What's new in Plague 3.38
Aug 13, 2009
- Finally fixed annoying ammo bug (I think) - still some other bugs to do with removal of shrubs and rocks, but not worth worrying about right now.
- Added smoke trail to Rocket Launcher.
- Altered petrol dispersal from molotov grenade.
- Updated "kill" method of Sim.check_boundary()
- changed the way sim command destinations are updated (to decrease and distribute cpu cost)
- corrected 2 errors in resources.py that led to incorrect images for memorised pistols and shotguns
- improved manual map building functionality
- rocks create smoke when destroyed
New in Plague 3.29 (Apr 13, 2009)
- minor bug fix to shadowing to remove some (pretty common) visual artifacts.
New in Plague 3.28 (Apr 10, 2009)
- New LOS algorithm that is more speedy and much more flexible (bug reports welcome!)
- Weapon recock bar now only shows for "manual" weapons.
- Shotgun is now more like a double-barrelled shotgun to provide weapon differentiation.
- You can now pick the screen resolution you want (yes, you can enter non-integer values...)
- You can now pick the volume you want (only in the options menu though for now)
- Shrubs now only partially block sight as opposed to rock which fully block sight.
- Added an option in the options menu to pre-calc Line of Sight (takes some initial time, but Plague is fast after that).
New in Plague 3.27 (Apr 3, 2009)
- Lots of really good changes. Haven't found the garbage-non collection (aka mem-leak).
- Options menu now shows default values
- Survivors now have many small health bars (instead of one big one). If a bar is partially filled, it recharges reasonably quickly. If it is completely depleted, it can only be replenished by a medkit. The GUI has been updated to reflect this.
- Made plague harder by lowering threshold for more zombies, and scaling initial zombies to score
- Feat: Added health, sprint and ammo bars
- Feat: Replaced text for grenades with "g" so players (hopefully) know to use g to change grenade
- Op: Added a frame counter so that UI text is updated every few frames
- Fix: Changed laser to dump heat into cells instead of temp (more realistic)
- Current values shown next to selected menu option
- Editted menu option in green
- Grenade UI text prettied up
- Other code changes to menu/options to make the code more intuitive
- Recock time for weapon is now shown in a white bar (good for sniper/gauss rifles).
New in Plague 3.26 (Mar 30, 2009)
- Plague runs noticeably faster than the previous already very snappy version!
New in Plague 3.25 (Mar 28, 2009)
- Op: AI code sped up by factor of approx 10* (thanks Sean).
- Op: Control code sped up by being event based (thanks SanityImpaired)
- Op: Simobject.py controls moved to controls.py
- Op: onfire checking code now only applies to sims with AI.
- Op: Timer code sped up by selective updating (thanks Sean).
- Op: Timer code now uses sets
- Op: Bullets the bounce too often are now killed (removes massive FPS drop spikes).
- Op: LOS speed optimisation turned back on by default (leads to artifacts)
- Starting zombies now a separate parameter to num_zombies
- Made background color darker
- Reduced sim sight radius (so that at full zoom in you see to edge of screen)
- Allowed AI sims to share ammo
- Changed all fonts to boston (thanks Sean)
New in Plague 3.24 (Mar 25, 2009)
- fixed sprinting bug that stopped players form sprinting when an enemy was visible
- fixed walking animations so it doesnt update while the game is paused
- changed options check so options can be >= 0 (allows zero hives at game start)
- removed a bug that would cause the game to crash when a gun was fired and there was no target_location.
New in Plague 3.23 (Mar 24, 2009)
- Sean Lange has added a main menu and an options menu. You can edit a few game variables here - it should allow you to customize Plague to a sufficient degree for now.
New in Plague 3.22 (Mar 23, 2009)
- Allowed player to issue stop/go commands with “v”. v toggles between “go” and “follow”. Followers will go to where the mouse cursor is.
- Gave sims starting weapons (pistols for now). Game is much easier now. Will make it harder later again by reducing the number of starting guns.
- Changed map creation parameters to give (what I think are slightly) better maps.
New in Plague 3.21 (Mar 20, 2009)
- changed weapon probabilities to be harder
- limited player to one grenade
- decreased ammo, weapons in map creation. Yep, its REALLY hard now
- allowed ai survivors to sprint, in all sensible scenarios I have thought of so far (if you think of some more, or something doesnt seem right, let me know)
- allowed zombies to form swarms with leaders
- leader zombies can now notify squads of targets (no they dont issue move commands)
- respaced survivor formations again to make them tighter
- made it so that survivors try not to crowd each other.
New in Plague 3.20 (Mar 19, 2009)
- separated survivors from your start position so others cannot “steal” your guns.
- Added line and chevron formations (and renamed the old line formation to column)
- Fixed an ammo bug where ammo would not be created and crash the game
- Removed an intermittent bug where guns dont update their images.
- Rebalanced weapons a bit (made them a little weaker).
- Changed spacing in formations so you are less crowded
- (hopefully) fixed ammo bug where survivors try to get ammo that they dont pick up.
New in Plague 3.19 (Mar 19, 2009)
- added back end code to allow me to add arbitrary game objects easily. Will be useful in the future when players design bases. Use cursor keys to pick/place/remove. Only works in “test mode”.
- Removed some debug print code I shouldn't have left in (whoops!)
- added UI text so the player can see the formation (and placeable game object)
- sped up world partitioning algorithm, so it takes 2500ms instead of 5000 ms to partition an average level (speeds up map creation time by 33%).
- fixed the way sims pick up ammo and drop ammo – should get rid of weird ammo related bugs introduced in version 3.14.
