retrospective 2009

2009's over, but the year was quite a busy one for me on the perl front:

• i finally took the time to investigate moose, and decided to port some of my code to use it.
• i discovered dist::zilla, and definitely plan to use it in all my dists.
• i discovered some other cool new perl modules (thanks guys).
  
• i uploaded some new dists on cpan, including games::pandemic (which i'm quite proud of, even if i need to continue hacking on it).
• i updated & released some of my existing dists.
  
• i contributed to other projects such as padre, dist-zilla, etc. sending patches is a good way to thank the author for their work.
• it's even easier to contribute with github, which i'm using more and more for my projects (and it's no more slow by now, woohoo!). of course, git is the master piece allowing this easy sharing.
  
• on mandriva's front, i resurrected parrot rpm, and finally shipped rakudo.
  
• 2009 was also the year of the great migration to %perl_convert_version
• ... with lots of new perl modules available as rpm (i am managing 450 of them).
  
• ... and finally i took ownership of perl rpm. (thank you perl5 porters btw for 5.10.1 and the push for next stable version!)

so, busy indeed 2009 was... i just hope that 2010 will be as fruitful on the perl front for me, and for the perl ecosystem by large.

external event loops no more part of poe

for those (such as me) that did not spotted it, external event loops for poe are now released as their own distribution. this means they aren't part of the poe distribution anymore, and you should add them to your prereqs...

of course, there's no way that dzil's autoprereq plugin could extract poe::loop::tk from code such as:


so, i had to use the regular prereq plugin to list it as a manual dependency. since dzil is using moose roles, it means more than one plugin can provide the prereqs, so i can continue using autoprereq beside this exception - woohoo!

in conclusion, games::pandemic 1.092660 is on its way, fixing a problem reported by a cpantester (thank you guys - you rock!)

first external pandemic translation

i'm really happy to release a new pandemic version, namely 1.092640 (that is first release of 264th day of year 2009 for those that skipped previous entry).

beside the introduction of the medic player (which in itself is interesting), it's with great pleasure that i committed a japanese translation that tomita naoki provided me with. thank you tomita for this first external contribution!

so, if you want to contribute, an easy way to start is by providing a translation for your language! of course, any other contribution is also welcome. :-)

full pandemic stikes, woohoo \o/

erm, not this pandemic, but the pandemic game written in perl...

so yes, i'm happy to report that milestone 1.0¹ has been reached. indeed, here's what warrants the bump:

• infection rate grows as epidemics strike
• special event: airlift implemented
• special event: forecast implemented
• special event: government grant implemented
• special event: one quiet night implemented
• special event: resilient population implemented
• epidemics now shown in past cards

yup, this means the game is fully playable. i'm not saying fully implemented, since there are still stuff missing such as the medic or dispatcher roles, the possibility to choose the difficulty, number of players, etc. and of course lots of polishing is needed to get rid of all those peksy details that get in the way.

however, all in all, i'm quite happy (and proud) of the release. version 1.0 is definitely not the ultimate one, it only means that you can play with it with comfidence.

of course, i'm always eager to have (constructive) feedback² on it. and if you want to contribute, well, the source is available on github.

[1] in fact, it's 1.000000 (i know it's ugly) since i'm switching to rjbs' versioning scheme: 1.yydddn³. it'll make versioning boring (even if not beautiful).
[2] fan & love mail is ok too :-)
[3] yes, i'm taking every bad habit rjbs has to offer, as long as it helps my laziness. of course, games-pandemic is using the excellent dist-zilla since the beginning.

pandemic nearing v1

so games::pandemic 0.8.0 has just been uploaded on cpan. this release saw lots of improvements:

• diseases can be eradicated
• performing infection outbreaks
• detecting game over condition when too many outbreaks
• allowing player to choose which disease to treat in multi-infected cities
• return/escape bindings for dialogs
• tooltips for various game information
• fix unfair epidemic repartition
• fix never-ending too many cards / deal more cards when dropping a card but still being beyond max number of cards
• better dialog for past cards / infections

the game is thus playable, with only 2 things missing to have a full game: augmenting number of infection when epidemic strikes, and special event cards. when those will be done, i'll issue 1.x

of course, this does not mean that game is complete and won't be improved after. for example, the startup dialog to choose the game and player roles, ui improvements, etc. will be post 1.x material.

but in the meantime, enjoy 0.8.0, which is already quite interesting to play.

new pandemic release

games::pandemic 0.7.0 is now on cpan, with a lot of improvements and a crash fix:

• wiping all cubes from a city if a cure has been found for the disease
• reacting to winning conditions
• reacting to game over condition when no more disease cubes
• possibility to see cards already played / discarded
• possibility to see past infections

i'm taking my time, but all in all there is progress... :-)

epidemics strike in games::pandemic!

games::pandemic 0.6.0 is now on cpan, with a lot of improvements:

• introducing epidemic events - fear! :-)
  
• closing current game is now supported
• player cards now displayed in a window of their own
• detecting game over condition when no more cards
• sorting cards by type then by disease then by city name
• introducing a new "action" menu, with shortcuts for actions
• actions now independant of buttons / menu for easier reuse

of course, there are still a lot of things to do, but it's shaping up nicely...

autoprereq plugin for dist-zilla gets smarter

i just released dist::zilla::plugin::autoprereq 0.2.0 which now extracts prereqs from moose roles declared with the with keyword ^[0]. also new in this release is the support for skip list, allowing to trim unwanted prereqs.


[0] why, yes, i got some failures for games::pandemic 0.5.0 due to a missing prereq... defined in a role, you guessed it. :-)

pandemic turns implemented

so games::pandemic 0.5.0 is now released^[0].

the basic game play is now done: besides the player actions, the cards are now dealt and infections propagated. card limit is also implemented, so player can discard them if needed. add to that a bit of ui polishing, and we now have a solid basis on which to build upon...

next releases will see (in no special order):

• the special cards (including the epidemics)
• end of game conditions (both game-over and win cases)
• more ui polishing (i think the players cards will have their own toplevel)
• easier game play (drag-n-drop on the canvas)
• missing player features (dispatcher, medic)
• missing rule implementation (disease eradication, ...)
• start game dialog
• etc.

yup, that's still a lot to do, so expect other 0.x versions! ;-)

[0] and without any more warnings, since i spotted a bug in moosex::semiaffordanceaccessor which has been swiftly fixed!

perl helps save world pandemic

ok, maybe the title was a bit too much dramatic - especially in those days. :-)

i like playing board games, and my wife and i discovered recently pandemic, from z-man games. it is a tremendous cooperative game, where players allies to eradicate 4 diseases. but the infections spread out, and if you aren't fast enough, you end up with a global pandemic - and loose...

it is really addictive, so i decided to write a perl module games::pandemic implementing a clone of this board game, with all its rules. it was also a good occasion to learn moose, dist::zilla and other modern perl stuff. at least, this goal is already fulfilled! :-)

i'm also using poe and tk (i know, i know). i just published the first public release, version 0.4.0. it already implements all the player actions, and here's a snapshot of a game:

of course it isn't finished, but i'm pretty happy of the result (even if the gui might change in the future). i aim for a v1.0.0 playable alone, and then allow networked game...

the code is available on github if you want to help - even "only" translating strings is welcome!

so, expect to hear more about pandemic on this blog. and while waiting for this perl version to be complete, i recommend you to buy a pandemic board game: you won't regret it...