Added scriptable species definitions in species.txt. Species have names, icons, focus settings, evironmental preferences, food consumption and effects associated with them. Many data-table based meter modifications have been moved into species effects, including population and health dependence on planet environment level for a species.
Removed secondary focus setting, and removed the balanced focus option. Planets now have only a single focus selection, all of which much be specific and (hopefully) more interesting to play with and easier to create content for.
Made focus settings moddable as part of Species defintions. Available foci on a planet can depend on arbitrary conditions, which may make for interesting gameplay changes with advancing tech or situational changes during a game. Each species can have a distinct set of available foci as well.
Fixed issue with custom ship designs that would frequently crash the game when they were built.
Modified behaviour of design screen when modifying a design: the incomplete design’s info is now shown in the encyclopedia panel whenever the design is modified or if the main panel is clicks. Clicking a part or hull once shows info about that part or hull, as before. The information about ship designs in the encyclopedia is also greatly expanded.
Added right-click popup menu command on the list of completed designs on the design screen: “Delete Design”. This lets players remove designs from the list that appears on the production screen, and from the completed designs list itself on the design screen.
Added species property to planets and to ships, which is used when colonizing to determine the species of the new colony. Built colony ships get the species of the planet where they were built.
Added an indication of ships’ species next to the design name of a ship on the fleets window, and planets’ species in their population tooltip.
Modified colonization UI to require a *single* colony ship to be selected before showing the colonize button for colonizable planets. The colonize button now shows the initial (determined by the colony ship capacity) and target planet population (determined by the species to be colonizing) on the colonize button.
Added some Python library files in a zip in the main FreeOrion directory in the Win32 installer. This should fix issues with nonfunctional AI when Python hasn’t been installed on a user’s system.
Removed the homeworld special, and modified species to track all the planets which are their homeworld, which are set during universe generation. Multiple planets can be a homeworld for a species, which is helpful as there are presently only two species available.
Fixed (hopefully) some issues with directories-finding code on Linux.
Modified apperance of meter bars on the sidepanel, to support showing current value, change in current value, and target / max value, even if the target is less than the current value.
Added a food consumption meter type, which is shown on the planet panels on the sidepanel, next to health and population.
Planet population icons use their species icon, rather than a generic population icon.
Added a droplist to pick species during single or multiplayer game setup.
Replaced contents of empire_names.txt with various generic empire names, rather than the species names that were there, since species are now a separate concept from empires.
Modified how empires and players information are stored in and retreived from save files, to make it easier to get this information when loading games without needing to load the whole save file
Made loading games much less likely to crash the client or server. Any errors that occur will abort the load and (hopefully) show an error message, and likely return the player to the intro screen, rather than crash.
Fixed issue with saving or attempting to write to an unwritable log file, which could previously crash the client or server.
Added some logging of the time it takes to execute various initialization tasks, to help future performance tuing.
Added an “inherent” meter cause type, for a few default/basic meter levels that are set automatically to make the game mechanics, particularly for stealth, work better.
Reworked Meter concept. Now meters have just a single value, instead of a current a max as before. Some meters have associated meters that are used like a max or target value, but not all, which is useful because various uses of meters don’t need a max or a target value.
Added new meter types for max and target meters, as these are now separate meters internally.
Modified the population growth mechanics to account for food allocation meter values and the possibility of larger population than target population.
Removed upper bounds on meter values. This may cause some UI problems if values are larger than can be shown in the available space, but we’ll deal with this when it becomes a problem.
Modified tooltips to handle new paired (or unpaired) meters.
Changed clickable links in sitrep entries and encyclopedia entries to be always distinctly coloured rather than underlined when moused over.
Modified effect parsing for new meter system, and accordingly updated content files.
Moved various data table-based meter modifications into effects.
Modified parts palette on the design screen to not show buttons for classes of parts for which none exist.
Changed resource output calculation to use meter values, rather than a more complicated multiplication and scaling between meter value and planet population. The resource output can still depend on population by making the effect that sets the resource meter value depend on population. This makes understanding output and where it comes from simpler.
Tweaked colour of industry meters.
Added Dump functions to various gamestate objects, which can be used for debugging or logging.
Added numerous content scripting object properies and modified existing ones, including adding a string property type, and properties such as object name, species, building type name, planet focus, ship design id, fleet id of a ship, planet id of a building, system id for any object, final and next and previous system id for ships, and the number of ships in a fleet.
Added a SetSpecies effect and a Species condition.
Changed Homeworld condition to use new system of species having one or more homeworld objects, rather than working with a special. Homeworld condition can match any homeworld, or can take a list of species names whose homeworlds should be matched.
Modified FocusType condition to take a list of focus type names to match. Planets with those foci will be matched.
