Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:02 am

I have released today's update to 3.19. I'll keep doing daily updates as long as people keep finding new bugs in the new table/list code.

Please see the Version History for details on bug fixes.

I also had some questions via email about version numbers. So here is how it works:

1) First number is the "Major" version number. This is incremented when significant new features are added to CMUD. This is the version used to enforce the "free upgrades for 2 years" policy. However, Beta versions typically allow players to continue to use their previous version license and do not require an upgrade. However, Beta versions have a hard-coded drop-dead expiration date in them.

2) The second number is the incremental version number. This number is increased whenever something new is added or when general bugs are fixed. Typically you can expect a new incremental version every month or so.

3) The letter at the end is the "quick update" version. When a letter is added to a version, this means that the base version had some serious bugs and that a quick update was needed. All users of the base version should updated to the patched version asap. Typically these quick updates are provided on a daily basis after a previous release until the major new issues are fixed.

So, you are seeing a lot of "quick update" letter versions because so many low-level changes were made in the 3.18 and 3.19 base versions. The bugs fixed in these quick updates are typically new bugs that only started happening recently with the new base version.

In 3.18 the low-level code for the string lists and database variables was changed. There were many quick updates to deal with those problems. In 3.19, the low-level code for optimizing the storage of variables in the *.pkg file was changed to improve performance. That was a new "feature", so the incremental version was increased. We are seeing a lot of "quick update" letter releases that are both fixing new issues caused in 3.19, but also still fixing new issues caused by the 3.18 changes.

Hope that makes sense to people wondering why I'm adding lots of letters to the end of the version number. Hopefully we will soon have all of the new bugs introduced by 3.18 and 3.19 fixed and I can go back to a normal release time schedule. Until then you'll continue to see these almost-daily quick updates.

Finally, I did update the version given by the automatic "check for new version" feature in CMUD, which is why some people have been posting to the forum who are not hard-core beta testers. I did this because these new versions need to have more people beating on them before I can dare to make a new Public Version. The last time I had updated this version file was for 3.17, so you'll see a lot of people trying to go from 3.17 to 3.19x and learning what it really means to be using a true "beta version" of CMUD ;)