Aw, come on! The first day I’m no longer under extreme pressure and I can start coding again and I’m again in a feature freeze?! Damn it 
!
Sigh. Maybe I can take some of my freshly gained time and fix some bugs or contribute to tick some release blockers off the list…
You could work on a secret branch instead of fixing “bugs” which are clearly apocalyptic features. The branch will merge fine after the freeze. I won’t tell them. 
While I do appreciate your suggestion (and braveness to tell me about this highly illegal method 
), I have some doubt that it will merge fine, as I plan to change some a lot of central files and it will most certainly conflict with changes other have made at that point - and I don’t want to rewrite the same thing again (that would be the third time) so I just have to wait it out, I guess.
A feature freeze is probably the best time to do that kind of “big changes” branch, actually.
I have a major feature that isn’t quite working and is explicitly not on the 0.F feature freeze list, so I’m going to have to fix and then it keep it up to date for 4-12 weeks. It’ll be annoying, but it’s what has to be done.
Since I have to rework it anyway (as the underlaying system has changed since 0.C, which I first wrote it for) I’m probably better off to wait until the freeze is over and all conflicting stuff got merged, and then start reworking it instead of keeping it up to date for who knows how long…
Especially since I still can’t predict when I get the next time consuming order and I have to stop working on Cataclysm DDA again for a few weeks or months…
But eh, that’s life, I guess 
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If you don’t mind me asking, what are you working on?
Help! S-/he wants to steal my idea! No, just kidding 
.
Well, that big one are a lot of new options.
We do have an option to change construction speed, but none for car parts install/uninstall time, crafting time, disassembly time… This one was done quickly and hasn’t changed that much over the years, I probably should make a seperate pull request for this after the freeze.
More time consuming would be the “rot speed” option. It allows to speed up or slow down food and corpse rot (or deactivate the rot all at once). I had it done and started testing when the realistic food freezing mechanics were implemented. And then a second time when 0.E feature freeze hit…
Even more time consuming will be to add an option to change the strength of monsters. We do have options for health (resilience) and speed, but non for how hard they hit.
I’d like to also add an option to change their behavior against structures (so that one could adjust if hulks actually can break down walls and zombies can destroy cars and furniture etc.), but that will probably be a mod with an “external option” instead of something to set in the option menu.
After that… There are 63 other (smaller) things on my to-do list (not yet coded), not included some of the stuff I saw on this forum… About 10% of those 63 ideas are in the game already and I just didn’t get around to remove it from my list, so that count is a bit off anyway.
Aftar that there are 3 other large projects, like reworking the fluid system, the wall/floor/roof system and the zombie clothing system, which all require a lot of time and teamwork.
Isn’t it supposed to not be majorly broken before a major edition goes out? There are some very broken big mechanics still hanging in the air. I’m not trying to be a downer. I just ponder how close everything broken is nearing a fixed stable state for a major release? <-rhetorical last question.
I think the point of feature and content and etc. freezes are to get people looking at those bugs rather than adding new things to the game. Yeah, some stuff is still busted at the moment. If there’s no stable, there’s no timetable to get them fixed, so they could remain buggy for months. If you’re pushing to release a stable, those bugs are going to get spotlighted and presumably fixed more quickly.
Nothing like grounding a topic. A fair perspective. I was thinking it would be a little rough on casual programmers who may not have the most time to work on the game. Rushing things makes a mess most often. So I was of mind to wonder what gets worked on when some folks may not be on that fast track time table(whatever the table may be).
This is one of those things that can suck in the moment, but long term are much better for the project health. Regularly slowing down to fix and patch and deal with accumulated issues is good, even if its not always optimal for contributors with more bursty development schedules.
I see it as a give and take though, as a potential contributor is also less likely to be turned away from trying to improve something when its not piled high with bugs . Long term it will lead to a more stable base all around to develop off of.
wow, what a journey, i’ve been following experimental until this announcement and it feels like riding a wave in the middle of the storm, some versions have nasty crashing bugs and some version has minor but skippable bugs
with 0.F i believe the game has entered the state of “simple, but pack full of content” for new and veteran players.
looking forward for 0.F