Pycraft Progress Report
Tags: programming, python, gamedev, opensource
Published: 2022-03-22 20:18:06

This is transferred roughly weekly from my Twitter profile (here: https://twitter.com/PycraftDev) to here on Dev! This is for the week 14/02/2022 - 20/02/2022.

* You can find the latest release of Pycraft (v0.9.3) here: https://github.com/PycraftDeveloper/Pycraft

* You can find the latest developer preview of Pycraft (v0.9.4-4) here: https://github.com/PycraftDeveloper/Pycraft/tree/Pycraft-v0.9.4-4

* You can find the latest feature preview for Pycraft (v0.9.5-0) here: https://github.com/PycraftDeveloper/Pycraft/tree/Pycraft-v0.9.5-0

* You can also find the latest documentation for Pycraft https://python-pycraft.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Although be aware there is a lot of changes occurring here.

## February the 14th - 2022

Today I was focused of fixing some last-minute bugs, getting the repository ready for the release and adding the final screen to the installer. The uninstaller has been heavily optimised for performance so now the project can customise what is removed to be more user friendly, that was partly the reason the latest update was delayed, due to a minor error on my part and bug fixes, aside from that everything is done and all I have to do tomorrow is share the code and update the repository, then I can focus on updating the dev channel, Discord and other locations and I'd like to note, I'm not going to start work on the updating section of the installer for a bit I have some personal things to resolve and sort out, a holiday to go on, and I'm massively behind on my other areas of Pycraft, the dev, Discord and medium work my holiday is next week and I will not be able to work on Pycraft, although I'll be still posting plans and sharing additional content, and focusing my work on my other hobby photography before I can get right back into programming when I'm back hopefully!

## February the 15th - 2022

Pycraft v0.9.4-4 is now released! You can download the latest release here: this update features a great number of changes, including the release of the recently showcased installer, as well as the theme selection menu redesign (github.com/PycraftDevelop…). This update has also seen changes to the controller detection utility and has heavily improved performance all around but especially targeting the start-up of the project and the first few seconds of the home screen, where the messages system has been redesigned! And additionally, I'm slowly changing a lot of the older graphics for the project from bitmap (.png) to vector (.svg) so that the README is more accessible and friendlier on devices with displays of all size, and also improves the project from the issues with themes, as the previous logo was entirely white, and in dark theme it looks fine but in light theme the logo was barely visible at best, that has now changed to match the new caption/icon image for the project! You can see this below: ![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mv0nzxh2o1pa0j2kkl2a.png)
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ym6184701jqgv59r5d49.png)
 
 

## February the 16th - 2022

Today has been a strange day for Pycraft, I've not written a single line of code for Pycraft, this will not be a regular occurrence don't worry about that, but I am winding down development for a few weeks to focus on my holiday and also to focus on making sure I am on track with the project and to finish off some of the longer or incomplete aspects, like the documentation which I've been working on today as well as analysing the project from a statistical point of view, making sure the project isn't becoming unnecessarily large and resource heavy, I also have a lot of work on Dev to do, but I've found a way of speeding that process up and a medium article for February to write! There is a lot to do and I hope in the few weeks available to me before I continue with the update section of the installer and working on the rest of the project, I have time to make a large dent in that to do list! Apologies if I've not responded hastily to your messages on other sites too, it's something I'm working on addressing!

## February the 17th - 2022

I've spent today working on the documentation writer, it now is more optimised for the completion of the documentation, I'm approximately 60% of the way through the documentation now, having made over 10% since Wednesday, I've also shared that progress I've made on GitHub, this is automatically shared to @readthedocs and the project will be made more modular with each program getting its own starting section and documentation page, this is because it’s very it’s big and causes issues for both memory bandwidth and also user friendliness, this will occur when the documentation is finished, and a large amount of the documentation will not change with the release of Pycraft v0.9.4 because I'm intelligently selecting and re-using code that doesn't change again for example the achievements section of the project is almost identical between Pycraft v0.9.3 and Pycraft v0.9.4 so will not need to be re-written, and then say in Pycraft v0.9.4 I change a module entirely, then in Pycraft v0.9.5 I go back and add code from Pycraft v0.9.3 (although I try to not bounce between features) then that will be taken from the library of previous code ideally reducing documentation writing time. I'm also exporting all of my posts like this from twitter since about the start of January so I can release updates on Dev in one go for each week, so they don't feel left out and then I will try to not make that happen again!
## February the 18th - 2022
I have made huge inroads into my to do list for updating the folks at dev, I've taken every single post I've made here, and exported them, as well as every single image, video and music piece (which will be replaced with originals, but for now I need to use them as placeholders), I've also formatted all the posts so that they are suitable for uploading to the channel, I'll up adding the weekly update, as well as all of the additional content there, and I apologise this hasn't happened sooner, its top of my plan for tomorrow.

## February the 19th - 2022

I had planned to release posts to Dev today, but after a series of hard crashes on my system which lead to me factory resetting it and then adding back all of my files gradually, this was a nightmare and didn't really fix the problem, but by lunchtime I was actually able to use my PC which was an improvement, I am beginning to think it's a compatibility issue between @AMD and @Microsoft's windows 11 because other PCs I have that are AMD are starting to show issues too, but don't worry everything for Pycraft is all present and correct and working fine, instead I've focused on creating my posts in word, spell and grammar checking them and adding/replacing all of the media with original copies from the placeholders and formatting them appropriately so ideally tomorrow if my PC will boot, I'll be uploading each week separately on Dev, I've also been working on the Medium article for this month too and a bit of the documentation, I'll start work on Pycraft v0.9.4-5 when I've written the medium article and updated the folks at dev which shouldn't take too long, I'm also taking this time to clean up some loose ends around the project and also don't forget next week I'll be unable to write code because I'll be away on holiday, but I'll be planning and writing the medium article on my phone.

## February the 20th – 2022

I decided today to get up at 6am and start up my PC, by 10am it'd stopped cycling between crashes and boot issues and I was able to get on with the work I had planned, mainly this consisted of updating the folks at dev and working on the Medium article, I'm trying to get as much down as I can (this will also be shared to Dev when it's finished), I'll be focusing on the change to the game engine from PyOpenGL and ModernGL as well as how I'm working on the installer this article will also feature the usual updates and changes made to Pycraft, I hope you enjoy reading the dev articles and I'll be updating the folks there again later next week or tomorrow if I have time!

Thanks for reading folks!