Build Bot?

[Rectifier]

Obviously compiling tome is easier on certain operating systems; or at least more intuitive for that particular os's user base (aka a non-windoze linux distro).

In any case, despite having a small amount of Unix experience, (a tiny amount of time) and that I like this game enough to want to be up to date with the svn, I don't have much incentive to compile on another os, as shown in this thread where I attempted to help someone else figure out the instructions for a windows build. http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=29823 .

And before anyone launches into a tirade, please forgive my ignorance of how build bots are set up or how complex it would be to automate builds for X number of operating systems or how it wastes time for the current iteration, etc. etc. I've taken a couple programming courses, I know that I know absolute jack about all the details of the big picture.

The reason I bring this up is this: automated builds would provide more up-to-date reports of bugs and feedback from players, and ultimately save time for a whole lot of people.

I've seen automated builds for other projects that use svn, so why not tome?

*Just had an afterthought, the milestone releases should still be used the most because they would be more stable and theoretically have more balanced gameplay; and the builds from automation would still be made for (beta/alpha?) testers.
...unless there was some kind of outcry...I hate my brain sometimes.

** Wikipedia article about build automation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_automation

[Mithril]

Sure, a bot would be nice but I imagine it would be too much work for a still small project.

That said, since the development has been so extremely rapid with constant major changes it would be nice if releases were somewhat more frequent. I imagine it would be easier to find bugs and resolve new unbalanced gameplay issues if there are small changes between releases and not several major simultaneous changes. Serious bugs would also be less of an issue with more frequent releases. Also easier to provide feeback on one changed major game mechanic rather than several ones that changed at the same time.

Maybe there could be a thread for non-official compilations of svns that could be posted to, say, Mediafire? If anyone would be interested in doing this.

[Rectifier]

A build bot doesn't even have to make a new build for every svn commit, it could update every day, every two days, or even weekly.

Just some food for thought, the wiki article I linked is a bit more detailed and has more background from the 'see also' links.