Truth to be told I don't have much in a way of release procedure, there are no automated tests, nor alpha, beta and release candidate testing periods. Heck, there is not much in a way of installation package either, just zipped folder. But I do try to check by hand if the zipped stuff works at all before uploading it. And guess what, it did work on my machine. It also worked on the other machine I sometimes use for developing the project. I asked a friend to test it on his computer but Christmas was near, I couldn't wait so I uploaded it anyway. Couple of weeks later I met with him brought the topic up and he gave it a try. Main window appeared over the whole screen but main menu was not there. Second or two later the program crashed with only the most basic and generic "Application crashed unexpectedly" error message.
That puzzled me because I specifically made a logic for trapping run-time errors and displaying the error details in a manner which reasonably competent user could report to developers (me). Since there was no such error message I had to reproduce the problem in the environment where I have some debugging tools. Guess what, I could reproduce it on my own computer on which it worked before upload. Trick was to download a zip file from the Internet, not use the one I uploaded. No, it was not the case of GitHub or SourceForge (for some reason GitHub hosts Stareater releases there despite SoruceForge's shady recent history) injecting something in my file but the case of Windows not trusting downloaded files and .Net security. Such circumstances made the Stareater to reject loading DLLs for AI logic and map generator. These DLLs can be replaced by mods so they are not exactly known to the Stareater's EXE in advance and not trusted because of it. To be honest I'm not the best informed about security surrounding untrusted code but I've been educating myself on one previous projects and it turned out Mono doesn't support it. If I remember correctly Mono simply ignores security related functions, doesn't explode with errors but as we wanted to sandbox 3rd party code we dropped the concept and moved to something else. In the future I could spend more time researching the topic and make some sort of DLL trust checking but for now I'll just allow all.
Sorry for inconvenience, next build will be available when some visible part of space combats is implemented. Or sooner if there is an interest.
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