GAE features that will be considered stable upon release

[tomreyn]

Hi again,

sorry for spamming your forums. ;-) While MegaGlest has just released a first beta of the upcoming 3.5 release, it still has some bugs we'll need to track down and (not actually me) fix. But I have a good idea of how we're making progress and how much longer it could take on our end to get this stable release out which both projects intend to release before the merge.

So I know that GAE has many interesting but also some very experimental (read: not always stable) features. So I'd like to help testing a little to contribute to stabilising those features of the game which are supposed to be stable. However, I really do not know, at all, which features are supposed to be/become (by the next release) stable and which will not. Do you have a list or a concise declaration on this available, so I can know what to test and not waste your time by bug reports on features which are not going to be stable by the time of the merge anyways?

Thanks

Tom

[Omega]

Bearing in mind that while stable features should be merged first, we can't skip out on any features, or we will break existing mods, which is one of the worst possible things we could do.

It's pretty hard to define stable, and GAE has a lot of features... Subfactions are pretty stable, but the AI cannot use them at all (game breaker!). Emanations *seem* stable, but have only been used to some degree in these recent versions. Save game is stable in the latest stable release, but holds the reward for being the most often broken feature. The pathfinder is stable, but if I recall, has given problems when trying to merge in the past (?). MG particles were a bit buggy last I saw, though I think that was fixed in the RC.

Of course, I could be wrong about any of these. I haven't gotten the time to test the RC (busy busy busy), and as I said, it's hard to define stable (in my case, some are just "works [flawlessly] for me").

[hailstone]

Thanks for wanting to help tomreyn. The ticket tracker is a good place to start looking. Not everything will be listed there though. It's hard to know how long it will take to stabalize GAE. Silnarm committed a lot of code for GUI and shaders in a seperate branch recently that needs to be tested.

Edit:
Here's a list that might be a bit more helpful:
cloak
teleport
transport/carry/housed units
water units
shaders
unit particles
GUI
custom mouse cursors (including for faction)
custom faction starting images
scroll move with mouse
jpg loading
png writing
save
multiproduce
self building units
cast spell
attack notification sound and image on map

[tomreyn]

Yeah that's a good list which should get me entertained for a good while, thanks hailstone.

[Zoythrus]

self-assembling units? can you tell me more about that?

[hailstone]

They assemble without needing another unit.

From Shibboleth tech - Defense Tower:

Code: [Select]

<skill>
  <type value="build_self"/>
  <name value="build_self_skill" />
  <ep-cost value="0"/>
  <speed value="300"/>
  <anim-speed value="300"/>
  <animation path="../../../../../magitech/factions/tech/units/defense_tower/models/defense_tower_construction.g3d"/>
  <sound enabled="false"/>
</skill>

<command>
  <type value="build-self"/>
  <name value="build_self" tip="under_construction"/>
  <display value="false"/> <!-- Display == false commands must come after all non-false command -->
  <image path="images/none.bmp"/>
  <unit-requirements/>
  <upgrade-requirements/>
  <build-self-skill value="build_self_skill"/>
</command>


[Zoythrus]

so, a unit starts production, but it finishes itself? like the Protoss buildings in Starcraft?

[hailstone]

Yes.

[will]

transport/carry/housed units
water units

these two are needed for the Imperial Faction.  It would be nice to think that the Imperial Faction can be played on the merged Glest 4 from the beginning, so it would be nice if these features it relies on are 'stable' and in that merge from the beginning.

I think Mr War has been asking about how to set these up in his mod thread?

[Zoythrus]

sorry to bring up the "self-building buildings" thing again, but i have a question. can you guys add a way to prevent workers from repairing it while it assembles itself? what's the point in something that builds itself if workers try to build it? (when i say we need a way to prevent this, i dont mean disabling auto-repair).

[Omega]

sorry to bring up the "self-building buildings" thing again, but i have a question. can you guys add a way to prevent workers from repairing it while it assembles itself? what's the point in something that builds itself if workers try to build it? (when i say we need a way to prevent this, i dont mean disabling auto-repair).

On a per unit basis, perhaps? That is to say, it would have to be activated in the XML.

transport/carry/housed units
water units

I think Mr War has been asking about how to set these up in his mod thread?

I should try and make Wiki pages about said features sometime, but at the moment, the wiki to-do list is growing and growing, and priorities are hard to manage. Perhaps some other......