Development Update: Weeks of July 29th and August 5th

We're going to be starting a new regular blog post sequence to keep you updated on our status and changes that are going within the project. During times of rapid activity, this should run every week; other times will be every few weeks. This post will be a long one, with developments from the past two weeks.

• Git Repo split: The Git repo split that we've been planning has been finished. We now have two separate repositories -- one for our engine, which is our current development focus, and one for our game, which will come later. This makes it easier on us and on packagers to separate the engine from the game in releases. This also makes it easier for any users of the engine -- they don't have to download, build, and install the entire Humm and Strumm game to develop a game using our engine. We're really excited about our plans, which set us apart from the other FOSS engines. We hope game developers will be, too.
• C++11 requirement: This one has been a major decision for us. C++11 is still very new, and compiler implementation of it is lacking in many areas. However, it gives us amazing new functionality that is hard to get otherwise (specifically, standard <regex>, shared_ptr<T>, and most importantly, multithreaded awareness and standard thread classes).

New Contributor

I've just joined the project to help out with development. My name is Tim Walters or 'realmz' online. Some of areas I've experience with include Linux development, Windows development and OpenGL.

Next Steps

Now that the 0.6 release is finished, we are now able to concentrate on planning what will go into our next few releases. We have some big changes coming up, and some fun changes, too.

Our first orders of business are two house-cleaning matters:

• Multiple Repositories: From the start, we have designed the Humm and Strumm Game Engine to be general-purpose, not tied specifically to the Humm and Strumm game. It should be possible to use our engine in any sort of 3D game, such as a First Person Shooter or some sort of Role Playing Game (although we don't claim our design is optimal for all genres).

  On our current infrastructure, however, downloading and using the engine as a library in your own game requires that you also download the Humm and Strumm game (which, granted, is not existent at the moment). To build the engine, you have to also build the game. This is problematic for anyone wishing to play with the engine itself.