There are now 5 release blocker bugs, at this point I’m calling a formal feature freeze, nothing except bugfixes merged until the release, that also means translators have some time with no new strings to catch up translating, I just updated the translation template, so launchpad should have it in short order.
With the release blocker list cut down so much, I’m pretty optimistic about a release this weekend.
Thank you.
Kevin can you update http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=4104.0
Please make zombears much more rare
Pllllleeeeeeaaaaasssseeeee
What are the major features of this release? Hard to tell from commits
Working on a changelog, it takes a while 
As usual we’re finding and fixing bugs right up to the end, I’m still optimistic about releasing tomorrow. I couldn’t do any bugfixing because I spent the whole day going through the [size=14pt]4732[/size] commits since 0.9
Here’s the changelog you slavedrivers. It’s a MONSTER.
0.A
Features:
View item on mouse hover in SDL.
Mouse move.
Basic LUA support.
Vehicles disintegrate into their constituent parts on impact.
Fuel tanks preserve their contents when removed/installed.
Vehicle construction and repair using duct tape.
More distinct mutation trees, including branch thresholds and post-threshold mutations.
Interact with monsters on stairs.
Guilt from killing monsters tapers off as you kill more of them.
Can track vehicles with a GPS module.
Allow filtering constructions by the ones you can do right now (can toggle).
Idling for vehicles, can effectively run as generators.
Minifridge that keeps food fresh longer.
Clothing pockets and hoods only activate when needed. (for warmth)
Inventory and crafting menus support listing items by category.
Expanded underwater combat.
Item spoilage rate varies based on temperature.
More info in list monsters menu.
Rechargeable battery pack mod for tools.
Gunmods are installed on rails now.
Better gender handling at character creation.
Expanded vehicle electrical system.
Can pick up or drop partial stacks.
Shove items out of the way when closing a door.
Radioactive items.
Mutation friendly clothing.
Remove prompt to resume task, of course you want to.
Vehicle facing indicator (option).
Fullscreen mode.
Show contents of grabbed vehicle (e.g. your shopping cart) in advanced inventory pane.
Fishing, find a pole!
Automatic view shifting when driving (option).
Zoom mode that dynamically resizes tiles (pretty slow when zoomed unfortunately).
Search known recipes by output, tool or component.
Infrastructure:
Overmap tiles moved to json.
Lots of warning cleanup.
More development of internal json library.
Mod manager.
Can define mapgen for tiles in json or LUA.
Traps moved to json.
Standalone json checker.
Refactored monsters and players to have a common parent class.
Retrieve items from inventory based on location instead of invlet.
Ammo types moved to json.
Blacklist and whitelist for including/excluding content.
Balance:
Sleep increases rate of fatigue recovery and healing over time.
Remove automatic matches and poketknife from player spawn.
Add skintight flag for underwear-type clothing to negate layering penalties.
First Aid and bandages take time to apply now.
Increased city size variability.
Turrets have finite ammo.
Reduce rate of damage for “real armor” as opposed to “clothes”.
Zombies spawn at last stand locations.
Burning ammo only throws shrapnel, no explosion.
Increased crafting distance to 6 to enable large workshops.
Progressive difficulty searching for lab notes.
Large-scale vehicle rebalances.
Improved code that determines what body part is hit by an attack.
Water purification methods use one charge per unit of water.
Buffed water resistant clothing.
Removed acid puddles from acid rain. (no more melting items).
Buffed most zombie HP.
Large nerf to solar panels.
Effectively remove cap to starting points option (set to 1,000).
More interesting gun misfire/jam mechanics, guns can take damage now.
Varied rate of projectile breakage with a flag, more differentiation between arrow types.
Content:
Atomic coffee, energy drink and hypospray, lawn darts, MOLLE pack, fingertip razors.
Too many mutations to list, including mutagen types and recipes.
Map types, ammo reloads, vehicle curtains, creepy doll, whiskey barrels.
Hibernation mutation, lots of cop and fireman gear, IV mutagen, piles of new traits.
Mutation-themed dreams, cowbell, atomic batteries, dojo and contents,
vending machines and bank cards.
Dinocataclysm added as a mod at long last!
Lots more terrain and furniture is now bashable.
Several new houses and other buildings.
Variations of vehicle condition (damaged, blood-splattered, engine running, etc)
Creatures fling around appropriate fluids and chunks when gibbed.
Several content packs that allow enabling/disabling different categories of content.
Shoggoth.
Bugfixes:
Prevent artifact swords from sticking all the time.
Royal jelly and blood filter heal dermatik infections.
Make active items (ticking bombs, rotting food) work in vehicle storage.
Prevent teleportation and stairclimbing from erasing monsters.
Lots of UI tweaks.
Fix bug where items couldn’t be thrown over water.
Erase scentmap when we move between floors.
