See SokoSolve Part One
The last release of SokoSolve was in Jan 2008 -- now over a year later it is time to revisit SokoSolve and take stock. For the initial version 1.3.45-beta, most of the development work was done during an intense period of my life while my mom was very sick with cancer. Since then I have not put much effort into the code, nor have I been monitoring or promoting the project as I did in the initial phases. The result being a period of stability during which the project has stood on it own feet.
After spending a couple days reviewing the stats, the site, the code, and its 'google presence', I have the following thoughts:
- I forgot just how much effort I put into the initial version
- The current version is stable and is fairly well polished. The decision to use a lot of in-line HTML in the GUI creates a good, polished look.
- The solver GUI is overly complex and is hidden away from the user
- Given the number of downloads, there is been little or no feedback from the user-group. In fact, I have no clear idea of the number of active users.
- While the solver can solve some fairly hard puzzles, it is not as effective as I had originally hoped. The problem domain it seems continues to be rich and deceptively hard to make iterative progress. This is however, gut feel, the solver sub-system lacks a clear benchmark library which makes extremely hard to set a baseline and show progress over time.
- The solver GUI is somewhat over-whelming, clearly good for internal development, but probability a blocker for advanced users or would-be developers for using it. It also has a number of bugs/failings that hail the user experience.
As on April 2009 SokoSolve is a stable project with typical statistics:
- 11706 web site hits (by way of the page counter)
- SourceForge rank around 7000-8000
- Averages 3-10 downloads per day, with 2,616 download in the last 12 months
- Tellingly, no forum activity in 10 months
Distribution Notes
TODO
- Replace the default cell images (kill the brown!)