April 24th, 2009
I’ve been combing through all of the forum posts, emails, and other correspondence with folks about what will be most useful to them. A great number of the suggestions jive with my own sense of what features would benefit WM tremendously, and some of them even have fairly considerable amounts of work already implemented on them!
I’ll be announcing what features will be making it into the next update to WM2 as they happen. As a minor update release (2.x) these features will almost certainly be a free upgrade for existing WM2 users.
But before then, I have some more bugfixing to do. There are a number of issues still remaining in the 2.15 beta patch, including a couple known memory leaks, some flipping issues on file formats, and other things.
From previous experience, I want to get as bugfixed a platform together as I can before I start doing anything involving new features. The final 2.1x patch will be released within the next few weeks to the next month or so.
Posted in World Machine Development News | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2009
Hey folks,
I’m back from my trip to the Southwestern US. Talk about inspiring! I visited the Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion National Parks. Between those three is a great deal of stunning ( and varied) scenic beauty, and when combined with whats available to see here in the Pacific Northwest where I live, there’s a whole lot of inspiration available..
I’m including a few of the photos I took while I was there — so no, these are not renderings 
I’m spending the next couple of days catching up with everything I can, so if you’ve sent me an email that hasn’t been answered yet, you should be getting a reply soon!
More to come in a bit. I also want to provide some feedback to the ideas I’ve recieved about future WM direction — soon.
Posted in Random Musings | 2 Comments »
April 3rd, 2009
Just a brief aside before I get to my main focus here — the bugfixing is still on track and will be rolled out before next wednesday. Most all of what needs to be fixed has been fixed, now it just needs to be tested and packaged.
After the urgency of the bug hunt, the main question turns to future improvements to WM. There are endless features large and small that could be useful, and after the bugs have been released I plan on trying to get as much community feedback as possible on what people would like to see, what would make WM yet more useful for their (your) needs.
As far as the internals go, there are a number of changes that I want to make that will improve the core functioning of WM; they aren’t flashy, but they will help remove a number of somewhat irritating limitations that are here now because of early design decisions made back when WM’s scope was not nearly so expansive as it is now.
Perhaps the biggest one is eliminating the artificial vertical scale issues that WM has. Keeping all data internally between 0 and 1 made sense when everything was created in a sandbox-style creation, but it has no place now that WM has huge terrains spread across many virtual kilometers, and is especially problematic when the “0..1″ system produces results different from a “natural height” system that simply tracks meters alone. The change isn’t sexy, but it will result in a more cohesive product and eventually allow for some interesting changes to the erosion algorithm and other things.
There are many things that COULD appear in future WM editions; many are nearly production-ready already but didn’t make the cut for WM 2, others would be ground-up development. But before bringing the question to the general populace of WM users, I’ll ask the blog readers — What do YOU want to see next in WM?
Posted in Random Musings, World Machine Development News | 10 Comments »
March 31st, 2009
I’m putting the finishing touches on a bugfix release for WM 2.1.
It fixes all of the large known outstanding issues. It will be available as a patch to the existing 2.1 release; there will be no need to re-install from scratch, as it should layer over the existing installation.
Along with the bug fix is a number of changes in progress for WM 2.2. Many of these were things that were intended for the release of 2.0 but that I ran out of time to perfect properly. After the bug release I will begin releasing more details on the new features, but the most important thing right now is obviously the current set of bugs.
ETA on the patch is approximately a week; I’m taking a weeklong trip to the American Southwest starting the 9th and it will be out before then for certain. The trip itself should be a very inspiring adventure through some of the most amazing scenery in this world!
Posted in World Machine Development News | 1 Comment »
December 25th, 2008
Hello folks,
It’s been a while since the last blog posting! I just wanted to wish everyone a merry christmas and happy holidays around the world.
Things have been a bit quiet lately as I’ve had a couple things happening in real life that have demanded a great deal of attention; however there is another bug fix release coming along soon for WM 2.
It should be a much easier upgrade than WM 2.1 has been, as the lack of file path changes means that it will be much harder to break anything.
The main things being slated for the next minor release are:
1) Bugfixes. Obviously! A number of discovered issues should be fixed — which ones I will post soon.
