Recodes

[Game_boy]

EDIT: Josh, I made this post in nonsense for a reason. Don't make it its own thread. It's also out of context now because I was partly responding to cheeseboy's style of posting. This wasn't an "attention forums" kind of post, it was deliberately offhand.

I was going to post something but I'll just quote myself from March, because looks like nothing's changed.

While being as aggressive as cheeseboy is pointless (the devs are mostly working on this for themselves rather than to an end goal), have you considered scaling back your aspirations? That is, not making something infinitely flexible or completely modular, and just focus on delivering, say, a 90% clone of GM6 by some not too distant time in the future.

Since then you have thrown out a couple more major systems with the promise of a ground-up rewrite. That's fine in a world with infinite time and fixed targets, but it is the reason why no functional version has been released. And by functional, I mean  the user don't have to understand how compilers and programming work to be able to i) run Enigma on their platform and ii) make a simple game by opening the GM6 file plus no more than minor changes.

I think it's time to admit you will not be delivering this with the original goals you posted on 64digits. I'm cool with that, I can see it's a hobby project and you enjoy all these rewrites and features, and I can see there are setbacks from intermittent commitment from all the devs.

If you still believe otherwise, my suggestion is a feature freeze. Leave ever major system exactly as it stands and work towards a finite feature list.

[IsmAvatar]

The parser was broken and high maintenance. We more or less would have had to keep updating it every time the kernel had a minor update, which was sorely detracting from our ability to solidify the existing systems and fixing the existing bugs, because Josh would always have to go and fix the parser again. A parser rewrite was unavoidable and necessary.

user don't have to understand how compilers and programming work to be able to

Almost sounds like a feature request.

At any rate, we were working on the install process to release something, when suddenly the parser broke. Once the dust settles from the new parser, it should be a simple matter of following the instructions on the Install page to have a working product that a user can simply run ENIGMA on their platform and then compile and run the existing example games, plus modify them or make their own game.

[Game_boy]

OK Ism, sounds good.

Nothing against this specific rewrite, just that this has repeated for many years now.

[IsmAvatar]

Yes, that gives you an idea of how fed up we finally are with having to maintain the Parser all the time. At the very least, this should significantly cut out maintainence costs of the parser, freeing up time to actually work towards a release and then implement necessary features, like "user[s not] hav[ing] to understand how compilers and programming work", and improving the install process so that it's easier and more user-friendly

[TheExDeus]

I have been bitching about that for years. When I was capable enough to do something about it I did. I added all of the functions I could think of to make this actually useful. Now it kind of is, just that it can't export a finished game. When that is done then its mostly finished.

Josh really likes to write parsers. We have known that for years.

[polygone]

I think after the parser is done it is near ready to ship as a proper release, go back to 64digits and places and see what they make of it.

I still think a couple of important things still need to be done though for ENIGMA to be properly accepted:
- parenting events really needs to be added (been asking for that for ages)
- the game settings need to be added (esp constants, and include files would be rather useful)
- polygon collisions is obv important and collision functions to match
- the windows widget system needs to be working as well

[Josh @ Dreamland]

The old parser was designed to bail on the first error. At first, it wasn't a problem, but as C++ continued to evolve and GCC continued to change, it was left unable to read the headers each time they were updated. Maintaining it became a pain in the ass. This new one takes a real beating, and still doesn't give up; plus, it gives us more information about the language, which opens the doors to giving us more tricks.

The number of advantages ENIGMA has over GM have declined since Yoyo started pulling budget out of the air to get code out. We're down to being faster and being free (and they're trying to threaten to get rid of the former advantage). I'm not interested in just being another Game Maker.

ENIGMA keeps getting bigger and better; we haven't launched a formal release because we really don't need one: People can check out the latest at any time. It's practically a release every time we commit. At some point, I will take the latest SVN version, package it up and mark it "stable" and go wave it at people. In the meantime, we'll stick with our Git revisions.

[Game_boy]

Josh if I wanted to start a topic on this I would have. I look like a dick now.

Thanks for context in last three posts.

[IsmAvatar]

Sorry for the minor loss of context, but the mods agree that this discussion is valuable to the community regarding General Enigma and understanding why we're doing what we're doing.

Also, none of us think you're a dick, and your post doesn't sound dickish. It's a professional concern, and expresses the concerns that others watching ENIGMA may have as well. We're glad you brought it up, we're happy to answer it, and we hope you don't mind too much if we share this with the rest of the community as well, rather than hiding it away in Off Topic.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

What Ism said.