Well, what a week this has been since release! I’m pleased to say the release overall went very well; I have been sent only a few bug reports, and almost all those I have got are pretty easy to fix (more on this in a moment). The feedback has been extremely positive and I can’t quite say what it means to have such a positive response after such a long period of development – and so much challenging personal stuff in the intervening years as well. The post I made on r/roguelikes, the blog post from last week and the release tweet were the three main parts of the release that got a lot of attention, but it was gratifying to see my posts on forums I hadn’t gone to in a long time – like Bay12 or TIGSource – also get a bit of love. The release even got re-tweeted by Derek Yu!
Although I thought it unlikely that the release would be a complete flop (which I say not out of pomposity but just from observing pre-release interest), I couldn’t help but shake the fear that simply nobody would care after such a long development gap. Five years is a long time, and – ahem – quite a lot has happened in the intervening years. As such, it truly warms my heart to see that if anything, quite the opposite is the case! Perhaps I should always do five-year releases…
(I kid, I kid).
More seriously: in the next week or two I am going to work on and then release 0.8.1, a bug fix release. As above, the volume of reported bugs have been pretty small (focused mostly on a few conversation options which don’t always work, and a few scattered issues elsewhere) and having looked through and catalogued all the reports, there isn’t really anything here I would expect to be insurmountable. This coming week I need to really hit the ground running both on prep for this term’s teaching and on revisions for several journal articles in the works, but once that’s done I’ll be getting this out some time in January. It might be next week, it might be in a few weeks, but it’s on its way.
So, what next on the blog? Well, in the next few weeks I will be posting the 0.8.1 bugfix release, as well as a 2020 year-in-summary about game dev and academic work, and probably a post about the games I played in 2020 during lockdown and what I thought about them (much like many others I have probably played more games this year than the past three or even four combined, and I have a lot of thoughts I want to share). After that I’ll post an update about where I, the game, the blog, etc, are all going from here (as soon as I figure it out myself!).
I’m also working on a lengthy and detailed post-mortem about URR (which doesn’t necessarily mean this is the last release, but this is definitely the time to write this) and maintaining a project of this size, suggestions for people who aspire to make mega-games, and so forth. I don’t know when this will be finished and posted, but it is on its way.
So: thanks again for everything, folks, and I’ll see you all probably next weekend, or if not, certainly the weekend after. Take care in 2021, and I do hope you’ve met some strange and interesting folks in URR.
Congratulations on getting 0.8 released! Will URR become open source if you decide to not work on it in the future at all?
Thank you Garaga! I really appreciate it; though no open sourcing, I’m afraid.
Honestly, I am super impressed you’ve gotten this far with such a huge project. It would be one thing if it was your job, you know? But it isn’t, it’s a side/hobby project, and you’ve faced a lot of challenges over the last few years as well. So many ‘super projects’ like this never make it past 0.3 or so.
It took some serious dedication to get URR this far. Very few people ever pull this sort of thing off as a hobby.
Jonathan, thank you! That’s really kind of you and I appreciate the message a lot. I cannot lie, it does feel very, very good to have finally got to this point.
I’m so glad to see 0.8 finally out – but a little frustrated that it happened when I don’t have access to a Windows computer 😛
In all seriousness, well done seeing it through all the way to today.
Thanks Kevin! Oh no, what timing – but if you have a Linux machine though, I think people have been able to make it work there :).
Hi Kevin and Mark
I am in the same situation. I have just moved to the new m1 chip from apple.
I tried to run URR with crossover for Mac with no luck.
But I have now installed windows in paralells. with a tech preview of an arm preview of windows 10 in parallels. Works very well. I will NOT put out any links but search for parallels technical preview and windows arms preview. It is possible now to run virtual windows on even the new apple silicon.
I am sure a URR build for Linux and Mac will happen sometime. But I am happy I can try this out even on the latest Mac right now
Now I can finally test URR 0.8.
Hi Jan, thank you for this detailed info! I’m sad that URR is proving tricky on Mac, although I’m also pleased that you were able to find a way around it. A Linux build is absolutely something I’d like to get out soon, though a Mac one will always be tougher. We’ll see!
I am so glad that you finally managed to get .8 out the door! I’ve been following since .7 at least, I’ve been coming here about once a month looking for that sweet sweet .8 news!
It’s amazing traversing the world and seeing what you’ve accomplished here. No bugs yet, either, but I’ll let you know if I find any.
I hope you do carry forward with this project. It’s a triumph of procedural generation, but including a main quest of the sort you originally described would add a lot, and would provide an incentive for people to see and experience the world you’ve built. Also, (and forgive me if I’m speaking out of ignorance) I suspect that incorporating a main quest and some traditional roguelike elements like combat would ultimately be a much more manageable undertaking than all that you added for 0.8.
Congrats again, I bet it felt great to get this out the door 🙂
Eddie, thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a long comment! I very much appreciate it, and particularly the kind words – I’m *really* glad you’re enjoying the world :). As for carrying on: I do too, and it may well happen, and if it does I’ll be pushing for 1.0 with a main quest as fast as possible (although for a project of this size, in my spare time, “fast” has a particular meaning). I wouldn’t count on combat, but I do want a main quest in there if at all possible. And oh gosh, yes, it felt fantastic, and I’m really enjoying releasing a new bug-fix every month or so as well, at least at the moment; it feels really good to be “active” like this again.