Handle adjacent overmaps better, including notes.
Lots of recipes moved fro auto-learn on skill thresholds to being learned from books.
Fixed vehicle rendering when dragging.
Can craft from items in vehicle storage.
Only count loudest vehicle engine for noise generation instead of adding them together.
Fix weird bug where being too strong made you bad at throwing things.
Fixed several related vehicle board/unboard bugs.
Player displayed in correct position when peeking.
Fixed lots of menu drawing glitches.
Height/width options make more sense, total instead of based on view width.
Limit indoor dimly lit areas to the same view distance as outside.
Fix bug where vehicles and windows projected light at dawn and dusk.
Targeting defaults to nearest enemy.
Toggling between enemies includes hostile NPCs.
Vehicle turrets no longer shoot player or their own vehicle.
Fixed issue where exploding items could destroy themselves and cause a segfault.
Check for errors when attempting to write files and take appropriate action.
Fixed some lab finale features.
Fixed vehicle workshops being usable as components in recipes.
Performance:
Many overmap generation performance improvements.
Stop updating scent if player hasn’t moved for a while, makes waiting and sleeping go much faster.
Optimized bitflag methods for very frequently used flags.
Heavy refactor of crafting menu for more speed.
Heavy optimization of scent diffusion.
Declare strings as const to avoid reallocating them all the time.
Lots of caching of vehicle parts.
Vision calculation speedups.
Refactored map loading to chunk up map data into tiny (1KB or so) files, so save/load is nearly instantaneous.
Oh man, that’s huge! You guys sure know how to get thing’s done.
Wait, is the mod manager new for this release, or was it in 0.9? Didn’t see it in the changelog.
Mod manager and json support are the biggest ones. It will make it easier for more people to add content. Since you can pick and choose what you want, people can create whatever they want and you can choose to add it.
I think we should talk about how we want to house mods. Do we want a separate mod subforum for completed mods? The mod forum now is for stuff in the main branch. Or will we add all mods to the main branch on download and people can choose to use them or not? Since the game is a small download, i propose all mods are in main branch, but disabled. Add a subforum where people can promote mods and ask for help. The easier we make it for people to get mods will encourage more ideas
I think the json is great. This makes it easier to make overhaul mods which are always a fun way to get more people involved.
Great release guys. This is an important structure release and will make it easier for others to add content.
I have one thing to ask. What is up with the npc overhaul? I saw it discussed in the mod forum for a while.
I think the NPC overhaul never got underway, even though some important bugs to do with them were ironed out for 0.A.
I thought that they had made some serious progress on getting the framework set up, just nothing that’s done yet. I thought.
I thought that they had made some serious progress on getting the framework set up, just nothing that’s done yet. I thought.[/quote]
Pretty much. We managed to get the very base of the framework set up and a small handful of functions moved over to that new framework. There is still tons of stuff to be migrated over to the new creature functions, but it’s something that si possible to be done now, which was probably the biggest first step that we needed to do on that front.
The general approach I want to take to mods is what youtoo suggests, mods ship with the main game, but are often disabled by default. Behind the scenes we can pick content from mods to move into either mods that are loaded by default, or into the core set of json files.
We still need to figure out how we handle various things associated with it, but now that we have some infrastructure for it we can kick ideas around.
Regarding NPCs, we haven’t made much progress on the NPCs themselves, but near the start of 0.A, swwu did a big overhaul of how we handle monsters vs players vs NPCs, and we’ve been polishing up bits of that ever since. This gives us a nice foundation to build npcs on.
before:
after:
creature -> monster
\-> player -> NPCsoon:
creature -> monster
\-> person -> player
\-> new NPCUPDATE: Writing the changelog took much longer than expected (all day Saturday ;_; ), and some additional bugs cropped up at the last minute (as usual), so we’re slipping some more.
However, we’re currently sitting at 0 release-blocker type bugs, so the current plan is to cut a release candidate tomorrow (if you want to get a head start, the RC s basically going to be the current experimental, as soon as Jenkins gets un-stuck again at least), and do the big bells-and-whistles release next Friday.
Thanks Kevin!
Originally I was planning to hold off for the eventual Z-Levels before getting back into Cata, but the change-log looks interesting enough (and Z-Levels distant enough, I suppose) to jump back in and have another go. So I appreciate you going through the considerable effort to put together the list. I’ll be waiting for that RC!
It needs more cowbell.
What would be the differences between tomorrow’s release candidate and the bells-and-whistles version next Friday? Would saves be compatible with both?
What would be the differences between tomorrow’s release candidate and the bells-and-whistles version next Friday? Would saves be compatible with both?[/quote]
Primarily bugfixes and full translation support. Breaking save-compatibility happens, but we give notice first.
Definitely save compatible. The only difference between the RC and “actual” release will be bugfixes. And maybe some translations packaged, but that’s a tall order.