Even as Beta2 prepares to wing its way to a public release at the weekend, planning has already begun for 2.3.0. In keeping with the work on QS 2.2.0, the focus largely remains on standardising the code. Perhaps the greatest potential 2.3 invisions is templating with phplib.

I’ve been doing a few tests – mainly to get up to speed on its use – and have been impressed. I’m wondering whether I qualify for a shin-kicking for not using templates sooner. Probably :). Anyways the great thing about templating QS is that I can depart from the problems inherent in mixing html and php in the same file. No doubt some are familiar with SE – it’s functional but none would call it pretty. QS is an improvement but it barely touches the tip of the iceburg. With tempating a true theme basis could emerge, we could finally rid the game of its generic look and ad-hoc feel and get some real html design done to boost it’s interface. It’s bound to be a lengthy process, and likely result in a mixture of templated pages and older non-templated PHP formed pages – but it’ll get there eventually.

The way I see it panning out – once the base functionality of the game is near completion (about 90% done at this stage), the game’s look and feel will take precedence. This could be one of those creeping concerns – sort of like what happened with the conversion to Fleets. Templating will at the very least allow quick development of an area – with the ability to return and improve the web design at any stage thereafter.

I’ll be returning to far more active QS development about a month after the final 2.2.0 release – so I have that much time to tinker with phplib’s templeting class while working on Q-CMS from time to time.