GAE 0.3.1

[silnarm]

Glest Advanced Engine 0.3.1

Generic Linux - Source package (with data)
Debian Based Linux - debs for 32bit & 64bit
Windows - Installer

Modders using Windows: Some of the new commands may be crashing the program, please use this new exe and pdb.  This exe is less optimised and may run slightly slower, but along with the pdb will give a nice stack trace if it crashes, which will help us greatly in figuring out what is going wrong.
Extract to the program install dir, and run the program from a desktop/start-menu shortcut (to ensure it can find the pdb). Delete the old pdb that was incorrectly installed in the bin/ dir.

This is a bug-fix release, with some small goodies thrown in.

Minor enhancements:

• PNG loader from MG
• Housed units can use projectile attacks (configured in Load command)
• The 'shuffle' option I forgot to add for multiple music tracks
• Player defeated messages, thanks Zoythrus for providing a long list to sort through
• Maximum selection size increased to 24.
• Select & Deselect from display panel

Bugs fixed:

• unmountable dataDir crashes ungracefully
• non visible particle systems eating memory and cpu cycles
• attack zones in the display panel were not being loaded from the lang file
• free upgrades
• die animations not processed correctly
• move skills modified by strong effects can lead to strange results
• the "don't reserve resources" flag wasn't being set properly when multiple units get the build command
• non-resource tileset objects were clickable
• the lua function unfogMap() didn't reveal tileset objects
• maps in a scenario's directory were not being located
• particle systems weren't pausing
• generate command was not multiplayer safe
• transports were not handled in savegames
• the buttons on the scenario menu were partially unclickable at low res
• having no gbm maps was considered an error
• savegames were broken due to physfs related path problems
• no change was made to the mouse cursor when a command was selected
• random projectile path was not very random...
• particle systems attached to die skills were not going away
• there was no confirmation request for quit game / program
• more physfs related path problems meant Lua couldn't read external files properly
• several memory leaks were plugged
• there was an error in the path finder causing crashes with large movable units
• no selection circle highlight on clicked targets
• sounds attached to move skills were not playing
• Some AI problems with new resource types were fixed
• Unit particle systems were always using a default radius (0.5)
• savegames with dead units in them were not loading correctly

[ultifd]

Cool, seems to have no problems so far.
Downloaded it, ran it for a bit...pretty smooth, I guess. Only thing that I saw so far was the  same slight pause when you return from the new game menu to the main menu, but that's minor...
 

Maximum selection size increased to 24.

Hmm...Very useful. Maybe MG should think about that too...not for now, but later... Unless they did already.

[Omega]

Awesome Silnarm! That was fast!

• maps in a scenario's directory were not being located

Whoa! You can place scenario maps in the scenario's directory now? Excellent, I've been needing this! Does the map just have to be in the directory or is any scenario code needed?

Too bad its a full sized installer download... Oh well, 5 minutes left... Cheers!

[Zoythrus]

hey, thanks silnarm for the update!

found a problem though, the new stuff is not on the wiki (as well as some not so new stuff). can someone who knows the engine better than i add some to the wiki?

[Psychedelic_hands]

Grrrrr, how come nothing ever works for me?

I get the error message that says:
"This application has failed to start because libpng12-0.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

I've re-installed it 3 times now  :'(

[Zoythrus]

found a bug!



look at the particles of the one on the left, it's not right. also, for some reason, the relative value wont work for this particle effect.

can i get some help here?

[ChupaReaper]

Awesome, I'll test out MRise straight away, hopefully all the bugs are gone so I can finally get the next release up!
Edit: Had a little test, 256x256 and 512x512 both work now but there is a bit of lagg at the start of 256x256, this seems to go away (will test more later), unfortunately 512x512 maps keep lagging and lagging to an unplayable rate, but at least it doesn't close off now.
When loading both faction for my mod the game gets to initializing and closes with no crash report, I've have a more detailed test later on. I may upload my factions soon so you can use them to test for whatever could be cause it it close.

[silnarm]

...Does the map just have to be in the directory or is any scenario code needed?

Too bad its a full sized installer download... Oh well, 5 minutes left... Cheers!

Just in the directory is fine, it looks there first, then in the normal places.

The download is at least not too big... the CPack generated installer for windows is a bit of a pain to be honest, and will probably be replaced by a hand-maintained one by 0.4, after which patches will be the norm.

...the new stuff is not on the wiki (as well as some not so new stuff). can someone who knows the engine better than i add some to the wiki?

Will try to get everything up on the wiki an the days to come, as time permits.

I get the error message that says:
"This application has failed to start because libpng12-0.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

Hi Psychedelic_hands, how are you trying to run the program? Changes were made so it should find the data if you double-click the exe, but then it may not find the dlls it needs (which are one directory level up). Do you also get this message when starting from the start-menu or desktop shortcuts??

found a bug!
...
look at the particles of the one on the left, it's not right. also, for some reason, the relative value wont work for this particle effect.

Thanks, will take a look... had that been modified since the version I have?

When loading both faction for my mod the game gets to initializing and closes with no crash report...

