New Release, version 0.4.7 Final

[andrewbuck]

The new release candidate has been put together and posted on sourceforge (both windows and linux builds). I would like to thank everyone who participated in getting this release put together. The game has come a long way since our last release in every aspect. The changes to the game engine include numerous AI improvements, speed improvements, team coloring, and many bug fixes. We have gone from having 9 models with only a few having animations, to 19 models with a majority having animations. We have added in-game sound and added several sounds to our library. And this is also the first release to be built on both windows and linux at the same time, and we now have a proper ticket tracking system.

The current plan is to have this release candidate up for 1 week while we collect and fix any bugs/issues that crop up during that time, and then release a final 0.4.7 version. Between now and that time no new major features will be added to the main build, only bug fixes and changes to materials/textures/GUI layout, etc will be put on the main branch. Other development can happen offline or on other code branches until the main release next week.

Thanks again to all those who have contributed. I look forward to hearing feedback from players whether it is bug reports or just what you thought of the game.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Nice, now sit back and watch the number go down towards 1

[TheAncientGoat]

Eeek, people will rage when you say a .deb = the linux build. But awesome work nonetheless Freegamer has a pending blogpost

[oln]

I will probably do a linux binary tarball as well.

[svenskmand]

When the final release is out then it might be a good time to go into wiki mode and update the developer documentation. Also there is still some work to do with describing how to build the game. I will finish up the Windows building guide tonight and try it again on a fresh machine. I am also looking at making a msi-package for Windows, it seems to be fairly easy, I will use Wix, which is a scripting language for making msi-packages, when I am done I will try and make a script that automates compiling and packaging on Windows. I have put the Ubuntu PPA on hold for now, the documentation I have currently on how to do it, is too useless :S

[TheAncientGoat]

Also, 32 bit deb only? Arg :\

[svenskmand]

The WiX tool is awesome I will have Windows installer complete with icons an banner brandings in no time. The tool is really well documented

[oln]

Also, 32 bit deb only? Arg :\

Another reason for getting a PPA going.
I will put up a binary tarball sometime today if that helps. Unfortunately I don't have a 64-bit system running anywhere, so someone else would have to contribute a 64-bit binary.

[TheAncientGoat]

AAARG; relies on libraries that aren't available in Ubuntu 10.04 :$

[oln]

You would need to add the ogre ppa mentioned in the wiki yes. No idea if there are other libs needed that are not in 10.04. Any reason you are not using 10.10?
EDIT:
Seems like SFML is an older version in 10.04.

[Skorpio]

Good job everybody! It almost feels like playing Dungeon Keeper now. Digging, claiming, dropping your creatures on the enemies, what else do you need?!

[TheAncientGoat]

It's getting close, so close... Still a lot of work, but it's almost at the point of just needing polish.. (I used the windows build, again, too much shlep to get it working on 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04)

[andrewbuck]

I was playing around with the new release a bit and I noticed that the construct worker gets stuck trying to claim tiles forever. This is because the level file has them as a worker but has their "claimRate" at 0, so they go dance on a tile, but get stuck doing that forever since they never finish. We should figure out how we want to resolve this, either make the unit not be a worker or set its claim rate to something greater than 0.

-Buck

[TheAncientGoat]

Running the game in wine works decently well; it does crash seemingly out of nowhere when I attack the red player, the game seems to crash when my units die. It works fine when my units die when fighting neutral creatures though...

[Skorpio]

My construct worker could claim tiles without problems, but some creatures tend to get stuck at corners for some reason, preferably at diagonal ones.

After dropping creatures I could a few times see them warp over a couple of meters. And sometimes some creatures went through walls.

Once the game crashed without an error message, but apart from that it works fine.

In the log file are some warnings about the file format of the meshes:
WARNING: Goblin.mesh is an older format ([MeshSerializer_v1.40]); you should upgrade it as soon as possible using the OgreMeshUpgrade tool.

