Would you consider updating your fork to the active PK2 repository?

[SaturninTheAlien]

Hi!

Thank you for your contribution to the Pekka Kana 2 project! I really appreciate the effort you’ve put into it—it’s always inspiring to see the community so involved.

I’m reaching out because I’ve taken on the role of maintainer for a new, actively developed fork of Pekka Kana 2. Unfortunately, the repository you’ve based your fork on:
https://github.com/danilolc/pk2
...is no longer actively maintained. It contains several serious bugs that are unlikely to ever be fixed.

The active repository is hosted here:
https://github.com/SaturninTheAlien/pk2_greta
This new version, codenamed “Greta Engine”, is under continuous development. Here are some highlights of what’s been accomplished so far:

• Many bugs have already been fixed.
• Tons of new features have been added.
• Backward compatibility with legacy PK2 content has been maintained.
• Extensive refactoring has been done, including translating most Finnish names to English for better accessibility.

I truly appreciate your work—it’s amazing! That said, I regret to inform you that the version of the game your work is based on (1.4.5) is one of the most unstable in PK2’s history. Specifically:

• Version 1.4.5 introduced numerous issues, and many custom episodes are unplayable on it.
• Memory leaks present in that version frequently cause the game to crash. These issues have already been addressed in the Greta Engine.

I highly recommend syncing your fork with the latest version from my repository. It would allow your amazing contributions to benefit from the stability and improvements we’ve introduced.

Finally, if you’d like to join the development team, we’d be thrilled to have you on board! Feel free to join our Discord community here:
https://discord.gg/kqDJfYX
Thanks again for your hard work and dedication. I look forward to collaborating with you!
Best regards,
Saturnin

[GMH-Code]

Hi @SaturninTheAlien,

I can sync the WebAssembly version with the Greta Engine, but it depends on how much interest there is in that happening overall. I've been aware of your version for a long time -- I chose Danilo's version back then because that was what the Google Play/F-Droid versions were running and generally what people seemed to be using at the point I started. Over time I have been weighing up the change.

I have a number of concerns:

• The old Piste Gamez website still seems to be what new users arrive at first. It only offers an old executable and looks to be long abandoned. Although I have a fond memory of that site, it really needs to be updated, replaced, or superseded, as it's just making it harder to find versions like ours. If you got official acknowledgement as the defacto version on the main website, and your binary was linked to, that'd be better for everyone.
• The Piste Gamez forums are very inactive and to first-time users it looks like nobody is interested in the game, unless they are already committed enough to join the Discord channel, which not everyone's going to join.
• The fan-made levels have gone and are now only available on Wayback. There needs to be an official place to upload to and host them again. I don't believe I have the legal right to download and redistribute the fan-made levels, so I didn't do this.
• The only version on F-Droid still seems to be Danilo's.
• The Google Play version has long gone. This is a loss of another important popularity metric.
• The newer desktop binaries only look to be available on OneDrive -- there needs to be an official hosting location for stable binary updates.
• It's currently difficult for me to gauge which versions are stable, i.e. ones tested more but maybe with fewer features, that you would be happy with being ported. The version numbers on your commits are being updated frequently and on almost all patchsets, so it makes me feel like I'd potentially be far 'behind' maybe after just one day of updating the port if I picked a random commit to sync with.

I did join the Discord channel as you requested. First thing I did was some searching around to see I could find any previous interest in the web version of the game. I searched quite extensively and have to say I saw absolutely zero interest there -- I never saw anyone talking about it or pointing to it, which was really disappointing. It's great to see your version getting a lot of interest there, but the general feeling is people on the Discord channel aren't really interested in the web port. I could do the update only for people to say, "we don't want the web version of Greta".

Basically I can be convinced, but I can't tell if there is enough interest in making the change. Currently I'm 50/50 on doing the update.

[SaturninTheAlien]

Hi @GMH-Code,
thank you for your response.

1. You rightly noticed that Greta Engine is under active development. I usually commit all working changes to ensure I can easily use git reset --hard if needed. I frequently experiment with different approaches, and I am not always satisfied with the outcomes. Every few commits, I publish a snapshot with compiled binaries on Discord.

2. Regarding the version string, I enumerate all the commits on the main branch. This approach helps trace bugs more effectively. While I am aware of the commit hash, enumerating commits feels much more intuitive for me. Since we often use Discord for bug reports, this method helps pinpoint the exact moment when a bug occurred.

3. Fortunately, we are about to publish the first stable release. I will inform you once it is available. The only tasks left are finalizing translations and implementing some minor GUI improvements. Binaries will be published on GitHub and other platforms.

4. We are also planning to update the official Piste Gamez site to reflect the latest changes.

5. Beyond Google Play, we are planning something much greater. Pekka Kana 2 Greta Engine is set to be released on Steam, which we hope will bring significantly more visibility and popularity.

6. Regarding the inactive forum, we have moved to Discord, which has become the primary hub for community interactions.

7. I have archived all fan-made levels from http://mapstore.the.cz/ using a Python script. Since this website was unofficial and hosted by unknown third parties, I anticipated its potential deletion. A link to the OneDrive archive should be pinned on Discord.

Best regards,
Saturnin