MegaGlest 3.5.1 Release

[softcoder]

MegaGlest 3.5.1 release - come and get it while its hot (svn revision 2252)
Downloads here: http://megaglest.org/download.html or below


Changelog:

v3.5.1

- Much better pathfinder performance
- Allow servers to temporary block specified network players from the game lobby
- Better Linux distro packaing support (by default megaglest works in standard linux paths and make install added)
- Game data cleanup (duplicate sound files have been merged in megapack) and non free content replaced.
  (autumn and desert tilesets)
- Displayed up to 15 queued commands (observers can view all players queued commands)
- Allow factions in a techtree to share common data using the special tag in xml files $COMMONDATAPATH
  which points to the techtrees commondata/ folder.
- standardized games and tools startup scripts with names starting with 'startup_'
- updated translations for German, Italian and French
- bugfixes reported in 3.5.0
- AI enhancements (better repair, and safer build positions)
- Improved network code, fixes some out of synch issues.
- Display players svn revision# in network game lobby

v3.5.0

- Menu changes to better group similar items
- Added Blender related tools in blender sub folder
- Modified binary and script names for Linux builds to avoid conflicts with original glest
- Added preview info in mod menu, scenario menu and tutorials
- End game stats have more info now
- Added more validations for modders for techtrees and scenarios (commandline options)
- Bugfix for OpenAL (now works in v 1.13)
- Updates to Romans faction
- Network messages generated by the game are now displayed in the local users selected language
- Support for custom credits (add the file data/core/menu/credits.txt)
- More AI player improvements
- Default screenshot format is now jpg (configurable in options menu)
- Fixed some performance problems with 'stuck' units
- improved resource selection
- performance improvements, now make it possible to play with more units and slower hardware than before.
- new maps with cliffs and higher terrain
- support for sending 7z tilesets and techtrees over network
- new game mod management console to download new game content or remove existing mod content
- multi-threaded pathfinding for better performance when many units are moving
- CPU AI player improvements (units get unstuck more often and stationary air units attack more efficiently)
- new tileset and resource particle support.
- added jpg screenshot support
- optional compressed GPU texture support
- improved harvesting and resource selection
- better support for multiple platform compiling
- Modifiable keyboard hotkeys
- bugfixes for map editor and g3d viewer to work more stable on multiple platforms
- LSB conform ".megaglest" usage



Please do read the installation instructions, since they contain important information.

Linux users need to install 7-zip (package p7zip-full on Debian + Ubuntu) to be able to install mods in the game (and to support various file transfer types).



Full installers:

Linux 64 bit:
Download Here (211.9 MB)
sha1sum 7659b05c6acb156685f1f6546a8cf86cdc9a4d66

Linux 32 bit:
Download Here (209.4 MB)
sha1sum 652df9b06097e3735422ac1d895217b33ac3cbc3

Windows:
Download Here (187.6 MB)
sha1sum a331632d12ab4fe394adef4c8e743fa3b53f2a14


Advanced options:

(click to show/hide)

Manual data installations (for advanced users only):

Full Data package (for both Linux and Windows):
glest.ini and glestkeys.ini are not included. They are platform specific and distributed with the binary.
Download Here (188.2 MB)
sha1sum 8f931d4d5932bf3389ffbed6f4eb4c151354f12a

All Downloads here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/megaglest/files/current_release/

Please remember to report any issues and bugs in a separate thread, not here.

Edit (tomreyn, 2011-05-08 08:19 UTC): fix sha1sum for MegaGlest-Installer-3.5.1_i386_64_linux.run
Edit (tomreyn, 2011-05-08 08:57 UTC): replace reference to hard-/software requirements by reference to installation instructions on website

[ultifd]

Yay for a lot less less disk space usage!

[Ishmaru]

- Allow factions in a techtree to share common data using the special tag in xml files $COMMONDATAPATH
  which points to the techtrees commondata/ folder.

Is this optional to use?

- standardized games and tools startup scripts with names starting with 'startup_'

What can be done with startup scripts??

- AI enhancements (better repair, and safer build positions)

What do u mean safer build positions?

[Omega]

The website was not updated. Despite linking to it in the first post, it still says 3.5.0.

[ultifd]

Have some patience, unfortunately we don't have some bots as our testers and administrators. (I'm being sarcastic of course, but for some other things it would actually be nice.) It's currently 6:15 AM in Germany and it seems tomreyn sleeps late, so...

OUTSTANDING
(Please move fixed/done items down to the next section.)
* (tom) After release: Update version notifications on masterserver
* (tom) After release: Update 'news' and 'downloads' (incl. changelog) sections on the website about this release
* (tom) After release: Compose and send release announcement to megaglest-announce and megaglest-development mailing lists
* (tom) After release: Update techtree documentation on website
* (tom) After release: Do some outreach, based on the http://release announcement

[tomreyn]

- Allow factions in a techtree to share common data using the special tag in xml files $COMMONDATAPATH
  which points to the techtrees commondata/ folder.

