Unofficial, alpha 23 weekly build

[Jeff]

The unofficial, alpha 23 leaked build is here!

A "leaked build" is when John and I literally grab the latest SVN build and package it up for you guys. It has a ton of known bugs, so don't worry if it doesn't work for you. It is not condoned by David, Phillip, and Aubrey, but we want to keep you guys in the loop and give you stuff to play with regularly! Please report bugs in Trac! http://trac.wolfire.net/spf/overgrowth

*NOTE* Please remember that these are unofficial alphas and they do not represent a finished product. They are not even polished builds, just straight up raw development dumps not intended for public consumption.

It is fine and encouraged to give us feedback in SPF, but we've been having a lot of trouble with people publicly dumping on our alphas without respect for the fact that most people do not understand what an early alpha is and will therefore assume that Wolfire does not support Linux, makes games that run at 2 FPS, etc.

New in this version: (see blog)

Also, press F to toggle wireframe stuff. Press 8 and 9 to toggle the Rabbot. Press ` for the console. Type Console.help() for the console commands. Press b to spawn a physics box, right click to drag it around.

We are testing out BitTorrent DNA this week! Please let me know how that goes.
Windows: (direct) (torrent) (BitTorrent DNA)
Mac OS X: (direct) (torrent) (BitTorrent DNA)

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Ryan Gordon is in charge of the Linux build. No word on that yet -- he will probably wait until we are further along.

Note! No PPC or 10.4 Tiger support at the moment -- we are waiting on Google Chrome for these. We are not sure when this will happen.

[zipil]

the mac direct download link is broken

[Jeff]

Should work

[zipil]

looking good now but i cant load any objects that arnt in the object loader screen when i click load and select one it just dosnt load

[Hale]

Just downloaded the mac version now and so far the preliminary stuff works. Of course there is the standard lag I encounter when loading a map...

However, I must say I absolutely love the new objects. I was waiting for the day we'd actually see some more work which fit the whole concept behind "Overgrowth". (I.E. Moar ruins) ^_^

As far as bugs go, I did notice that there was an absence of shadows. Secondly, when I attempt to save a map I get the error "Problem Exporting .Png file". The map still saves apparently, but the error persistently shows up.

**Oh, I suppose shadows can be manually loaded now? Heh, my bad...

[GDer]

I'm not sure if that's the effect you need (looks like AO bug because I got this after I generated the AO data):

[Ninjas]

The AO is set to low quality now so that it renders faster-- the shadow bleeding on the blocks is not there on higher quality levels.

[Sargon]

Downloading now...
Hmm, the file is already above 400 MB?
I am just wondering what did you put that make the file 400MB?

[GDer]

The AO is set to low quality now so that it renders faster-- the shadow bleeding on the blocks is not there on higher quality levels.

But the quality should not change this.. :/ I haven't worked with AO algorithms much but if the result should be darker edges then why the edges here are only brighter?

I'd be glad if you would tell me how you calculate the AO data, I could see the reason of this problem.

[Johannes]

(Just a quick note, not my usual rundown. Have a math midterm to study for )

Calculating Shadows and AO works great with the buttons, and it's nice that you can choose to not have them for when you are just working on the map.

I really wouldn't worry much about it GDer, little bugs like that will get ironed out over time. The core of the AO is there for now, that's good enough while they have other more serious bugs to fix, and bigger features on the list that still haven't even been implemented (animation, combat, etc.)


For the mac version at least the new re-organized files were not included. Jeff did give me the list of the files so I will be able to update the community content pack to work with next week's alpha.

It might be because of this, but cmd+s for saving the shadow data crashes with an error message:

Lugaru 2ScreenSnapz002.png (12.12 KiB) Viewed 2770 times

[David]

There should be a Data/Textures/ShadowMaps folder. If there isn't, you could make one, and it will probably fix that problem.

[Johannes]

There should be a Data/Textures/ShadowMaps folder. If there isn't, you could make one, and it will probably fix that problem.

That did it. Thank you suh! *salutes*

[GDer]

I really wouldn't worry much about it GDer, little bugs like that will get ironed out over time. The core of the AO is there for now, that's good enough while they have other more serious bugs to fix, and bigger features on the list that still haven't even been implemented (animation, combat, etc.)

Of course, gameplay is more important. I just want to know a bit more about that AO algorithm. I'm sure fixing that bug is a simple task.

[Johannes]

I'm fine with it as is until it gets more optimized. It took 16 minutes to render the AO for Foothold with the quality as is for me:

I'm guessing Aubrey's right and that it is indeed the quality of the AO that is doing it. Keep in mind that David's demo renders were probably done at the highest AO quality for the sake of showing off the feature, and they don't seem to have these issues.

Of-course it could still be the case that it's something graphics card specific, but I'm willing to accept Aubrey's reason. Being a dev he probably has a good idea of why it's doing what it's doing.

[TheBigCheese]

When I ran the AO, it was taking forever, until I heard my computer's fan running extremely fast. I moved the mouse a little and it finished, which was weird.

Other than that it works fine.