0.3 Released!

[Bak]

I think I had way too much coffee for a weekend in spring break, but Discretion 0.3 is now complete and available for Windows at https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...lease_id=672062 !!

 

The newest feature that you'll notice is that it's playable, meaning you can connect to discretion-enabled zones and kill and be killed. Although that said, you need a server to play on so you probably won't notice this for another week.

 

The newest feature that you won't immediately notice is that there's an update manager built in, meaning that I can do incremental updates that Discretion clients will download and run, instead of large releases that you have to manage manually. This may be the last version you need to download from sourceforge . This was a bit tricky since I think most self-updating programs use a hard-coded update website (I assume that's how DCME does it). However, since we want to avoid centralized control, I had to use public key cryptography to allow arbitrary websites to act as update sites, but only code signed by a trusted author (my public key is included by default) to be actually run. Also, you can receive updates by source or by windows binary, which means that I haven't forgotten about linux compatibility (and maybe mac too).

 

Next weekend I will work on getting a permanent Discretion server up, which Sass will help run. Then, I hope to get feedback from you guys as well as Sass on the most important updates Discretion needs, and then do weekly (or at least more often than now) updates which will get distributed through the in-game update mechanism.

[»doc flabby]

Just gave this a little play and its pretty awesome...i love how you have done the text (how it fades in and out)

[Hakaku]

Pretty nifty Is there any plan on being able to handle bombs in online play? Also, it seems as if speccing/unspeccing isn't handled by the client (i.e. if someone else goes to spec, they'll still appear playing. If you go to play/unspec while they 'appear' playing, you literally become them.)

[Samapico]

Sounds cool, I'll try it out when a server is up and all that.

 

And yes, DCME updates via a specific website, though not hard-coded since a few versions... You can specify a different update path, but it's pretty useless unless sscentral.com blows up. The update system of DCME sucks overall, though I might take a look at how you did it, could be interesting.

[Sass]

Ok, throwing an idea here. The basic eight ships are ... well, dull at best. They were designed in 95 for 256 color resolution to keep the total download size to a minimum. However, the ships themselves are well known. So I created some neotype versions of ships by mixing the fuselages, wings, etc. By dissecting the ships, each part becomes an interchangeable layer after it's been sprited (rotated) for use. To avoid conflicts (ie. having two fuselages, or mismatching parts) a void xref table could contain illegal pairs. When a player goes to build their ship, they basically pick their options - the void xref keeps things in check.

 

http://www.pitstophobbies.net/img/junk/disc_ships_01.jpg

Sure, this generates a ton of questions but rather than trying to work through every detail, I wanted to toss it in the mix for feedback. From an infantry point of view, soldiers can be seen carrying different gear, various heads, torsos, and guns. Some of you probably already saw my rendition of those.

Edited April 2, 2009 by Sass

[Bak]

love it, you're work is always great Sass.

 

For the time being we could start with some prebuilt variants of the original ships, and add customization later. I love the alpha channel on the exhaust, it really brings subspace into the 21st century, although that said I need to think of the best way to get it into Discretion. I think currently images can have a blend % which is the percent of alpha for the whole image, is there a standard format for images with a variable alpha channel (i don't think bitmap formats support it).

[»doc flabby]

I think currently images can have a blend % which is the percent of alpha for the whole image, is there a standard format for images with a variable alpha channel (i don't think bitmap formats support it).

32-bit TGA format is often used the bytes are arranged (RGBA) is often used, and its easy to write a loader for it, plus quite a few software packages support it...its still kinda non-standard though.

 

PNG files also support alpha channel as standard and have wide support and lossless compression so they would probably be the best way to go.

Edited April 2, 2009 by doc flabby

[Sass]

PNG has variable alpha channel transparency. MNG is like PNG with GIF animation capability: http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/ so basically we could create animated sprites (smoke effects, blinking lights, etc) Edited April 2, 2009 by Sass

[Hakaku]

You may also want to check out APNG, which is quite similar to MNG, except that its library size is smaller, and it supports older png files. I don't exactly follow the debate for either format, but I just thought I'd throw that out there as well.

[Sass]

Ok, so here are two sample exhaust files in PNG format built with a fading 0-100% alpha transparency along the exhaust trail and a 90% overall transparency so that the 1st sparks (image 1 and 2 ordered left to right) have some mild transparent effect. During construction I removed the background black using simple select methods - this is why the image appears pixelated.

 

PNG8 format - 5k

http://www.pitstophobbies.net/img/junk/exhaust_png8.png

 

PNG24 format - 10k

http://www.pitstophobbies.net/img/junk/exhaust_png24.png

Edited April 2, 2009 by Sass

[Samapico]

love it, you're work is always great Sass.

