After about a year of work and almost 540 commits from close to 20 contributors, Evennia 0.8 is out! Evennia is a Python game server for creating text-based multiplayer games (MUDs, Mushes, etc) using Django and Twisted.Some of the upcoming improvements have been covered by previous dev blogs, such as the completely reworked server infrastructure:
as well as the new Online Creation System that allows for editing in-game prototypes using a powerful menu system:
Other improvements are in the web client, which supports split-panes out of the box. The user can split the output area in any number of panes, resize as desired and then assign different types of content to each pane. You can also have panes that absorb "all the rest" or "all" of the content.
There are still some bits which are a bit shaky and there is still much to do with the web client (for example, not that many outgoing messages yet defaults to being tagged in a way that the webclient recognizes). But it's a step forward!
There are many other improvements for developers, such as easier tools for running debuggers and a lot of new utilities and helper functions. The menu-creation tool (EvMenu) has seen a lot of improvements and also sport a few new decorators for quickly creating multi-page menus with full functionality to flip through and select large numbers of options.
The community has also chipped in with a large number of optional contributions for developers to use for their own game, such as a full turn-based combat system (divided into convenient chunks for the dev to pick and choose support for everything from magic and potions to equipment and ranged attacks). There are also a range of helper functions for creating simpler menus and build commands as well as auditing tools and additions making better use of Django's very mature security features.
The more detailed list of improvements and changes can be found in the announcement here. As usual, please report any issues to the issue tracker on github.
Future
In the immediate future, we'll focus on resolving any bugs that may have slipped through the cracks and also resolve some other issues in the pipeline.
But beyond that, work on Evennia 0.9 will begin. And before you ask - yes Evennia 0.9 is the version where we'll move fully to Python3. Our dependencies have now reached a point where this is possible and there will be no intermediary Python2/3 version. There is no timeline for the 0.9 release but it should hopefully not be too tricky for the community to make the jump when the time comes.
