News for March 2006

One month ago I promised I'd be making fortnightly progress reports for L3DT 2.4. Hmmm…later better than never, here it is:

The hoopla over text file formats has been settled. I've updated the following files to XML:

• Map group files (.mgf) are now project files (.proj).
• Climate files (.cli) are now '.cli.xml'.
• Application settings (.ini) are now '.ini.xml'.
• Map definition files (.def) are now '.def.xml'.
• Water body list files (_WBL.txt) are now '_WBL.xml'.

As a consequence of these changes, much of the L3DT file I/O code has been greatly simplified and centralised, which should make it easier to maintain, and also more easily allow for future improvements if required. In all cases I've included a backwards-compatible loader for the old formats, but there won't be a write-capacity for those formats.

I've got a climate manager/editor interface up and running. As many users may know, this is a feature that has been requested on numerous occasions for quite some time now, since editing the climate files manually was rather messy. The new user-interface (some screenshots here) automates some parts of this process, and eliminates the nasty and largely undocumented incorrect-formatting issues that occasionally popped-up with user-edited files.

Before I unleash this on the public, however, I'm going to do some extended testing to smooth-out any unintuitive speed-bumps in the user-interface. This testing will involve writing several new climates, as well as re-writing my walkthrough tutorial on making a new climate to explain the new process (currently very incomplete). I figure if I can use it, and I can explain it, and neither take too much effort, then it will be sufficiently complete for community beta-testing.

Oh yes, the climate editor will be included in both the Standard (free) and Professional (commercial) editions of L3DT 2.4, with no difference in functionality.

I had hoped to have the scripting system fully operational by now, but numerous distractions and other commitments have prevented this from happening. I still expect to include this in the final L3DT 2.4 in July, but I can't yet say when it will be ready for a pre-release evaluation.

One significant change from L3DT 2.3 to 2.4 is a compiler upgrade (from VC6 to VC7). Unfortunately, this has not gone as smoothly as one might have hoped; I'm getting vastly different behaviour in some important routines. While I have debugged enough faults to have a roughly-workable copy of L3DT under VC7, there are still quite a lot of essential bits that are very, very broken. VC7, it seems, is a harsh mistress. Nevertheless, continuing to use the 8-year-old VC6 was starting to feel a little untenable, so the shift to VC7 was inevitable and is now irreversible. I'll just have to sort out the new bugs.

I'm mildly optimistic that I'll have a pre-release ready some time in April. That will include the climate editor, some new climate files, all the new XML file formats, an updated L3DTVi2 (the viewer), and some basic geo-referencing support. The first pre-release is likely to be the Standard Edition, as this has less features in need of debugging, and a pre-release of the Professional Edition will follow some time after that (May/June). I'm still holding to the July release date for the final L3DT 2.4.

As anyone who has e-mailed me recently will know, I'm rather sluggish at replying to correspondences at present. The bad news is that this situation is not likely to change soon, as I have to commit much more time to my studies this year as I have in the past. The up-shot is that I recommend support or general queries be addressed to the L3DT community forums¹⁾, which is now well-established with a number of knowledgeable gurus. I'll certainly add my two-cents should any problems arise that can't otherwise be solved.

If you'd like to leave a comment regarding this progress report, please do so in this forum thread.