Ambrosia Software Web Board: Antares 0.6.0 Released - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Antares 0.6.0 has been released for Mac OS X 10.6+. This release contains two new features: first, you can now run Antares in a window, instead of full screen. Second, if you have a two-button mouse, you can select target objects with the right mouse button.

Behind the scenes, the graphics engine has been entirely reworked to make better use of OpenGL and GLSL. This should improve graphical performance for most users. However, there is a possibility of compatibility problems. If you see any problems, you can file a bug on Antares’s issue tracker.

Antares 0.6.0 contains several fixes for issues that were present in Ares 1.2.0:

• Issue 2 (Mouse movement disrupts replays)
  
• Issue 111 (No special weapon shown when selection change from destination)
  
• Issue 112 (Control, target sprites clipped in minicomputer)
  
• Issue 113 (Minicomputer object’s target does not change colors)
  
• Issue 114 (Minicomputer targets sometimes not updated when switching to/from destination objects)
  
• Issue 116 (Minicomputer buttons not consistent on background color)
  
• Issue 117 (Minicomputer may not initially show control/target)

…several for issues present in earlier versions of Antares:

• Issue 10 (Mission briefing doesn’t allow display of ship stats)
  
• Issue 12 (Loading progress bar doesn’t display)
  
• Issue 34 (Mission debriefing disappears too easily)
  
• Issue 37 (Mission debriefing doesn’t display typing blocks)
  
• Issue 105 (Sprites sometimes appear in front of instruments)
  
• Issue 106 (Shield stenciling doesn’t always work)
  
• Issue 118 (Control, target sprites off-center in minicomputer)
  
• Issue 119 (Sometimes screen black after starting level)

…plus improvements intended to make Antares more maintainable in the future.

Sadly, this release is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. If you are still running one of those versions, Antares 0.5.1 is still available.

Excellent!

As in the other thread, I have two (new) questions.

1. The shield effect is bugged for me. It is stationary over anything it triggers, rather than having a moving TV-static-esque effect.
2. Do I have to delete my game files and redownload them along with the new version of Antares?

IonicPaul, on 06 December 2012 - 11:36 PM, said:

Can you attach a screenshot? What system and hardware are you using? (the graphics card is particularly relevant)

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Nope, whenever there's a change made to the game files (I don't think there was in this version) Antares will upgrade them for you.

A screenshot won't do you much good, as you still have the static effect. It's just... it's static. It doesn't flicker, or move. I could maybe make a quick recording?

System/Hardware:

OS 10.6.8
2.93 Ghz i7 (quad core iirc)
4 GB RAM
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5750

It would still be useful to see a screenshot; maybe a couple close together. I'm also interested in knowing:

• Is text tinted the right color?
  
• Do sprites in the mission briefing look right? (like the three on the left in this screenshot)
  
• Are on-screen labels instructions dithered? (like how the "Simulated Planet" label colors every other pixel in this screenshot)
  
• Do ships with more shielding have more static (even if it doesn't shimmer)?

All of these effects are implemented in the same GLSL snippet, so if there's a bug in the static, it could affect any of the others. Probably the easiest way to get screenshots of static is in Level 10 (“Assassin”), where you can take over an Obish Escort and engage its cloak (shields and cloaking are the same effect).

Except for some vertical banding, the static looks as intended on the two machines I have access to—one laptop is Intel graphics and the other has an Nvidia chip. Is your computer a Mac Pro? I don't know where I'd get access to one for testing, and a quick search online suggests that they're the only ones with ATI cards.

Feel free to file an issue for this, or I can do it when I've got more info.

As far as I can tell, text and sprites all render correctly. It is only the shimmer effect that is bugged.

I've attempted to make a video showing the bug. I got an Obish Escort, but failed to use the cloak when zoomed in to 2:1, so you can't really see the effect on the cloak (it's the same). I am relatively sure this was not how the shields looked prior to 0.6.0, but I cannot be sure.

My computer is a 27" iMac. A relevant bug is that on fullscreen, ships in the corners of the screen will disappear, as Ares was not intended for a widescreen monitor.

Here is the video.

Well, I don't know what's going on, but I can make a guess. Try this: Antares-nightly.zip

This post has been edited by Pallas Athene: 08 December 2012 - 12:37 AM

Works like a charm. Shielding and cloaking works perfectly.

I'll hold onto both versions to see if there are any discrepancies?

In lieu of a new topic:

Antares 0.6.1 has been released for Mac OS X 10.6+. This release fixes two problems present in 0.6.0:

• Issue 110 (Control, target bars not as wide as minicomputer selection)
  
• Issue 123 (Static static on ATI card)

I have encountered two things which I'm not sure are bugs.

