[scummvm-devel] New year, new release: Prepare for ScummVM 2.7.0

[Lothar Serra Mari]

Hi all,

it has been a while since we published our last, big update ScummVM 2.6.0.

Considering the incredible work that happened during the last couple of 
months, we think it is time to start a new release cycle - prepare for 
ScummVM 2.7.0.

While preparing this release cycle, I came up with the following release 
schedule:

- January 20:  Branching off 2.7.x, master branch is being frozen
- February 3:  Public testing announcement, focusing on the new features
- February 13:    Tagging date, porters start building their ports
- February 25/26: Public release

As always, there are a number of bugs that would be amazing to have 
fixed for the next release.

Please check out

	https://bugs.scummvm.org/report/17

frequently, especially regarding the "blocker" issues marked in red color.

Additionally, we want to finalize another great and shiny new feature: 
Support for shader-based scalers.

In preparation of this feature, I created the new repository

	https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm-shaders/

we want to use as a base repository for shaders that we can potentially 
bundle with ScummVM itself. In the next couple of days, I'll tackle the 
tremendouly tedious task(tm) of curating a list of shaders we want to 
have in the initial "set".

Additionally, the ScummVM documentation needs to be updated in order to 
reflect the last changes, especially regarding new screenshots for the 
added GUI options, a description of the shader-scaler feature (which is 
in WIP as mentioned above) as well as a description of the game/engine 
specific GUI options for the "Game" options tab for HADESCH and MOHAWK.

If you have any feedback regarding the release scope and schedule, 
please feel free to ping me.

All the best
Lothar

-- 
Lothar Serra Mari
ScummVM Co-Lead