As LSPDFR 0.4 nears completion, we hope this topic will help in providing some clarification for developers who make use of our API about what the changes in 0.4 mean for them and their work.
Firstly, the significance of the changes to LSPDFR that 0.4 brings can't be overstated. LSPDFR 0.4 introduces changes to almost every aspect of the mod and will take a little getting used to. We think that the overall experience is much improved from 0.3, and a lot of the features that we introduced in 0.3, or earlier versions, have been dramatically changed, expanded upon or entirely re-worked. It's important to keep this in mind as such drastic changes will unavoidably have the potential to cause issues across the board.
In regards to our current approach, our main priority at this time is to release a public version of LSPDFR 0.4 as soon as is possible. In short, this means that our focus is and has been very much on the core experience of the mod. As a result, while we will still ship the first public release of LSPDFR 0.4 with a functioning API, it will not be substantially different from the current LSPDFR 0.3 API. Additionally, we are committed to ensuring that custom callout plugins remain compatible with LSPDFR 0.4.
We understand that this approach might cause some initial disappointment, but we think it is the most sustainable way of doing things both in terms of people being able to play 0.4 as soon as possible (which obviously is very important), but also from an API and development perspective. As said above, a lot has changed in 0.4 and we want developers to have the opportunity to properly familiarise themselves with the new version and get a feel for what sort of content they'd like to create and what sort of things they'd like to change.
Just like with previous versions of LSPDFR, we are committed to pushing post-release updates and hotfixes for 0.4, with a view to following up with a minor 0.4.1 version, which will focus primarily on extended API functionality. During this process, we will work with developers to incorporate their suggestions and requests for the 0.4.1 API, and will also provide development builds of 0.4.1 to developers for testing.