Naev Development Blarg (Page 16)

• Naev 0.5.0 Release

  BY BOBBENS, ON JUNE 3RD, 2011

  The Naev devteam is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.0! This release is the result of over a year of hard work done by nearly 30 committers. This release is just a step in the path for ultimate greatness and a major step forward in the maturity of Naev. It has many major gameplay changes and signifies the coming of age of Naev, which has now exceeded the tag of Escape Velocity clone.

  

  Due to the size of the 0.5.0 ndata, downloads shall from now on be hosted at Sourceforge instead of Google Code due to the latter’s arbitrary size limits.The rest of the project infrastructure will remain unchanged.

  In the future, a shorter release cycle will be used, with focus on the remaining features left before content can be the main focus which include asteroids, dynamic economy and fleet AI, among others.

  Some statistics of the release to give an idea of the magnitude: 961 files changed, 91734 insertions(+), 25431 deletions(-)

  Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/naev/files/naev-0.5.0/ Blog: https://naev.org/ Forums: http://forum.naev.org/ (Forums are lost.)

  List of changes since 0.4.2:

  For Players

  • Larger universe
    • Expanded Dvaered, Frontier, Empire and Pirate territories
    • All-new Sirius and Soromid territory
  • Big systems
    • More planets per system
    • Much larger planets, many new planet and station graphics
    • Players must fly to jump points before jumping to another system
  • Overlay map for in-system navigation
  • Mouse interactivity
    • Planet, ship and jump point targeting
    • Contextual click actions (board, hail, land, etc.)
    • Optional mouse-controlled flying
  • Electronic warfare
    • Ships have cloaking and detection abilities
    • Sensor range depends on cloak vs detection
    • Turrets no longer track all ships equally
  • Time model changes
    • In-game time progresses in real-time
    • Dynamic time compression speeds up long journeys
  • On-map security rating abandoned in favour of faction presence indicators
  • System backgrounds (nebulae, stars and more!)
  • Fancier new GUI
  • Brand-new tutorial that is independent from the main game
  • Outfit slots now have sizes
  • Weapon sets allow easy configuration of different weapon combinations for each ship
  • Ship and weapon heat system
    • Weapons start with perfect accuracy, and become inaccurate as they overheat
    • Severe overheating causes rate of fire to drop
  • Damage absorption and penetration system
  • More diverse planetary inventories (see the tech system below)
  • Random bar NPCs
  • Sound system improvements
  • Smarter autonav behaviour
  • … and plenty more (new missions, ships, outfits, portraits, etc.)

  For Developers (Missions and likewise)

  • Faction presence
    • Replaces security and simple fleet spawning
    • Fleet spawning is now controlled through Lua on a per-faction basis
  • Universe and system editor
    • Allows easy and quick modification of the universe
    • Can create and manipulate planets, systems and jumps
  • New tech system
    • Techs are groups containing outfits, ships or other techs.
    • Assets (formerly planets) sell whatever is in their assigned techs.
  • Hook improvements
    • Pilot hooks pass arguments by default
    • You can now pass custom arguments to hooks
    • Many new hooks
  • Replaced old timer system with new hook-based timer system
  • Improvements to the in-game Lua console
  • Missions can now use more than a single mission marker
  • ndata-locating code is much-improved
  • Lua/Luajit and CSparse system libraries can be used instead of internal ones
  • SDL_image is no longer a dependency
  • Events can now be saved
  • GUIs can be written in Lua
  • Camera API allows much greater camera flexibility
  • Vast amounts of other Lua API additions and enhancements

  ---

• OpenAL showcase

  BY BOBBENS, ON MAY 18TH, 2011

  With 0.5.0-beta2 out the door I decided to work on more videos to show off missions and fancy things we do in Naev. I first decided to record the OpenAL effects (EFX) we do in the nebula. For this I decided to show off the “Destroy the FLF base” mission. If you do not want to be partially spoiled I recommend you do not watch the video. Although it is really cool.

  Effects to notice:

  • Positional sound (basic for OpenAL)
  • Doppler Effect (depends on velocity)
  • Air absorption factor (sounds like you’re under water)
  • Reverb (also helps make it sound like you’re underwater)
  • Speed of sound changes (depends on nebula density – also for sounding underwater)

  For the implementation I’m using the SW OpenAL implementation by KittyCat. Which should work on all systems that support Naev, so I highly recommend it. With the SDL_Mixer backend you do not get all these fancy effects. Some of these effects are also active when not in the nebula and especially notable is the pitch shift with time compression. So I highly recommend you all use the OpenAL backend.

  Now without further ado here is the showcase video of the mission:

  I’m not an OpenAL expert, so if anybody has any advice or recommendations, I’d love to hear them. This isn’t final so it may sound different in the 0.5.0 release. Of course I haven’t touched this part of the sound code in 2 years or so. We’ll see.

  (Sorry for the 4:3 resolution also, I promise I won’t do it again)

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• Naev 0.5.0-beta2 is here!

  BY DEIZ, ON MAY 14TH, 2011

  The Naev devteam is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.0-beta2. This is the second beta and is closer to a release candidate than a beta. We do not anticipate any major issues unlike with 0.5.0-beta1. We prefer to have another beta so the 0.5.0 release is rock solid.

  Links are available on the downloads page.