And in the violet kreatur zone, when I clicked on the walls, there appeared no pickaxes but copies of this indicator box.

[andrewbuck]

Running the game in wine works decently well; it does crash seemingly out of nowhere when I attack the red player, the game seems to crash when my units die. It works fine when my units die when fighting neutral creatures though...

There are no 'neutral' creatures since any creatures with the same color are freindly and any other color at all are enemy. If you can try to get some more details about the specifics of the crash I will have a look at it. I may also try taking a crack at running in wine here and see if I can reproduce it, but wine has enough problems of its own so it may just be a bug there.

some creatures tend to get stuck at corners for some reason, preferably at diagonal ones.

I think this is a bug in the gameMap::cutCorners() function. It has been doing this for a while, I think what happens is the creature gets just slightly into the wall/lava tiles and then sees that it can't move out so it gets stuck there. I plan to make them take "wider" turns around these impassable tiles and this should hopefully resolve the problem.

In the log file are some warnings about the file format of the meshes:
WARNING: Goblin.mesh is an older format ([MeshSerializer_v1.40]); you should upgrade it as soon as possible using the OgreMeshUpgrade tool.

This will resolve itself naturally as we improve meshes and they get re-exported with the newer tools. We have had this warning for a while so I don't think it is a big issue.

And in the violet kreatur zone, when I clicked on the walls, there appeared no pickaxes but copies of this indicator box.

This is a bug that has existed for some time, I think I know what I need to change to fix it but when I change that it breaks the tile loading. I will try to have another look at it.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

When the final release is out then it might be a good time to go into wiki mode and update the developer documentation. Also there is still some work to do with describing how to build the game. I will finish up the Windows building guide tonight and try it again on a fresh machine. I am also looking at making a msi-package for Windows, it seems to be fairly easy, I will use Wix, which is a scripting language for making msi-packages, when I am done I will try and make a script that automates compiling and packaging on Windows. I have put the Ubuntu PPA on hold for now, the documentation I have currently on how to do it, is too useless :S

Any opinions about this documentation stuff?

[oln]

I've done some work the wiki today already after some feedback, which should help. I have also gotten the impresseion that we should do something like what blablub suggested in the other thread, create a frontpage with various links. People seem to be having problems with finding downloads, bug tracker etc.

[svenskmand]

Yes we should also do that. When things have settled down with the current release I think we should focus on these two things 1) making good documentation and 2) clean up the webpage.

[Skorpio]

Another thing that we should add to the game is a splash screen that tells newbies how to host a game. Once I watched a video on Youtube in which a guy tried to play OD and some other FOSS games, but he didn't know how to start it. I can't find the link anymore.

Actually it's pretty easy, but maybe some people don't bother to click on the system tab.

[svenskmand]

True, it should be very easy for newcomers.

By the way expect a msi-package later this evening, I have the WiX installer rolling Now I just need to rebrand it with OD logo and stuff

Edit: the msi-package is now finished and I am now uploading it to SF, please try it out. I am now committing the WiX scripts to the SVN repo. Working with WiX is much easier than making a deb-package, mainly due to WiX being very well documented

There is a HowToCompile.txt file in the SVN under mediaSource/master/ODWinInstallWiX which describes how to build a new msi when the time comes, I will probably do it, but now others can also do it if I am not here

[oln]

Are we ready to prepare the final release?

[andrewbuck]

I think we are getting close. I don't have anything further to contribute to the code before the release (and even have one change I am waiting until after the release to push). I think we should try to get the new tile meshes exported and working in the game, and also make sure the latest GUI stuff is committed in and working. If both of those are good I think we are ready.

-Buck

[StefanP.MUC]

Just did some last consistency polishing to the GUI. I think I won't be able to create some yet another new major feature for the GUI before the release, so for me it's OK to release 0.4.7-final (then I can finally develop further on the GUI on Windows and not in a slow VM ).

[oln]

I'm planning to put up git builds (on my webhost) quite often to make it easier for non-coders to work with the latest version after this release.