Alpha 31 time!

Read on for what’s new!

Hello, and welcome to our latest monthly alpha release. The builds will be going up on our SourceForge page shortly. For this release, I will be trying a different article format. Let me know what you think of it.

We now have a special surprise for you all in the form of a new player model for the alien team, the mantis. As you may or may not be aware, the mantis has replaced the basilisk, and functions differently from its predecessor by losing the grabbing and healing abilities, and instead having a pounce attack. Over successive releases we’ll tweak the texture further and give it glowing eyes, but for the meantime let us know how you feel about it!

There were gameplay changes included from feedback collected during our Sunday development games as well. Knockback has been removed from most sources of damage, except for obvious ones like explosions. Build points are stored in the appropriate resource structure, and you will lose some when the enemy destroys them. The healing range for aliens in proximity to each other has been increased, and you will heal faster when near three or more aliens. Beacons now use smaller icons for structures, and building beacons will no longer pool up on edges of the screen. Also, beacons for enemy structures will remain in place until their death or removal are confirmed by a teammate, meaning that you can no longer cheat by knowing immediately when a structure is gone. Buildings will also no longer heal when unpowered.

Assorted bug-fixes and clean-up have been made, as always. This time I’ve started to include the commit log of commits specific to this release. Issue numbers correlate to what you can find on our GitHub repository. So, if you find a bug or feel something should be changed engine-side, file an issue there and we’ll get right to it.

