Transcendence

VERSION 3 IS AVAILABLE

For a limited time only, I've made version 3 available for download. I will leave the download open for a while to collect bugs, and will close it if any absolute showstoppers are found.

What's in this release:

• Fix for the savegame issues. Really. This time it's good!
• Should work with cross-platform savegame issues as well.
• Extension resources should be properly sandboxed within the Extensions directory.
• Text entry boxes should generally behave better and accept both upper and lower case text.
• Maps should zoom in and out.

Some known issues:

• There is a fatal crash that has something to do with gateing out at the same time that another ship is gateing in. I'm going to try to reproduce this consistently over the next day or two. Betelguese reports that this may be a pre-existing bug in the Windows version as well.
• There is a couple bugs I simply haven't been able to reproduce locally - the docking brackets one (#38) and the invulnerable ships on gate (#39). Savegame files with these occurring would be extremely nice.
• The bugs not closed on the site are still outstanding; I'm refraining from closing the savegame related ones until I hear back from others that things are indeed working correctly.

As none of these are "blocking" bugs (that is, bugs that consistently prevent a user from playing the game) I'm happy to ship the new version out.

Special thanks go out to Atarlost, Betelguese (a.k.a. Taben), and speedofsquid for producing some excellent bug reports and testing materials!

Cheers,
--G

Can we try tar.bz2 or .7z ? To compress it a bit better? Smaller download?

Next time I'll push out just a binary (since that's predominantly the only thing changing) so you don't have to download the entire game data as well.

VERSION 4 AVAILABLE

Executable Only: bz/tgz.
Full Package: gz

This fixes a crash, and several problems that evidenced themselves as "shoot the station, crash the game". Old savefiles should be discarded.

Thanks for Atarlost and speedofsquid for providing some excellent savefiles to reproduce these issues.

Hi GambitDash,


Just downloaded the last version, loading time is just the same, around 35-40s. I'll have some time to test more.

Mutos wrote:Hi GambitDash,


Just downloaded the last version, loading time is just the same, around 35-40s. I'll have some time to test more.

Cool.

It's interesting that it's so long for you; it hasn't been that long for me in quite a few versions, and I'm running this within VMWare. I might have a custom binary for you if you run into me on IRC.

One of the things that makes this a longer load time then the windows version is that I pre-convert a bunch of the images to a constant format. I could do that to the data on the package itself, but I was trying to avoid doing that kind of wholesale slaughter out of sync from the mainline. It makes it much more difficult to track changes, especially on binary files.

Hi GambitDash,


I'll try to get to the IRC during the week-end. Is there any information that could help you to better pinpoint the problem ?

GambitDash wrote: One of the things that makes this a longer load time then the windows version is that I pre-convert a bunch of the images to a constant format. I could do that to the data on the package itself, but I was trying to avoid doing that kind of wholesale slaughter out of sync from the mainline.

Couldn't you just (perhaps this wouldn't be a good idea until this becomes stable) only convert the files on the first load or if the file has changed since the last load?

Oh, that's exactly what it does do; it converts the resources when they first get loaded, and then they're fine once they're in the system. It's just copying a lot of memory around, and SDL provides one more layer than the native GDI blits do.

I have an optimized binary that drops the actual painting cycles down to around 3 or 4 on some boxes, but I think there's still some lagging under certain as-yet-undetermined circumstances. As always, if you find a clear way to reproduce a bit of lag, let me know!

Otherwise, this version should stand up to most users. The only major issue right now is that in-game keystrokes may not behave exactly the same way that they do on the original version, but that's not a dealbreaker.

Cheers,
--G

VERSION 5 AVAILABLE

Executable Only: bz2
Full Package: bz2
Magic Number: 141

Changes in version 5:
* Sound support!
* Default optimized binaries.
* Smaller overall downloads.

Any bug reports for sound should include the Debug.log file, as the output is extra verbose for sound setup issues.

A word of warning - this build has not been tested on other platforms yet for sound support, so it may or may not successfully play sound on yours. If it doesn't, create a new bug, attach the Debug.log file, and included a detailed description of your hardware support.

Enjoy!
--G

VERSION 6 AVAILABLE

Executable Only: bz2
Full Package: bz2
Magic Number: 145

Changes in version 6:
* Sound support! Really! Actually happened on another computer!
* Full screen enabled when your screen resolution is 1024x768, otherwise windowed mode.

Oh, and substantial thanks for this release go to Demanther, for providing a willing testbed :)

Enjoy!
--G

VERSION 7 AVAILABLE

Executable Only: bz2
Full Package: bz2
Magic Number: 148

Changes in version 7:
* Fix key-repeat issues by adding SDL key repeat support. (#23)
* Fix some broken logic in full screen support (check the screen res /before/ setting it).
* Allow accelerator keys to work in dockscreens (#46)
* Convert numpad keys to the appropriate non-numpad values (#47)

Enjoy!
--G

Pinned!

Hey, I tried playing it on Ubuntu 8.10; I double-click on it, and... nothing. I'm running 64-bit, does it need 32-bit?

No. I run it on 64 bit Fedora. You may be missing some dependancies.