Naev Development Blarg (Page 17)

• 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!

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• 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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• New tutorial

  BY BTAXIS, ON MARCH 16TH, 2011

  You’ve all seen it. The message asking you if you wanted to play a tutorial whenever you created a new pilot. Well, I’m pleased to say that message won’t be bothering you anymore, because the tutorial has a new face.

  

  So, a new tutorial. What is different? Well, first of all the tutorial isn’t based in the regular game anymore. Where the old tutorial desperately tried to give you a quick crash course on how to play right at the start of the game, this tutorial is accessed right from the main menu, taking its time in a special training environment, teaching the basic concepts without worrying about the player flying off somewhere because, well, he can’t. So, hopefully, the new tutorial will make the learning process smoother for new players.

  Another thing that is different is that the new tutorial is split up into several distinct modules, each module focusing on a limited selection of concepts and ignoring all the rest. This is good, because it means that our fledgling, ignorant player-in-training can revisit specific parts of the tutorial without having to sit through the whole thing again.

  At present, six tutorial modules are coded up. These are: Basic operation, Interstellar Flight, Communications, Basic Combat, The planetary screen, and Missions and events. A further two, Advanced combat and Trade, will eventually be added. I say eventually, because both combat and trade are parts of the game that are in for a serious overhaul. Writing tutorials about them now would be pointless.

  Most of you will already know how to play the game, so a new tutorial won’t help you much, but hopefully this step has made Naev that much more accessible to new players.

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• Merge into Master

  BY BOBBENS, ON MARCH 12TH, 2011

  As a good sign of what’s going on, all changes have been merged into master and development is now going to be done there. Some stats on the change:

  naev: Edgar Simo master * rc7d316d / (9 files in 3 dirs): Merge branch 'balance' of git://github.com/Deiz/naev into tutorial (+1161 more commits...) - http://bit.ly/fmcrdB

  [bobbens@ghanima (~/usr/prj/naev)] $ git diff origin | wc -l 133349

  As you can see it’s a pretty big change. I’d consider it a new game. Anyway, on the 0.5.0 beta we’re waiting on finishing the new tutorial and then we’ll do some quick check ups and code analysis before the release. This won’t be the official release, just a beta as it’s still buggy and such. However it does give a change to get some mass testing done to get a nice polished 0.5.0 release. So after over 1000 commits and 100k line diff we are finally nearing the awaited 0.5.0 release, albeit with like a 3 month delay of the original goals, however this release is so ambitious I believe it’s totally worth it.

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• Manual Zoom and Dizzyness

  BY BOBBENS, ON MARCH 7TH, 2011

  It has come to my attention that numerous people become dizzy while playing Naev. As it is to my interest that no physical discomfort happen while playing Naev I’ve dealt with probably the first cause which is the zoom. While the zoom is nice to have automatic (and you can tweak it’s behaviour), it seems like it can make people dizzy. So Naev now has an option to enable manual zoom. It is controlled by mouse wheel, however I’ll probably add key bindings in the near future.

  

  This is a start. If anybody experiences dizziness still with Naev 0.5.0 I’d be very interested in feedback and investigation into what exactly triggers it to try to solve the issue.

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