Unofficial, alpha 16 weekly build

[Jeff]

The unofficial, alpha 16 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

New in this version: (see blog)

Also, press P to toggle wireframe stuff. Press 8 and 9 to toggle the Rabbot. Press ` for the console.

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

Subscribe to the dev blog!

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 Chrome for these. We are not sure when this will happen.

[tomascokis]

super duper cool

can't wait to examine that new building thing

[tomascokis]

um... who thought of having shift moving you down? because its now impossible to use shift in combination with right clicking!!!

[ss2man44]

Yay! This is looking awesome, guys. As I type I'm downloading the Mac torrent so I can seed.

[Johannes]

Quick Alpha 16 mac impression:


Grrr, Phillip, Fix the grid bug! I wanna make nice aligned buildings D':

Grid mode is also still locked, you can't move an object normally and not be in grid mode. Please, please, please fix this.

The 6th tool is still completely useless on the mac, even with an external 3 button mouse attached.

I realize I suggested using jump and crouch as movement keys for up and down... but I stupidly forgot that the default crouch key, shift, is already used as a modifier key for moving along a normal. this results in you moving around when you try to select a face.
The user should be able to set up and down independently of crouch and jump in config.txt

The skymap artifact is still there, but Wire-frame transparency is fixed! =D

Loading some objects, like Objects/LitterLoads/Basket1.xml , caused the game to freeze with no response even from the mouse for 12 seconds. same with DogLitter.xml in the same location. I have not been able to recreate this consistently though.

The edge of the map might fade out nicely now, but the clipping plane is still hard edge:

I still cannot seem to be able to load maps on the mac version. This has been the case for a few alphas now. please correct me if I'm wrong, but to load basic_blocks.xml I would type "load Data/Levels/basic_blocks.xml" correct? this causes a crash. I might have the syntax wrong, since the same happens when a bogus Path is used.
Please test this out on your mac machine.

Copy and Paste does NOT work anymore in the console. neither control+v or command+v will paste text as it did in earlier alphas.

Nothing new, but Rabbot's Shadow ignores texture alphas:

Since rotating groups with 100s of objects kills the framerate here's a possible new feature:
When scaling/rotating an object hide the object, and show only the bounding box. when you finish the modification the object is rendered again. They would only be hidden while you drag the mouse and modify them, and reappear when you let go/finish the operation.
This would be especially useful on older computers.
This feature should either be enabled by a checkbox or activate when more than X objects are selected together, where X could be set by the user depending on how good their computer is.



The brush feature is getting better every time =D
I really like holding down b for brush, it works well, before when you rotated the view while using it was too confusing.

The range for the sliders should also have a manual input option.
For example what if I want the object to spawn it's own height above the ground, not touching it?
What if I want to be able to have the translate jitter be larger than the default max?
To allow for this, the sliders should have a default range, example: scale zero (awkward name, consider changing to "spawn scale") ranges from 0.1 to 10. however what if I want something 100 times larger? you should be able to click the value and input your own number, like with Photoshop's sliders:

PhotoshopScreenSnapz003.png (14.3 KiB) Viewed 2946 times

and change the value to your liking.

On the subject of Photoshop, Values of certain sliders like that of scale should be exponential, so that you move the slider the same distance to get from 1.0 to 10.0 as you do when from 1.0 to 0.1

Scale and angle jitter should have 3 checkboxes, one for each axis that is randomly affected.

Lastly, there should be a distinction between spawning with a click, and with a drag:
- when you click once, only one object should spawn right where you clicked. this is for accurate placement. the load feature only allows you to do this on the initial load. this would ignore the translate and scale jitter.
- when you drag it should do what it's doing right now.

[Tosh]

You know, playing with the rabbot and using the shift key a lot kind of reminds me of the grappling hook from "Tenchu: Stealth Assassin"... I know it's almost entirely pointless given the distance you can already jump, but that doesn't make me want it any less =x

Also, that village is fantastic, kudos to Nimai. I had much fun editing it and changing everything around, so perhaps even lazy sods like myself will start using the tools regularly once we have a lot of the real game's assets & levels to play with =]

[Johannes]

Here's all the objects that were included in this build:

An interesting new addition is the dog Litter and the stuff that would be on it:

[eyeCube]

I wish these alphas worked on my computer.

[Untadaike]

I wish these alphas worked on my computer.

I'm totally with you(it doesn't work for me either) but I don't think they want people going on about how the latest build doesn't work for your computer by the way it sucks, I have 10.4 and these alpha's don't work for my mac it really sucks and I'm really down on it and they don't work for my computer and I really want it to work and I'm so impatient and these Overgrowth Alphas don't work on Mac OS X 10.4 and I'm like "when are they going to get the Chrome thing or whatever" and I wish that these Alphas worked for my computer, I've seen all the cool stuff people that it does work for have done and I'm so jealous and this latest build doesn't work for my computer, it doesn't work for yours either, does it……………

[tomascokis]

lol

that says it all

[Phillip]

Grrr, Phillip, Fix the grid bug! I wanna make nice aligned buildings D':

Okay, okay, just fixed it. Sorry to have neglected that for awhile, but remember, these are still leaked builds, so I'm not actively trying to make things usable for everyone. That said, I can't wait to see what you do with the working tools, and with all you've been doing, you do deserve to have some working controls . So, I just now went through and tried to clean up the control issues that you and other Mac users have been having. On Mac, cmd is now just used for shortcuts like cmd-s. For box select, you can now hold down 'b' and click and drag (paintbrush now uses 'p', wireframe uses 'f').

