Some news from the development team !

[RabidViper]

It's been a few months since the last time you were really given information about what we had done, what we were doing, and what we were planning to do.

Here is a short post to keep you informed !

Media (mapmodels, textures, autodownloader)

A lot of media, and more custom content will improve a lot the overall maps quality. Also, more variety is always better ; we do believe that offering people the ability to play custom maps is a good way to keep this game interesting.
A lot of people try AC - they are not enough to stay. By allowing more creativity (provided it fits with the engine capabilities), we're making AC even more exciting to most players.

Things that were done

• A few mapmodels were added by Cleaner; thanks to the recent repackaging, we could find a few free mega bytes for new content !
  
• The auto downloader was fixed a bit. A "sortpckservers" command was added; it will later be automatic and will guess the best server to download content from;
  
• Akimbo was updated a lot. It's fully compatible with the new autodownload system. It is still undergoing some improvements right now.
  You can now check the textures and skymaps previews, search through files for a specific mapmodel/texture, etc.
  

Things that are planned

• The autodownload system seems to be working nice. If it performs good enough, it may be extended to mods. You would be able to download mods such as new weapon models, fonts, misc textures, etc. from the game itself. Before implementing it in AC, akimbo will be reworked so as to be compatible with this possible feature.
  
• We're seeking for more akimbo servers (mirrors). Currently, we have one in france and one in the USA. We're working on setting up another server in Germany, thanks to gear4.
  
• Dynamyic auto generated mapmodels previews (and also statistics like vertices count and such ??)
  

Mapping / engine

As explained above, improving maps quality is something really important, and the graphics are a major criteria for many people.
There are different ways to have better maps created, like :
- make the mapper job easier and less time consuming, so that they have more time to focus on the gameplay and the aesthetics rather than technical things
- bring more content and possibilities !

What has been done

• A "mapeditor" branch was created. The changes to the map editor system and the engine will be brought to this branch. It may be merged later once stable enough
  
• A selectable entities system was included. See http://ac-akimbo.net/showthread.php?tid=840 for more details and a video.
  

What is planned

• Dynamic mapmodels and textures menus with previews containing the list of loaded mapmodels while editing.
  
• Textured clips, would be somewhat integrated to the cubes rendering system, so as to make them more handy than platforms (custom dipmensions like clips) and also less expensive ?
  

Gameplay

I guess you're thinking it's the most important. Well yes it is. But it entirely depends on the other aspects of the game. Since everything should be ready now for the next release, apart a few technicals issues that i'm going to detail later, not much was done to the trunk. Still :

What has been done

• SMG recoil reduced to make it actually playable, as requested by many members of the community
  
• A new gamemode was created, it's currently called "regen capture" because it's pretty similar to sauer's regen capture. However, its name may change, since it was ctually created after considering some suggestions in the proving grounds. We don't know when it will be merged because of the lack of testing
  

What's planned

• VonDrakula had made drop gun system and created a branch for testing purposes. We may be going to include it in a dedicated new gamemode.
  
• We're studying new "bases based" gamemodes, a abit like the regen capture mode.
  
• Because in was mentioned recently in the "ideas" thread, and that some of you seemed to be unaware of that project: we're working on singleplayer campaigns. A few new cubescript features to control bots would make it possible to "script" these campaigns. Anyone would then be able to make his own w/o changing the binaries.
  I guess we would provide a few campaigns with the official package.
  

Linux bug

Thanks to SKB we could make some tests and we got some precious information about the bug. On my side, imay be able to get AC to run on a linux machine @home, and will be able to perform some tests.
I have something in mind to "fix" that issue; i will test within a few days (i hope).
If it works, i guess the release would come fast.

However, the following bugs were "found" recently but need to be confirmed :
- voting mastermode match makes duplicate player entries appear (as DISC).
- teams shuffled when a map is voted ??! (need to be checked again)

We need testers to know more about that.
Please, organize inters/matches on the SVN. You will get used to the new balance, and also give us precious feedbacks.


Because we all want the next version to be released ASAP, we're trying as much as possible to make the wait less boring. Therefore, the dev team tried to commit itself to helping with ACWC's organization as much as we could.