v1.4.0 released!

[Cervator]

I went ahead and merged two outstanding PRs, including the soundtrack one: https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/pull/86

Music works in-game and in the main menu now, woo

There are a few other tweaks for v1.4.0 but nothing outstanding I can think of. We should do some testing, especially on Android + beta release on Steam (both need proper builds done), then release it in the near future.

After that maybe we can finally do some work on the dark empire arc. It also looks like @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi has started playing with integrating some Gestalt pieces, which would be super cool, but I am guessing might be a little ways out still

Exact build number for the soundtrack addition: http://jenkins.terasology.org/view/DestSol/job/DestinationSol/48/artifact/desktop/build/distributions/DestinationSol.zip - check it out!

 

[Cervator]

Movement! After an equip-fix some additional issues were discovered and I got to learn a fair bit about said system, wee. Suffice to say I am thinking we should start trying to build new systems to replace ole ones piece by piece rather than try fixing anything substantial in the code-as-is ...

If player equipping gets fancier probably better to build a whole new system (EVE style ship fitting anyone?) and apply that only to the player, as-is it seems a lot of stuff gets shared between player, NPCs, and even stations along with mercs in some fashion.

PR with potential last bit ready for testing, I might merge and release tomorrow (Sunday) if nothing scary sticks out and I rediscover how to correctly sign the code for Android and properly build it for Steam.

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/pull/101

In potentially MORE interesting news I also poked at @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi's PR for adding some Gestalt stuff to DS, testing specifically on Android. As expected there are some issues but two of the initial ones seem solvable and the PR itself works great on PC, running Gestalt asset + module. We won't magically have Terasology-level data and extensibility but it would be a huge first step on the journey there.

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/pull/92

 

[Cervator]

Gaahh! Android can be so complicated!

So turns out I could run the game just fine using Java 8, lambdas, and all kinds of stuff when running directly from source. Actually trying to package a release? Nope! No Java 8 for you!

Didn't seem like even the retrolambda Gradle plugin would do it, but after much questing across distant lands I found new Android build tools coming out with Android Nougat (I think?) that allow you to finally use Java 8 yet backport to older versions of Android still. So the Android setup got way more overhauled than initially intended.

To make things even more fun the soundtrack made the game size go from 9mb to 61mb, but actually at first the entire assets directory was being duplicated, so it was actually past 100mb - exceeding Google Play's limit for the base size of the game. You can add these "expansion APKs" to go way bigger, but that includes downloading stuff from inside the game and who knows how long that would take to hook up. More questing in distant lands ensued until I found a hack for now - after building the base game quietly disqualify the shared assets directory as a "resource" so when Android builds it won't include it a second time.... yeah.

Assets are likely to shift around further with the Gestalt change, so I didn't want to go crazy and bowl that over only to have to re-fix it again after. Maybe we should also consider how we would actually bundle more game content - I bet long term we would have to look at using an expansion APK, possibly built out of all game modules, leaving the base APK the engine alone, much like Terasology. Fun! But at least now trying to get that PR working should be easier with Java 8 more properly on board.

Oh, wait, Google Play now complains it is over 50mb?!? Make up your mind!! Yet more questing argh! Turns out you only qualify for the 100mb limit if the Android API level is past 8, where as our target was 18, but our minimum was 4 for some reason (ancient Android 1.3 or something). So boosted that as well.

Beta release is published on Google Play at last, or should be sometime over the next few hours anyway. A beta opt-in is available via https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.miloshpetrov.sol2.android for anybody interested, I'm going to bed expecting I can test by morning. Got an assortment of pending Android/Gradle tweaks to commit and push for the PC build, but at least it seemingly all works now.

 

[Cervator]

Release is finally out! Published on GitHub, Google Play, and Steam

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/releases/tag/v1.4.0

There is a potential issue we might want to try hot fixing related to the music being hooked up in a way possibly causing lag (and then in turn audio issues). @SimonC4 already provided some intel on it and it may not be hard to fix.

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/issues/102

Beyond v1.4.0 (and a possible v1.4.1) I've got @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi's Gestalt setup further tweaked along for a v2.0.0. Lots of comments and details in the PR

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/DestinationSol/pull/92

In short the main current blocker may be the use of lambdas in Gestalt, but not so much Java 8 features in general anymore - and unfortunately that may be an outstanding issue in the new Android compiler itself, not much we can do about that. Not sure if we might be able to find a workaround but I need to move on to other issues for a while

Edit: Also check out http://hastyhamster.net/ which is a new game Milosh (original DS creator) came up with.

 

[FredoMaster]

I love the water physics