Commits

  • 1b54795 Add more variants of G_LineOfSight, modify the semantics a bit.
  • b0df029 Increase alien teammate heal range and apply a 4× modifier for three or more aliens.
  • 28d6b1a Move build point and mining related functions to new file g_buildpoints.cpp.
  • 5b5c456 Tentative approach to have RGS store a fraction of the team’s build point pool.
  • 584e25b Remove leftover debug output.
  • 319d81a Fix minimum build point generation being added twice to the account of mined build points.
  • 605d624 Refactor g_buildpoints.cpp a bit.
  • ecb5a58 Add current mine rate and stored build points to buildable status displays.
  • 17b1c6c Store remaining BP in the main structure. Only lose a fraction if a BP storage gets destroyed.
  • 9c99291 Don’t add or remove momentum when the main structure gets built or deconstructed.
  • 890cd96 Reward momentum to enemy attackers if a hurt structure gets deconstructed.
  • 144d5a9 Rename g_confidence.cpp to g_momentum.cpp.
  • 9aa01b6 Fix build.
  • a0f7327 Fix momentum reward size for killing players.
  • 528e3a4 Buildables don’t heal if they’re not powered.
  • de78c1a UI Replace references to deleted circle assets
  • 5c0eeb9 Remove obselete QVMs from gitignore
  • 5b05927 Use NOEXCEPT instead of noexcept to fix VS build
  • 8b15c28 Fix stack smashing in CopyVertexData
  • 00f5441 Temporarily remove asserts that crash on the ckit model because of degenerate triangles
  • 6a89697 Initialize empty infostring in CG_Rocjet_BuildServerInfo
  • 36d59a8 Fix scaling of bone-less models with r_vboVertexskinning 0.
  • 9a23381 Force lookup of master server address on net_restart.
  • 4ce6eab Fix an incorrect vec4 copy (should be vec3).
  • b26ffc7 Fix beacon highlighting.
  • 8c9623b Add unlocked-marker-color and locked-marker-color to allow controlling the color of the unlock markers on the momentum bar
  • 724bd64 Clean up of
  • 3766ee7 Add buildable costs to both teams’ circlemenus
  • dca0919 Terminology: “forgiving vsync” -> “flexible”
  • 0ad9bd5 Move the handling of sv_cheats to common.cpp
  • da6528e Fix the client resetting sv_cheats too eagerly when starting a local server
  • bbbf6da Fix the VM not having the right value for g_cheats.
  • 18c7d57 Update librocket
  • df3b84b Slight cleanup of CL_GetServerCommand
  • 9b84285 Command.cpp no longer depends on framework files
  • 77745be Explicitly load fonts for librocket
  • 54dc6d5 Style the armoury weapon menu like the weapon menu
  • 22fd709 Get rid of Cbuf_ExecuteText
  • 4f5b10e Remove other framework includes in common
  • e583ab8 Add Logger::Do(Debug|Notice|Warn)Code
  • 133e0d7 Fix emoticon size on loading screen
  • 961076f Simplify cg_beacons.c.
  • 0ac406b Remove unneeded members of bspNode_t
  • 0d96fc0 Remove unnecessary spans from Rocket_QuakeToRML output
  • 621aa75 Fixup and enable light scissor tests
  • 801d78c Merge multidraws when possible
  • 74c1f3c Improve world vbo surface order
  • dca6da9 Remove r_dynamicBspOcclusionCulling support
  • f2804aa Reduce the size of bspNode_t
  • 9904907 Remove r_mergeMultidraws cvar
  • 0eab9f1 Fix crash
  • 512c091 Remove the _#x# suffix from emoticons
  • 398dcd8 Add sorting by server name, player count, and map
  • 7f4d7ae Fix OB1 error in the consoleTextElement that prevented text with the timestamp from appearing Fixes #346
  • 375996f Add build timers to alien and human builder HUDs
  • fec9ebb Fix a typo in light direction reconstruction.
  • eabb0cd Death message grammar fixes.
  • 1bb8350 Here, have some more death messages.
  • 737bd0d Last of death messages, for now.
  • 5ea15a8 If friendly fire is disabled, don’t prevent the egg from killing friendly buildables in its way.
  • 81e33fd Move Vertex and Index data into aligned arrays.
  • c6c6b69 Delay mipmap computation of cubemaps until the texture is complete.
  • 16b8cd9 Use unsynchronized glMapBufferRange for VBO upload if possible.
  • 50efef8 Avoid glVertexAttribPointer calls during world rendering.
  • 7989221 Stop RocketCvarInlineElement from updating every frame
  • c103d28 Fix RocketConsoleTextElement OOB access
  • 29d2345 Fix off by one error in RocketConsoleTextElement
  • c64cd89 Cleanup rocketProgressBar slightly
  • b53de31 Add USER_ARCHIVE flag to cvars set by the UI so they save
  • c76eda1 Set openal current device so the dataselect can select it
  • 4efac03 Add trap_Cvar_AddFlags
  • 9957243 Add CVAR_ARCHIVE to audio.al.device when set via the UI
  • 8c67e75 Start loaded HUD units hidden
  • 1235443 Resize alien health and poison progressbar images to remove alpha Fixes #420
  • cdcd525 Remove tag sounds and tag score indicator.
  • 0b3f79c Fix highlighting, add back BCT_HEALTH and BCT_AMMO, make beacons more opaque when fading in.
  • 58982b0 Remove unimplemented stuff from tr_types.h
  • aca2872 Remove unused parameter from R_CullSurface
  • a66b6bb Remove R_AddBrushModelSurface
  • 565bd57 Remove unused patch culling stats
  • f6dd09f Remove double setting of vertex attrib pointers and improve Scissor.
  • a7ede0b Default to no knockback for all damage; Add the doKnockback missile config option.
  • 40f1980 Fix GLimp_DebugCallback to work with different versions of GLEW
  • cf5fae4 Remove unneeded call of va() in Tess_UpdateVBOs.
  • ca159a2 Fix grenade and other missiles scaling.
  • 69bc3a1 Selection box description changes.
  • 5e33ec2 Download text change.
  • 458cfd2 Let the base clustering code handle tag beacons instead of structures.
  • 551d626 Cleanup CG_RunBeacon a bit.
  • 65bde36 Make enemy structure tags permanent.
  • 3e6a79d Defer removal of enemy structure tags until the structure’s death was confirmed.
  • b0e46c4 Let’s not translate IRC error messages.
  • 727a64b Don’t need to translate these IP messages.
  • c0ce6ee Why translate cvar messages?
  • a36ec3a Removed cl_parse translations
  • 1e7004c Removed the rest of cl_irc translations.
  • a8d0795 Removed cl_keys translations.
  • 6fbea99 Removed cl_main translations.
  • 1b56168 Let’s not translate sv_client.
  • 70e5ea2 Let’s not translate sv_main.
  • 0b37a58 Let’s not translate sv_ccmds.
  • d6052fe Misc server translation removal.
  • 2028938 BaseCommands translation removal.
  • 725ab52 Removed translation from common.cpp.
  • f147af8 Removed translation from msg.cpp.
  • a9cca39 Removed translation from files.cpp.
  • c695956 Untranslate the rest of qcommon.
  • 0530230 Rest of CvarSystem.
  • b274063 Fixed line in translation.cpp.
  • b6fa5e9 Removed translations from audio.
  • ba1b1e3 Remainder of src/engine translation scrubbing.
  • 615c3c3 Stop using entityState_t.solid for transmitting bboxes over the network.
  • 920d466 Rename Lore to Help
  • 1e1171b Fix 615c3c3.
  • b858247 Use static VBOs where possible.
  • 0eb7de8 Add guarding #ifdefs around GLEW_ARB_buffer_strorage
  • 0233a2a Invalidate tess.surfaceShader after scissor is updated.
  • 103ccbf Clean up rocketDataSource.h
  • fbce5c9 Fix spacing on scoreboard Fixes: #428
  • bbfe283 Fix ping on scoreboard Fixes: #429
  • 4e7e7aa Set size of emoticons everywhere to 1.1em so they appear properly sized Fixes: #431
  • 8425dd8 Clear all key states when switching to UI focus Fixes: #367
  • 9038e4b Make scoreboard show up instantly, even if it is wrong briefly
  • b9c9802 Add a trap call to load map metadata + refactor code for this change – All maps must keep their levelshots and arena files in a meta/ folder at the root of the pk3/pk3dir – datasource levelshot and maploading levelshot split off into different elements – Only the map you are playing is fully loaded now.
  • 89067e0 Remove invalid comment
  • 8ec3022 Fix armoury bounding box/size mismatch.
  • ab0df56 Load arenafiles from meta/mapname/mapname.arena Add trap_GetFileListRecursive to accomplish this
  • 0bc1513 Always load DEPS when loading a pak with a prefix
  • 8ff8680 only load hud/menu stuff from the ui/ prefix
  • c69824a Check for tess.indexes == NULL in RB_StretchPic and friends.
  • 170cd1a Send full list of commands to the client upon pubkey authentication and remove listrotation and listmaps from admin command list /listrotation didn’t work because someone added it to the admin command list with no function so it was always handled by the admin list instead of the command list in g_cmds.cpp. Fixes #433
  • af2adf6 Fix typo in registering a rocket property Fixes #430
  • fcb6a06 When restarting the UI in CL_Disconnect, shutdown the entire cgame instead of just rocket Fixes #438
  • 30eb458 Fix typo in createserver menu
  • adf7293 Protect failed to load animation warning with a debug cvar This warnings are only useful to developers and are annoying. In the future, when we have per subsystem logging, this cvar can be replaced.
  • b932e65 Add mantis charge cooldown progressbar to hud
  • a8322dd Version bumb to 0.31.0
  • ff90986 bump version in the main menu