Reassembly News

Happy new year! I wanted to get the beta out before the end of the year, and here it is. The main new feature is a shroud system that makes turreted weapons look nicer. There are also a number of bug fixes and optimizations.

* Add more elaborate turret shroud graphics to many blocks
* Optimize explosions and resources
* Update SDL library versions
* Fix steam integration in Windows XP build
* Fix crash when entering wormhole

Modding features
* add shroud system
* fix shroud offset for invisible blocks
* fix bug where rotator angle was not saved on cluster changes
* add FRIENDLY_FIRE explosion flag
* add explosionColor0 and explosionColor1 faction data fields

General Updates
* Add galaxy configuration screen when creating a new game or regenerating the world. Allows players to change the size of the galaxy, number of agents, and, if the Fields Expansion is installed, the number of gravity wells and slow zons.
* Show which block is causing the "locked" status for imported ships.
* Fix particle effect related crash (std::bad_alloc)
* Big projectile physics optimization - can now have significantly more projectiles before the game slows down.
* Number of optimizations for AI and plant mechanics
* Fix a number of missing translation strings and update Chinese translation (thanks tanghao, Song Jiang, Uiharu, and other members of the Chinese community).
* Optimize rendering of the ship editor, upgrade, and fleet screens
* Fix bug where players can't get credits immediately after regenerating th world
* Allow modded map regions to load in a more order-independant way
* Add file browse option to make locating save files easier
* Don't pan the camera when using the arrow keys in the ship name widget in the ship editor
* Optimize R tractor beam code and fix bug where R packets were sometimes not picked up when a bunch of ships are nearby.

Fields Expansion
* Push stations out of neutron stars if they get stuck in there
* Afterburner now allows the ship to turn more tightly when activated
* Disable stacking of afterburner with regular thrusters
* Fix typo in audio config file.
* Reduce the amount of stuff that spawns inside gravity wells somewhat.

Modding Updates
* new FIN feature and finForce parameter allows blocks to use more steering behavior type movement. Try it on missiles. Negative finForce acts as drag. Also works with ACTIVATE.
*ACTIVATE compatibility with TRACTOR, PHOTOSYNTH, ASSEMBLER
* fix crash when using the "reload" command to load mod data

Get it here!

There are also a number of updates in the base game:

Tournament
* Add free for all tournaments!
* Add soft tournament border
* fix excessive spread fire
* add option to pause between rounds instead of advancing automatically
* fix bug where saves slots at end would not appear in tournament screen

General
* fix long standing memory corruption issue related to strings
* fix bug where blocks with ports very close together could corrupt ship state
* fix some fleet color import issues
* fix a number of subtle threading crashes
* update SDL image/ttf and associated dlls
* unlocked blocks are added to the palette in order
* fix some crashes related to resources

Modding
* recoil control for cannons
* fix crash when prettyingprinting long fragment lists
* allow exporting a whole fleet of selected ships using the "export" command
* fragment optimizations
* new console commands "health" and "credits"
* fix bug where ships would mysteriously not attack each other in sandbox
* add aihint_range and aihint_muzzleVel to tell the ai how to aim complex weapons
* add "extends=BLOCKID" field to copy attributes from another block
* fix a number of issues with custom shapes

Update time!

General
* Add support for OSX Mojave.
* allow dragging blocks with the middle mouse button after cloning (thanks Jolt for the suggestion)
* don't load save slots until they become visible in the menu, for those of you with 50 save slots.
* import menu enhancements: Add link to reassembly data directory and save slots. Add sorting and an icon size toggle.
* optimize ship load time
* players can now place agent into the "agents" directory inside the save directory (controllable with kAgentDirectory cvar). Agent in this folder will be used instead of downloading from the wormhole server, if available. Import menu support coming soon.

Bug Fixes:
* Fix bug where lasers could sometimes carve through several blocks suddenly. Fix laser-related game hang.
* Fix issue where ships could sometimes pass through buildings and plants
* Fix issue where ships would randomly take the name or colors from other recently deleted ships.
* Fix crash when exporting mods

Modding additions:
* add cvars kModExportFactionStart and kModExportBlockStart to allow modders to control which faction and block ids the "Export Fleet from Save" function uses.
* load blocks.json from mods, if you prefer JSON format to lua
* new block fields control turret aesthetics: barrelSize={x, y}, barrelCount=N
* allow transparent blocks - block fill colors can now contain an alpha value in 0xAARRGGBB format. Cannon projectiles can also have an alpha value.
* improve handling of concave custom block shapes - the game will now automatically calculate the convex hull of these shapes instead of spewing errors.
* add cannon spread pattern flag ABSOLUTE (e.g. cannon={pattern=WAVE|ABSOLUTE}). Projectiles with this setting will not inherit the velocity of their parent. Particularly useful for fragments.
* add explosive flags FRAG_PROXIMITY, FRAG_FINAL, and FRAG_IMPACT. By default, fragments fire on both FINAL (the projectile reached the end of its range) and IMPACT, but you can use these flags to make only one or the other happen. FRAG_PROXIMITY is analogous to the existing PROXIMITY explosion parameter and also uses explodeRadius to determine the how close to get before exploding.
* add new block field "sort" which can be used to change the order of blocks in the palette. The default value for mods is that blocks will be sorted in the order defined in blocks.lua. Set sort=-1 to use the old automatic sort order.
* add "lifetime" console command to change the lifetime of blocks.
* new cannon field "rangeStdDev" allows adding random variance to the range of projectiles.
* new block field explodeStdDev allows adding random variance to radius of exploding blocks.
* add teleporterRadius field to control the maximum range of teleporter blocks
* Use fuzzier matching when spawning fleets in the world generator. Should avoid a situation where certain ships are inexplicably rarely or never spawned.
* Add shield power field which adjusts shield regeneration power (power usage when regenerating is shield.regen * shield.power per second)

