Unofficial alpha 66, weekly build

[Jeff]

The unofficial, alpha 66 leaked build is here!

A "leaked build" is when John and I 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 and Aubrey but we want to keep you guys in the loop and give you stuff to play with regularly! Please report bugs in our Trac system!

*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.

New in this version: (see blog)

To download the alpha, use one of these links (please use the mirrors!)

Win: slow original fast mirror 1 fast mirror 2
Mac: slow original fast mirror 1 fast mirror 2

Let me know how the mirrors are working for you -- they are graciously provided by Mow and should provide much faster download speeds. They will also save us a lot of money.

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Note! No PPC, 10.4 Tiger, or Linux support at the moment -- we are waiting on Awesomium for these. AJS says that Linux support is on the horizon, but we cannot make any concrete estimates for it. In the meantime, we are Wine compatible.

[Johannes]

Downloading mac version. Fingers crossed =)

[Slothoholic]

Nooooooo.

No Snow Leopard support.

[amplitude]

Awesome, will report back with any bugs I find, Keep up the great work guys!

[Johannes]

New this week:

Mac alpha 66 running on a 2.53GHz MBP with NVIDIA 9600M GT with 512vram, running Mac OSX 10.5.8:

1. Once again the main menu is skipped completely, automatically loading the desert map:

2. Pressing 8 to spawn rabbot still causes a crash.
• However this time we have an error that might be useful:

• Clicking 'Retry' makes the error message pop up indefinitely.
• Clicking 'Cancel' just quits the program.
• Clicking 'Continue' leads to another error, after which the game crashes:

3. Typing in the console won't work.
• The console appears when pressing `
• Clicking in the text field and then typing does not result in any characters being written.
• The cursor keeps blinking when typing so it seems as if the console doesn't even register the keypresses
4. I've only just noticed this, but your ASCII art is misaligned now, due to not using a constant-width font in the console anymore. This is unacceptable!

5. Clicking the 'save level' button causes a long pause followed by this error:

• Clicking 'Cancel' Closes the program
• Clicking 'Continue' makes the error message pop up indefinitely
6. Surprisingly enough some parts actually seem to be less chunky and run smoother.
• Nonetheless, it still won't breach the 30 fps barrier if any geometry is visible, with the framerate generally hovering around 15fps.

[grid_bug]

On the 2.66 Ghz mid-to-late 2008 iMac (8,1) running Mac OS X 10.5.8, I get the same errors as jo-shadow, with the exception of the error while saving, that works fine. My graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256mb vram.

[Sweeneypaul]

Thanks ill download it now

[BlackHole]

I've still got the shader problem on the pc with the Geforce 7600GS.

- Black
A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him.

[Johannes]

This week I've gone and compared the performance of the mac and windows versions on my computer.

Having talked to Jeff about it, it's clear that the large difference in performance is likely due to issues with the Leopard OpenGL drivers. He made it clear that these issues will be addressed in time once the more pressing tech such as fighting has been added to the game, a decision I fully support.

These are screenshots taken on The latest alpha, running Under 10.5.8 on Mac and Windows 7 on Windows.

Since the framerate fluctuates even when not moving the camera I tried to always catch the largest famerate.

Desert Outpost:
Mac: 25, Win: 64, Difference: 256%, Mac: 24, Win: 61, Difference: 254%, Mac: 17, Win: 59, Difference: 347%, Mac: 33, Win: 103, Difference: 312%, Mac: 23, Win: 64, Difference: 278%
Abandoned Grove:
Mac: 18, Win: 55. Difference: 305%, Mac: 17, Win 48, Difference: 282%, Mac: 18, Win 50, Difference: 278%
Forgotten Plains:
Mac: 24, Win: 60, Difference: 250%, Mac: 22, Win: 60, Difference:273%, Mac: 16, Win: 59 Difference: 369%

As a side note, the drop in Framerate is even more noticeable when moving around, but it would have been impossible to get consistent data for that.

Here are the shadow and AO calculations, as provided in the console. The predicted times become accurate after about 3 percent were calculated, so I chose the largest time listed after that.

Desert Outpost:
Shadow: Mac: 66, Win: 24, Difference: 275%, AO: Mac: 515, Win: 207, Difference: 248%
Abandoned Grove:
Shadow: Mac: 62, Win: 23, Difference: 270%, AO: Mac: 522, Win: 210, Difference: 248%
Forgotten Plains:
Shadow: Mac: 64, Win: 23, Difference: 278%, AO: Mac: 506, Win: 205, Difference: 247%

[Kompatriot]

I still get a Robbert Crash. I am a sad panda.

[MoDFoX]

As a side note, the drop in Framerate is even more noticeable when moving around, but it would have been impossible to get consistent data for that.

I'll try to get some data for that.

[Flamespike]

Just preordered!
I
Has
A
Happy!!!
downloading now.

[Freshbite]

Just preordered!
I
Has
A
Happy!!!
downloading now.

Wait... a happy what? D:

[Flamespike]

I'm running this one 66 with a mac 10.5.11 macbook running 1 gb of ram. I'm getting a resounding 1 fps max..... why is this?

[TheBigCheese]

I'm running this one 66 with a mac 10.5.11 macbook running 1 gb of ram. I'm getting a resounding 1 fps max..... why is this?

Thats a fairly low amount of ram. I don't know about your processor, but you'll probably need at least 1.2Ghz or so, Dual-Core would be good too.