News/2009
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Monthly update for December, 2009
- Map fixes
- New map tiles
- Map editor improvements, including additional filters, improved model selector
- UI fixes, including fixes for tooltips
- Lots of new models and textures
- New sounds
- Alien count in maps tuned according to UFO capacities
- Battlescape fixes, including fixes for model visibility, actors falling if object below them is destroyed, reaction fire and not automatically crouching when a new enemy is noticed
- Translation updates
- Pathfinding and tracing fixes
- Geoscape fixes, including fixes for aircraft returning to bases
- Weapon balancing
- Inventory related fixes
- Savegames now contain date, which is displayed as a tooltip in the load menu
- Lots of other fixes
In total, 357 commits were made to UFO:AI repository in December
Full changelog.
Monthly update for November, 2009
- Fixes for built-in IRC client.
- New models and textures.
- New map tiles.
- Campaign improvements, including improvements to UFO recovery.
- Crashed UFO recovery is now impacted by the severity of the crash.
- Lots of UI fixes and improvements, including multiplayer UI fixes.
- Fixes to maps.
- Updated translations.
- Fixes and updates to map-get.py script.
- Battlescape fixes, including not stopping movement when a civilian is spotted.
- Map editor fixes and updates, including terrain and script file editors, initial RMA editor.
- Manpage updates.
- Fixes to models.
- Lots and lots of other fixes and cleanup.
- Pathfinding fixes.
- New brush class added for maps - lightclips, blocking light.
- Console command map works again.
A couple of excerpts from commit messages:
- Personal note: This is my first SVN commit, hopefully I\'m not screwing anything up too badly here
- TODO: Remind Mattn to whack me with a big stick for wasting bandwidth...
In total, 475 commits were made to UFO:AI repository in November
Full changelog.
Monthly update for October, 2009
- Added ambient light control for geoscape
- Improved XVI overlay rendering speed
- Fixes for geoscape, including fixes for 2D map rendering, XVI, several crash fixes
- Many Uforadiant modules moved into core
- Many fixes to the pathfinding, including fixes related to weaponclips, actorclips, entities, actors moving one level up when instructed to climb unclimbable objects
- Minor pathfinding performance improvements
- New models
- Fixes for battlescape, including:
- New map tiles, especially many new dropship and UFO tiles
- Work on alien base map
- Fixes for models
- Lots of fixes for maps
- Updated fonts
- Updated translations
- Transfer fixes, including fixes for UI and dropship destroying
- New and updated textures
- Crash fix in research controls
- Uforadiant fixes, including fixes for crash upon autosave and merges from Darkradiant
- Added PNG support for ufo2map
- Fixes to the dedicated server
- New music and sounds
- Base missions now have day/night support
- Multiplayer fixes
- Several other crashes fixed, including changing screen resolution without having game started
- Problem with aliens shooting at walls was fixed
- Fixes for the built-in IRC client
- Improvements to the LUA AI
- Campaign fixes, including UFO appearance fixes
- UFO recovery and UFO hangar fixes and updates
- UI updates and fixes, including messagesystem scrollbar fix
- Fix for passable brushes being invisible in-game
457 commits in October.
Full changelog.
Monthly update for September, 2009
- Battlescape fixes, including fixes for autofire and visibility being updated immediately after breakable object is destroyed.
- Geoscape fixes, including fixes for installation destroying, aircraft destroying, basedefence usage, base attacking and antimatter storage destroying.
- New models, sounds and textures.
- Map fixes.
- Radiant fixes, including fixes for pathfinding overlay, segfaults and memleaks.
- In Radiant, pathfinding only for the current level can be rendered, and it can be displayed also in 2D views.
- More translatable strings in Radiant.
- Work on Radiant sound support.
- Improvements and fixes to the new pathfinding.
- Further attempts to deal with "actor still moving" bug.
- Build process improvements and fixes, including MacOSX updates.
- Port can now be passed to the multiplayer 'connect' command.
- Harvester UFO tiles for more maps.
- Campaign fixes and updates, including no maintenance fees on unfinished buildings, particle beam ammo dependency changes, new events and savegame loading fixes.
- Added new research mails.
- UI fixes, including research screen and aircraft equipment fixes.
- Improved random map assembly performance.
- New random map assembly tiles.
- A long ago lost map resurrected and cleaned up.
- Introduced particle browser in Radiant.
- Door and rotating object related fixes in random map assembly.
- New Radiant prefabs.
- Updated translations and tips of the day.
- Introduced ability to do parallel random map assembly and to timeout assembly.
- Radiant now depends on gtksourceview-2.0, introduced material editor.
- Radiant icons converted from bmp to png.
