Vassal 4 vs Java

[LoadEffectiveAddress]

For the longest time, there's been a plan to work on a better-designed Vassal 4 and ditch Java. Years. But then Covid-19 came along and apparently spurred some new interest in Vassal and there are now some forward-looking plans to significantly improve the v3 client over several releases.

I've been avoiding v3 since I heard about v4, but it's hard to tell if it's still going to happen. Even desktop Java has improved since the original complaints about it. I don't want to argue for or against it, I am just wondering: is v4 still likely, or is this resurgence of interest going to keep rolling on v3 into the foreseeable future, and end up being the new goal?

I was hoping to be a part of the new project eventually, learning about it as it grows rather than jumping into that quagmire of v3's code again. If there's not going to be a new project, it would be good to know.

I hope this doesn't come across as pushy or entitled, I understand everyone is a volunteer and things can take time and be interrupted by real life. I am just unclear on the future plans, given the recent (relative) flurry of activity. It feels like there have been more releases this year than over the last five.

[Brent Easton]

Yes, there are still plans for a Vassal version 4. Our 'Master Designer' is hoping to start in earnest in December on fleshing out the design.

The current spate of activity on Vassal 3 is partly due to additional manpower, but mainly because we wanted to get Vassal 3 up to a suitable level in terms of bug, usability and performance fixes, plus some new features and get it to the point where we can stop worrying about it so much and leave it to stand on it's own two feet for a while:) We have managed to fix pretty much all outstanding bugs, including many that have existed for more than a decade, as well as significantly improve performance in several key areas.

I expect Vassal 3 development will quieten down over the next year, however, we do have some keen developers with more ideas for V3.

[uckelman]

Thus spake LoadEffectiveAddress:
> For the longest time, there's been a plan to work on a better-designed
> Vassal 4 and ditch Java. Years. But then Covid-19 came along and
> apparently spurred some new interest in Vassal and there are now some
> forward-looking plans to significantly improve the v3 client over
> several releases.

That's only partly due to the pandemic. Work on 3.3 started in Autumn
2019.

> I've been avoiding v3 since I heard about v4, but it's hard to tell if
> it's still going to happen. Even desktop Java has improved since the
> original complaints about it. I don't want to argue for or against it,
> I am just wondering: is v4 still likely, or is this resurgence of
> interest going to keep rolling on v3 into the foreseeable future, and
> end up being the new goal?

Once 3.5 is released, my own development time will be going into V4.
We released 3.5.0-beta1 yesterday, so that will be happening fairly
soon.

> I hope this doesn't come across as pushy or entitled, I understand
> everyone is a volunteer and things can take time and be interrupted by
> real life. I am just unclear on the future plans, given the recent
> (relative) flurry of activity. It feels like there have been more
> releases this year than over the last five.

From my point of view, the purpose of much of the work since last fall
has been to get V3 into a state where it doesn't require much maintenance,
in order to give me time to work on V4 while people use V3.

--
J.

[LoadEffectiveAddress]

Thank you both, I was looking at the roadmap which appears to contain a significant amount of work for 3.5 and hints of 3.6 as well. I look forward to seeing what comes next.