Changelog/2.3

Version 2.3

Git working directory: root

Template:Todo

Code

• Theora video playback support
• Joystick support
• 3D engine improvements
  • Thread support for map rendering
  • Shader support
    • Bumpmapping
    • Deluxemapping
    • Specular lighting
    • Warping surfaces
    • Glowmapping
    • Dirtmap support
    • Flare and corona support
  • Image filters (contrast, brightness and so on)
  • Initial merge of obj model support from q2w.
• non-ASCII characters can be used in base names and soldier names and such.
• Fixed problems with non-ASCII texts and strings.
• Widescreen support
• Savegames now XML based
• Skirmish game support
• More improvements of the in-game irc client.
• Changed image loading to SDL_image
• Several pathfinding optimizations

UI

• Rewritten UI system:
  • Support for popups, floating menus and tabs. Components system.
• We now have general support for multi-line tooltips.
• UFOpedia UI improvements.

Localisation

• New localisations:
  • Belarusian (bg_BG)
  • Hungarian (hu)
  • Korean (ko)
  • Dutch (nl_NL)
  • Norwegian (no)
  • Portuguese (pt)
  • Ukrainian (uk)
  • Chinese (zh_CN)

Battlescape / HUD

• Terrain affects how much grenades and other bouncing particles bounce. See terrain definitions.
• New tactical mission radar [1]
• New RF and TU-reservation system
  • The TUs used for Reaction Fire are now "reserved" on the current turn (and are not used from the next turn).
    TUs will be reserved for exactly one shot in RF, but if "Multi RF" is enabled the game will shoot as many times as there are TUs left.
  • There is now a button/checkbox to reserve TUs for Crouching/Standing-Up.
  • There is also a new button that will bring up a popup to reserve TUs for shooting.
  • All reservation settings will be carried over to the next round/mission (if possible).
  • The default Reaction Fire setting (on first mission and in multiplayer) is now set correctly for all team members (and yet untested the aliens - the aliens may still need some attention).
• If one hovers over a crouch or reload button we now have tooltips that show the needed TUs for that action and the TU-bar in the HUD will show the remaining TUs after clicking (if it's possible).
• A new tooltip will pop up when moving the mouse over the TU-bar to show all information about TUs (includes e.g. reserved Tus). Enabled by multi-line tooltip support.
• Stun-attacks now do not result in blood-splatters and stunned bodies only have blood around them if they are heavily wounded.
• It is now possible to shoot over single crouched actor.
• Key-binding improvements
• Lots of pathfinding fixes and other fixes. Lots.
• Bumpmapping for meshes/models on the geoscape
• Post-processing effects (glow map support)
• Basic implementation of mouse-based pan/tilt for battlescape

AI

• New LUA-based AI framework implemented, but not currently in use

Inventory

• The tooltip of items in the inventory now have a background drawn as well.
• When manually dragging items to a soldier (i.e. his/her belt/backpack/etc...) the items are now auto-rotated to fit the available space.
  This also is used by the game when auto-placing (via the right mouse button)
• Also if one drags an item there is now a "preview" drawn. This means you will see (while still dragging) the item in the location it'll end up when you release the mouse-button.
• Support for scrollable containers in the soldier equipment screen. Scroll with the mouse wheel MW , by clicking on the new previous/next buttons or by pressing O/P. Internally two types of scrollable container are supported:
  • Vertical (default): one item per row (weapons have their ammo drawn next to them). All main items have their name&amount listed and ammo only its amount.
  • Horizontal: The multiple items are listed in as many rows as have space in the container area.
• New category for heavy personal equipment was added (e.g. rocket launcher, flame thrower etc.. are now listed in an extra view)

Geoscape

• New display of radar coverage on geoscape
• New XVI overlay to show XVI progression
• Popups on the geoscape now prevents a gamer from speed up the time (you have to close them first).
• New geoscape HUD
• Added starfield, sun and moon behind earth on 3D geoscape, season changes.
• New view of nation borders
• Aircraft now anticipate target movement while intercepting, instead of flying straight to target location.
• Geoscape has higher frame rate
• Configurable notifications.
• New time control system
• Added ambient light control
• Improved XVI overlay rendering speed
• GLSL support for geoscape: screenshots