  

  The changelog is as follows:

  • Features
    • All missions reviewed for playability, many fixed and otherwise improved
    • New mission and other minor content additions
    • Timed cargo missions are less punishingly difficult
    • Weapon cycling account for heat – coolest fires first
    • GUI improvements
      • Ship heat is represented by a bar
      • Turrets have an indicator for how well they can track the current target
      • Better-optimized for narrower screens
      • New graphics
        • New background nebula images
        • Several new portraits
        • New planets and systems
        • Autonav exit condition can be set to anywhere between missile lock and 100% armour
        • Time acceleration multiplier can be limited to avoid lagging on slower computers
        • Minor improvements to ship and outfit availability
        • Sound system improvements
        • Support for using system Lua/Luajit/Csparse libraries
  • Bugs
    • Credit modification glitches fixed
    • Remedied a variety of minor compiler issues
    • Typo fixes in missions, planet and outfit descriptions
    • Ships will no longer jitter when taking damage while getting ready to jump
    • Many graphical elements (player messages, target indicators, etc.) now ignore time accel
    • Camera no longer jitters when flying away from targets rapidly or in the nebula
    • Camera fixes for afterburner rumble in conjunction with the Sol nebula
    • OSD text can never overflow past the translucent background.

  We hope you enjoy this release!

  ---

• Naev 0.5.0-beta1 released!

  BY BOBBENS, ON APRIL 2ND, 2011

  The Naev team is proud to announce the long-awaited 0.5.0-beta1 release. This is a beta release and therefore isn’t quite ready for the general public. While it’s highly unlikely that it will set your cat on fire and send threatening messages to your family, there are no guarantees.

  

  It’s been over a year since 0.4.2, but this is a major step forward in maturity. The original intent for 0.5.0 was to work out many of the important low-level features and gameplay mechanics to avoid jarring shifts in gameplay in future releases. Feature creep being what it is, 0.5.0 has perpetually grown more ambitious over time. We hope to do a better job of “release early, release often” after this beta.

  Compared to 0.4.2, Naev 0.5.0 is essentially a new game. While older saves can be loaded in 0.5.0-beta1, we highly recommend that players start new games. Many things have changed: The galaxy looks quite different, some older missions are absent or have been wholly rewritten, and there’s a wealth of new ships and equipment. For the best experience, start fresh.

  On a side note, a number of songs in this release are encoded at a lower quality than in Git, for size reasons. Google Code has a “technical limitation” of 200 MB per file and our current Git ndata size is 214 MB (and growing). We may have to distribute the final 0.5.0 release through BitTorrent or another hosting service for this reason.

  We don’t expect this release to be perfect (it’s a beta after all), and what we need most right now are testers to run through the many 0.4.2-era missions and other content. The more testing the beta gets, the better the final release can be. So please, report any issues to us via the Google Code bug tracker or on IRC.

  Changelog (long, but still likely missing some things):

  For Players

  • Bigger universe
    • Expanded Dvaered, Frontier, Empire territories
    • All new Sirius territory
    • Preliminary Soromid area (Not inhabited yet)
    • New Pirate system
  • Big systems
    • More planets in systems
    • Bigger planets in systems, more planet graphics
    • Players must fly to jump points before jumping to another system
  • Electronic warfare
    • Ships have cloaking and detection abilities
    • Sensor range depends on cloak vs detection
    • Turrets no longer track all ships equally
  • Fancier targeting method
  • Random bar NPCs
  • On-map security rating abandoned in favour of faction presence indicators
  • More diverse planetary inventories (see the tech system)
  • Outfit slots now have sizes
  • System backgrounds (nebulae, stars and more!).
  • Fancier new GUI.
  • Weapon sets allow to easily configure different weapon configurations for each ship.
  • Heat system replaces accuracy making ships more accurate at first.
  • Overlay map helps navigate and visualize the environment.
  • Mouse targeting.
  • Damage absorption and penetration system.
  • Continuous time model.
  • New tutorial that is independent from the main game.
  • Mouse flying.
  • Images in intro.
  • Lots more content!

  For Developers (mission and likewise)

  • Faction presence
    • Replaces security and simple fleet spawning
    • Fleet spawning is now controlled through lua on a per-faction basis
  • Universe and System editor
    • Allows easy and quick modification of the universe
    • Allows creation and manipulation of planets, systems and jumps
    • Allows selection of planet graphics
  • New tech system
    • Techs are groups containing outfits, ships or other techs.
    • Assets (formerly planets) sell whatever is in their assigned techs.
  • Hook improvements
    • Pilot hooks pass arguments by default
    • You can now pass custom arguments to hooks
    • Many new hooks.
  • Removed old timer system to new hook-based timer system
  • Improvements to the in-game console
  • Missions can now use more than a single mission marker
  • SDL_image is no longer a dependency.
  • Events can now be saved.
  • GUI can be written in Lua.
  • Camera can be modified.

  That’s all for now, good luck and good flying!

  ---

• What if Naev had cheat codes?

  BY BTAXIS, ON MARCH 17TH, 2011

  Many of you will have used the in-game Lua console to cheat, or at least know how to. But I was thinking, what if cheating was a feature? So I came up with this for the on-start event:

  ``` godsequence = {“left”, “right”, “left”, “right”, “target_clear”, “target_clear”, “target_clear”, “hail”}

  function create () player.pilot():addOutfit( “Laser Cannon MK1”, 2 ) hook.input(“input”) isgod = false godcode = 0 end ```

  function input(key, pressed) if pressed and key == godsequence[godcode + 1] then godcode = godcode + 1 if godcode == #godsequence then togglegod() godcode = 0 end elseif pressed and godcode > 0 then godcode = 0 input(key, pressed) end end

  function togglegod() isgod = not isgod player.pilot():setInvincible(isgod) if isgod then player.msg("God mode!") else player.msg("God mode off.") end end

  As you can see (or not), it adds a cheat code to the game much like the codes for old console games. The only way it would be better is if it responded to “IDDQD”, but that can’t work for a variety of reasons.

  Note, this isn’t actually ingame. You’re going to have to keep using the console to get your mad cheats.

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