I’ve got only a handful of things remaining to finish before XMICAE is ready for a test release. Some of these might not even make it in to the first testing, depending on how ready I am when June 7th rolls around. I’d hoped to make the June 7th release be a public test, but it’ll probably be 0.0.0 in my version system and include a without-warranty source release under Apache 2.0. I should be able to start a private test this weekend, and release 1.0.0 as well as open it up for public testing some time the week afterward. Here’s the stuff I have left to do:
- Some UI sidebar stuff
- Removing old test files
- Adding in rolls
- Finish switching over to prepared statements.
Of these, I think that the rolls are the lowest priority, especially if I do a 0.0.0 release. I’ve come up with a solution for them that involves allowing both in-line and separate file roll documentation, meaning that it’s entirely possible to use rolls in separate places. My hypothetical 1.1.0 includes adding in “last XMI prompt” as an appropriate roll result, allowing reusable rolls (for instance, resting and healing).
The UI is the highest priority; it will include links to a prototype character sheet, allow players to resume or begin play flawlessly, and generally interact with XMICAE outside of manual URL entry like I’ve been using. Most of this simply involves putting a few links in. At 1.0.0 the UI won’t include any character information; I’m hoping to make this be a pop-up window with Javascript, which I grow decreasingly hesitant to use as XMICAE grows.
The SQL security upgrades are not necessarily going to make it into 0.0.0. I’ve been having a darned difficult time getting my prepared statements to execute in certain circumstances, even ones that appear to be called in identical situations to working ones. Once I get this working, however, I expect it to be relatively quick to finish up.
I also want to move my salt settings for password hashing into config.php. It’s only referenced two places, but if you mess it up users can’t log in, so it’s important to have it working consistently in both, and it’s also something that should be changed (in theory) for each installation of XMICAE.
Test files being removed is fairly easy. I’ll probably make them available separately, though you wouldn’t necessarily want them in a production environment.
I forgot to actually include the progress I’ve made here:
I squashed a couple bugs involving stokens (turns out I’d been using the function to check tokens for stokens, which worked in testing because I was careless and used a token/stoken named “test” in both tables), which makes most of the content I have written accessible now.
Trivia has been added; this is useful for people who might have large amounts of background setting or, in my case, historical information, to include. It is accessed in a configuration setting, much as being an admin is (except, unlike being an admin, users will be able to change this value themselves).
Also added in is an option to turn on line breaks between paragraphs. The main reason for this is that I don’t have indentation in right now, so this way you can decide for yourself whether to have an extra space (and seriously huge text flows) or have it all run together. Indentation will come soon-ish, but is low priority.
Looks like I’m not going to get test/source up this weekend. I hope to have the test/source code up by Tuesday with everything but the final rolling and/or prepared statements working (and hopefully the prepared statements will be working, but just not fully replace the old query system). I have the UI working, though it’s not “pretty” yet. I need to seriously go back and beat up my CSS until it gets less ugly.