Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

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Anomalous
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Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by Anomalous »

New map, new telenode, new…

New map!Or, rather, an old map. Pevel has updated Perseus for Unvanquished, taking the opportunity to improve the layout and the lighting and (of course) make use of the much better texturing possibilities.

New telenode!Shiny new telenode model from Warvinc. The beam effect's still there; but, like the medical station's healing aura, it's normally not visible.

ImageTelenode and Reactor setting off on a tour of PerseusNew filesystem codeThis got a complete overhaul. It's now cleaner and it handles files much more strictly. See ”Big changes to the filesystem” for more info. Basically, the files have been re-arranged somewhat and are stored in a different directory; profiles are no more; there are new naming schemes for .pk3 contents; and we have .pk3 dependencies.

Things may be a bit broken as a result. All being well, any such breakage will be fixed over the next month or two.

Those changes mean that this is a good time to do a .pk3 clean-up and merge. We're throwing out a lot of old, unused resources. Consequently, plenty to download this month – and there'll be more cleanup once we've got the remaining problems with pre-compressed textures (DXTn and the like, so that we can avoid having to decompress them for sending to the GPU) sorted out.

You're likely to need to copy some files from the old location to the new one – those of you who use the Unvanquished packages for Debian or Ubuntu should find that their identification and key bindings are retained (if not, it just means that the migration script saw something already there) – and, unless you were using the defaults, you'll need to check your settings.

Gameplay changesIf you're using the armoury via the UI, as new players will, you'll see some improvements. Buy an item, and all conflicting items will be sold – so switching weapons is now a lot faster. Also, items which you can't afford and carried items which conflict with what you want to buy are marked in red.

Tyrants can slash a little faster, but basilisks no longer draw power from humans' power sources. Grangers can build any structure (so long as that type is unlocked), but they still can't wall-walk without being the advanced form. Humans can buy light armour at the start of the game. Buildings, when placed, now have 25% of their total health.

The minimum time for which items, buildables or classes are guaranteed to be unlocked is halved to 30 seconds. You gain less momentum for destroying enemy buildings and a little more for enemy players. Basic income is gone.

Rendering changesWe've added an extra preset, “Dlights, no fx”, to the video quality options menu. This is intended for hardware such as older laptops which can run the GL3 renderer but struggle somewhat – if you get less than 30fps, you probably want this option, which should allow for rendering speeds close to those of the older renderer.

Configuration changesConfiguration settings are no longer saved if they haven't been changed. There's still a work-in-progress element here – we don't yet have reset buttons in the menus, but if you know the name of the console variable used for that setting, you can /reset it.

A few important things to note here regarding variables…

  • /foo bar sets foo to “bar” and marks it as to be saved. (This still requires that foo already exists.)

  • /set foo bar sets foo to “bar”, creating it if needed. Certain variables will be marked as to be saved; most won't.

  • /listcvars has corresponding output changes – if the flag list contains ‘a’, the variable will be saved if its value is changed. If it instead contains ‘A’, the variable is marked as to be saved.

  • /reset will clear the ‘to be saved’ flag of each variable it's told to reset.

Misc changesThere have been a lot of small fixes and improvements. A few more console commands have completion support, and some command output has been tidied up. Mouse pointer movement should be much improved. A lot of potential bugs (mostly harmless, I suspect) have been fixed…

ImageReactor, you'd like the lighting here. Signed, Telenode.

Click here to read this article on the main site!

Last edited by Anomalous on Mon Feb 03, 2014 4:11 am UTC, edited 7 times in total.

Debian and Ubuntu packages (squeeze, wheezy, sid; 12.04, 12.10, 13.04) may work on derivatives

OFFEND! … no, that's not right… ATTACK!

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Veyrdite
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by Veyrdite »

I'm looking forward to delving into the new filesystem and writing some documentation. Hopefully irc.freenode.net will start working for me again soon so I can get in contact!

Title: ???

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DwarfVader
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by DwarfVader »

hmmm,

upgrading from 0.23 to 0.24 on my ubuntu system here got me in some trouble. I had to move /var/games/unvanquished/main to /var/games/unvanquished/pkg to even start the game.

if this is the normal way to get the new version to run, a little more detailed howto text than just

You're likely to need to copy some files from the old location to the new one

would have been nice. Especially for new players and/or olders don't familliar with the changes you done recently.

Are servers not updated yet? tried to play this new version but got an 'invalid PAK reference' error trying to connect to the training and the EU server.

I now got 2 hidden home directories: '.unvanquished' and '.Unvanquished.' Is this just a misspelling? Why don't override .Unvanquished? or is that change necessary due to the new filesystem?

if so, again a more detailed description what can be deleted, what has changed ( paths, directory names ) would have been nice.

a detailed install and/or upgrade instruction is something i realy do miss in the new version news. And that is not just for the current one. A detailed changelog in list form would be nice too.

I would like to play the new version, but can't connect due to the invalid pak error. I don't know if I've done something wrong in just letting apt-get upgrade the game from 0.23 to 0.24. You know what? a detailed install and upgrade howto in the release news would be of great help :thumbup: :grin:

DwarfVader

ccsadegh

Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by ccsadegh »

I didn't download it yet, but plz join EU server and don't play with BOTs :/

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Amanieu
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by Amanieu »

I'm not very familiar with the details of the ubuntu package, so you'll have to wait for Darren to wake up.

Regarding the hidden directory, the old one was .Unvanquished, the new one is .unvanquished. The profile migration script should have already copied your settings over.

We are still in the process of updating servers, you can check which version a server is using on this page: http://www.unvanquished.net/servers

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DwarfVader
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by DwarfVader »

hmm,

so i can connect to the NA server because its the only one running 0.24 allready BUT the left mouse button doen't trigger the team choose menu anymore. So I am kind of stuck with the spectator mode. the only thing i can do is invoke the ingame menu via ESC and since that is lacking a 'join' entry the only thing i can do right now is playing around with the options and go back to the main menu or exit the game entirely. So any tipps how can i join teams? or isn't the new version meant to be played at all ? ;-)

I also get terrible crippeld sounds hovering over the menu entries, the 0.23 version was fine. Something in my gut tells me that simply copying the game pks from /var/games/unvanquished/main to /var/games/unvanquished/pkg was not all to get the game to run as it should ?

if the the old .Unvanquished dir should have been overwriten by the migration script and its just a typo that .unvanquished gets created, pls force the developer (preferably with a gun) who is responssible for this, to use a 'real' OS where upper and lowercase matters!!!

DwarfVader

Last edited by DwarfVader on Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:46 am UTC, edited 1 time in total.
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Amanieu
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by Amanieu »

No, the old pk3s will not work with the new version, they all need to be replaced. You can manually download the new pk3s from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/unvanqu ... es/Assets/

Make sure you only download the pk3s which are from Feburary (check the modified date field).

In theory this should have been automatically done by the package upgrade. I'm not sure why it didn't work properly.

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kharnov
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by kharnov »

You might want to download the universal zip. It has everything you need in one place. Just copy the assets from it into the appropriate place and you can keep using the Debian/Ubuntu packages.

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DwarfVader
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by DwarfVader »

wow,
sounds like a realy 'user friendly' install/upgrade routine....

im pissed :frown:

DwarfVader

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kharnov
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Re: Alpha 24 – download at your peril (probably)

Post by kharnov »

There will be some roughness for older users to transition their files to the new filesystem, but it was an engine change that had to happen, and it's the sort of change that can only really take place during an alpha. See the previous news post for more information about the filesystem.

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