Welcome!

Any development news for TSM will be posted here! Posts will contain things like recently added features, announcements for new beta versions, what is coming in the near future, as well as general TSM-related news / commentary.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Releases Slowing Down - Not Progress

So lately, there have been very few new releases of TSM or any of its modules including alpha versions. However, rest assured that the work on the addon has done anything but slow down. I (and some periodic helpers), have been working hard on some big new features for the past few months and the work will likely continue for many weeks to come.

None of these new features will be made publicly available during the current beta phase of TSM. All these features are targeted for the release phase of TSM (which, perhaps not surprisingly, happens after the beta phase). There is a ton of work left to do before TSM goes into its release phase so it's not going to be anytime soon. We are talking about a few months, not a few weeks.

However, as it currently stands, TSM is mostly stable and bug-free which is why I made the decision to slow down the release of beta versions and instead focus on the things that need to be done for the release phase (v1.0). Of course, if a patch comes along and breaks something, I'll fix it asap in the beta versions, but otherwise, I don't plan on releasing any new beta versions.

The way I see it, the beta phase of TSM was a time for me to try a bunch of different things out, get a ton of feedback, and generally figure out a direction for the addon. I have certainly tried a ton of different things out; some of which worked and some which didn't. The feedback (both positive and negative) has been motivating and inspiring, and I now have a good grasp of the direction I want to take TSM which has guided my decisions around the new features I'm working on.

There will be a "private" testing phase before TSM (v1.0) is officially released similar to how the alpha phase worked. This has already started with one of the big new features which is in a usable state. I will make it clear when there's a chance / need for a broader audience of testers to get involved.

So, bear with me over the weeks to come and don't be too sad when you see no new version of TSM since June/July; it'll be worth the wait once v1.0 comes around!