Modified BuildingType condition to takte a list of building type names.
Fixed some issues with CMake build system.
Wrapped some code in try-catch blocks to prevent some crashes when parsing stringtable entries.
Fixed issue where empires would lose visibility of starved planets, and never actually observe them being stared, so would perpetually think they were in the state they were immediatly before starving.
Disabled the message box that popped up to inform players they had won, as this was annoying, particularly when playing a game with no AIs, in which case a player would always win on the first or second turn.
Replaced ship health meters with structure and max structure, as health meters were changed to health and target health, and it doesn’t make sense to have more structure (-al integrity) than the max, even though a planet could have (temporarily) more health than its long term stable health value.
Renamed some tooltip resource “production” strings to “output”, to avoid confusion with the separate “production” concept in game.
Consolidated some stringtable entries related to meter tooltips, which now use standard meter name stringtable entries.
Modified victory sitreps by adding a text parameter that can be filled in with an entry in the stringtable by the client.
Added VarText support (in stringtable entries) for building types, specials, ship hulls and parts.
Fixed some meter value discrepancies between server and client.
Changed conditions and effects evaluation to use the initial value of a meter on a given turn, so that meter values can be repeatedly recalculated and not accumulate as a result.
Removed several resource output object properties from content scripting, since these are now redundant with the resource meter values.
Added new hull design backgrounds.
Removed unused ship icons.
Fixed some app bundle isues on MacOSX
Removed “previous” value from meters… which contained the value of the meter on the previous turn, as this wasn’t being used anywhere.
Tweaked behaviour of code that sets default rendering settings dependent on graphics card GL version support, which is intended to reduce the number of crashes on older rendering hardware.
Tweaked behaviour of stealth threshold slider on galaxy map.
Fixed crash when clicking between FleetWnd and other windows and the map surface.
Added initial code to 3D combat system to support cached rendering of objects.
Fixed issue with server logging that was shutting down before all logging was complete. This should make server log files more useful after crashes.
Fixed a minor graphical glitch on the encyclpedia panel, where a border line wouldn’t be rendered.
Fixed issue with autogenerated condition / effect descriptions that treated a “Value” in a SetMeter effect as a property of the source object, rather than the target object that is should be.
Despite some early teasing, it now seems Steam is not coming to Linux after all – at least for now.
News broke August 21 that Valve’s marketing VP Doug Lombardi said in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz that “There’s no Linux version that we’re working on right now.” This is despite early discoveries that Linux was indeed on the menu and apparent confirmations.
There are two trains of thought on the statement by Lombardi. Most seem to interpret it to mean that Steam is not coming to Linux – period. Then another camp is saying don’t overlook the obvious qualifier: “right now”.
That means currently no, but it doesn’t mean not next month, or not next year, or not ever.
Valve is all too familiar with gaming folks out there. They are the guys behind the awesome STEAM online gaming platform. They were in a bit of controversy recently when they denied all reports of a Linux version of their famous online gaming platform. But once again, Valve is in the news.
The “employment opportunities” section in their website is the new source of all the hype. The responsibilities of the desired candidate for the post of Senior Software Engineer include “Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform”.
Back in July we reported that Unigine Corp, the company behind the advanced Unigine gaming/3D engine, was working on its own strategy game. This game was supposed to be announced by the end of July, then in private we were told it got pushed back to the middle of August, but to start off September we finally have the announcement for this new game. Unigine OilRush is the game title and it will be available for Linux. Will this be the best Linux native game we see in 2010?
In other words, the second episode of Vera Blanc, “Ghost In The Castle”, is officially out. To find more about it, just visit the game official page at http://www.verablanc.com
This time, Vera must investigate a mysterious ghost that is haunting a old castle in the italian town of Bargi. It’s the ghost real or is a myth? is Roberto Anastasi, the man who hired you for this case, hiding something? why Eva and the Master are still following you?
You’ll find answers to all those questions in the second and for now last episode. As I said before, it’s very unlikely that a 3rd chapter of the game will be released in this format, since the production costs are much higher than those of a traditional visual novel, but maybe next year something might change. I would like to make a “real adventure game” based on Vera Blanc character since I think would be perfect for that kind of game.
Imagine something similar to those good old Lucasfilm adventures with many puzzles to solve, less texts to read, and maybe a fully voiced version.
However, first need to finish several other projects I’ve started (many RPGs and otome games) and then next year we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you like the games I’m producing, and if you like the character of Vera Blanc, please buy the game and spread the word so the chances of having a 3rd great episode will increase
So for now, au revoir Vera Blanc. Hopefully she’ll come back next year in a completely new gameplay system, and why not, maybe with a more manga-oriented style!