Hmmm, if it's the old error building mip-maps problem, you should be getting a message (and with some additional info now), will experiment with it an see that it is catching the exceptions properly.

[ChupaReaper]

Ok, so I can run two Hyperion factions without any problems (on 256x256 and 512x512 maps too but with the same mega lag in 512x512). I'm gonna test two Necribus, will edit with the results...

Edit: It crashed while initializing with this:

(click to show/hide)

Crash
Crash
Version: Advanced Engine 0.3.1
Time: Tue Oct 05 08:38:35 2010
Description: Access violation (Reading address: 0x02D83760)

Call Stack:
  Frame       Code address
  0x0115D4FC  0x004F2DB5

=======================

So my new Hyperion faction seems to be working fine, though it still has a few mroe units left to add, differences tech wise:

• All none building (movable) Hyperion units are only 1 in size at the minute, their height varies a lot though. They cover both land and air like the Necribus
• The Hyperion were built from templates copied from the Necribus units then modified a bit (adjusted stats and different models/sounds, etc). The sounds are relatively the same but the Necribus still have massive amounts of animation frames (soon to be fixed for next release hopefully).
• No other significant differences apart from the Hyperion have less units at the minute, they both have the same types of buildings.
• The Necribus have emanations and effects, none of the Hyperion units use these yet.

All that I can guess something to do with the above or a little scripting bug that I haven't found but if that was the case the faction wouldn't work on its own right? So its ether something to do with the large moving units, emanations or large animations... or maybe something else...

[silnarm]

Edit: It crashed while initializing with this:

(click to show/hide)

Crash
Crash
Version: Advanced Engine 0.3.1
Time: Tue Oct 05 08:38:35 2010
Description: Access violation (Reading address: 0x02D83760)

Call Stack:
  Frame       Code address
  0x0115D4FC  0x004F2DB5

=======================

Damn! No stack trace, could you please copy glestadv.pdb from bin/ and place it one level up with the dlls and try to make it happen again ??

[Psychedelic_hands]

Hi Psychedelic_hands, how are you trying to run the program? Changes were made so it should find the data if you double-click the exe, but then it may not find the dlls it needs (which are one directory level up). Do you also get this message when starting from the start-menu or desktop shortcuts??

Hey  
And yes I've tried opening it from those places, I'm re-downloading now to see if that works.

Edit: I've re-downloaded, it now opens from the desktop, but not from the folder.
When I go to the new game menu I get this message.
"Error loading map file: maps/autobahn
Unknown exception"

[silnarm]

Edit: I've re-downloaded, it now opens from the desktop, but not from the folder.
When I go to the new game menu I get this message.
"Error loading map file: maps/autobahn
Unknown exception"

A bug

Please go to your 'config dir' (open the 'Addons' folder and go up one directory) and delete the last_gamesettings.gs file.

It remembers your previous game settings and reloads them when you enter the new game menu, but there are no checks to see if the map/tileset/tech you previously used is still there.

[ChupaReaper]

Ok I copied the pdb file from bin to the root so that it's in both places.
Lol the two Necribus didn't work because they had duplicate effect names, will adjust Necribus2 as its going to be my test dummy, anyway using Necribus and Hyperion it gets to Initializing Renderer and... nothing... I'll try moving the pdb into my config and see if that helps, nope still nothing.
I'll try experimenting by changing things around with Necribus2 to see if I can get it working with Hyperion.

Edit: Managed to get the Necribus2 working.. by removing 45 of its units! Somewhere amongst those is the cause of it (or is it just the amount of units there or or maybe something to do with large g3ds?)

Edit2: I did more tests adding units one by one back in, I found that four of my units have dodgy textures, though will those fixed the random close still happens. It seems to be overloading as once I hit 59 units if I add any more the problem comes, but then I tried duplicating a smaller unit with a simpler mesh to have 60 units and it worked fine again, so I added another one having three of these units, it still worked, then I made a fourth and the random crash returned... I didn't have this kind of problem when using GAE 0.2.x I know some people had a 2D mipmap error when loading the Necribus but they were alone and I think I've found the source of that now. Hopefully going through all the g3ds and optimising them will help fix things, in the mean time I'll keep messing about to try and find the source.

[Psychedelic_hands]

Awesome! Thank you, I'm glad that was a bug not just me being stupid.
But there is still the problem of it not opening from the folder....

[silnarm]

But there is still the problem of it not opening from the folder....

If you copy all the dlls from the program directory into the bin/ it should run from there (but don't move them, as then the desktop/startmenu links wont work). The bin/ and share/glestae/ directories are a pain on windows, and will be removed sometime later (prob 0.4).

Windows Users:
New exe and pdb, the pdb I shipped in the installer does not contain all the information I thought it did, and is in the wrong place anyway, so I've built a new binary (which is less optimised and may run slightly slower) and pdb with everything needed so we get a nice stack trace if it crashes.

Extract to the program install dir, and run the program from a desktop/start-menu shortcut (to ensure it can find the pdb). Delete the old pdb that was incorrectly installed in the bin/ dir.

Anyone able to generate crashes, please use these!

