With 0.5.0-beta2 out the door I decided to work on more videos to show off missions and fancy things we do in Naev. I first decided to record the OpenAL effects (EFX) we do in the nebula. For this I decided to show off the “Destroy the FLF base” mission. If you do not want to be partially spoiled I recommend you do not watch the video. Although it is really cool.
Effects to notice:
Positional sound (basic for OpenAL)
Doppler Effect (depends on velocity)
Air absorption factor (sounds like you’re under water)
Reverb (also helps make it sound like you’re underwater)
Speed of sound changes (depends on nebula density – also for sounding underwater)
For the implementation I’m using the SW OpenAL implementation by KittyCat. Which should work on all systems that support Naev, so I highly recommend it. With the SDL_Mixer backend you do not get all these fancy effects. Some of these effects are also active when not in the nebula and especially notable is the pitch shift with time compression. So I highly recommend you all use the OpenAL backend.
Now without further ado here is the showcase video of the mission:
I’m not an OpenAL expert, so if anybody has any advice or recommendations, I’d love to hear them. This isn’t final so it may sound different in the 0.5.0 release. Of course I haven’t touched this part of the sound code in 2 years or so. We’ll see.
(Sorry for the 4:3 resolution also, I promise I won’t do it again)
The Naev devteam is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.0-beta2. This is the second beta and is closer to a release candidate than a beta. We do not anticipate any major issues unlike with 0.5.0-beta1. We prefer to have another beta so the 0.5.0 release is rock solid.
The Naev team is proud to announce the long-awaited 0.5.0-beta1 release. This is a beta release and therefore isn’t quite ready for the general public. While it’s highly unlikely that it will set your cat on fire and send threatening messages to your family, there are no guarantees.
It’s been over a year since 0.4.2, but this is a major step forward in maturity. The original intent for 0.5.0 was to work out many of the important low-level features and gameplay mechanics to avoid jarring shifts in gameplay in future releases. Feature creep being what it is, 0.5.0 has perpetually grown more ambitious over time. We hope to do a better job of “release early, release often” after this beta.
Compared to 0.4.2, Naev 0.5.0 is essentially a new game. While older saves can be loaded in 0.5.0-beta1, we highly recommend that players start new games. Many things have changed: The galaxy looks quite different, some older missions are absent or have been wholly rewritten, and there’s a wealth of new ships and equipment. For the best experience, start fresh.
On a side note, a number of songs in this release are encoded at a lower quality than in Git, for size reasons. Google Code has a “technical limitation” of 200 MB per file and our current Git ndata size is 214 MB (and growing). We may have to distribute the final 0.5.0 release through BitTorrent or another hosting service for this reason.
We don’t expect this release to be perfect (it’s a beta after all), and what we need most right now are testers to run through the many 0.4.2-era missions and other content. The more testing the beta gets, the better the final release can be. So please, report any issues to us via the Google Code bug tracker or on IRC.
Changelog (long, but still likely missing some things):
For Players
Bigger universe
Expanded Dvaered, Frontier, Empire territories
All new Sirius territory
Preliminary Soromid area (Not inhabited yet)
New Pirate system
Big systems
More planets in systems
Bigger planets in systems, more planet graphics
Players must fly to jump points before jumping to another system
Electronic warfare
Ships have cloaking and detection abilities
Sensor range depends on cloak vs detection
Turrets no longer track all ships equally
Fancier targeting method
Random bar NPCs
On-map security rating abandoned in favour of faction presence indicators
More diverse planetary inventories (see the tech system)
Outfit slots now have sizes
System backgrounds (nebulae, stars and more!).
Fancier new GUI.
Weapon sets allow to easily configure different weapon configurations for each ship.
Heat system replaces accuracy making ships more accurate at first.
Overlay map helps navigate and visualize the environment.
Mouse targeting.
Damage absorption and penetration system.
Continuous time model.
New tutorial that is independent from the main game.
Mouse flying.
Images in intro.
Lots more content!
For Developers (mission and likewise)
Faction presence
Replaces security and simple fleet spawning
Fleet spawning is now controlled through lua on a per-faction basis
Universe and System editor
Allows easy and quick modification of the universe
Allows creation and manipulation of planets, systems and jumps
Allows selection of planet graphics
New tech system
Techs are groups containing outfits, ships or other techs.
Assets (formerly planets) sell whatever is in their assigned techs.
Hook improvements
Pilot hooks pass arguments by default
You can now pass custom arguments to hooks
Many new hooks.
Removed old timer system to new hook-based timer system
Improvements to the in-game console
Missions can now use more than a single mission marker
Many of you will have used the in-game Lua console to cheat, or at least know how to. But I was thinking, what if cheating was a feature? So I came up with this for the on-start event:
godsequence = {"left", "right", "left", "right",
"target_clear", "target_clear", "target_clear", "hail"}
function create ()
player.pilot():addOutfit( "Laser Cannon MK1", 2 )
hook.input("input")
isgod = false
godcode = 0
end
function input(key, pressed)
if pressed and key == godsequence[godcode + 1] then
godcode = godcode + 1
if godcode == #godsequence then
togglegod()
godcode = 0
end
elseif pressed and godcode > 0 then
godcode = 0
input(key, pressed)
end
end
function togglegod()
isgod = not isgod
player.pilot():setInvincible(isgod)
if isgod then
player.msg("God mode!")
else
player.msg("God mode off.")
end
end
As you can see (or not), it adds a cheat code to the game much like the codes for old console games. The only way it would be better is if it responded to “IDDQD”, but that can’t work for a variety of reasons.
