6.13/6.14 Plans - Launcher Designer Needed

[PyTom]

After several months of crazy-hard work deadlines, and with forum drama having settled down for the time being, I'm finally in a place where I can get back to Ren'Py development. Here's my current plan:

First off, I'm going to aim for a 6.13.9 release in the next week or so.

6.13.9 will fix the current outstanding reported bugs, including those in the Android port.

It will also include an interactive android packaging tool. The tool will be text-based, rather than gui, but it will be able to prompt the user for information about their game, and create a package that conforms to modern packaging standards, and will be able to install that package onto a USB-connected device. It will even take care of things like creating signing keys for use in the Android Market.

The goal is to make things a lot easier than build.py is - maybe not 100% turnkey, but not the current command-line switches-based approach either. I think that I should be able to make it so that our more experienced developers are able to start releasing apps to the Market (and the Amazon App Store as well, probably.)

After that, I will return to work on 6.14. You can see the original plans for 6.14 here:

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 32&t=11887

However, I am altering the plan. Pray I don't alter it any further.

Namespaces are in - I'm already done with them, so the only thing I'd have to do is merge in the code. The Android tool - which is going to be free - is going to be part of 6.13.9. I plan to spend a bit of time looking at ways to improve the performance of screens - perhaps some sort of memoization.

The big change is that I don't think I want to go ahead with the launcher rewrite.

Now, I think a launcher rewrite is important. And I want to implement the functionality I described - things like the new updater, better packaging, and so on

But I've been finding working on the launcher - which is ugly enough I don't want to show it - very demotivating. I want to create something that looks good and works good. What I have doesn't look very good, and it means I don't want to look at it - and that really hurts my motivation to keep going. I'm not a very good at user interface design - and I've come to realize that when dealing with a big project at work. (Thank you, Twitter Bootstrap, for saving my bacon.)

So if we're going to have a new launcher, I need someone from the community to step up and design it for me. The ideal candidate would have a good artistic sense, be able to write in Ren'Py's screen language, and have the foresight to tell me that their work would be (better, simpler, etc) if I changed Screen Language in certain ways.

The general idea is that I'd provide a bunch of primitives (launch game, get list of labels, open label in editor, build distributions, etc) and then the user interface designer would build a new launcher on top of those primitives. If we do that, then I can get moving again, and get all or most of what I've planned into Ren'Py 6.14. Otherwise, I'm going to have to kill features, or release them without an interface.

[SleepKirby]

- good artistic sense
Not really.

- be able to write in Ren'Py's screen language
I've written two Ren'Py UIs with screen language now. Not incredibly complex ones, but they have a few things out of the ordinary. I also write Screen Actions pretty routinely.

- have the foresight to tell me that their work would be (better, simpler, etc) if I changed Screen Language in certain ways
I don't have a list of suggestions right now, but if you suggested something then I could certainly comment on it. I could also comment on what's helpful and not as helpful about old and new launcher functions.

Could we have multiple people helping with the launcher? In particular, at least one screen language person and one person for the artistry. That's pretty much how the division of work goes for the games I'm working on.

[jack_norton]

If you find nobody let me know, I can pay some of my artist to do the new interface! I don't know which style you want though (modern, supertech, fantasy, etc) ?

[SleepKirby]

Did you hear from anyone else, PyTom?

I have some general ideas on the launcher design, which could get things started. I'm wondering if I could post the ideas here or in another thread, or someplace else.

[OdysseyStudio]

Could you give us a basic layout of what your looking for on here. We as a community could build upon it then.

[SpoilerDuck]

If you're building the launcher out of screen language, does this mean it'll be theoretical customisable by the end user? I always enjoying skinning programs to suit me just so where the option is offered.