sadly, sane versioning is almost forgotten these days, so there is little reason to stick to it, i believe. i tried to recommend IVAN to several people, and some of them said: "oh, it's still 0.59? i'd better wait for 1.0, or even 1.1 then, it is definitely not ready for playing yet."
of course, hardcore RL fans know that no roguelike is ever "finished", and they all at 0.x permanently.
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but i believe that many "non-RL fans" could enjoy IVAN too. why don't make it slightly easier for them by removing the imaginary "0.x barrier"? IVAN is already more attractive to… let's say "casual" players, with its graphics instead of ASCII. and blood, and gore. so i think that we may cheat a little. it may not help to get wider audience, but there's no harm trying.
i.e. just bump the version number, without much phanfares. consider it "0.60" internally, but use "1.1" for public announcement. "0.59" was released almost 3 years ago, so it's fair to assume that the game went all the way to "1.0" and further during that time. version bump won't look as pure cheating (even if it is
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.