[Zoythrus]

...the new stuff is not on the wiki (as well as some not so new stuff). can someone who knows the engine better than i add some to the wiki?

not really, a made a slight change, but it was like this before i changed. and yes, those are all the same unit.

[Psychedelic_hands]

If you copy all the dlls from the program directory into the bin/ it should run from there (but don't move them, as then the desktop/startmenu links wont work). The bin/ and share/glestae/ directories are a pain on windows, and will be removed sometime later (prob 0.4).

Thanks for that man

But for some strange reason, I can't get the free camera mode to work.... I'm hoping this isn't just me being stupid again...

[ChupaReaper]

Still no report, but if this helps I checked the main log and it shows when it cuts off:

(click to show/hide)

Initializing renderer
76: ~GameState
76: ~World
76: ~TechTree
76: ~Tileset
76: ~Cells

[silnarm]

...
look at the particles of the one on the left, it's not right. also, for some reason, the relative value wont work for this particle effect.

'relative' is working, and positions new particles correctly, you also need 'relativeDirection' to get the velocity vector rotated (so the particles travel in same direction).

This was missing from the ipv build-glitter particles.  With it set, it mostly works, but I did notice occasionally some of the particles ignore this and go off in the un-rotated direction... will investigate further.

But for some strange reason, I can't get the free camera mode to work.... I'm hoping this isn't just me being stupid again...

There is no 'game' and 'free' camera in GAE, it is always free. We really need a user guide to ship with it.

Camera Controls:

Middle mouse button to rotate camera.
[Ctrl] + Middle mouse button to pan
Scroll Wheel to zoom.

If you don't have a three button mouse, you should get one
The default camera keys are the same as vanilla glest, but + [Shift],
eg. [Shift] + A : rotate left.

This is because A is the attack hotkey now.  This can be configured to your liking by editing keymap.ini (found in ~/glestadv), and hopefully in 0.4 or 0.5 there will be a way to do this in game.

Still no report, but if this helps I checked the main log and it shows when it cuts off:

I think maybe you're running out of memory... I had the task manager open while loading Necribus yesterday, mem use was about 900 MiB before hand, and 2.4 GiB after loading... The OpenGL drivers are probably having a fit when they can no longer get hold of 'real' memory... what's the average size of your tweaked textures ?

[ChupaReaper]

It's not the textures it's the G3Ds with massive animations, I've been slowly going through each one and shotening the frames (around half way through now) and it's suddenly started working!
It must be all the animation frames. Some weighed around 6.5MB! Down to less than 768KB now.

Edit: Finally finished optimising the Necribus, they load much faster and work alongside the Hyperion. Hopefully I wont run into this problem again as I'll be having five factions eventually. I've cut the Necribus down from around 1GB to 463MB, when compress it will hopefully just about half to around 200MB, a much nicer download!

[hailstone]

Could use_simd_interpolation be affecting it since it reads in the frames differently?

[ChupaReaper]

Subfactions still don't work for units (producible ones, haven't got any subfaction buildings to test) but they do for upgrades.
Also 256x256 maps eventually start to lag out of control with around 5 players, 512x512 maps lag from the start.

[Zoythrus]

hey, i'd like to know the code for the new stuff. how can i use it if i dont even know how?

also, the wiki needs an update, for reference of course.

[Omega]

Oh dear.... Finally get it downloaded, and it won't work. The executables don't work at all with the old links (blinks open and closes instantly), and directly opening them gives a white screen for a bit, then closes, no error message, and nothing in the err file either.

In addition, the old 0.3 executables in that same folder don't work, presumably a shared media was edited, such as the DLLs?

Originally, I had an error about missing a DLL. Moving that DLL from the install directory to the ./bin/ directory stopped the error, but as I mentioned above, it still doesn't work.

[silnarm]

In addition, the old 0.3 executables in that same folder don't work, presumably a shared media was edited, such as the DLLs?

Originally, I had an error about missing a DLL. Moving that DLL from the install directory to the ./bin/ directory stopped the error, but as I mentioned above, it still doesn't work.

Only two additional dlls were added, so that shouldn't be the problem. It is probably something wrong due the same install directory though, perhaps try installing 0.3.1 to a directory of its own, or uninstall 0.3 first.

Failing that, what logs do you get in your config dir, if any? If using an 'old' config dir, delete the log files there first. Does the stdout.txt in the program directory have anything in it??

hey, i'd like to know the code for the new stuff. how can i use it if i dont even know how?

also, the wiki needs an update, for reference of course.

The 'allow-projectiles' option for load command had been added, other stuff will get there in due course, but if you need to know now, just ask!

Subfactions still don't work for units (producible ones, haven't got any subfaction buildings to test) but they do for upgrades.

Sorry, I seem to have missed this last time around, it has a ticket now...

Could use_simd_interpolation be affecting it since it reads in the frames differently?

I don't think this is likely, the memory is allocated differently, and each frame gets it's own array rather than them all sharing one, but that's about the limit of the changes.  So I doubt it, but then stranger things have happened, and it may be worth trying it with RenderInterpolateWithSIMD (in glestadv.ini) set to false if Chuppa runs into this problem again.