 

For the time being we could start with some prebuilt variants of the original ships, and add customization later. I love the alpha channel on the exhaust, it really brings subspace into the 21st century, although that said I need to think of the best way to get it into Discretion. I think currently images can have a blend % which is the percent of alpha for the whole image, is there a standard format for images with a variable alpha channel (i don't think bitmap formats support it).

Yeah, really... add some transparency to all of the current graphics, and you've already have a 200% improvement on visuals right there

[Corey]

Please explain what this is, it seems very interesting, and i want to give it a shot.

[Bak]

Please explain what this is, it seems very interesting, and i want to give it a shot.

http://www.ssforum.net/index.php?showtopic=13145

 

 

Sass, if the entire frame has a constant transparency I can handle that using the current blend% function, although we'd probably need to input it through the settings. I wonder if SDL supports PNG alpha channel...

[Bak]

hoho, SDL already supports PNG alpha transparency. Here's a picture of a semi-transparent ship overlapping with a bomb. Feel free to use alpha Sass, just don't mix black transparency with the PNG Alpha transparency:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/bak2007/disc_blend.jpg

[Bak]

The first non-temporary Discretion zone is up! You can look for "Discretion Wars" using Continuum, or press Zones on the Discretion front end for it to refresh zone list (you may need to scroll down to find Discretion Wars). Everyone ?message freakmonger to thank him for hosting our zone!

[Corey]

thats cool, but how would i play in it? I click on Discretion.exe, and it tells me to run the .bat mode, and i do, and the program window opens, then closes right away... Edited April 3, 2009 by Corey

[CRe]

It worked fine for me. Good job btw. I tried it out before.

[Bak]

thats cool, but how would i play in it? I click on Discretion.exe, and it tells me to run the .bat mode, and i do, and the program window opens, then closes right away...

 

Hm, weird. Open cmd.exe and run the .bat from there to see if there's any output. What are your system specs?

[Hakaku]

Cool, works well for me. Curiousity though, how come chat doesn't work? (besides pub chat; iirc they all worked in an older version)

[Corey]

thats cool, but how would i play in it? I click on Discretion.exe, and it tells me to run the .bat mode, and i do, and the program window opens, then closes right away...

 

Hm, weird. Open cmd.exe and run the .bat from there to see if there's any output. What are your system specs?

still nothing... don't know whats going on...

[Bak]

still nothing... don't know whats going on...

 

Try running it from an administrator terminal. Also, what are your system specs (operating system)?

[Bak]

Just uploaded 0.32 to the discretion sourceforge download page. Updates should be working correctly now. If you had trouble updating before, get Discretion 0.32 and try again.

 

cygwin decided it had path precedence to minGW, leading to the rsa key checking program to be compiled dependent upon cygwin. That meant you couldn't update without cygwin, which most people don't have installed. I also took the opportunity to make two changes, moving most settings to conf/modules so that they can be upgraded using the update mechanism, and using a crc32 of the updates.txt file so that, if everything is up to date, only an 8 byte crc32 file is downloaded instead of a ~20KB update file. I figure that will reduce webserver bandwidth. Also, I got rid of all "offline" modules except SettingsHandler, which is used by the front end. I can't use the upgradable SettingsHandler module because it is write protected if it's being used and so can't be upgraded (and I didn't want to spend 3 extra hours coding the workaround). The side effect of this is that the practice offline zone actually checks for updates online, in the future i'll make it so if the update checking fails it still tries to enter the game, rather than not letting you play. Or maybe I could rename "practice offline" to "play with yourself" .

 

 

Let me know if you have any problems. Once again, we should have a permanent discretion server up now so you can come in and say hello.

[Fox-1]

thats cool, but how would i play in it? I click on Discretion.exe, and it tells me to run the .bat mode, and i do, and the program window opens, then closes right away...

 

Hm, weird. Open cmd.exe and run the .bat from there to see if there's any output. What are your system specs?

still nothing... don't know whats going on...

I had a similar problem and got it solved by doing following:

 

When running Discretion.exe, I get:

Please run Discretion.bat instead of Discretion.exe so you can see information in the terminal.

 

After this, when I run Discretion.bat, the screen just quickly pops up and closes.

 

After this I try to run the bat directly from the command line by typing "Discretion.bat". I get the following error:

'cmd' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

 

After this I simply type "Discretion.exe 1" in the command line and it starts working!

[Samapico]

Trying it out...

 

I'd like to see someone else log in to see how it goes...

 

I like the way it shows when your weapons are disabled like just after firing a bomb

[Bak]

After this I try to run the bat directly from the command line by typing "Discretion.bat". I get the following error:

'cmd' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

 

After this I simply type "Discretion.exe 1" in the command line and it starts working!

 

Ahh.. interesting. What version of windows are you using?

 

If you do start -> run -> cmd does it run the terminal?

If you do start -> run -> C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe does it run the terminal?