Experimental Features

[TimAidley]

Everybody's been having a lot of fun with the experimental brushes and features, but they were experimental for a reason. Currently many of them are broken, and I worry about people making art with them and losing it due to future versions of the app not supporting them.

I also worry that if people make too much art with them we may be backed in to a corner having to try and support and fix up these broken features, some of which we may not want to support.

I think therefore we may want to think carefully about what we want our proper 'version 1' of Open Brush to contain. I realize there's a tension between wanting to have features to attract people to use it, and ensuring that our release is stable and reliable for artists to use.

What's the answer here?

[TimAidley]

One thought:

Perhaps we make some form of 'experimental' something that we turn on at runtime, a little bit like advanced mode is at the present.

I think it would have to be something that you'd need to turn on every time you use the app, and each time it gives you a modal popup saying something like:

"Experimental brushes and features are intended for preview and amusement purposes only. Sketches created in Experimental mode may not load in future versions of OpenBrush" [OK][Cancel]

I also think that sketches that contain experimental brushes woudl have to save as .tilt.ex, and be marked in the Sketchbook as experimental.