This is the first update in quite a while and it's a BIG one.

TLDR; rebalanced block P costs, lots of new weapon types for modders, significant optimizations for better frame rate and a smoother ride.

General Improvements:
* Block P costs have been re-balanced
* Significant performance, precision, and stability updates when editing very large structures.
* 'x' now properly stops the player ship from rotating when in key rotation mode
* tooltips are now properly updated after scaling a block
* World streaming and generation is now smoother. Improve performance when copying clusters and when allocating new clusters using a new port connection copying algorithm and pooled allocator for cluster structures.
* Use a different, more accurate method for sleeping between frames and update steps (smoother animations).
* Improve targeting for cannons and rockets, particularly when the velocity difference between the firing ship and target is significant.
* update Chinese translation (Thanks to community members Uiharu, Fgdfgfthgr, tang hao, liilili, Magnus siiftun1857 Frankline, and others). Improve Chinese and Japanese text wrapping.
* Significantly reduce the memory used by each game block by moving constant fields into a central, shared location. This also makes it easier to add new block fields in the future.
* Significant physics engine cpu and memory optimizations.
* Graphics transformation optimizations. Particle effect spawning optimization
* Significant healing laser optimizations
* New block sleeping optimization reduces CPU usage of inert blocks.
* OPTIMIZATIONS
* Fix several rare editor related crashes
* Weapon ranges are now displayed in the binding screen
* Lots of random crash fixes

Tournament:
* The AI now ignores weapons bound as either "point defense" or "auto-fire" when determining what range to engage at. Players can bind auxiliary weapons to either of these two binding slots to prevent them from interfering with AI positioning.
* AI will now use the fire mode ("fire all" or "ripple fire") from the primary weapon binding for its weapons.
* Weapons bindings are now easier to edit in sandbox mode. Just press 'b' without closing the console.
* AI now properly considers weapon boosters when calculating weapon range/damage in several places.

Modders:
* New "fragment" cannon field allows recursively defined projectiles that split into more projectiles.
* New cannon field "pattern" can be set to "random" (default), "spiral", "wave", or "constant" to change the way projectiles are distributed through the "spread" angle.
* New cannon/laser field "barrelTaper" allows modifying turret barrel aesthetics.
* New cvar kSensorRangeMultiplier allows modders to increase the sensor range of all ships (default is 2200 units). Particularly useful for mods that also increase kLiveRadius.
* audio.lua mods can now load sounds from the base game directory without having to copy the sound file into their mod
* Hold down "control" to display the prettier construction mode tooltip when in the sandbox (instead of the more verbose sandbox tooltip)
* level_save command now requires a -f switch to overwrite and existing level file. Add level_remove command.
* Allow setting block "health" and "mass" directly instead of setting "durability" and "density"
* Add new cvar kWriteJSON which causes the game to export ships and write other data files in easily parsable JSON format instead of the default lua-esq format. The game can now import ships and other data files in JSON format.
* Fix issue where multiple glsl shader #includes were sometimes garbled
* Add ability to glue several translation strings together in lua files. For example, blurb=_("foo") _("bar") will translate "foo" and "bar" separately and then glue the results together.
* Add new features ALWAYSFIRE and NEVERFIRE which cause weapons to either always fire or never fire (ignored even by AI). Useful for cosmetic lasers, etc.
* Extend the ONEUSE flag to work with SHIELD, LAUNCHER, and FACTORY/SELFFACTORY.
* Add PALETTE feature to allow placing blocks in the faction palette even if they are not in a ship (see also NOPALETTE).
* Add turretLimit block field to allow turrets that only partially rotate
* Increase maximum custom block scale from 10 to 32. Increase maximum number of vertices per shape from 16 to 32.
* Allow new kCVar += N syntax which helps mods conflict less
* Add new triangle based (instead of point based) particle rendering mode which is slower but works better with very large particles. To enable set kParticleTris=1.
* Add new feature LAUNCHER_BARRAGE which can be added to LAUNCHER to cause all missiles to fire at once.
* Add cvar kMainMenuBattleFactions and friends to allow controlling the contents of the main menu battle