2) Improved memory handling. I’ve been experimenting with a system to automatically page out (currently unneeded) heightfields to disk, allowing for worlds to be built much more effectively when RAM is an issue.
3) Functionality improvements — other than the memory issues, there aren’t a ton currently slated.
Between Christmas and the New Year I’m going to set down and plan out the course of WM 2 through the next year, so I should have more to share with you all regarding future developments then.
Cheers!
Posted in World Machine Pro Development | 6 Comments »
August 30th, 2008
One of the changes that needs to happen is to make WM fall into line with Microsoft’s guidelines on where and how applications should store their data. I don’t fully agree with the new specifications; specifically, I’ve always found the AppData folder to be an odd place to store user data, especially if the user might conceivably want to edit that data.
Nonetheless, in order to make WM fully compatible with Vista and a standard user account, path handling has to change. Not an earth shattering modification, but one that will keep things compatible for the highest number of users going forward.
Posted in World Machine Development News | 1 Comment »
August 22nd, 2008
Hey folks,
it’s been a little while now since WM2 was released, and the reception so far has been a good one.
In the time since release a number of bugs have been discovered that are important to fix; my current task for the last while has been fixing as many as possible. In addition, through the exposure of WM2 to a wider audience, I’ve received a number of great suggestions that would enhance workflow, sometimes dramatically, that are not difficult to implement.
My current plan is to issue a service pack as soon as I have the important issues addressed; I’m going to then attempt to add some of the small scale enhancements that have been suggested and get a minor feature-enhancement pack out sometime in the next three months.
On a personal note, I stressed a disk in my back about two weeks ago. Anyone who’s also done that can testify that its one of the least fun experiences you can go through. Obviously, not so good for productivity either, but I’m well along the healing curve now.
So there you have it!
Stephen
PS:
Again, please feel free to email me at stephen@world-machine.com if you have any comments, or suggestions on improving any aspect of World Machine.
Posted in World Machine Development News, World Machine Pro Development | 2 Comments »
July 15th, 2008
Hey folks!
Now that WM2 is released to the public, what is next in line you might say?
Well, I have essentially 3 tasks that will be occupying me for the next few months:
1) Increasing exposure of WM2. Especially for me who is so close to the product, it seems like everyone who could possible have heard about WM already has; however this is far from the truth. I want to increase the attention that WM2 gets as a terrain solution in the various fields that folks have found a use for it.
If anyone reading this has some ideas on spreading the news about the WM2 release, please drop me a line at stephen@world-machine.com.
2) A number of bugs have been found since release, thankfully none that are complete showstoppers. Nonetheless I hope to have a first service pack available within a month or two that will fix any bugs found and perhaps expose several of the features that didn’t quite make it into the main release.
3) Release the PDK to its final state and make it publicly available. I hope that anyone interested in novel ways of editing terrain may become interested in using WM2 as a fast platform to create devices in.
To go along with these, your input would be a great help! Reporting bugs you find, or ideas for features you have, can help me improve the product. I also would love to see what people have been doing with WM2; post them on the forum thread for that purpose or email them to me.
Posted in World Machine Pro Development | No Comments »
July 4th, 2008
As of an hour ago here, it’s now July 4th! Happy Independence Day to the Americans in the audience, and happy Release Day to everyone!
All those who pre-ordered WM2 have been sent their upgrade information. However the widescale release is still pending — waiting on website changes before it goes live as well. By the afternoon of the 4th (Pacific Time) however everything should be ready to roll.
We’re now standing at the end of several years of fairly intense development effort. When I go back and use WM 1.25, I suddenly remember how far things have come, as you all will soon see. 
And there’s so much more that could be added and improved! But that’s for another day. For this day and weekend, enjoy.
Posted in World Machine Development News, World Machine Pro Development | 7 Comments »
July 2nd, 2008
I’m down to just the final release prep tasks at this point!
I’m going to upload to the website Help section the WM2 User Guide and Device Reference, if anyone wants to start looking through it.
Pre-orders I’m hoping to start fulfilling early July 3rd, so that you’ll receive your copy a day early. They will be processed in arrival order so be patient if it takes a while to get to yours! Everything at this point is a go for a July 4th release. I’m trying for a midnight release the night of the 3rd if everything goes well.
Posted in World Machine Development News, World Machine Pro Development | 1 Comment »