Campaign

• New campaign system and a lot of balancing tweaks
  • Alien activity (UFOs, missions, etc.) will change depending on the player's actions
  • Removed predefined list of missions.
• Soldiers are now linked to a nation.
• Skill/Ability/Experience system overhaul
  • Actors gain experience for performing certain actions such as walking and using their weapons, up to a maximum per mission.
  • Actor stats are given by their initial stats, plus a power over their total experience for that particular stat.
  • Detailed information can be found here.
• Support for sam sites and other installations
  • Radar Tower - Provides additional radar coverage on the geoscape, but less than the standard base.
  • SAM Site - These installations will attack UFOs in a small radius on the geoscape.
  • UFO Yard - Off-site storage for recovered UFO's. This replaces UFO Hangars which have been removed. Proposals/Off-base_UFO_Yards
• UFOs are now detected every fixed time interval (game time) with a probability between 0 and 1. This means UFOs may stay hidden even within radar range.
• Added alien bases to game
• Fixed several bugs in capacity code (like number of aircraft per hangar)
• Crashed UFO recovery is now impacted by the severity of the crash.
• Research, production and geoscape related fixes, including improved installation handling and speedups
• Game mechanism updates - interceptors can no longer carry soldiers, base mission is lost if there are no soldiers, soldiers can be equipped before base attack without aircraft
• Support for crashed UFO missions
• Tweaks to alien equipment and UFO recovery
• Aircraft can be renamed
• Alien count in maps tuned according to UFO capacities
• New beam weapons for aircraft (laser, particle beam cannon)
• Medics removed. The hospital now works "automatically"
• Pilots added, but they do not yet have stats

Base

• Updated base summary menu to show stats of the current base.

Map and map tool improvements

• GTKRadiant 1.5 was forked to UFORadiant and came under maintenance
• Pathfinding information can be viewed in editor
• Workflow optimizations for RMA and material files
• New (map) entities:
  • func_door
  • func_rotating
  • trigger_hurt
  • misc_mission
  • misc_mission_alien
  • misc_message
• Material subsystem (terrain support)
• Lightclip brush class added to block light in maps
• Phong shading for lightmap calculation (ufo2map map compiler)
• New view filters
• Added prefab support for easy pasting into a map
• Added model browser
• Field editing for entities to easily set properties
• Support for adding sounds via misc_sound entity

New Maps

• Lots of new tiles, adjustments and fixes to maps
• Random maps
  • New tiles for farm theme
  • alienbase map
  • extended ufocrash theme
  • forest theme
  • industrial theme
  • cemetery theme
  • city theme
  • converted to RMA and extended some maps:
    • africa
    • japan
• Static maps
  • community_centre
  • city_train
  • laboratory
  • fueldump
  • wilderness
  • england
  • ferry

Compiler

• Improvements to the map compiler, ufo2map, including statistics mode, performance improvements and automatic nodraw setting upon map compile. Lots of check/fix functions for ufo2map, do --help for more info
• map compiler no longer leaks memory

Changes

• changed footstep and fireaffected content flags to surface flags
• New tracing and pathing code implemented. New code allows for correct detection of floors, walls, and obstructions that prevent movement. Also allows for passages that may only be used while crouching.
• Updated pathfinding code to detect when crouching through a passage would be more time efficient.

Bugs

• Fixed a bug where a soldier would still fire every single shot of e.g. the grenade launcher even if he died from the splash-damage in the middle of the shot-sequence
• Fixed pathfinding bugs related to inline brush models

Artwork

• Nation flags in the nation funding stats.
• A lot of images/textures that had an unknown license/copyright were replaced with GPL (or CC) ones.
  This is still a WIP, but you can see the progress here and here.
• New UFOpedia images and textures.
• Lots of new textures for mapping
• New aircraft models
• Death textures for aliens

New Weapons

• XAW95 (multiplayer only)
• Coilgun
• Needlergun

Music/Sounds

• Several new music and effect sounds added
• Fixes to sound subsystem (memory corruption, better ogg support, fix for sounds being played at volume 0).

Multiplayer

• Improvements to multiplayer team creation, including alien teams and team saving.
• More weapons available in multiplayer
• Updates to built-in IRC client, including scrollable userlist.
• Extensions to multiplayer menu and invite feature

Miscellaneous

• Add support to the skirmish menu to select the amount of soldiers to start the mission with