Naev - Naev Development Blarg (Page 15)

XDG Part Deux

BY DEIZ, ON FEBRUARY 20TH, 2012

As with the previous post, this pertains solely to *nix (primarily Linux and Mac OS X) users. Windows users are warned to avert their eyes to avoid irreversible Unixification.

I’m not a fan of pushing maintenance duty onto end-users, so I’ve done some work to automate the XDG configuration update process bobbens mentioned.

When first running the next release, if old configuration files exist (in ye olde ~/.naev) a prompt will show up, offering to automatically invoke the update script. This will hopefully reduce the process down to simply clicking “Yes” for most users.

Of course, you’re welcome to click “No”, as well. To hopefully handle all distribution cases (whether Naev is run from loose files in a Git checkout, installed via a package manager or grabbed directly from SourceForge) the script is both included in the single-file ndata and available as a standalone file.

With any luck, the configuration update will be smooth and painless. It should also make the coming release less painful for bobbens, because I think if we’d gone the full-manual route and asked package maintainers to correctly run the script for each user, they’d be demanding his head on a pike.

UNIX gets XDG Compliancy

BY BOBBENS, ON FEBRUARY 19TH, 2012

This change only affects UNIX platforms (that includes linux and mac os x). Now in git master we have recently merged changes that should bring Naev up to the XDG Base Directory specification. What does this mean? First off it means that no longer will Naev’s per user stuff sit in “~/.naev” but instead it will be split up so that:

config is in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or “~/.config/naev”
saves and screenshots are in $XDG_DATA_HOME or “~/.local/share/naev”
nebula and misc cache stuff are in $XDG_CACHE_HOME or “~/.cache/naev”

The bad news, this means that you will have to run our script to move stuff over or it won’t recognize your old config or saves. We should be detecting that and displaying a warning. To update to the new paths all you have to do is run:

$ ./naev-confupdate.sh

However, we do believe this will be better in the long run. Package maintainers should look into incorporating that script for users in post-install hooks or the likes to avoid trouble. Sorry for any inconveniences this may cause.

Activated outfits

BY BTAXIS, ON FEBRUARY 11TH, 2012

Okay, so, on those activated outfits, they’re now up and running in the Git version. For those of you who are curious about how it works, I’ll explain it briefly.

Running a jammer while the afterburner cools down.

An activated outfit is a piece of equipment that does something when manually activated in space. While it’s off it does nothing, but it also doesn’t use any energy. On the other hand, once an activated outfit is turned on the benefit it gives is usually quite noticeable, and can make a big difference if used right.

This means that the abilities activated outfits give you are highly situational and give you more things to worry about than just fly, point and shoot. In some ways, we are moving a little closer to the common skill bar you find in many action RPGs. Like those skills, our activated outfits can have a cooldown period too, which means you need to wait a certain time before you can use that same outfit again.

At the moment, we only have two activated outfits, those being the Missile Jammer (which slows down missiles close to you) and the Afterburner. But we have plans for quite a few other outfits. For example, how about an outfit that instantaneously transports your ship to another part of the system, or an outfit that lets you quickly recharge your shield at the cost of a big chunk of energy? The possibilities are many.

Activated outfits will be in the next release.

Naev is on Desura!

BY DEIZ, ON FEBRUARY 3RD, 2012

~~I suppose I should qualify that with an almost.~~ Thanks to the efforts of #naev IRC regular oldtopman, we’re all set up ~~and awaiting final approval~~. ~~Once we go live,~~ Naev ~~will be~~ is available via Desura on all of our usual supported platforms (32 and 64-bit Linux, Windows and Mac OS X). The Desura client is presently exclusive to Windows and Linux, but Naev will still be downloadable on OS X through Desura’s site.

For those unaware of Desura, it’s a digital distribution platform. I’ll let Desura’s own about page do the rest of the talking.

Without further ado, here’s a link to Naev’s Desura page:

Update: As of now, Naev is live on Desura!

More happenings

BY BTAXIS, ON JANUARY 23RD, 2012

Hello everyone, and a belated happy 2012. It’s been rather quiet here on the blog, but I assure you that’s only because nobody has been posting on it. Elsewhere we’re all still tinkering away on the project, and we’re hoping to build toward a new release in the near future. Before we can do that though, we need to put the finishing touches on the active outfit system. You see, we plan to add outfits you can install on your ship and activate once in space for all sorts of effects… Oh, but I can see you’re not very interested in that. So, let’s move on to something else that’s been happening:

Asset and jump discovery

Discovering assets (that’s planets and stations) and jump points used to be easy. Jump into a system, glance at the system map, voila, they’re all there. But that is changing. Just as ships become undetectable if they’re far away from you, so can assets and jump points be invisible to you, using much the same mechanics. For an easy example, look at the following screencaps:

NOTE These screenshots have been lost to time :(

As you can see, it’s now possible for assets to not be shown on the map until the player discovers them. Now, I should point out that most planets tend to be fairly hard to miss in a star system, so when you jump into a new system you will usually discover all of them immediately, just like it’s always been. The example above isn’t representative in that respect – I simply modified the hide values for the purpose of showing how it works. However, if the system has high sensor interference (inside the nebula, for example), it may be more difficult to find the planets within.

Space stations tend to be a fair bit smaller than celestial bodies however (yes yes, except THAT one). You may have to scout around a system a bit before they appear on the map, and if the station actually makes an effort of being inconspicuous (think hidden military or pirate bases), you won’t easily find them.

Jump points, too, are more difficult to detect than your average planet. You usually won’t spot any jump points other than the one you entered from when jumping in, which means you can’t plot a course to the next unknown system before first finding the way there. So how will you know where the jump points are then? Well, you could fly around and look for them yourself, but there are a number of things you can do to find them more reliably:

Follow other pilots. Especially traders often travel to other systems, and they know all the major routes. If you see a trader fly away from a planet, try following it. Chances are it will lead you to a jump point.
Talk to NPCs in the spaceport bars. Not only do NPCs offer you missions sometimes, they will also give you helpful information. Some may even offer to update your map with locations of assets or jump points if you don’t know them already.
Buy maps. As of the next version of Naev, the Star Map outfit has been replaced by a collection of pre-defined maps. Each map reveals one or more star systems, and may or may not reveal jumps and assets belonging to them. Buying a map for the Empire Core, for example, will immediately update your map with systems in Empire space, as well as the jumps leading from one to the other.

There are also rumors of new, exotic types of jump points, such as hidden jump points that can’t be detected without special equipment, known only to a selected few. There also seems to be a kind of jump point that can’t be detected at all, and that only be used from the other side…