BATTLEZONE

Version 1.5.2.20

Released 2014-04-07

I took a break to work on some new projects over Christmas and New Years vacation, and one of them turned into a months-long obsession to the exclusion of all else. The end result was a console-based virtual analog synthesizer.

Downloads

Unpack these into the root directory of your Battlezone 1.5 install.

Testing Executable and Symbols

All-In-One 1.5.2 Asset Pack (updated 2014-04-20)

Check the main 1.5.2 page for other downloads.

What's New

Stability

• Fixed a crash in the debug message that reported faces missing textures
• Prevent HoverCraft physics from probing off-map positions
  • This occasionally caused crashes in the terrain system
• Fixed a potential divide-by-zero in Targeting

Multiplayer

• FlagDisplay only draws flags for player-controlled teams
  • It no longer draws colored squares for AI-controlled teams
• NetPlayer can recover from (temporary) team number collisions
• Disabled "drawcoll" and "drawguns" cheats in non-Debug multiplayer
• Revised how kill messages look up player names
  • Should fix kill messages showing "Team " instead of player name
  • Non-player teams will still appear as "Team ", of course
• Host sends an "assign team" packet to joining players
  • Host has more complete information about player teams
  • Should help prevent players ending up on the same team
• Allow much longer chat messages
  • Shell chat edit boxes allow up to 241 characters
  • In-game chat edit allows up to 240 characters
• Fixed a (rare) crash when the firer died before the sniper shell hit

Rendering

• Apply brightness gamma to 16-bit and 32-bit textures
  • Makes them consistent with 8-bit textures (finally!)
  • Upconvert 16-bit to 32-bit if Texture32=1 in render.cfg
• Fixed crash when using 32-bit textures
• Increased vertex limit per face to 32
  • Allows some of the more complex custom models to work

Gameplay

• RemoteDetonator doesn't need permission to detonate :)
• SeismicWave uses sequence numbers to vary up shake
  • Prevents units from all moving the same way
• Updated AdjustedScrapCost and AdjustedPilotCost
  • Affect only the player's team in single-player
  • AdjustedScrapCost reduces scrap cost by 2 for Very Easy (versus 1 for Easy)
• Updated AI utility functions finding enemies/threats
  • Exclude "not enemy" instead of "friend"
  • Restores pre-1.5 behavior of ignoring neutrals
  • Also exclude indestructible objects
• FlareMine emits projectiles in a radially symmetric pattern
  • The original emitted projectiles in a distinct "fan" pattern
  • This is more noticeable with high shotVariance
  • Can reproduce the BZ2 "Death Fountain" (flare mine shooting poppers shooting blast)

Editor

• Fixed editor data from going off screen [Dx]
  • Edit Task data is easier to read
• Added UnitTask Follow Distance [Dx]
• Added engage range for the Gun Towers [Dx]
  • Edit Task shows white circle around Gun Tower when selected
  • Only Gun Towers show the engage range

File System

• Fixed file system sometimes returning the wrong version of an asset
  • It made LargeAssets=2 use the version of check.odf from bzone.zfs
  • How did this ever work?
• Main loop saves and restores the current working directory
  • This is a bit of extra protection
• LoadSaveGame functions handles file paths with '.' in them
  • Filename would be truncated at the first '.' after the first save

Shell

• Mission Archives screen shows planet description

Modding

• Path spawn checks that the requested ODF is a GameObject
  • Filters out non-GameObject ODFs (e.g. build.odf)
  • Eliminates some assertions in debug builds
• Added [BounceBombClass] bounceRatio property
  • Defaults to 0.5 (like stock)
• Added angular velocity accessors
  • SetOmega sets angular velocity in radians per second
  • GetOmega gets angular velocity in radians per second
  • These are the same units as turn rate values in ODFs
• Fixed Lua GetPosition for path/point arguments
  • It was trying to read from the wrong argument "slots"
• Added [AnimatedScrounge] Type4, Type5, Type6, and Type7
  • There's 8 slots so there might as well be a way to set them all

Single-Player

• Fixed some issues with "The Race Is On" (misn10) [Dx]
  • SetObjectiveName on SAV at mission start (overrides "Data Disk")
  • Forced ccaturret2 to deploy before defending

Sound

• Integrated AudioSys changes from BZ2
  • Shut down all sound channels before cleaning up OggManager
• Integrated OggManager changes from BZ2
  • Each Ogg stream thread gets its own critical section
  • ...not that this makes any difference for BZ1