Changes:
For the campaign, the game now gets automatically saved after a mission (when the save/continue screen appears) to a slot called "Autosave", so you can restart a mission if you forget to save it. Formation speed limiting has been removed since it didn't work well and caused bugs, will be fixed later. There was a new round of balance changes, the loading screen should be noticeably faster on vsynced displays, you can now use international characters in the chat, and challenge timers are saved.
Savegames from Beta 7 should still work; for multiplayer, all players need to use Beta 8.
Starting with this release, we will disable all translations with less than 75% translated strings (the changelog below will still list any translation updates). Included: German, UK English, Spanish, Estonian, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Traditional Chinese (and Ukrainian to test if it works correctly now). See also Translation, TranslationStatus.
The Windows installer for this release was built on a different system than those up to Beta 4, please report any irregularities. If your virus scanner complains about it, please report it to the maker as a false positive (and tell us, so we can report it to them as well). The installer is cross-compiled on a Linux system, the hosting is done on Linux, the file never even touched a Windows system before the download.
Bug Reports:
As usual, we need bug reports to fix problems in the game. Please note that we use tickets only to track bugs, for discussions about how features should work and feature requests we have a dedicated forum section.
For bug reports, see BugReporting for details, in short:
- Search the existing tickets for your problem, if the problem has already been fixed in SVN, the ticket will be closed.
- If there is an open one already, feel free to add more info to it.
- If there is no report yet, make a new ticket.
- Be as detailed as possible in both summary and description, and either log in with your forum account or leave an email address so we can contact you if we need more information.
- The more information we have, the easier it is to fix problems, so include savegames/instructions to reproduce the bug, crashdumps, backtraces, screenshots for graphical problems... if you have.
- When you attach files to a ticket, please add each text/image file separately and uncompressed, so we can view them easily in trac (savegames can and should be zipped, they consist of name.gam, possibly name.es, and the files in the name/ folder).
As usual, downloads can be found on our download page.
Detailed Changelog:
2010-01-19: Version 2.3 beta 8
- General:
- New: Mod files in mods/autoload/ are now autoloaded - note that this is NOT the previous autoload location (r9290, #1415)
- Fix: Crash when switching between players in ctrl+o cheat menu (r9283)
- Fix: Better projectile collision detection (r9288)
- Fix: Remove all fog of war darkening when satellite uplink built (r9216)
- Fix: Faster game loading when vsync enabled (r9167, r9163)
- Fix: Widget ID corruption leading to disappearing reticule and other GUI bugs (r9325)
- Fix: Miscellaneous crashes and asserts (r9153, #1219, r9192, r9152, #1402, r9248, r9181, r9174)
- Graphics:
- UI:
- Change: "HOST" appears below host (r9340)
- Change: Laser satellite firing and structure under attack now generate a radar blip (r9313, r9292, #1134)
- Change: Allow keyboard shortcuts to use the Cmd key as a modifier (r9307)
- Fix: The hide interface keyboard shortcut (Tab, by default) now hides the minimap and console, as well (r9273)
- Fix: Non-ascii characters now work, instead of appearing to clear all text (r9287, #1330)
- Fix: Radar blips should no longer disappear with some zoom levels (r9197)
- Fix: Make build progress bars look nicer by adding a gradient (r9157)
- Fix: Design form sometimes displayed incorrect component (r9255)
- Fix: Make keyboard shortcuts look nicer: "Ctrl + F11" instead of "lctrl - f11" (r9307)
- Balance: (r9339)
- Pulse Laser range decreased to 14
- Heavy Laser range increased to 16 (and damage toned down to match)
- Prices of Pulse Laser Tower, Pulse Laser Hardpoint, Pulse Laser Emplacement, Lancer Hardpoint increased to match weapon changes
- Scourge Missile range decreased to 14
- Seraph Missile Array range increased to 15
- Short-range accuracy of Mini-Pod, Lancer, Tank Killer, and Scourge Missile decreased - long range-accuracy remains unchanged
- Lancer price increased to 150
- Lancer no longer prerequires Mini-Rocket Array
- Mini-Rocket Array damage increased
- Splash radius of mortars, howitzers, cannons, and rails increased
- Damage of cannons and rails against cyborgs and tanks increased
- Damage of artillery against tracked tanks decreased
- Damage of artillery against hover tanks increased
- Command Turret price reduced
- Command Turret II, III, IV given more damage, longer range
- Gameplay:
- Change: Ctrl + Alt + mouse wheel to change game speed (r9178)
- Change: Formation speed limiter has been removed due to bugs and sync issues (r9331, #1177, #1167)
- Fix: Templates created with the design screen started at 1 power/HP instead of 0 (r9159)
- Fix: Changing speed no longer gives a "cheating" warning (r9177)
- Fix: Bugs with game speed changing abruptly should be fixed (r9280, r9251)
- Fix: Rounding errors in power code (r9172)
- Fix: Tank Killer didn't fire sometimes (r9339)
- Fix: Some structures should be obsoleted by others (r9339)
- Challenges:
- Fix: Restore challenge timer when loading a challenge savegame (r9207)
- Campaign:
- Skirmish:
- Translations:
