Turtle Arena 0.6 Released

Head over to the new blog for more info!

Still Not There Yet

Unfortunately Turtle Arena 0.6, which had be planned for release tomorrow, is not ready yet. I wasn't able to work on it much lately (where does time go?). I was able to (almost) finish the main three items from the last post.

• Not-quite-done: Add menu for entering name at the end of Arcade Mode.
• Done: Create character images for main game / arcade mode character select.
• Done: Add time limit and score/capture limit to TAB scoreboard.

Entering name at the end of arcade game works, but could use some improvement still. Google Code isn't accepting svn commits at the moment... so I'm waiting to commit some improvements.

High-Definition Character Select Menu

I think the character select images turned out pretty good. Although I would have put more effort into the images if I wasn't planned to remove the characters after 0.6 is release. I was so use to just solid blocks of color, I keep being surprised every time I see them.
I may do a new 0.5.4 release soon as kind of a release candidate for 0.6. I don't want to set a new release date for 0.6 as I failed to meet the first two. It will be released when it's ready.
What’s left to do for 0.6?

• Finish Arcade Mode post game menu
• Check for issues (in the game, network multiplayer, building on Windows, etc)
• Test upgrading Turtle Arena 0.4.3 to 0.6
• Fix issues
• Write release notes
• Create installer/packages
• Take screenshots
• (Maybe) create trailer video

What's up with Extraordinary Beat X?
The preemptive "renaming" of Turtle Arena may of caused some confusion. Extraordinary Beat X will be the name of the game continuing after Turtle Arena 0.6. When I started renaming the game, I wasn't planned to have a new major Turtle Arena release. EBX will use the same underlaying code and many of the same ideas and goals, but will future new characters and a new universe. A lot of the data will probably be scraped or remade. Many things are up in the air right now. After Turtle Arena 0.6 is released, I intend to finalize the plans for the game, characters, ui, etc before continuing development (meaning not modifying the stuff in subversion).

Not Quite There Yet

Nearly everything planned to be included in Turtle Arena 0.6 is done now, but it's not quite ready yet. Turtle Arena 0.6 is scheduled for release Friday March 16th 2012. I think this is a realistic date. It give time to complete last few things, test it, fix any last minute bugs, package it, and prepare screenshots and videos.
I started working on preparing 0.6 for release after the Mageia 2 versions freeze, so it was too late for a new Turtle Arena version to be included.

Setup players for multiplayer.

Add a new menu for configuring players for multiplayer. It combines 8 other menu screens (player settings and character select for each of the four players). Plus it allows enabling extra players when starting or joining a server.

New Arcade Mode menu, with high scores!

Arcade Mode has a cool menu now with high scores now! Next button goes to player select, after that you can start playing.
Fixed compiling BSPC, the bot map AI compile. It was broken in TA 0.5.1, due to merging ioquake3 r2099.
What’s left to do for 0.6? The main things are;

• Add menu for entering name at the end of Arcade Mode.
• Create character images for main game / arcade mode character select.
• Add time limit and score/capture limit to TAB scoreboard.

Turtle Arena 0.6 Development Status

Turtle Arena 0.6 is planned to be released by the end of the month! That give just two weeks to finish it!

Some major changes have been held back until the 0.8 release, mainly the new title and characters. I decided it would be best to have a new stable release now instead of having a release with rushed half-baked characters in a couple months.

Part of the decision for a new stable release now is that Turtle Arena is going to be included in Mageia 2 which is scheduled for release in May! (The current Turtle Arena version to be included in 0.5.3, hopefully 0.6 will be completed in time for inclusion.)

What's left to do for 0.6?

Work-In-Progress Character Select Menu

I've recently started working a new character select menu. It will be used for selecting players/characters for main game, arcade, and multiplayer. It will make it much easier to play splitscreen games. It will also be used in-game for easily adding/dropping players and changing characters.

I still need to finish the Arcade Mode start game menu and end of game menu. Arcade mode saves scores, which I still need to show in the Arcade menu. I still need to finish the game of game UI so players can enter their name (instead of always using "name" cvar).

I recently noticed BSPC does not compile. It is used for creating the bot map AI .aas files. There are pre-compiled binaries in subversion, but I can't in good conscious do a release with it failing to compile.

I'm sure other things will pop up, but these are the main goals right now. I'd like to spend some time working on the multiplayer maps, but we'll see if there is time.

Turtle Arena 0.5.3 Released

Turtle Arena 0.5.3, after long delay, is now available for download! It has many improvements and bug fixes.

There are now (untested) Windows x64 client and server executables included in the download (credit goes to ioquake3 for windows x64 support).

A lot of code was merged into ioq3ztm during the development cycle for Turtle Arena 0.5.3 and resulted in bug fixes for TA and cleaner code.

Turtle Arena now has increased memory usage, partly due to new features/graphics (such as support for four times as many game objects). The minimum recommended RAM is now 512MB (plus memory for the operating system), the 128MB (plus OS) recommended until now many have to too low to actually run the game.

Changes:

  * New icon / loading image.

  * Switched to M+ Outline fonts from GUN FreeFont and DejaVu fonts.

  * Started an Arcade Mode. It's a single player (score-attack) mode for playing the multiplayer gametypes. It saves the best 5 scores/times with player name for each map/gametype.

  * Players can now move through each other.

  * Initial support for four times as many entities in game, 4096. (This hasn't been stress tested yet, but should allow creating maps with a lot more objects.)

  * Better handling of incompatible mods.
    * Added Virtual Machine API version checks for game and cgame moduals (already existed for ui modual).
    * Don't allow VM to make system calls before checking API version.
    * Don't call VM shutdown functions when VM reports an unsupported API version.

  * Started work on allowing IQM model skeleton to be accessed/modified-for-rendering by cgame/ui.
    * This will allow players to have smooth bending at waist/neck, instead of using three separate models for legs, torso, and head.

  * Save games now support splitscreen.

  * Air meter now is only shown when needed (when waist-deep in water or deeper and shortly after getting out of water)

  * Many, many bug fixes.
    * Fixed object collision to use real contents (e.g. solid, player, water), required for allowing player to move through each other.
    * Fixed client-side prediction issues due to different bounding box on server and client.
    * Fixed crash when beginning intermission in maps without an info_player_intermission entity (such as map dm2).
    * Splitscreen bug fixes.

Announcing the Beginning of a New Era

Extraordinary Beat X (or simply EBX) is the new title for Turtle Arena. EBX will be Turtle Arena with a new title, icon, logo, characters, but the same great taste!

While not all of the design work is done yet, it is diffidently coming along.

The new WordPress website is located at http://ztm.x10hosting.com/.

Delay and Plan

The next Turtle Arena release is currently on hold while I work on the new game design.

* Finalize new name.
* Create new icon .
* Create new logo .
* Finalize story (general concept/overview of world, intro, and ending) .
* Create playable character concept artwork .
* Create NPC concept artwork [common enemies and bosses], names, and describe them.

I'll hopefully get most of this done in the next month. After the game design is done (or mostly complete) I'll finish the new website and make it public. New releases will resume after that.

The next major release (0.6), with new name and all new characters, is targeted for a Q1 2012 release.