Versioning, Releases and development plan

Hey there! So it's been a few weeks since I launched this project and I have honestly been awed by the response I've received so far. I'd like to take this time to thank João.

Before I get into the main topics I wanted to get to, let me explain to you who I am; and what you can expect from me at this time. I am a full time software engineer. In my spare time, I've been developing a game that I hope to release in the not too distant future. While developing this game, I found myself looking for a better solution to 2D skeletal animation within the Godot engine than the built-in tools. Through researching a solution, I stumbled upon an old, barely maintained module for the godot engine that integrated the Dragonbones JSON format to import animations into godot. After getting a local build and integrating it quite extensively into my project; I realized that other people would probably benefit from it aswell.

This leads me into our first topic: What you can expect from me

At this point in time, I make no promises for anything. I try to find time to make improvements and release functioning software. However, I'm not being paid (alot.. João has kindly donated a little bit to the cause :] ) so I need to prioritize my day job. However, if the project gains more support(especially financial) and users; I will be naturally more inclined to dedicate more of my own time to the project.

Which leads us to...

Releases and Versioning

The versioning system I am going with at the moment is to appropriate the high patch numbers of the current stable Godot release. This is to cause Godot to throw an error if attempting to use inappropriate export templates. Therefore, until otherwise stated you can expect this version format: ${GODOT_MAJOR}_${GODOT_MINOR}_${GODOTDRAGONBONESVERSION} The current (first) version is 3.2.50. I don't expect the godot team to release 50+ patches between releases; so its probably safe enough to take this range. I would have gone with a completely separate versioning system; but the Godot source code has a few places where it checks to be above version (3 usually); so going to, say, 1.0 like I wanted to was unfeasible.

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Future plans You're probably interested in what is coming up now that a stable release has been produced for all major platforms. Right now, I'm focused on giving you guys what you want; and I've received 2 requests that haven't been addressed. 1. Slot Swapping / Texture Swapping

Fairly self explanatory. This will give you the ability to swap specific slots to their alternate textures. This has been quoted to me multiple times as the most desired feature; and is therefore high on the priority list.

2. Mobile export templates

This has been asked for and I believe should be a fairly easy thing to accomplish. In releasing 3.2.50, I created a build pipeline that will help build and publish these things. I'm concerned about SDK / NDK restrictions. I'll likely follow the same version recommended by the Official Godot documentation. I'm also not a huge fan of Apple; so iPhone templates may take longer than Android as I am unable to test iPhone templates at all.

My plan is to do Android export templates first, followed by slot swapping and then iPhone templates. If there's more interest in the iPhone templates than the slot swapping; I may revisit this plan. ___

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please consider donating. If I can get to ~$25 CAD a month it will cover server costs and I can keep this up indefinitely. Full disclosure, right now I'm at about $0.66 CAD a month after fees. I will try and be as transparent as possible now and moving forward. At the very least, please share this with anyone who might be interested. Sincerely, Paul