Let's make active development more visible

[DaVince]

For a while, I'd been getting the impression that the game engine was kinda dead. Then I started actively participating on Github a few days ago, and it turns out that there's actually a lot of active development.

Problem is, you can't really tell from the outside. The website hasn't changed in forever, and the latest version 0.23.0 has been released June, 2019.

As a result, I think a lot of people aren't really attempting to use the engine, or they get stuck midway and abandon their efforts. I think this is definitely a pity, because Excalibur is one of the only nicely fleshed out Typescript-based game engines out there. I like a lot of its paradigms and feature set.

As such, I'd like to think about what could be done to get the word out there. I think there are possibilities for both the Excalibur devs as well as the whole community.

For one: could we have a patch release of 0.23.1, just to release the bug fixes in the last year and to keep the project 'fresh'?

I have some ideas for the website as well:

- Show some sort of Github activity on the Excalibur front page.

- Track down games to add to the Gallery. Also add dates and Excalibur versions to the games that are already there.

- Show some previews of games made with it on the front page.

- Add more documentation.

I do a fair bit of front-end development so if there are any urgent wishes here I'd love to contribute. :)

Additionally, I'm making a larger, rather ambitious game with Excalibur. I'm thinking of contributing some tutorials for various topics, but which ones are the most desired? (And you can bet I'll be advertising Excalibur left and right when the game gets to a certain point!)

[DaVince]

Scratch that "0.23.1" comment please, I just noticed there's only one milestone left for 0.24.0 :)

https://github.com/excaliburjs/Excalibur/milestone/32

Op donderdag 16 april 2020 17:21:32 UTC+2 schreef DaVince:

[Erik Onarheim]

I fully agree, we fell out of our regular release cadence (ideally ~2 months) and would like to get back to that rhythm. For the team, a few life events happened so it stalled things out for a while.

We'll get something on the calendar soon (ideally within 30 days but no promises) to at least release our current master bug fixes.

I like your ideas for the website, we will discuss with the team, but I think we can get behind these.

We are always wanting contributors! We welcome any help you can provide.

DaVince, if you would be interested in chatting over hangouts or zoom let me know and we can work out a time. I'd like to get your take on your game and how Excalibur can help in general :D 

We working on some improvements to the API usability/features in our roadmap (https://github.com/excaliburjs/Excalibur/issues/1161) that will be breaking changes, I will definitely take you up on more advertising as we get past those. Graphcis API Redo & ECS support being the big features coming down the road.

Thanks again for all your help!

-Erik

[DaVince]

It's good to know a release in on its way! And life events always come first, of course.

I sent you an email regarding meeting up some time. :)

Op donderdag 16 april 2020 17:49:11 UTC+2 schreef Erik Onarheim:

[Erik Onarheim]

I'm happy to report v0.24.1 just shipped!

Let us know how it goes!

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[DaVince]

Awesome! My game now runs on the latest release without locking up.

You might want to make a release thread for exposure! :)

Op vrijdag 24 april 2020 05:30:34 UTC+2 schreef Erik Onarheim:

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