Is this optional to use?

For data distributed with the game (namely the Megapack), this is now mandatory.
For other data this is optional but recommended since it allows for reducing redundant data and thus cuts short on download time and disk space.

Use the --validate-techtrees and --validate-factions command line options (see --help on how to use them) to find out about errors and duplicate files in your installed techtrees and factions.

- standardized games and tools startup scripts with names starting with 'startup_'

What can be done with startup scripts??

These are Linux specific wrapper scripts (for the bash shell) which ensure that all libraries needed to execute the binaries are in place and correctly referenced across the various Linux distributions. This changelog entry just means that, starting 3.5.1, all of these previously existing scripts now use the same naming scheme.

- AI enhancements (better repair, and safer build positions)

What do u mean safer build positions?

I think this means that when a worker starts to construct a new building, it will now position himself on the edge of the building that is most close to his home base, and thus usually most distant to the enemy, causing him to be less likely attacked by incoming enemy units while the construction is ongoing.

[m0ellemeister]

Tonight i will start with the work on the FreeBSD Port Update. Hopefully in a few days 3.5.1 will be available in the FreeBSD Ports Tree.

[softcoder]

By default this is how you would build and install 3.5.1 in the standard Linux Path for your distro:

get source and data (either via svn or download the separate packages from sf):

from the root folder containing the top level CMakeLists.txt:

Code: [Select]

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
sudo make install
thats it, binaries go to standard binary path folder and data goes to standard data paths. From any terminal type:

Code: [Select]

megaglest
and it works. To see the cmake options type the following from the build folder:

Code: [Select]

cmake -L ..
To build using the standard developer paths (as was done in 3.5.0 and previous) use the shell scripts to build in trunk (build-mg.sh) or use the following build commands:

Code: [Select]

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= ../
make
../mk/linux/megaglest
Special thanks to pabs (from the debian games team) and svenstaro (from Arch Linux) for giving a lot of help.

Regarding the new commondata folder, each techtree can store data that is common to the techtree in this path:

Code: [Select]

techtree/commondata
and in the xml file you use the special keyword $COMMONDATAPATH which will expand out to this folder at runtime (this is optional, but we use this feature now with megapack to save space). This was already possible previously by using pathing like ../../ etc but that syntax is much less easy to follow since it climbs folder hierarchies. The techtree validation command will now evaluate how files are used in a modders techtree and tell them which files are unused and which files are duplicates and also if you specify additional commands the validator will remove and merge together such files and report how much disk space was saved.

This was done to megapack saving plenty of wasted space (And memory due to extra sound files being loaded which were not needed). Currently the merging of duplicate files ONLY does this for sound files, other files types need to be done by hand due to some cases where duplicate models and textures are more complex problems to solve. Unused files however work on all file types in the techtree.

AI improvements now mean the AI tried to build on a square that is not in the visible site of an enemy unit. The AI also has better logic to repair damaged units, and places a higher priority on castles (some AI factions could NEVER repair their castles due to a bug).

[m0ellemeister]

Tonight i will start with the work on the FreeBSD Port Update. Hopefully in a few days 3.5.1 will be available in the FreeBSD Ports Tree.

I've finished the work on the update and filed a Problem Report therefor the update will be committed by a FreeBSD ports commiter. As soon as i know that MegaGlest 3.5.1 is officially available in FreeBSD, i'll let you know.

[m0ellemeister]

I've finished the work on the update and filed a Problem Report therefor the update will be committed by a FreeBSD ports commiter. As soon as i know that MegaGlest 3.5.1 is officially available in FreeBSD, i'll let you know.

@MegaGlest Upstream Team:
have you rerolled out the distfiles again at sourceforge after initial release of 3.5.1?

I was just testing the updated FreeBSD Port on another computer and now the tarballs:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/megaglest/files/current_release/megaglest-data-3.5.1.tar.xz/download
http://sourceforge.net/projects/megaglest/files/current_release/megaglest-source-3.5.1.tar.xz/download

differs from the ones i've downloaded last night (before 02:00 AM CEST). When i'm back home I'll check the md5sums of the downloaded files compare them with the actually available files at sourceforge.

For a FreeBSD port a sha256 checksum and the file size of the files provided by upstream are recorded. When they differ no file will be downloaded/unpacked and no source will be build.

