Naev Development Blarg (Page 15)

• Naev 0.5.2 Release

  BY DEIZ, ON MARCH 25TH, 2012

  The Naev development team is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.2. This is mainly a bugfix release, though it also introduces a small amount of content in the form of missions and outfits.

  The new asset discovery mechanics have bothered quite a few people, so we’ve introduced a jump scanner outfit that greatly increases jump detection range, as well as local maps which behave similarly to the traditional star maps found in 0.5.0 and earlier releases.

  Now, as per usual it’s time for some statistics, from 0.5.1 to 0.5.2:

  83 files changed, 2408 insertions(+), 574 deletions(-)

  More than half of the added lines come from the dat/ directory tree, thanks in large part to a new event and a repeatable mission for the Sirius faction.

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

  Blog: https://naev.org/

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

  Changes since 0.5.1:

  • New events and missions
  • New outfits
  • House Soromid now has a logo
  • More ways of mapping the universe
  • Disabling damage leaks through shields
  • conf.lua-tweakable font sizes for accessibility
  • Bug fixes

  ---

• 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

  ---

• 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.

  

  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.

  ---