We started working on Dark Avatar before we even started 1.3, so we've essentially been working on two different code bases (I'm leaving out most of the technical details to spare the non-coders). Well, with 1.31 up it was time to merge the Dark Avatar code back into the 1.3 code. I was getting increasingly nervous about the merge because our version control program doesn't always handle file comparison and merging that well, and we changed A LOT of files, including converting all of the models from text to binary files. We also had several files (and functions) that were changed in both 1.3 and Dark Avatar, with different changes that all needed to be in the final version. Now, our version control software will let us go back to any version that we've tagged, and we tag the code almost every time we put a build up on SDC (a few of the betas usually slip through the cracks). So if the merge didn't go well, we could always do it manually from the tagged versions of 1.3 and the initial Dark Avatar code.
I made everyone stop coding yesterday, made sure that everyone had checked in everything, told them all to stay out of the version control software and started the merge process. Once the files were merged, I had to go through them all and fix the conflicts. I finished a few hours ago (including making sure that it compiled and ran) and committed all my changes to the server. Now it's just a matter of going through and making sure that everything made it. From the files that I looked at while fixing the conflicts, the merge went far better than I expected it would. I went around and told everyone that they could update their code. Now I'm tagging the code again, so that if we need to go back to this point in the code, we'll be able to do it.
I think that we're making good progress with Dark Avatar. I'm definitely glad that we've finally got all the code merged,so that it's not hanging over my head anymore.