X-Bomber v0.8, v0.79, v0.76, v0.68 and v0.64

[Crash]

!!! Old Version - Please scroll down for the latest !!!Version 0.64 with Mission 11 and big updates and fixes to the game overall. - Hope you enjoy!This version is just the file structure in a zip file.  Just extract the folder and its contents to wherever you want and run the application (xb2-064.exe).  I figured I'd save some time on this kinda surprise release and not bother with an installer.PS.: We offloaded 9.3 GB of data last month.  Looks like people have been interested in our source code as well as installers.

[Son Of Chronos]

Yes I finally got to play your game in non slow motion You've done a great job here man, at first when I was playing I couldnt figure out the shooting, but then I realized theirs so many different types you got to change, I was trying to shoot straight with the wrong weapon.I like how you can change ships into Dia-x and then even that can be brought to together, some pretty cool stuff man, I was well impressed.Im not surprised you get alot of traffic Im sure other people are enjoying your game too, will be great when its done.Keep up the good work.

[Crash]

Oh there's a lot of weapons - probably about 30 or so.Try out the later levels they are pretty sweet. The graphics have had a lot of work for this version.Give it a bit of a play on with - there's a lot of stuff in there to discover.This latest version is pretty sweet, there's one or two things I could tweak but nothing really worth the time compiling until the next version. Less than 5 levels to go!9.3 is pretty terrific - I used to think I was doing well if I shifted 2 or so gigs when I was with Krystal. At this point I woulda had to upgrade my old plan I think to be safe of not getting stung from bandwidth penalties.

[Bradster]

Any thoughts on putting the source up on a dedicated site like BitBucket, GitHub, or even SourceForge? That would save you file management and bandwidth, plus it would preserve and share your changelog (assuming you use SCM).

[Crash]

You've raised a good point there about the project. The availability of the source code is far, far behind the compiled versions. That hasn't been an intentional thing or indicative of a change of heart.Our bandwidth is probably less than 10GB/month, it isn't charged for and it's nice to keep it in one place.I've stripped down the zip files so that they only include backups from a fortnight apart. Do you think the whole lot should be available or, in the interest of simplicity, should there just be the files that were used to create the finished versions? It's just that because the files include everything like graphics, sounds etc, they are really quite big.Because there's only one developer, there's no real changelog apart from what I post on here. I think it's simpler and more public that way. I am compiling a changelog though from various places. Once the program is more-or-less finished (I'm getting there), I'll put that up on a new page with expandable sections like isoHunt, giving more detail about each version's 'new' features.

[Bradster]

First, let me put out there that I don't have any personally vested interest in obtaining/versioning the X-Bomber source code or changing the way you release it since I don't have a copy of Multimedia Fusion. These are just some friendly words of advice coming from my own experience as a developer. From an outsider's perspective, what I would generally expect are separate source and binary downloads for each version and a brief change log (outside of the actual downloads) of how one version differs from the previous. That's assuming you stick with zipping/7zipping up the code after each release. If you use a SCM tool with a public repository, you wouldn't have to manually zip up and host separate versions. Just tag or branch the code for each version when you build/release it, and the users can immediately pick and download as they like. If you use a SCM tool only privately, you'd still have to zip and upload a blob of code for each release.That said, if you're not already using a SCM tool yourself, I highly recommend it!The chief benefit to using a SCM tool ("software configuration management", aka. "source control system" or "version control system"), even if you're the only person committing changes to it, is that it gives you a complete history of your changes. When you're done working on any small piece of code, you commit it to the repository with a comment. If you ever wonder "why did I do this?" on a given line of code, the SCM can pull up that line and give you the comment you gave for the change. This also gives you the ability to automate change logs, as you can simply pull the list of change comments between two releases and review them for legibility.SCM tools also give you the ability to conveniently branch and merge whole versions of your code. Say you want to try rewriting a major piece of how weapons fire, but you're not sure how it will work out. Without SCM, your only options are to either duplicate/archive your code so you can go back or maintain both the new and old code in conditional blocks and toggle between them. With SCM, you can "branch" your app, which conceptually (but not literally) creates another copy of your code, and commit your changes to that branch. If things work out well, you can "merge" that branch back into the mainline "trunk" and keep going. If you decide to abort, you can just kill the branch and go back to trunk. If it's a mix, as is often the case, you could pick-and-choose either whole files or specific commits to merge back to trunk. In any case, you have a full history of all the changes you made so you don't have to keep manual notes (or exercise your brain's memory) to track what went well, what went poorly, and what exactly you did in each case.CVS and Subversion are two of the older open source version control systems. Subversion (aka "svn") started as an evolution of CVS. Both are built as centralized systems which mean all committed changes go to and from a single centralized manager. That makes these the "obvious" choice for sole-developer projects.Git and Mercurial (aka "hg") are two of the newer competing open source version control systems. Git was created by Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) because none of the other open source systems (including CVS and SVN) had good enough performance for the projects he was working on. Mercurial was modeled after the same concepts that Git set down. In a nutshell, CVS and SVN differ from Git and Mercurial in that the latter are "distributed" systems and don't require a single central server for all users to hit. This might seem to rule out their use on sole-developer projects, but there are some other benefits to them that I won't get into here. WALL OF TEXT WALL OF TEXT WALL OF TEXT, I know. This is one of my "soapbox" subjects!Anyhow, if you want to know more, there's a very good lightweight introduction to version control systems in general (and hg specifically) by Joel Spolsky (of "Joel on Software" fame) here: http://hginit.com/01.html QUOTEI know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “JOEL, THIS ALL SEEMS LIKE A BIG WASTE OF TIME.” Why go through all this rigamarole of committing?Patience, young grasshopper. You’re about to learn how to get some benefit out of this.

[Crash]

Well, I would be delighted if someone did have an interest in the source files, especially with a view to independent levels etc.I found that most of the files were on the server. They weren't linked to.I think, from this point on, I may just upload the source file that corresponds to the compiled version and leave out the files that show the lead-up to it. That's just because, even with about 4/5 files, the .7z is about 150MB. Besides, in more mature versions, the changes between backups are less extensive because I've more-or-less decided on the way the game should work now.I'll keep the backups on my own machine for my own happiness.Obviously with the last level-and-a-bit still to do, it's maybe a bit late to start using the CVN now and I quite enjoy writing about work on the game in a user-readable, 'progress report' form.I've managed to sort out my X-Bomber files, which were strewn across 5 disks this weekend and now I think it's time to compile a separate version history as part of the site as you say. The WayBack Machine should be some help there. It was something I was working on since about a fortnight ago.I suppose in the end, this is meant to be a game to me in terms of making the game. So, obviously making the explosions prettier and the enemies more complex and the weapons more vicious has been my focus but when the project's nearly there, it's time to account for how I got here.I've gotta say, although I haven't been stalling because I'm being kept busy in quite a few ways at the moment, I'm in no particular hurry to finish the program.I suppose that shows that you've enjoyed writing it.