- Aircraft can now be renamed.
- New debugging commands.
- Fix for loading new map if loading previous one failed.
- General fixes, including fixes for segfaults amd memleaks.
Total of 427 revisions for September.
Full changelog.
UFORadiant download
We've uploaded a Windows installer for you of our UFO:AI mapeditor UFORadiant
Download: uforadiant-1.5-win32-r26345.exe (8.2MB)
Monthly update for August, 2009
This month we would like to call specifically for map testers. All you need is a desire to help the game and ability to compile the development version. Join channel #ufoai on IRC network freenode, and we'll get you started on that.
- Fixes to savegame loading.
- Fixes and improvements to campaign, including research fixes and balancing, transfer system, pilot assignment and large scale economy balancing.
- Lots of UI fixes and improvements, including widescreen related fixes, battlescape UI fixes, smooth 3D geoscape, transfer & hire UI fixes and improvements, updated geoscape layout, aircraft equipment screen fixes and improvements and Ufopedia improvements and fixes.
- Map fixes and updates, including more work on alien base map, split Africa map to RMA and new aircraft tiles.
- Pathfinding fixes and improvements, including fixes for actors sometimes walking in the air and through civilians.
- Battlescape fixes and updates, including several crash fixes, electrolaser damage fix, actor centering, updated radar, improved performance and interactive radar.
- Updates to the Uforadiant (map editor), including sound support, model selector and other merges from darkradiant, initial work to show routing information in Uforadiant and improved GTK compatibility.
- Geoscape updates and fixes, including installation fixes, base defence fixes, fired projectile displaying fixes, more informative messages, improved selected UFO indication in 2D geoscape, multiple crash fixes and more messageoption categories.
- AI fixes.
- New textures, models and model skins, battlescape radar images, particles and sounds.
- Simplified battlescape radar map creation process.
- Updated translations.
- Implemented UFO yards.
- As usual, lots of other fixes.
Total of 457 revisions for August.
Full changelog.
UFORadiant updates
And again our mapeditor got some new features. We are now able to render the pathfinding information in the mapeditor. This should help us to fix pathfinding bugs very early.
In addition we now have a model browser (merged from DarkRadiant) - hopefully we will get more map models included now.
Last but not least we are working on integrating sound support into radiant. The mappers should really make use of the misc_sound entity as this adds a lot of athmosphere to a map.
UFORadiant with new pathfinding renderer
UFORadiant with new modelbrowser
Monthly update for July, 2009
- Battlescape fixes (several potential "actor is still moving" problem sources fixed, terrain rendering fixes).
- Ufopedia UI improvements.
- Lots of other UI improvements and fixes, including text scrolling fixes, base defence dialog improvements, more tooltips and production screen improvements.
- Geoscape improvements and fixes, including autofire for defence weapons, target selection, base defence fixes, Moon displaying fixes, ammo assigning fixes, mail client fixes, transfer fixes and inventory fixes.
- Build process fixes and improvements.
- Saving/loading fixes.
- Updates to translations.
- Updated and new textures and normalmaps.
- More map prefabs split and sorted in subdirectories.
- Key binding improvements.
- Radiant prefab panel now has treeview according to directories.
- More improvements to the Radiant prefab panel (including path and extension stripping).
- Improvements and fixes to Radiant entity panel.
- Pathfinding fixes (including infamous "harvester ramp" problem fix and ceiling check fixes).
- Fixes and updates to maps, including work on new aircraft.
- Updates to Windows codeblocks package.
- New sounds.
- AI fixes.
- Updated models.
- More verbose output when a random map could not be assembled.
- Various fixes to the campaign, including rank system fixes.
- Added initial regression tests.
- Added particle browser in Radiant.
In July, total of 594 commits were made.
Oh, and mattn got married somewhere along the way - so wish him the appropriate things :)
UFORadiant updates
We have added prefab support to UFORadiant. This hopefully allows mappers to fill their maps with details faster.
In the next days this feature will be improved and stabilized. We encourage you to test it and report problems and give feedback.
UFORadiant with new prefabs support
Monthly update for June, 2009
- Geoscape updates (installation models, cached messagelist, messagelist open upon mouseover).
- Market usability improvements.
- Map fixes and updates.
- Windows codeblocks package creation updates.
- Max entity limit increased.
- UI improvements (scrollbar changes, more tooltips).
- Campaign improvements (research dependencies, base attack, balancing).
- Map editor fixes and improvements (ability to select all faces with a given texture, classnames list, prefab sidebar).
- Fixes to the new pathfinding.
- New sounds and textures.
- New savegame system fixes.
- Translation updates.
- Battlescape fixes (actor moving, negative TUs, bloodspider weapon).
