Help with testing and feedback

So far I've received very valuable feedback from some of those who have tested the new release. Yesterday I even uploaded a fixed package to sf.net based on some crash report.

Today tidbit reported issues with DepthOfField effect, for him nvidia + windowXP combo results in a fully blurred scene. Obviously this isn't okay. So far he's the only one having such trouble. It would be nice to have some feedback if it works for you or not. (You can switch on / off DoF in options menu.)

tidbit also had some random crashes with OpenAL bundled with jcrpg. Do you have trouble with it? So far he's the only one reporting that kind of crash.

The more feedback, the earlier these things might get fixed.

'Almost Pristine' Release

Yes, we're ascending to the next level of our destiny through the obstacles of the great dev-eater beast of Tiredness and Desperation. We have entered the sanctuary of the miraculous Release again. Here we stand astounded and in silence, holding back breath. We are aware that something great surprising and of elemental effect may happen anytime. As we are there awaiting for some never-ending minutes, a booming sound starts to cite something strange, slowly - pressing each word. Listening carefully we try to memorize what's being told:

"
- Ported to Ardor3D engine, to resolve stability issues
- New buildings (by tidbit)
- New voicpacks (by various contributors)
- Bugfixes
- New secondary terrain added for large view distance
- Corrected Shadow and Depth of Field effect
"

Right after finishing these words, a glowing globe elevates from out of the darkness of the Sanctuary. Yeah, now you know what awaits you, jcrpg's next sneak-peek enchantment is in your hands like a crystal ball. It may be that it helps you to look into a distant Future... so let the Trial begin!

Candidates for Testing - don't hesitate! And don't forget to report back at the forums, trac or IRC chat channel.

If you wish to make the dev happy, don't forget to donate some bucks to the project through paypal (at the left side of the blog, the links positions your browser there). It will help to keep the enthusiasm high and reassure the exhausted developer. It still needs ~-$327$ (see Project Budget on the left side of the blog) to have a 0 budget regarding the music creation costs.

Please note, that the project greatly lacks female voice packs, so if you happen to be a kind lady, please stop by and create a voice pack for the game. :)

Next step in the project plan is to work out dialoges/trading/quest system, so after this technical release, we'll concentrate on gameplay elements again.

Under Macintosh you will need to run the jClassicRPG.sh from console as clicking it might not start it if your OSX is not configured to run it as script. Please note that most probably game won't run with Intel video cards as recent Intel GPU driver releases under Windows and Linux caused the game to stop working.

'Almost Pristine' release is out. Proper Announcments later

It's too late in the night here to write a proper release post. Anyways grab the package from the sf.net site if you feel the urge. :) Link. Proper Download/Install instructions under the Download link as usual!
PS: Quick fix for some smaller issues done...uploading a whole new package. Sorry! (Fixing: audio crash when out of channels after combat, logs are now written to User Appdata/home instead of the game directory) Going to post link in the official announcement post soon here.
PS2: Done. Link above now points to the fixed zip.

We got Ardor3D.com highlighted. Release: almost ready, dist builder script done

The freshly refactored site of Ardor3D engine contains jClassicRPG as one of its highlighted projects. It's grand to see our humble project on the site of the great engine. The release with Ardor3D is really close, I have even produced a test tar.gz with the recently updated ant task. I've repaired some fresh smaller bugs and integrated the remaining voicepacks contributed by Bunches, Rigardi and MaximB. Thanks folks! :) The planned date of release is next monday... hopefully it will be met. I need to test things on Windows and nVidia yet and then it's ready.

Content integration, preparing for release

As the tasks related to migrating to Ardor3D are all done I've started to work towards the release. Out of two remaining content integration task just completed one: new shop and guardpost buildings (by tidbit) are now placed in towns of humans and boarmen. I still need to integrate those voicepacks that landed the contribution depot some months ago. Project soon to celebrate its 3rd birthday, hopefully with a brand new test release. :)

Ardor3d based code committed to SVN

The new official SVN root is now https://javacrpg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/javacrpg/jClassicRPG/ . jME2 based code is moved to jme2_obsolete/ branch. Qubodup, the almighty FOSS genius is already helping with testing the newly committed game code. He checked out SVN, installed maven tool to be able to compile the jCRPG-engine subproject (using 'mvn clean install' command). I've already fixed some issues and updated some documentation. If you like the idea, you can try to help test the SVN codebase this way, before the release will be out. If you have an Intel GPU I cannot promise it will run (I already wrote about this here). Most probably it won't. Nvidia and Ati should be fine. Hopefully this may change with later releases of Intel drivers (it used to work with older drivers...).

Things are pretty close to release

Time spent on squasing the few remaining bugs and adding parameterization to the starting view distance of the new clipmap terrain (which made possible the usual arbitrary setting of the old tiles view distance) means that all of things related to the Ardor3D based release are in place now. I still want to do some profiling and updating the content hieararchy before commiting the stuff and rolling out the release. Stay tuned... :)