Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:30 pm

As you know, the existing zMUD customers only get their discounts on CMUD during the CMUD beta period. So I've always promised that I will be sending an email to every zMUD customer to announce CMUD well in advance of the public version to give them time to buy CMUD at the discounted price.

The current plan is to release the CMUD public version sometime towards the end of the first week of December (Chiara's birthday). In order to meet this goal, I will probably have the public release mostly ready (but still marked as Beta) at the end of November.

So, it's now about two months from this planned release. When do you think I should send out the announcement emails?

Based upon the forum and crash dump feedback that I'm getting, CMUD is getting more and more stable. In my opinion, the main thing that is still needed before an announcement might be the help files.

Making the announcement will bring in a lot more potential beta testers. And while it will be announced as a BETA, I want to make sure that CMUD is working well enough so that people are not turned off by it. Obviously some of the past few beta versions have been too rocky to announce.

Essentially, this will be the formal "public beta" announcement. Even though the entire beta has been technically open to the public, it hasn't been widely announced or advertised. This announcement will bring a lot of attention to CMUD. Is CMUD ready for this kind of attention?

Keep in mind that I *must* make the announcement long enough before the public release to give zMUD customers a fair chance to use their discount. Obviously people would be upset if I only gave them a week notice. So, if the public release is planned for December, then I'm probably going to need to announce it pretty soon.

I guess the main thing I'm wondering is what critical features and/or fixes do *you* think I need to focus on before making this announcement? If you just found out about CMUD today and downloaded it, what would your first impression be? I know it's hard to guess about first impressions when you've seen all of the messy changes in the past few months, but try to give it a fresh look and tell me what you think.

Your feedback is always appreciated!

Newbie Joined: 27 Sep 2006 Posts: 5

I advocate a Holloween mailing. Its memorable, its fun, it gives you a month to iron more stuff out, and a moth for us to decide we want it.

Thats a lot of commas, and thats my advise/opinoin :)

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:52 pm

Halloween announcement sounds good to me to.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Sounds like a good time for the announcement. And by that time, I think that CMUD needs help files. And it needs to have compatibilty at 99.999% with zMUD except for the stuff in the "Converting your scripts to CMUD" document. So, another round of bug fixes but no new features, another release, creation of help files, another release with help files and some more bug fixes but no new features, wait some days to check there are no big bugs, and then the announcement. Smile

Then you can look at new features again but don't release until after most registered zMUD users have downloaded a copy. I think stability is important in enticing zMUD users to pay for an upgrade. Just my opinion though.

Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:44 pm

The main new features that are currently on the list for the public version are:

Handle initial conversion of zMUD files (copy *.MUD files to CMUD installation dir) and handle the CMUD installation directory properly (Program Files vs My Documents/Muds etc)
Trigger debugger (similar to the Test tab in zMUD)
Trigger events (replacing the atconnect etc aliases)
More readable XML copy/paste/import format
zApp Forms

The main list of major "bug fixes" for the next few versions are:

Fix "crash" bugs
Fix display issues with gauges and buttons
Improve User Interface for buttons, gauges, and trigger conditions
Fix alternate scripting languages (fix #MSS, %mss, etc)

I think the only "features" that aren't needed before the announcement are the "readable XML" and "zApp Forms" features. The other features will be important for zMUD compatibility.

Otherwise, except for the stuff on the "Converting scripts to CMUD" document, I think the compatibility is already pretty good. At least there aren't many people sending me bug reports about compatibility issues. I have a few minor things such as manual trigger states, issues with #PCOL and stuff like that. But if there is still a major compatibility issue with your *.MUD file, be sure you have sent it to me (and PLEASE start a different thread on it...let's NOT hijack this thread to talk about bugs).

So, I think I agree with the Halloween proposal. That gives time for these features and bug fixes, and also the help files. If I start by trying to convert zMUD help files for the commands and functions, that should be a good start. Since the help system will be updated from the web site, it will be easy to improve the help files over time, but I need to have the basic help files and update mechanism in place before the announcement.

My only worry is that Halloween is pushing it a bit. What I mean is that I probably need to give zMUD users at least 30 days before their discount expires so that they are able to use the 30-day trial. So Halloween is probably the absolute latest that I can send out the announcement.

Guess I just need to work harder and try to magically find more hours in the day to work.

But if there are things on the feature/bug list above that you don't think are needed before the announcement, let me know.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

I was just writing a post about missing features, but you beat me to it. I know there were a lot of notes posted during the design phase with feature requests, so we probably need to sift through all the old posts and dig up a list to make sure we haven't missed anything important.

I think probably the most important thing we touched on was the newbie friendly features, but perhaps they can wait until further down the track. I thought we were going to use Chiara as a test subject to see if she could get into CMUDding without the confusion that you typically got from zMUD.

Personally I don't think it's important to announce the CMUD beta to the zMUD users - announce the beta on the forums around halloween so you get some more testers (some of them familiar with the zMUD beta process), then when the first public version goes out announce that they have until the end of the year to upgrade for the discounted price?

I say this without knowing your financial situation, so if it's not viable to go on half price sales for the rest of the year then I can certainly understand you wanting to limit the discount to the beta period, but it seems to me more logical to make the big announcement with the bug free (is there such a thing?) public version so that people don't get turned off by a beta product and decide not to upgrade until maybe CMUD 2.0 or 3.0?