- New models (tank).
- Updates to the new LUA AI.
Commit message of the month: "fixed a pathfinding bug. Not sure what it actually fixes..."
Total of 396 commits.
Monthly update for May, 2009
- allow replacing armor by DND
- improved rendering speed by reducing the amount of traces
- added intro animation
- improved dynamic lighting
- some pathfinding fixes (still work in progress)
- added some new prefabs for mappers
- fixed roq cinematic sound
- added some new sound effects like burning fire
- added missing shots and loading background for maps
- two new maps: ferry and england
- fixed 2d geoscape images for mission
- improved the sound and music system
- normalized footstep sounds converted into ogg and all the same length
- theora and xvid video support fixes (it is activated in the windows build now, too)
- menu input improvements
- menu editor improvements
- fixed bsp light loading from entity string (bug #2785510)
May totalled at 223 commits. Full changelog.
Monthly update for April, 2009
- Many UI updates and fixes, including multiplayer equipment menu item details, tooltips, soldier stat displaying, inventory and widescreen support fixes.
- Fixes to pathfinding, including performance improvements.
- Geoscape updates and fixes, including weapon range extension and time scaling fixes.
- Campaign improvements and fixes, including base building and templates, aircraft equipping and transfer system fixes.
- Fixes and updates to maps, including updated material definitions, more footstep sounds and new normalmaps.
- Translation updates.
- Ufopedia fixes.
- Updates to the AI.
- Battlescape fixes and updates, including actor movement smoothness, ability to move multiple actors simultaneously, weapon balancing work, TU calculation fixes, bsp light loading and reaction fire fixes.
- Ability to prepare actor movement feature in the battlescape. Activate "confirm action" and hit enter twice to perform all the pending actions.
- Sound system fixes.
- New country flags and GPL texture replacements.
- Updates to the map editor, including merged icons from NetRadiant and entity inspector grouping affecting keys by class.
- Initial OGG video support.
- Implementation of material editor.
- Some updated and new particles (laser).
- Lots of various fixes and cleanup.
April totalled at 482 commits. Full changelog.
Monthly update for March, 2009
- More code splitting in ufo2map.
- Lots and lots of UI updates, fixes and reorganisation, including market, transfer, lost/won, alien containment, base attack and other menu updates.
- Map compiler (ufo2map) memleak and other fixes.
- Campaign mode fixes, including alien campaign fixes.
- Further widescreen support improvements.
- Various battlescape fixes, including inventory, soldier and firemode selection.
- In battlescape it is now possible to shoot over single crouched actor.
- Map editor updates, including automatic mandatory field adding for new entities, some merges from netradiant and valid entity value combobox.
- A bit more threading in various components.
- Geoscape fixes and updates, including a crash when destroying an installation, merged base and installation controls, default base name fix, max installation count limited to 3*(working base count), mail system fixes, message option updates and fixes to interception path calculation.
- Map fixes and updates, including some work on alien base map.
- Updates to translations, including initial Korean translation.
- Console autocompletion and history fixes and updates.
- LUA AI fixes, including a memleak fix.
- Initial merge of obj model support from q2w.
- Various keybinding fixes.
- Lots of tooltip improvements and new tooltips.
- Minor fixes to the new XML save format and removal of the old, binary save format.
- Loading screen names updated to reflect renamed maps.
- Many fixes to the new pathfinding.
- Gameplay changes, including alien equipment and aircraft size changes and UFO recovery improvements.
- New UFOpedia images and textures.
- Removal of unfinished airfight combat zoom mode.
- And the usual round of lots and lots of other fixes, totalling at 650 revisions.
Monthly update for February, 2009
Alongside the continuous development work we got mentioned at Inside Mac Games.
- Huge refactoring and splitup of code, especially soldier/aircraft/team relationship stuff (which should make base missions and skirmish easier to develop and support).
- Refactoring and cleanup in other parts of code, including mapping tools.
- Various compilation fixes.
- A lot of UI updates and fixes, including new recruiting window look, multiplayer UI updates, mouse handling, language selection, pilot assignment, aircraft menu changes, statistics charts, tooltip related fixes, UTF-8 fixes and initial changes for better widescreen support.
- Translation updates, including initial Dutch translation and updates to UFORadiant translations.
- A lot of new checks in the mapping tools, which in turn lead to...
- ...a lot of minor fixes and improvements for maps.
- Improvements to multiplayer team creation, including alien teams and team saving.
- Improvements to UFORadiant, including window handling, font selection, translations, path handling, statistics mode, stateful button disabling, improvements to entity editor, generic GTK methods used for image loading, binary now being called uforadiant instead of radiant and more functions exposed through menus and toolbars.