New in Plague 3.18 (Mar 16, 2009)
- improved “fire_escape” ai algorithm
- added Sean Lange's burnt shrubs art
- zombie_fast now has a burnt corpse, thanks to Sean Lange
- allowed the player to pick the formation (use key “c”)
- added wedge, line, None formations (previously only ring formation)
- changed shotgun number to 3 (better than SMG, worse than AR)
New in Plague 3.17 (Mar 9, 2009)
- survivors now can have squad behavior and formations (extensions to come)
- Sean Lange has added walking animation for Survivors
- survivors now avoid heat (they run away from fire)
- guns now start with a full clip of ammo
- capped the number of zombies and hives to stop massive slow downs
- scaled the number of permissible zombies to the number of remaining hives
- removed a bug where survivors try to pick up a weapon they already have
- fixed a bug where the laser charged while the simulation was paused
- made the player exempt from sharing weapons with other survivors
- added a drop weapon key (x), drops your current weapon and switches to another weapon if you have one (I know there is an intermittent bug with this, bug reports welcome)
- have not added all of Sean Lange's additional art (I'm out of weekend).
New in Plague 3.16 (Mar 2, 2009)
- stopped another weapon drawing bug that allowed drawing on unseen used weapons
- can only pickup one of each weapon type now (no point in being greedy for the current game feature set)
- fixed bug where soldiers didnt know they had ammo
- fixed bug where survivors didnt share weapons
- fixed bug where guns couldnt be picked up after they had been dropped
- transferred player weapons over to new maps (in a ugly way, but it was quick)
New in Plague 3.15 (Feb 28, 2009)
- Michael Stone integrated NumPy into Plague leading to a very decent speed increase in cellular simulations – fire simulations are much quicker now, playable even. Thanks very much Michael!
- incendiary grenades leave behind phosphorus that continues to burn after the initial flash of heat.
- guns don't automatically reload unless they are currently being used
- stopped guns from being drawn when they weren't visible to the player
- made concussion grenade shockwaves hurt more and push less
- your score is conserved between battles
- the larger your score, the harder the game gets (more hives and more zombies)
- started adding leaders and followers
New in Plague 3.14 (Feb 23, 2009)
- changed survivor sim ai so that they change to the best gun they have (ammo permitting)
- nerfed sniper rifle a little
- nerfed the zombies a little – it was too hard
- added more of Sean Lange's artwork, and his implementation of a shotgun.
- Implemented inventory for sims
- rebalanced grenades and guns a little
- changed the ways guns and ammo interact
- made laser make its own (non-universal) ammo
New in Plague 3.12 (Jan 21, 2009)
- The previous release had an error (from an incomplete copy/replace) that didnt allow it to make a main game. Odd since I tested that last night. Fixed now anyway.
- ... (2 days later)..
- OK, so its fixed and UPLOADED now... ... enjoy!
New in Plague 3.11 (Jan 19, 2009)
- Tweaked bullet properties to try to reduce computational load and weird looking reflections off blocks.
- Realised I wasnt using melee_arc to determine whether or not something could be meleed. Now fixed. Zombies and survivors can now only melee things in front of them.
- Realised is was calculating melee distances incorrectly. Fixed. Now zombies and humans will consistently correctly melee. This has the effect of making zombies more deadly.
- Game is too easy – increased zombie_normal and zombie_fast health.
- Zombies now react to being shot – they will run towards direction of incoming fire.
New in Plague 3.09 (Jan 17, 2009)
- Code rewrite to make code more readable, use inheritance more, and do things in smarter ways
- Some nice new sprite art / sprite improvements from Sean on www.blogger.com
- Rest of sprite art upgraded to match Seans work.
- Changing drawing order so UI drawn last
- Reduced bounciness of some bullets (where the gun has a high fire rate) to decrease computational load
- calculated bullet draw paths without physics_locations – new list: draw_locations made
- fixed add_sim so that “effects” are always drawn
New in Plague 3.07 (Jan 9, 2009)
- made zombies and survivors panic and flee when on fire
- grenade sprint throw “bug” removed
- make incendiary the default grenade
- fixed control bug where player would stop receiving input because input was not “fresh”
- changed bullet physics so that embedded bullets actually embed all the time
- reduced laser_pule_temp from 5 to 50 (necessary because embed bug fixed)
- added 2000 burn damage to laser pulses
- fixed text – I dropped some brackets when rewriting it...
- reduced num_zombies to 60 again for speed
- reduced zombie sight radius to 8 for speed
- reduced soldier sight radius to 14 for speed
New in Plague 3.06 (Jan 7, 2009)
- Eval is evil – it has a “memory leak” and its not as fast as a lambda function
- removed eval from entire code base (whew!)
- set battle game scale to 1 so players knew that there was a game to play (it was too zoomed out)
- made zombie_massive more red to distinguish from zombie_fast and made it larger
- increased sight radii to tempt players to zoom out
- changed control scheme (mouse wheel weapons and QE zoom) – see instruction help page for more information
- changed zombie_massive health from 5000 to 2000
New in Plague 3.05 (Jan 6, 2009)
- Deleted unused game_states
- updated ReadMe for typos
- removed grenade dropping when player is dead/None (only added for my testing)
- randomised shrub health
- made zombie_hives bleed when shot
- decreased gauss_rifle_bullet so it doesnt destory concrete_blocks instantly
- fixed square_project so it doesnt automatically stop all things
- decreased grenade health to 0.5seconds – more satisfying
- increased normal and fast zombie speeds
- decreased normal and massive zombie melee arcs
- investigated massive zombies seemingly not taking damage – no error found
- battle would not restart (while True loop with no exit) - fixed