I'm trying to keep this one rather regular from now on. There should always be enough news to talk and report about so it will just depend on me finding some time
Development
For those, who are not familiar with the development of Nexuiz: as we know, Nexuiz is and open source game, and the development is rather fluent, and SVN commits are pretty regular. The SVN commit log can be found at:
http://svn.icculus.org/twilight/trunk/darkplaces/
http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/
Actually there are two such places. One is trunk and one is the nexuiz-2.0 "branch". Trunk is were all the latest changes go and the branch is were the stable changes that will make up the next version or next bugfix release go to. There is a bugfix release in sight, it will happen very soon but it does not contain all the changes from trunk. For example stuff like the nexball mod (which finally got merged into Nexuiz) will not be contained in the 2.5.1 bugfix release to give it more testing in trunk. The same goes to some small bot released changes. However when deemed stable they will get into 2.5.2!
The devs have been busy with bugfixing and implementing new stuff so the usual 'readable for everyone' collection of changes in the file
- Code: Select all
changes-since-last-release
Stuff that will be in the 2.5.1 release include: Engine: fixed memory leaks, a improved map loading screen that displays a progress bar and the name of the currently loading item, secure encrypted rcon protocol, slightly lowered CPU usage, a 'bindlist' command was added and a few crashes in the engine. The editing features have been improved (ctrl with cursor left/right will now move wordwise, shift with cursor left/right will now move one character and its color codes, ctrl and pageup/down will move three lines far). Also the caching of stuff was changed a bit to speedup loading of a followup map. A few bugs that could cause players to fall through the map were fixed. A cause of bad behavior on packetloss was finally fixed. That bug was the reason for the sticky muzzle flash a few players reported, also stuff like the 'dead walkin' and some connecting problems can be explained with that bug.
As for Nexuiz itself we have support for secure rcon in the rcon and rcon2irc tools and also some small bugfixes in both tools, several small bug fixes in the game, a few of Tenshihan's new sounds, better display of strength and shield running out, bot improvements and faster loading of bots via cached waypoints, weaplast was fixed, ONS had a big bug were one team was unable to cap a controlpoint before the other team, a very cool change includes being able to sync map effects to the music being used. See here for a video: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4567
Work has been stated to give commands to the bots. Right now that only used for debugging but in the long run it might be possible to give 'real' commands to the bots. The netRadiant included can now also generate the minimap images to help mappers getting them. Minor menu changes, the crylink got fixed (no bullet was drawn after a bounce) and got a trail, overusage of jumppad sounds got fixed, a few sound tracks were added.. enough for now, if you find other new stuff you get a cookie
People should feel free to let the devs know about found bugs or feature request on the official tracker: http://nexuiz.com/bugs (Please note that this link takes you to the BUG tracker, select Tracker/Features if you want to summit a feature request. Also please use the search function on sourceforge to keep doublicates low)
This might sound like advertising, but to help the devs get more feedback from changes in the development code please play on the CTF CTF CTF 2.5 NO HOOK CTF, CTF Herforst 2.5 Elgefhsnegolrb, {}Race Over the Lazy Dog 2.5 {X} (well Lazy dog in general!) and Planetnexuiz.de server which are activly updated and monitored by the developers. Also often they are available via in-game chat if you found a problem. Those servers run server-to-irc gateways so they can see your messages. If not, try the bug tracker or just jump on irc or this forum.
Community Buzz:
When Nexuiz 2.5.1 is finally out, please help with contacting every server admin, for example the memory leaks that were fixed will be bad for servers and they need to update ASAP.
If you want to keep uptodate please see this thread about a release mailing list: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=839
Lets take a look at some cool stuff happing in the community itself.
The Nexball modification is comming along nicely: Nexball Recoded, Beta 2 (for Nexuiz 2.5) ! As already mentioned its now part of the development version of Nexuiz.
Accompanying nexball is a Nexball Mapping contest: See here for all the cool new maps created so far: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4585
There is a new site commited to nexuiz news! http://www.nexuiznews.com Make sure to visit that site and inform yourself about the latest news. There is a whole team of people writing entries and gathering news. They will be more uptodate then i can ever be with my NN posts
Some people are working on further Nexuiz changes, "Dib" is trying to get his "Accuracy Patch" into a working state so it can find its way into the dev version of Nexuiz. I'm running that change on my server (planetnexuiz.de) to give it further testing and exposure.
"terencehill" is trying to renovate the team-selection menu. I'm trying to help him improve it. Right now the plan is to make the menu bigger, add tabs that can also control the demo playpack, enable/disable the demo camera, give easier access to standard votes.. AND to dynamicly embed it into the main menu when connected. So in the long run the F5 button might be dropped.
2008 was a great year, the monthly "Frag of the Month" series spawned a poll to find the best frag of 2008! Please make sure to summit your vote! http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4580
Several new maps by enthusiastic mappers have been released: Nexuiz - Map Releases
If you want to downloadmaps visit one of those two huge map repositories:
http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~r ... xuiz/maps/
http://maps.nexuizninjaz.com/
And while NetRadiant is now included with Nexuiz 2.5 (sorry, the sources for linux somehow got eaten by a bug in the package script) this is still the best link to get updated about NetRadiant: NetRadiant = Radiant 1.5 with useful q3map2 patches...
It seems the "Simba" ctf server got quite popular, gratulations on that. Just make sure you guys also play on other servers, sometimes its more fun to play 4vs4 on two servers then play 7vs7 on one full server and wait for a free slot
After all the complains about the 2.5 physics it seems people got used to it. I played/witnessed a few great CTF matches, people still are able to capture and move around the map.
So you see, a lot of stuff is happening, stay tuned and help so we have more great stuff to announce in the future.
This was the #3 of Nexuiz News! I hope you've enjoyed reading through the news!
Regards,
esteel