Of course, all the specific button controls in the alpha should be thought of as placeholders. We won't know which new buttons will be needed for which new tools until everything is pretty much done. So we probably won't settle on final default controls until right before release. (As for having user specified controls, it's on my list ).

um... who thought of having shift moving you down? because its now impossible to use shift in combination with right clicking!!!

hehe, yeah sorry about that. Had just quickly put it in and overlooked the problem. Now have changed it to shift+up/down for moving the camera up and down.

The 6th tool is still completely useless on the mac, even with an external 3 button mouse attached.

Yeah the selection tool is pretty much deprecated now, even on PC. But if you feel like messing around, you can right-click with that tool on various parts of object bounding boxes, and it will select box faces, lines, and vertices. Not good for anything right now, but maybe someday.

Loading some objects, like Objects/LitterLoads/Basket1.xml , caused the game to freeze with no response even from the mouse for 12 seconds. same with DogLitter.xml in the same location. I have not been able to recreate this consistently though.

This is probably because those objects didn't have caches. On the first load without a cache, a cache is created, so that one time it will be slow.

I still cannot seem to be able to load maps on the mac version. This has been the case for a few alphas now. please correct me if I'm wrong, but to load basic_blocks.xml I would type "load Data/Levels/basic_blocks.xml" correct? this causes a crash. I might have the syntax wrong, since the same happens when a bogus Path is used.
Please test this out on your mac machine.

Hmm, I'll check this out.

Since rotating groups with 100s of objects kills the framerate here's a possible new feature:
When scaling/rotating an object hide the object, and show only the bounding box. when you finish the modification the object is rendered again. They would only be hidden while you drag the mouse and modify them, and reappear when you let go/finish the operation.
This would be especially useful on older computers.
This feature should either be enabled by a checkbox or activate when more than X objects are selected together, where X could be set by the user depending on how good their computer is.

That's a pretty nifty idea. We'll want to wait until all the optimizations are in before doing too much like this, so that we can properly evaluate whether it's necessary. But I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

Lots of good paintbrush suggestions too, Jo-Shadow. I'll take them into consideration. Thanks again for all the feedback!

[Johannes]

Just fixed it.

Phillip I could hug you right now... in fact, I'll ask Jeff to hug you for me.

Sorry to have neglected that for awhile, but remember, these are still leaked builds, so I'm not actively trying to make things usable for everyone.

Sorry i've been pestering you so much for this XD I realize that later for the blessed build you will nail down any and all bugs, but given how the making of user-created content has taken off recently and will probably continue to do so at an exponential rate, it would be very beneficial for the basics to work flawlessly.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing how these changes work in the 17th alpha, though I can't make any guarantees that I won't come whining again if I do find more bugs

(As for having user specified controls, it's on my list ).

That deserves another hug.

You can right-click with that tool on various parts of object bounding boxes, and it will select box faces, lines, and vertices. Not good for anything right now, but maybe someday.

Oh cool! I hadn't tried that yet =) Hmm, wondering what kind of use this might have...

On the first load without a cache, a cache is created, so that one time it will be slow.

D'oh! of-course! I should have realized this >_<

I still cannot seem to be able to load maps on the mac version...

Hmm, I'll check this out.

I tried it on the windows version yesterday. Same story. I checked in the forum and that format used to work in some of the older builds: "load Data/Levels/Level_Name.xml" but causes a crash now. As I said, it crashes like it does when you type in a bogous path, so perhaps the root of the command has changed? as a side note, once it works, it would be fun to add this command to the config.txt file to load a different map by default.

mass-objects suggestion-

That's a pretty nifty idea. We'll want to wait until all the optimizations are in before doing too much like this, so that we can properly evaluate whether it's necessary. But I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

Sure, once optimized it will run much faster, but I think this will be worth having nonetheless, because even after optimization low end computers will see framerate drops when they select and attempt to scale/rotate tens of thousands of objects, which I think is a realistic number of objects that a final map in the game might have.

Lots of good paintbrush suggestions too, Jo-Shadow. I'll take them into consideration. Thanks again for all the feedback!

Anytime phillip =)


Lastly, one bug that I've found to be mac-only is when you freeform alt(option)+drag an object (so without holding any modifier keys) the object won't duplicate or transform.
This is only for free-form; It will duplicate properly once you hold a modifier key.

Also non-free form transformations (so with modifier keys) seem to lock it to the grid, holding control not doing anything anymore. is this intended?

[kehaar]

I wish these alphas worked on my computer.

I'm totally with you(it doesn't work for me either) but I don't think they want people going on about how the latest build doesn't work for your computer by the way it sucks, I have 10.4 and these alpha's don't work for my mac it really sucks and I'm really down on it and they don't work for my computer and I really want it to work and I'm so impatient and these Overgrowth Alphas don't work on Mac OS X 10.4 and I'm like "when are they going to get the Chrome thing or whatever" and I wish that these Alphas worked for my computer, I've seen all the cool stuff people that it does work for have done and I'm so jealous and this latest build doesn't work for my computer, it doesn't work for yours either, does it……………

You don't have time to waste on fancy overgrown alphas! With their fancy not-having-to-jump-just-right to get stuff in the place you want it "controls", as they're calling them.

Back to work on your Lugaru campaign, you!









yeah, Unta, they don't work on my 10.4 either, man, they would--
And no muttering! (*snaps whip*) w-w-whhick, CRACK!!!

[Untadaike]

Back to work on your Lugaru campaign, you!

Y-y-yes, master!

yeah, Unta, they don't work on my 10.4 either, man, they would--
And no muttering! (*snaps whip*) w-w-whhick, CRACK!!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA