Naev 0.5.1 Release

BY BOBBENS, ON MARCH 1ST, 2012

The Naev development team is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.1. It’s been nearly nine months since the release of 0.5.0, but we hope the release is worth the wait. With contributions by some twenty people, it’s one of our larger releases.

0.5.1 was originally intended to be a small feature release, released soon after 0.5.0. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. However, in the time since, 0.5.1 has ballooned into a sizeable release unto itself. We’ve implemented a number of proposals that bring us a few steps closer to our goal for the far-off version 1.0, developed a fair bit of new content, and polished up innumerable things.

As per usual, we encourage players to start new pilots in 0.5.1 for an optimal experience. Of course, older saves can still be loaded, but there are some caveats. Specifically, due to asset and jump discovery, a 0.5.0 (or earlier) save will have its map appear as a series of unlinked systems, as the jumps must be discovered. A number of older missions have also been heavily tweaked, so in-progress missions in older saves may need to be manually aborted.

And now, for some slightly-misleading statistics, from 0.5.0 up to a few days ago:

804 files changed, 48017 insertions(+), 35760 deletions(-)

As well as some less-misleading ones, from the src/ directory:

346 files changed, 14799 insertions(+), 8806 deletions(-)

Since 0.5.0, Naev’s core code has grown by almost 6,000 lines, and we’ve gained more than 12,000 lines, in total.

Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/naev/files/naev-0.5.1/

Blog: https://naev.org/

Forums: http://forum.naev.org/ (Forums are lost.)

List of changes since 0.5.0:

For Players:

• Many new missions, and improvements for older ones.
• Soromid faction added.
  • Full array of ships for the faction.
  • Populated northern area of the galaxy.
• New disable mechanic
  • Disabling damage is separate from regular damage.
  • Player ships can now be disabled, boarded and looted!
  • Disabled ships will recover automatically over time.
• Jump points, planets and stations must now be discovered through exploration.
• Maps now reveal fixed routes, mostly between major factions’ space.
• Fancier map search shows details about found items.
• New planet and station graphics.
• Large AI ships now have greater weapons diversity.
• General usability improvements for low resolutions.
• Missiles lock on gradually, depending on electronic warfare values.
• The tutorial has been substantially expanded and reworked.
• Active outfits allow for powerful, temporary abilities to be toggled.
• New key bindings make the it possible to use the keyboard most of the time.
  • Autonav is now more flexible and can travel to planets in addition to systems.
  • Navigate the spaceport with keytips.
• Improved faction reputation logic.
  • Factions now have ceilings for reputation gained through killing.
  • Missions are necessary to elevate your standing beyond this.
  • Completing major missions can increase the reputation ceilings.
• Landing permissions enhanced beyond the simple boolean (hostile or friendly) model.
  • Landing at military and other special assets typically requires high reputation with a faction.
  • When you don’t meet the required standing but aren’t hostile, assets are marked ‘restricted’.
• Overhaul of spaceport bar NPCs. NPCs will now often say meaningful things and can even help the player out by hinting at missions or updating his galaxy map.
• Complete ship health rebalancing.
• Store user data in XDG-compliant locations (*nix-only)
• Misc. bug fixes

For Developers:

• Faction standing and land permission code moved to Lua.
  • Reputation is now handled with per-faction scripts.
  • Special assets can have unique landing code (e.g. requiring a particular mission to be done)
• Large amount of Lua API additions and changes.
• Greatly enhanced the in-game universe editor.
• XML data (ships, planets, etc.) has been split into individual files to allow greater modularity.
• Various faction specific scripts have been reorganized to be in a more logical location, and these script have been tied closer to the master faction definition.
• Generally less crash-prone when loading corrupt data.
• Misc. bug fixes