual Duality package, so it can be updated. Previously, this wasn't possible as it was not part of any package and merely included once in the initial download .zip file.

I have also upgraded my toolset to VS2013 in preparation for a future upgrade from .Net 4.0 to .Net 4.5.1, which is not possible with VS2010.

Due to internal changes at how Microsoft organizes their files and a little hack that is required to cope with this, you might experience issues when trying to create a new (non-empty) Duality project while using a Visual Studio version below 2013: Under these circumstances, Duality may no longer be able to automatically build the GamePlugin for you while configuring the new project. This is absolutely non-critical: In case you run into this, just build it yourself once, when the editor has restarted in the new environment for the first time.

Alternatively, you can either upgrade to any version of VS 2013, or open DualityEditor.exe.config and delete the following block:



Again, you will likely never need this since you're either using VS2013 anyway, or don't use the affected feature set often enough to notice. Just putting it out there if someone comes searching.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)

A lot of bugfixes in the past two weeks, nothing too big. Today I've been working on the PackageManager dialog a little more, tweaked it to improve load times and also improving how it handles Package Compatibility.

If a package or any of its dependencies differ in a minor version from their corresponding local packages, they will be deemed "likely compatible", if the differ in a major version number, they will be considered "likely incompatible". When viewing packages in the online repository and deciding which ones to install, the ones that are likely incompatible will be marked as such using a new icon - similar to updates that might introduce incompatibilities for other installed packages.

Also, a MessageBox will ask the user to confirm the operation if any of it involves introducing a likely incompatibility. He can still click "Yes" and hope to be lucky (which may work in certain cases!), but at least everyone is warned

This is going to become very important in preparation for the next "bigger" update, which may change API in critical places. So in order to avoid breaking everything for an unsuspecting user, a warning and info system is now in place to make sure it is obvious that an update may not always be a simple drop in. Taking the leap from, say, Duality 1.6 to 1.7 will usually work without issues, but to 2.0? That's not quite as easy. It doesn't really affect Duality's core packages themselves, as they're always compatible to each other, but it's more about what custom packages users add and for which Duality version they have been built.

Most importantly, the recent Package Manager Dialog update covers the following situations:

1. Updating a Package, passing a major version gap: Warning icon, user confirmation required.
2. Installing a Package that is either too old or too new: Warning icon, user confirmation required.

And hopefully, that's enough to help users not to run into problems here.

As a side note, some UI elements have also been updated: There's a License link now, and Release Notes will be displayed in a scrollable text box, rather than a label.

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Blog | GitHub | Twitter (@Adams_Lair)