Note, this isn’t actually ingame. You’re going to have to keep using the console to get your mad cheats.
You’ve all seen it. The message asking you if you wanted to play a tutorial whenever you created a new pilot. Well, I’m pleased to say that message won’t be bothering you anymore, because the tutorial has a new face.
Main menu with tutorial button
So, a new tutorial. What is different? Well, first of all the tutorial isn’t based in the regular game anymore. Where the old tutorial desperately tried to give you a quick crash course on how to play right at the start of the game, this tutorial is accessed right from the main menu, taking its time in a special training environment, teaching the basic concepts without worrying about the player flying off somewhere because, well, he can’t. So, hopefully, the new tutorial will make the learning process smoother for new players.
Another thing that is different is that the new tutorial is split up into several distinct modules, each module focusing on a limited selection of concepts and ignoring all the rest. This is good, because it means that our fledgling, ignorant player-in-training can revisit specific parts of the tutorial without having to sit through the whole thing again.
At present, six tutorial modules are coded up. These are: Basic operation, Interstellar Flight, Communications, Basic Combat, The planetary screen, and Missions and events. A further two, Advanced combat and Trade, will eventually be added. I say eventually, because both combat and trade are parts of the game that are in for a serious overhaul. Writing tutorials about them now would be pointless.
Most of you will already know how to play the game, so a new tutorial won’t help you much, but hopefully this step has made Naev that much more accessible to new players.
As a good sign of what’s going on, all changes have been merged into master and development is now going to be done there. Some stats on the change:
naev: Edgar Simo master * rc7d316d / (9 files in 3 dirs): Merge branch 'balance' of git://github.com/Deiz/naev into tutorial (+1161 more commits...) - http://bit.ly/fmcrdB
As you can see it’s a pretty big change. I’d consider it a new game. Anyway, on the 0.5.0 beta we’re waiting on finishing the new tutorial and then we’ll do some quick check ups and code analysis before the release. This won’t be the official release, just a beta as it’s still buggy and such. However it does give a change to get some mass testing done to get a nice polished 0.5.0 release. So after over 1000 commits and 100k line diff we are finally nearing the awaited 0.5.0 release, albeit with like a 3 month delay of the original goals, however this release is so ambitious I believe it’s totally worth it.
It has come to my attention that numerous people become dizzy while playing Naev. As it is to my interest that no physical discomfort happen while playing Naev I’ve dealt with probably the first cause which is the zoom. While the zoom is nice to have automatic (and you can tweak it’s behaviour), it seems like it can make people dizzy. So Naev now has an option to enable manual zoom. It is controlled by mouse wheel, however I’ll probably add key bindings in the near future.
Location of the checkbox to enable manual zoom.
This is a start. If anybody experiences dizziness still with Naev 0.5.0 I’d be very interested in feedback and investigation into what exactly triggers it to try to solve the issue.
As part of our move to become more independent from Google’s services, which should allow us more flexibility and comfort, we have decided to host our own wiki. This wiki will allow us to organize proposals, todo and overall design considerations by centralizing them. This does not make either the forums or the mailing list obsolete, but complements them. It’s not fully fleshed out yet, but it is already far superior to the old one. If you are interested in Naev and would like to contribute to the wiki, feel free.
One decision we have taken on the wiki is that we do not want every planet to have it’s own article. The wiki should focus on general information for both developers and players, without recording individual details. So, while the Empire faction gets it’s own page, the planet Em 5 does not. As with all wikis, we ask that you please do not add stuff you would like to see in game directly without getting the approval of a devteam member. However, you are completely free to write a proposal and submit that for review. You are all welcome to use the Naev wiki, let the editing begin!
Today we’ll talk about the name of this game: it’s history, pronunciation and how to write it. First off a bit of history, as you probably do know, NAEV originally stood for “Neutron Accelerated Extreme Velocity” although “Not Another Escape Velocity” was also widely accepted. The original idea was to sort of create an improved clone of the original Escape Velocity game. However with the 0.5.0 release we will transcend that. Naev is no longer a clone and therefore no longer an acronym, it is now a proper noun. So from now on no more NAEV, only Naev! You may notice I have been changing that, this unification of criteria will make it easier to handle and no longer cause confusion.
Now onto pronunciation, how is it pronounced? In case someday we hold a Naev meet or the likes we should all know how to pronounce it so we don’t make a mess and fools of ourselves (we probably will anyway). The proper way to pronounce Naev is /nɑ.ɛv/ if I got right my symbols (would need confirmation). I know most of you pronounce it more like knave, but trust me, that is wrong.
Recently the new x.org brought me frustration. My open source driver broke down and I was left without being able to run Naev. After realizing I needed a kernel upgrade I found out the biggest benefit of gallium3d: I can make videos! So kudos to the open source ati driver team. Here’s a video showing off preliminary 0.5.0 alpha gameplay in the balance branch.
Things to note:
I’m using forward cannons, swivel for the win!
Using HatlessAtlas’ new AI, it’s harder to follow and track them
Pretty backgrounds (for those who haven’t seen 0.5.0 in action)
Smooth camera and dynamic zoom (zoom will be revised a bit more probably)
New rumble (it’s preliminary, but much smoother)
Penetration model (I barely get hurt – maybe more balancing needed)
New weapons
This is not meant to be a really serious video, just me fooling off and showing my awesome ship build and mad skills.
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