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Actually, I must say that I'm inclined to agree with Rainchild about the annoucement dates - not e-mailing zMUD users until CMUD is in a public version (except that I think zMUD users should have at least a month from the announcement date to decide if they want to upgrade and that might be into early Jan), although I know it goes against everything you, Zugg, have always said.

Also, I have to say that I prefer the Settings Editor from zMUD at the moment. I especially liked the separation of folders from settings in the folders in the view.

Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:27 am

Sorry guys, but I promised to email zMUD users well in advance of the public version, so I'm not going back on that. Also, I'm not planning to extend or otherwise change the deadline for the discount. Again, I already announced the discount schedule many months ago and some people have already made their purchase decision based upon that information and it wouldn't really be fair to change it.

The whole purpose of the discount was to increase the amount of beta testing prior to the public version release. While the existing beta testing has been good for the major bugs, I'm getting less and less reports and it's going to take more testers to find some of the more obscure bugs. The purpose of the discount was to give existing zMUD users (who already know how zMUD works and what is needed for MUDding) an incentive to try the beta version and to upgrade with the discounted price.

Remember that this announcement targets people who are already using zMUD. These are not brand new users who might be more interested in "newbie" features. Some of these might be new users, but most of them have already gotten CMUD for free, so the majority are people who have been using zMUD for several years.

The announcement makes it really clear that CMUD is still a BETA product, but also makes it clear that the discounts are only valid during this beta period. So it's up to the individual user to decide if they want to take the discount and use a beta product, or wait till it's public and pay full price. But I think this is a decision that each individual user should make and withholding the information about CMUD just doesn't make much sense.

It's not like we are talking about the 1.01 beta here. I personally think that 1.08 is very useable, and the volume of bug reports seems to support that. It's never going to be perfect, and like with zMUD, it's going to be improved in time. There isn't any magical date where CMUD is "done". After the first public version, then I get into stuff like SSL, the database module rewrite, and the mapper rewrite. And those things are going to have their own beta period and be buggy themselves too.

Seb: The trigger events are needed because the current "atconnect" types of aliases no longer work properly. This is because the System folder no longer exists. And some people need this functionality to autolog into their MUD. As far as the settings editor, I think it just takes some getting used to and to learn some of the newer features, such as putting classes into their own tabs and stuff like that. Have you tried turning off the Class Folders and just displaying the settings in the tree and then using the combo-box pulldown just above the tree to navigate the folders? The new interface is pretty flexible but has a lot of stuff that is different and without the documentation, you might just not be comfortable with it yet. And, of course, any changes are always going to take a while to get used to.

Rainchild: I had to dump a lot of the newbie features that we talked about in old threads until after the public release. Right now I'm trying to reduce this to the minimum amount of features needed for the initial public release. It's why I delayed the SSH module. What I'm reminding myself is that CMUD will continue to be a work in progress and is never "done", so it's a matter of deciding what functionality is needed for the base product. Mainly I want to ensure that nothing big from zMUD is missing, so CMUD-specific features tend to get delayed. And I'm trying hard not to delay the zApp-form stuff any longer, although it's clear that the help files need to come first now.

Also remember that the beta is already announced in the forums. There have already been announcement threads over in the zMUD forum about it, and it's already on the sales and product pages. That isn't bringing in new beta testers. There are only a couple hundred people who use the forums. As a comparison, when v7.21 was announced last year (via the zMUD auto-update announcement that is displayed when you run zMUD), over 4,000 people upgraded within a month. But when 7.20 was announced just in the forums earlier than that, only a few hundred upgraded.

And no, there is no such thing as "the bug free" version. I can only dream :)

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

i have to think that the lessened bugs are because people are now finalizing their scripts that were causing those errors and you will see an influx of reports as they move on to new errors.

My biggest concern in having everyone tackle a beta is that often you get a bunch of people who dont understand fully what beta is and get irate. However i admire your devotion to keeping with what you said. Best of luck with that. I still have about 95 scripts to throw in that are severly complex so i expect (although im not hoping) to run into some pretty odd things.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Beginner Joined: 08 Oct 2002 Posts: 20 Location: USA

All I want to add is make sure the package help file is detailed as all get out. I love working with the new CMUD but honestly grasping the package system is turning my brain into mush. I understand the concept well, but I'm requesting a concrete demonstration with nice examples, syntax, etc...

Thus, the request is for the package helpfile to be as detailed as possible versus previous zmud help files. Thanks!

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:28 pm

With the help system being online and the Guru's on board to edit the help entries even if what Zugg first enters is a little prosaic it can be expanded upon and demonstrated lquite quickly after. This will lead to a much better help system than in zMUD especially if people request a certain help topic be explained in more detail.

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 1:15 pm

I vote for beer...
I can do that, right? Shocked

If not, then I third (or is it to fourth or fifth now) the motion for Halloween-ish.

Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:28 pm

I started using Zmud December of last year. I tried CMud v1.08 for a couple of hours some weeks ago for the first time but after importing my existing Zmud items into CMud I couldn't get CMud to load up properly because of all the errors. It kept popping up error after error asking if I wanted to continue or abort the program. Personally, I didn't feel like giving it any more attention after that. I figured I'd give it another look once it was officially released.

So if a fresh look is what you are looking for, I'd say your first priority should be giving appropriate error messages when people import Zmud scripts that aren't entirely compatible with CMud. I can live with it giving me hundreds of specific things to fix, but I didn't even want to bother when it just kept saying there were errors of some unspecified sort and that I need to choose whether to continue or exit the program. From what I saw it wasn't very stable and that turned me off to it.