- Included Thai fonts for platforms that don\'t have them.
- Music updates.
- Minor performance improvements.
- 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 and more weapons available in multiplayer.
- Map compiler updates, including inter-platform fixes, actorclip & origin containing fix and face overlapping fixes.
- Fixes to concurrent sound playing.
- Fixes to console tab completion.
- Updates to map-get behaviour and locations.
- Fixes to the battlescape HUD, including reaction fire, firemode selection and reload button activation.
- Updates to built-in IRC client, including scrollable userlist.
- Geoscape fixes, including crashed UFO loading.
- Debian packaging updates.
- Battlescape camera switching has been removed.
- Dirtmaps added to some textures. For visual comparison, open before and after images one after another and go forth-back in the same browser window/tab (usually achieved with Alt+left/right keys). This allows to create new look without creating new textures and reduce pattern with repeating textures.
- Savegame format changed to XML, using bundled Mini-XML. This should reduce savegame breakage rate in future.
- A lot of fixes, many being quite technical and not user visible.
Some statistics - January had 832 commits, February had 972 commits.
LUA alert - if you know LUA and are interested in AI, we have something to offer. New AI implementation can use LUA scripts, but there are no scripts themselves. If you are interested, contact us on forums or IRC.
Monthly update for January, 2009
When I wrote something about busiest month being December, I seriously underestimated the dedication of the UFO:AI team. First few days of the January produced monthly update comparable in size to the December one...
- Lots and lots and lots of refactoring and cleanup, including lots and lots of breakage. This was the month of breakage.
- Many interface improvements (improved menus after missions, mail client improvements, base building fixes, unavailable aircraft menu buttons disabled and start/recall moved to icon, buy/sell menu fixes, mouse behaviour fixes, research screen fixes, equipment screen improvements, fixes to mousewheel behaviour, aircraft equipment menu improvements and firemode selection cleanup.
- Map editor fixes and improvements (fix for the bug where angles were dropped sometimes after moving a model, shortcuts added, additional use of mapcompiler output, contentflags are not reset anymore when surfaceflags are modified - and are displayed as such, entity regrouping merged from NetRadiant, window position and size saving fixes and changed configuration directory on Windows.
- Fixes and performance improvements to the new pathfinding.
- Keybinding improvements, notably battlescape keybinding separation.
- Fixes to maps, including outdated data cleanup.
- Compilation fixes and improvements, including 7z support for pk3 archives.
- Geoscape fixes (destroyed UFOs now are removed properly, UFOs now also estimate location of the aircraft they are trying to intercept, fixes to incorrect UFO tracking lines, a hack for long distance estimation problems, radar overlay handling fixes, fixed occasional crash when aircraft meet, shortcut fixes and fixed automatic initial ammo addition.
- Updated textures.
- Campaign improvements (more gradual tech introduction, fixes to alien equipment assignment, ammo dependence fixes, more ammo added to the market, crashed UFO missions are now limited in time.
- Updates to the translations, including initial Bulgarian and Dutch translations.
- Load/save cycle fixes (weapon assignment to the aircraft, employee transfers).
- Fixes to loading of some maps.
- Updates to the license analyzing script (mostly interesting for packagers).
- Fixes to long alias handling.
- Fixes to sound subsystem (memory corruption, better ogg support, fix for sounds being played at volume 0).
- Started translation of the map editor.
- Work towards implementing alien bases (team and equipment definitions, interest category).
- New research tree images.
- Improvements to the map compiler, ufo2map, including statistics mode, performance improvements and automatic nodraw setting upon map compile.
- More erroneous maps catched by the map compiler.
- License changes for Destructavator contributed music, making it compatible with OSS/Debian guidelines.
- Reduced reliance on fake aircraft and base for skirmish and multiplayer.
- Power armour animation updates.
- Fixes and improvements to console command completion.
- Fixes to Debian package generation.
- Fixes to repeated game startup sequence.
- Updates to md import script for Blender.
- Move of GTK runtime libraries into map editor installation package for Windows.
- New aircraft models.
- Updates to the music.
- Automatic language selection fixes.
- Fixes to model scale.
- Basic automatic clipping for models (mostly interesting for mappers).
- Reduced communication between server <-> client for sound traffic.
- Introduction of menu node editor. You can have some fun with it by entering "mn_push editor" in the console (without quotes).
- Of course, lots of misc fixes, including ones for aforementioned breakages :)
Special guest: 2 savegame breakages ;)
Commit message of the month: "* Remove redundantly redundant parentheses, which are redundant.".
Runner up: "* quote: it doesn\'t get more boolean than boolean".