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Respawn (Digital Archaeology Edition) - 2021.0 beta 2

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@matatk matatk released this 10 Jan 16:43
2021.0-beta2
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2021.0 beta 2 release notes

Changes from the previous beta release can be found under the "New in this beta" heading below. Known limitations are listed in the "Caveats and known issues" section.

If you'd like to try out the Level Description Language and/or AudioQuake on modern platforms, here's a new test version of a major new release for you :-). Whilst times have moved on in terms of accessible games and mainstream game accessibility, I wanted to bring things up-to-date so at least you can still play the game - and most importantly, try out the Level Description Language (LDL).

Feedback is welcome. Here are some major changes…

  1. New GUI launcher based on wxPython.

  2. Level Description Language (LDL) is built in to the launcher.

  3. Support for Quake, Open Quartz (an open-source asset pack) and ‘high-contrast’ texture schemes for maps (and all AGRIP maps have been built for all three ways to play).

  4. Support for QMODs has been reinstated since the previous beta from years ago (and the GUI is massively improved since then, too).

  5. It’s much easier to build AQ yourself because the build system has been completely rewritten and the documentation updated. Even on Windows it can compile the engine for you automatically, without the need for you to use the Visual Studio GUI. (You still can, and you still need to install some build tools from Microsoft; the documentation has all the info.)

  6. The user and development manuals have been edited and brought up-to-date (though I'm still working on the multiplayer section of the user manual, but wanted to start by getting this beta out now things are working well).

I would be really interested in your thoughts on the Level Description Language (LDL), simplistic as its geometry is, if you fancy having a go at that. The tutorial has many examples to help you get started, and each tutorial map, plus some examples, are included. You can give feedback via the AGRIP Google Group.

I hope to work a bit more on this and get a stable release out in early 2021. I am not sure how often the releases will be (or need to be) after that, but as I’ve wanted to make it easier for you to access the tools and the game for some time, and finally found the time, I thought I’d give it a go.

New in this beta

  1. Keybinding list (analyses your config files and shows you all of your key bindings).

  2. The game data directories have been separated out, so they are no longer 'inside' the app bundle. This makes things a bit cleaner and may pave the way to user-specific config/data in future (or smoother updates to any future releases).

  3. Screen resolution settings have been added. ZQuake can run full-screen and wide-screen, though things look a bit stretched in widescreen (in theory it should support these modes OK; still investigating that).

  4. On Windows the launcher app's support files are kept in a separate folder so they don't clutter up the main directory. A shortcut is used to launch the launcher. Alas due to shortcut limitations this can't be given the AudioQuake icon.

  5. The way that the remote console and dedicated server are launched has been streamlined. (Though there's a problem with this on Windows at the moment: the executables are started in the same thread as the launcher, so they lock it up.)

  6. Command-line options have been added to the launcher: you can now start specific maps from the command-line (this is used by the LDL command-line scripts, which are available in the repo, so that you can build and run a map with self-voicing, as the launcher runs the game). Currently you can start an individual map, start a mod, list the keybindings (which come out in text in the terminal, rather than in HTML in a dialog, as with the launcher feature above) and play a mod. In future you will be able to list installed mods too.

  7. It's built using newer versions of Python and supporting libraries. (On Windows it's now using 64-bit Python; this should not make any difference though.)

  8. On the Mac, some changes seemed to happen to the development tools in recent updates; these stopped ZQuake from compiling but have been worked around.

Caveats and known issues

There are some known limitations in this beta release:

  1. The code is not signed, for Mac nor Windows, as I don’t have developer accounts. On Windows you’ll be given a choice as to whether you want to run it. On the Mac, you would need to allow it through Gatekeeper and move it somewhere on your computer if you decide you want to run it. I can't seem to trap the error and provide info on what to do any more; will try to improve this in the next release.

  2. This is only tested on 64-bit Windows 10 (Home) and macOS 10.15 Catalina (i.e. not macOS 11 Big Sur, though with luck it should work on Big Sur). This is actually not likely to change for the final release. There's no Linux version, simply due to lack of development time. I have tried to keep all the new code and build system cross-platform, so it would be easy to add Linux support back in, but I have not had time (nor a regular Linux install, though I think a VM would be fine to get this working if there's sufficient demand).

  3. Several sounds and models are missing from Open Quartz, as a result you will get some messages about missing sounds (sometimes quite a lot of them; you can stop them from all being announced by opening and closing the console again), and LDL tutorial map 7 won't run at all. Neither may some mods (though some will be able to).

  4. I have tested the launcher with VoicOver and NVDA and it works well, though the file picker controls' textboxes don't have their own accessible names. I have tried to provide some, but haven't met with success; need to do more research on this.

  5. There are some funny special/non-printable characters in the various manuals (user, developer and LDL tutorial) on Windows. Not sure why; working on it.

  6. When you install the registered data on Windows, the file dialog won't actually show any files, because it's a directory selector. I was expecting the classic tree-based directory picker to be used, but it seems to've been replaced. This is a bit confusing, but it doesn't stop the thing from working - just make sure you're in the directory where pak0.pak and pak1.pak reside, and use the "Select folder" button and you'll be good to go.

  7. If you have the AudioQuake+LDL package extracted in a directory that's nested very deeply in your filesystem, then when the map compilation tool QBSP runs, the path to the file containing the textures for the level may be too long for it. In this case, you will get a "token too large" error. The fix (for now, at least) is to extract the package higher up towards the root of your filesystem or drive.

  8. On Windows, the dedicated server and remote console executables are started in the same thread as the launcher, so they lock it up.

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