If the MG dev-team updated the files everything is fine and i can update the FreeBSD port too (which is not released yet). It would really handy if such a change could be announced on the announcement mailing list. :-)

[softcoder]

Sorry yes the source and data tarball were updated to remove one level of directory due to a request from the arch linux packager. Source code will be tagged today in svn as 3.5.1

Thanks

[tomreyn]

Since we intend to work with several distributions now (and I think that's the direction we want to take, too) who rely on automated retrieval, examination and possibly packaging + building of packages, I think we really need to make any change to a package which has been previously released, if just hours ago, and if just a single file was renamed, a new version, since checksums will no longer match. If it's just about the source and data packages then it should be fairly easy to just upload modified packages and version them as 3.5.1.1 or, actually more consistent, 3.5.2 (which would mean the next planned release would become 3.5.3).

But then all this talk is basically theoretical now since the next thing to happen is the merge with GAE, which means not having any stable release in a good while.

[ultifd]

Maybe we should have a 3.5.1.1...sound issue is kinda annoying and somewhat "big".

[titi]

Sound issues? If you talk about the desert/autumn sounds this is really no reason ( but a bit annoying  )

[ultifd]

OK it's just kinda annoying. 
I need at least a 200 word description of the MegaGlest Team for CNET, can anyone help me out please? Up to 1000
Thanks.

[tomreyn]

How about this (221 words, courtesy of http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html)?

Since its inception in early 2010, the MegaGlest Team strategizes in innovative one-to-one models and morphs leading-edge e-commerce into intuitively deployed supply-chains. Its dedication to deliver mission-critical synergies allowed it to redefine next-generation e-business and to empower integrated initiatives. Incubating ubiquitous web-readiness into its products facilitates B2B e-services never-seen before. The officers have since specialised in e-enabling innovative paradigms while continuously embracing their sticky communities. Furthering these singlular opportunities, the developers drive B2B technologies to new heights and visualize visionary content for its userbase to finally aggregate user-centric ROI. The tech-oriented nature of this enterprise allows it to engineer global e-markets by driving dot-com platforms through a matrix of user-centric end-to-end channels with the ultimate goal of monetising wireless architectures next to orchestrating sexy e-commerce. The syndication of dynamic markets has, next to optimizing turn-key action-items, been a long-term strategic target to repurpose front-end networks of enhanced dot-com e-tailers. Since this lead has taken the strategic decision to architect out-of-the-box initiatives it has set itself into a position allowing it to reinvent plug-and-play systems, incubated into bleeding-edge deliverables which cultivate impactful relationships with their customers.

Alternatively, this might be an option, too.

Apparently not every publisher provides such a text:
http://download.cnet.com/windows/truecrypt-foundation/3260-20_4-6282386.html

So do we really have to? I suggest you really just make something up or use one of the above examples. I doubt they have the time to review all of these submissions properly.

[ultifd]

I think the 200 word thing rule was implemented a short while ago, that's why. I'll try adding ----- to see if that would be good.

[Omega]

Seriously... Why wouldn't you want one? You'll alienate half the users if you posts something like that as your description.

Code: [Select]

Attempting to fill the gap left by the final release of the popular real time strategy game, Glest, the MegaGlest team is a team effort to improve Glest, in a fork called "MegaGlest". Development ranges from the main game to tools bundled with it to help modders, allow creation of game assets, and more.

The MegaGlest team believes in free and open source software, with the source code of all their work available. They believe in freedom of expression, modability, strong documentation, high quality, and a strong multiplatform game. MegaGlest focuses on a powerful, stable multiplayer experience, expanding on everything Glest started, improving it in numerous ways to ensure that players get the best Glest experience possible! Backed by a strong community on the Glest forums, MegaGlest is enhanced with numerous mods which require no experience to use and install, as well as the ability to modify the source code itself to allow you the highest levels of customization possible.

With all work under the GPL (GNU General Public License), you can be assured that you have the ability to modify the program as you wish as long as you maintain the same license. With the level of freedom this allows, the MegaGlest team is able to give the best quality to all its users.
215 words.

[ultifd]

Tomreyn was just being sarcastic/joking, kinda.

Thanks! You're really good at describing things.
Edit: oh it was 200 CHARACTERS.   I swear it said words before...

[Omega]

In that case, 1280 characters.

[ultifd]

Yeah, I know. For now I cut out the license part, I'll just edit the description later after the profile gets accepted.

[Omega]

Yeah, I know. For now I cut out the license part, I'll just edit the description later after the profile gets accepted.

I kinda stretched it a bit. The first two lines were all I could think of, but they were a bit shy of the (then) 200 word limit, so the description kinda falls apart at the end anyway.

[ultifd]

I submitted MG! We'll get to know whether they accept or not and etc in ~5 daysa week!

[tomreyn]

Tomreyn was just being sarcastic/joking, kinda.

Yes indeed. 200 words as a minimum requirement seemed a lot to me, actually requiring submitters to stretch their self-description by making it contain euphemistic statements which actually have no meaning.

Thanks! You're really good at describing things.

I agree, that's a good text.

Edit: oh it was 200 CHARACTERS.  I swear it said words before...

Okay, that's actually a sensible requirement then.