Devious Devices 5 - Release date and beta program (Patreon)

I got some good news today. The new device code I put in DD5 (see my last posting for details) has passed my testing suite. Device equipping and unequipping seems to work as before (just faster!). I also put the new framework code to the test by playing several DCL missions involving heavy use of DD items for about 5 hours, and did not experience a single problem. The testing involved many device types worn by both player and NPCs, so I have some confidence that the code is on the right path here.

The next step will be broader public testing. For this, I will make a beta version of DD5 available in the DD Framework development thread on LL. This will happen in early October, if everything goes according to plan (I got some final touches to apply to DD5 first!). If everything checks out, the final version should be available end of October, but that of course depends on how many quirks testers are going to unearth, and how difficult they are to fix. Particularly since beta testers are going to have different DD mods installed than me (I use only a very small subset of what's available on LL), and I have no way to know how they will react to DD5 until testers tell me.

I guess it's no big surprise that DD5 - combining all existing DD mods in one download - will be quite a whopper to download. The archive weighs about 2GB now. Yikes! For that reason, I plan to offer delta patches for the point releases from now on, and make people download the full release only when it's really warranted by the amount and significance of changes. I obviously cannot offer DD5 on LL, for it's way, waaaay over LL's file size limit, so it's probably going to be hosted on MEGA (like DDX has already been for a while).

At this point, I do plan to release DCL 9.0 alongside DD5. DCL 9 is more or less ready to go out of the door, but it of course needs DD5 to run. Both DD5 and DCL9 will mandate a new savegame, so I will try to release both updates simultaneously, to keep users from having to start new games all the time.

I am not currently decided on whether or not to conduct an official beta testing phase for DCL9. The changes and new features would sure warrant it, but to participate, people would also have to be in the DD5 test, and I am not sure how to coordinate that across different threads without creating a lot of confusion. I will think about it!