1. I transferred control to the Battleship in Mission 12 and the mission — only the mission, not the game or my system (music played, as well) — froze. I recreated as close to the exact conditions and was unable to cause the same freeze.

2. Player-launched EVA troopers will go for the currently selected target, and not the bunker station. This doesn't seem like a bug, but more like an unintended flaw of the by-design feature of newly created allies (such as ships that have just been built) going for the current target.

IonicPaul, on 08 December 2012 - 05:46 PM, said:

Strange. Were you able to hit ESC to quit?

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Working as intended, unfortunately. The engine has two "create object" actions; EVATs are created with "create object inherit target" which assigns them their creator's target. For AI ships, that's the right thing. For the player's ship, it's probably not. When I'm piloting an assault transport, I launch EVATs by engaging autopilot.

In theory, the engine could have an action that amounted to "create object, target at nearest matching object" which would always do the right thing for EVATs. I'm not ready to get into the business of adding things like that yet, though.

I was able to hit escape to quit, which is why it was so weird. The menus functioned perfectly afterward, and I was able to start up a new mission, if I recall correctly.

Unfortunate about the EVA troopers. Oh well, it only matters in two missions anyways, and it's not too hard to get around.

This post has been edited by IonicPaul: 09 December 2012 - 10:02 PM

The weird active freeze happened again. This time I was playing Mission 17, and I don't know what happened. Could it be the number of ships? I'd started to create quite a few, as well as the Audemedons.

There was also a repetition of another weird game response that I forgot to mention earlier. After quitting to the main menu, the game seemed to automatically choose the replay/demo, and exiting the demo would simply cause another to start up as soon as it got back to the menu. The only way to stop it it was to quit by using command-Q.

This is looking good. Just downloaded it, running fine so far on 10.6.6.
This is good work, do keep it up

[I'm sticking with 10.6.6 as my max OS as I need its ability to run older software. Previously I maintained OS9 (partly) in order to run Ares, it will be somewhat amusing if, in the future my OS will be [i]too old[/i] to run Antares!]

Nice to see you're still working on Antares.

Performance is definitely better in this version for me (2010 MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard). I didn't notice any drop in frame rate even at large resolutions and with lots of objects on screen. Fast time still doesn't run as fast as it did in OS 9 on a G4, but that may be a good thing. I like the new resolution picker.

I also like the ship stats display and harder-to-dismiss mission results, but they definitely appeared much faster under OS 9.

Right click to target is very handy and gets around the inability to warp while holding shift (which may be a classic bug, now that I think about it).

However, I did experience the mission freezing (in mission 6, after winning a battle, so there weren't as many objects as there had been earlier), as well as the demo playback starting immediately on returning to the main menu. I've opened issues 124, 125, and 126 (for a minor graphical bug during briefings).

#126 is easy and fixed. I'm not going to cut another release just for that one, though.

#124 and #125 remain mysterious to me. I haven't seen them myself (admittedly, I don't really play Ares much) so it's hard for me to say much about them.

10.5 was the last version of OS X that ran on PPC, right? If I can drop support for PPC, that's convenient.

If it's any help, the times it's happened to me tended to be during longer missions, past maybe the ten minute mark?

Something just occurred to me on this freezing issue, and Mission 17 in particular, there was a maximum upper limit on the number of objects in Ares, which when exceeded caused made it impossible to build anything, though the game didn't crash.
Could this maximum number of objects issue still be present in Antares in some way?

Antares crash report. 10.6.6, intel i7.
I was just taking the fleet out for a spin when the game crashed
It happened as follows when I exited to the main menu from the start of Level 7 On The Rocks
It got stuck in a loop of continually trying to launch a level and then returning to the main menu. The levels it was trying to launch appear to be the illustration levels (Including Space Race the Musical).
I had to force quit Antares to escape!

The crash was an isolated event which I couldn't replicate.

When you say "trying to launch a level and then returning to the main menu" do you mean that the game didn't succeed at getting to the point of running the demonstration? That would be odd (and interesting).

I did find a couple of irregularities in the way that the main screen was waiting for its timeout. I don't have an explanation of how they could turn into bugs, but it will at least be different in the next release.

The demonstration starts and runs for a second or so, then fades out to the main menu (no items are selectable) which then fades into another demonstration level. The process repeats at regular intervals.

Antares crash report. 10.6.6, intel i7.

The game froze in Chapter 17, just as my transport was landing on the Audemedon world, unfortunately before the planet was captured! A force quit brought me back to desktop.
All the stations had been captured and all hostiles eliminated. I had a large fleet, but was still able to build.

The maximum number of objects warning popped up once during the game sometime earlier.
It might just be a goog old fashioned Ares Freeze