Rebooting the technical ALPHA

As described in our previous updates, we were not satisfied with the results of our first technical ALPHA. We have spent the last couple of months getting back to the drawing board restructuring our application. Now it is time to see how fruitful our attempt has been.

We left no stone unturned, the best way to review this release is as a reboot / start over. This means that you have to uninstall the previous version, download the new version and start testing. This also means that maps you have made with the first tech ALPHA are not compatible with the new build. Please make sure you export them, if you so choose; you will be able to bring them back as images once the image importer has been implemented.

• We have completely replaced several core elements and have reimplemented the core features to get a good comparison to the previous ALPHA version.
• We have also built the Mac and Linux versions to get more testing results from different systems.
• The new version includes a very rudimentary, yet fully functional, self-updater that will allow you to be notified that an update is available and update from within the application.

Rebuilding the core architecture has caused delays, however we would appreciate your feedback to help ensure we have fixed the stability and memory loss issues plaguing the previous versions.

Learning from previous mistakes: “Stability before Shiny”
Being overly confident that our first attempt would be running smoothly on all systems without having your testing feedback early, we dragged the release of the first technical ALPHA to add fancy designs and relatively unnecessary functionalities (for performance testing) to the build. We must admit, the reason was to some extent pure vanity - we wanted to shine from the start. 

We have now learned our lesson: To catch up with our initial schedule, we have decided to release the current version with only the core features necessary for testing. With the new self-updater already working we can push all missing features to your application while you are testing. We will do the polishing and fancy designs once we are certain that our application is performing as expected.

How do you test and give feedback?

We have reworked our crash reporter to report any exceptions and crashes automatically and anonymously. Digging through all the reports we received in our first ALPHA helped us to improve our methods and it is no longer required for you to submit your reports manually. Don’t worry - all we collect are the exceptions, error messages and system specifications that are necessary to understand what has caused the error. We do not collect any personal data at all.

But how do you give feedback then?
In the application itself we have implemented a feedback button that will bring you directly to our feedback submission form where you can submit your feedback.

Do you need assistance with uninstalling / installing?

We have updated our Help Desk where you can find all necessary steps for all operating systems.

Running the application the first time

Windows SmartScreen

When SmartScreen appears it usually says the app is unrecognized. We are aware of this and future versions will have a proper signature and thus will not be blocked by the Windows Defender SmartScreen. Anyhow we can assure you that the application is safe to open and to use.

In order to run it properly we have prepared a guide on our helpdesk which you can follow to launch the application.

macOS

The current alpha v0.2.0 release for macOS misses code approval by Apple and therefore is not seen as secure by the operating system. We are aware of this and it will be fixed later down the road. Anyhow we can assure you that the application is safe to open and to use.

In order to run it properly we have prepared a guide on our helpdesk which you can follow to launch the application.

Note on ARM support

The current release is not yet optimized for Apple devices with ARM architecture and will run through Rosetta 2 emulation with some performance impacts. We are working on native support and bring it to you as soon as possible.