Version 1.4.0 of Chocolate Doom was released recently; the project aims to replicate the behavior of the original DOS DOOM releases. I’m a bit of a DOOM purist, so this is the source port I use when I want to play single player. Moreover, developer Simon Howard was interviewed by Fragorama.se about the game:
Simon: There’s such a variety of reasons why people still play Doom. In terms of game play, I think some things are balanced in a unique way that is different to modern games – things like the speed of the player and the selection of weapons. I’ve seen comments to the effect that no other first person shooter is as fast-paced for deathmatch as Doom is. For single player, while modern games have moved on to one-on-one battles with intelligent AI opponents, the Doom gameplay remains enjoyable – slaughtering your way through hundreds of (comparatively dumb) monsters to reach the exit.
Today we can proudly announce that Amnesia: The Dark Descent has gone gold! So what does this mean? Well, it essentially mean that the game is done! What is left for us now to do is to send it away to our Russian publisher and online retailers. We will also start to focus 100% on doing PR and make sure people know about the game. In less then two weeks it will be released to the world!
It has really been a long journey and Amnesia has been the focal point of our existence for quite some time. With all that work behind us it now feels very nice to be done and we are extremely pleased with end result. I actually enjoyed testing the game until the very end, something I cannot say about Penumbra. I feel we have bettered ourselves on all accounts with Amnesia and are very excited to hear what all of you think about it once it’s released.
Below follows a brand new gameplay trailer about water, doors and being hunted. And if you are interested in seeing new environments from the game check here and here.
Version 0.30b of Endgame: Singularity, a rogue self-aware AI sim, is out; changes include assorted bugfixes.
Changes:
- –nosound properly ignores the sound system.(emh, Cyclotron / Daryl for bug report)
- Better appearance when no items will fit in the slot. (emh)
- Knowledge screen is refreshed properly when loading a game. (emh)
- Time Capsule English text no longer assumes the Antarctic. (Phil Bordelon, Avaera8820 for bug report)
- Game pauses when random events occur. (Phil Bordelon, captainsegfault for bug report, justapawn for initial implementation)
- Savefiles are now in sorted order instead of an arbitrary arrangement. (remur_030)
- Additional corrections to de_DE translation. (Christian Gerloff, Developer-KI)
- Really make the Projects do something. (Phil, WvWisokee for bug report)
- “news” and “media” are only synonyms to humans. (FM, captainsegfault for bug report)
- Support the Delete and Keypad Enter keys properly. (Phil, Yoshi for bug report)
- Stopped building additional CPUs from refunding the money previously paid. (FM, Yoshi for bug report)
- Location name fix. (Phil, pederick for bug report)
- Fix a crash with handling scrollbars. (Phil, netantho for bug report)
- Fix a bug where the finance report wouldn’t always display. (Raymond Martinau)
- Updated (but not fully complete) es_AR translation. (Guga)
* New it_IT translation. (Daniele Sapino)
- Fixed a bug where building 0 CPUs made the game crash whenever time was unpaused. (FM, don.ridge for bug report)
- Font sizing has been improved. Most dialogs should no longer appear “bloated”. (FM, Gastón Alonso for bug report)
The Chzo Mythos gets an update; 1213 and Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment are released for Linux
After receiving a generous amount of feedback, I have created an updated build of The Chzo Mythos. Changes included revised documentation as well as the inclusion of libraries libXpm.so.4, libXpm.so.4.11.0 , libgstinterfaces-0.10.so.0, and libgstinterfaces-0.10.so.0.21.0 . This should hopefully solve some issues people were having with the original builds as well as allowing the games to run on more systems. The updated builds took about a day to upload as I was forced to do it over a slow Modem connection, so I seriously hope someone will enjoy the end result of the effort.
- Fixed Bug #22,
- Ukranian file should be called uk.po instead ua.po,
- PlayOnLinux can no longer run in it’s own environement,
- The program does not alert the user that 3D acceleration is not present when mesa-utils packet is not installed,
- Fixed a bug in libraries loading,
- Fixed bug in Wine Import plugin and Offline PlayOnLinux plugin,
- Some cleaning.
A lot of new features
Some plugins are now integrated in our software, adding a lot of features:
- Capture will allow you to record your games,
- Wine Import will allow you to add Wine apps into PlayOnLinux, and uses our features for it,
- Cedega Import will let you import your Cedega games,
- Wine Look will help you to change the color of your Wine application to fit better with your desktop,
- Advanced Wine Configuration will give you access to a lot of tweaks for Wine,
- Offline PlayOnLinux will allow you to run PlayOnLinux without internet access, by running locally a server script.
For scriptors
- POL_GetSetupImages and POL_SetupWindow_InitWithImages will help you to manage top and left images for your scripts. Here is an example:
