Welcome to 2015! To kick things off, we’ve got a new website to go along with our latest alpha release. Please let us know what you think on the forums! All of the old articles should have been imported along with their images, although the authors weren’t properly preserved. We’ll work on getting cross-posting set up soon, so that you can comment on articles from the forums.

As for our latest alpha release, we’re packing some great new content! The star of this release is the rocket pod, which makes its debut as a major gameplay feature and our newest addition to the human base. It replaces the old tesla generator, and functions by firing long-ranged homing rockets that pack a serious punch. We also have new first-person claws for the marauder and mantis, based off their third-person models. This means that all of the slashing aliens now have the appropriate first-person animations, and we’ll think up a suitable effect for the biting aliens.

Our map Forlorn now has another monthly update, featuring some new lighting and textures, while we also have our first release of its associated texture set. This will be an added bonus for community mappers, as they originate from us and are appropriately licensed, in addition to looking great! It will also make updates to the map easier, as we don’t need to ship the whole texture set every time. There is also a new Parpax update, with a layout featuring new bases for both teams.

Code-side, we have numerous fixes to things, including better motion blur, deadlocks with Nvidia and Bumblebee, r_showLightGrid crashes, and delays on dedicated servers. Here are all of the commits from this release cycle:

• 549507a Download torrent file via SSL inside download-pk3-torrent.sh.
• e90fae6 Remove usage of SYSTEMINFO for pmove cvars
• 790f242 Fix the spam of NET_CompareAdr
• 8fed63a Make sure all the bot detection uses SV_IsBot
• 3bc882c Some more SV_IsBot fixes
• 6533972 Fix clients connecting as bots (and related problems)
• 1216a88 Do not send the renderer info to the server >_>
• e726378 Simplify the bot client allocation logic
• 08b12a1 Revert “Revert “Merge remote-tracking branch ‘origin/remove_sdl1_support'””
• 8183532 Try to make travis use sdl2
• 394337e Explain to travis it should say yes when adding a PPA
• e2b931b Remove filename extensions from rcss images and explicitly state image-s and image-t for checkbox
• a874d82 Fix delay on the dedicated server
• 7eeb8e4 Fix commit removing SDL1, SDL2 was always true and removes the cls.glconfig.isfullscreen, thanks ZTM!
• 2433590 Change vm.*.type to default to TYPE_NACL
• 8ae07fd Fix buffer overflow in R_UploadImage
• 6658232 Fix /delay’s help text
• fc2cd9a Fix /exec with arguments for the file being execed
• c5bb4b5 Fix the motion blur effect
• 7de1372 Fix pitch of turret for new model. yaw still WIP
• 96c7019 Allow buildable model configs to rotate the model, use this for the turret.
• 6e04343 Use neutral pitch for turret in construction.
• 8ab645a Fix bad rotation of preview buildables.
• 31ef83f Add turret barrel rotation and muzzle flash.
• f4af6ab Move turret brass ejection to the right place.
• 13eef2c Don’t draw tracers when buildables shoot as they use their origin as muzzle point.
• 516a96b Fix flickering of turret muzzle flash particle system.
• ff9b80b Reintroduce tracers for buildables, draw them more precisely everywhere.
• f6819ee Make tracers more visible.
• 317523b Misc tracer improvments:
• d01a814 Add documentation to explain the different VM types
• bfcfe6c Update turret shader.
• 9657b0e Don’t play a construct animation for the turret.
• 8827100 Make turret death animation consider the current pitch.
• 02d8481 Remove the tesla generator and add basic support for the rocket pod.
• 261f4e8 Fix typos and explain NACL_LIBPATH, thanks ZTM, Viech and Amanieu!
• d740d09 Demerge turret and rocketpod some more.
• 1483b97 Split rocket pod and turret target comparators and improve both.
• 454ab3b Don’t crash if an IQM animation has no bounds.
• 01341af Another fix for animation without bounds.
• cccc95b Make the rocket pod enter a safe mode when an enemy is very close.
• f7c8990 Allow scaling and rotation of missile models; Use it for the rocket.
• b1f914b Make rocket shader use transparency.
• effba47 Add a trail system for the rocket.
• b97620d Increase turret giveup on target time and add an assertion for it.
• a2c7a06 Set default spectator color to white
• 47cd07f Attempt to fix two issues that can break compilation.
• ff4871f Fix rocket pod animation jumps when leaving safe mode.
• 3957840 Add basic tracking to the rocket.
• 202f9a1 Make sure the rocket pod doesn’t hurt friends.
• 28bab03 Start balancing rocket pod and turret.
• b524cd3 Only set IQM anim bounds/poses if they exist
• a635993 Allow adding a muzzle PS to the rocket pod.
• 70d03f6 Improve rocket pod target selection.
• 3a492ec Remove some dead ‘viewlog’ code
• cfe4eef Refactor buildable animation handling.
• 3c53699 Make the rocket pod shutters functional.
• 1b726bd Force the client to always have com_dedicated 0
• 996b54b Remove “inline” directive that can prevent compilation.
• fbb084f Buildable animation coins.
• e088dca Fix rocket pod reacting to close spectators.
• f3f00d8 Fix fbb084f breaking the medistation animation.
• 695fd97 Allow buildables to be rotated along all axis, similiar to missiles.
• c2ccbab Lots of small changes to remove com_dedicated, it is now server.lanOnly
• c776adb Fix a crash at startup with some compilers in Release mode
• f9c6d54 Delete Fences after they have been waited for.
• 2b615ff Use a preallocated ent structure to avoid alignment issues on QVM.
• 04ef970 Make lcc report aligned structs on the stack.
• da5d90d Make all aligned structs used by cgame static so lcc doesn’t mess them up.
• b243f8d Split static refEntity_t from 2b615ff by function.
• 7958985 Fix SIGSEGV on client disconnect before their building finishes construction.
• 7cf3940 Make daemon work out of the compile on mac
• c6e5c42 Fix r_showLightGrid crashing
• bd49647 Copy all runtime dependencies into the build directory
• dc8588f Add some comments to explain the ring buffer mechanism.
• e1c84d1 Allow tagging of buildables in construction and confirm their death earlier.
• 191e3fd Fix and add filter support to /shaderlist
• 890ca58 Update weapon skeleton bounds when rotating
• 9b6c2d7 Update the skeleton bounds when building the skeleton for an iqm model
• 1d10a95 Show votes above the tutorial
• 9b63323 Verion bump to Alpha 35