Release Notes 016

Major Changes

This is a short list for game websites

Added Core game type. Destroy enemy cores to win. Core health can be set in the editor.
Added loadout presets. Players can save loadouts with Ctrl-1/2/3 and load them with Alt-1/2/3. Loadouts are saved via INI and can be viewed with the /showpresets command.
Upgraded Sensor increases passive viewing range and allows spybug placement without using a weapon slot. Spybugs are now placed with double-click
Added spawn shield. Protects newly spawned players for several seconds until they move, activate a module, or fire a weapon
Energy recharge rate increases while idle and doubles while idle in a loadout zone. Hostile loadout zones drain energy.
Removed soccer ball pick-up. The ball is now “heavier”, and other objects, like TestItems, are heavier as well.
Triples consume about 20% less energy than in the 015 series
Bouncers are more effective against the Armor module
Loadouts no longer carry over from level to level -- now you start a new level with the default loadout
Added top scores in single-team games like Rabbit and Bitmatch to lower right corner
Player ratings are determined by kill/death ratio. If you die more, your rating is negative
Forcefield engineer abuse has been greatly reduced. Note: Original forcefield behavior can be accessed through 'EngineerUnrestricted' instead of 'Engineer' in Specials
Team bitmatch suicides no longer hurt team score
Teleporting onto a loadout zone triggers loadout change, just like flying onto one

Added music sub-system. Plays Ogg Vorbis music files. You can test it by placing files in the 'music' sub-directory
Fixed screenshots; now use PNG format
64-bit Intel Mac build available now
Fixed voice chat for all operating systems, with improved quality
Reduced leave/join spamming in lobby
Allow /mute in server lobby
Fixed some game lobby bugs with leaving/joining being out of sync
Added scoreboard marks for admins (@) and level changers (+)
Joystick profiles are now kept in a separate INI, joystick_presets.ini, that can be adjusted and added to for your joystick
Smaller text should look crisper throughout the game
Line smoothing is now officially part of the game
Removed -jsave and -jplay cmd line options. It's been ages since they worked, and it's unlikely they ever will
-help cmd line option now displays meaningful help
Added engineer to help screen
Added Bitfighter icon for the taskbar
Diagnostics work a little better and will not show joystick info if none is attached
Allow for more than 32 different types of game objects for future expansion
Reduced CPU usage on diagnostics screen
Reduced CPU usage for overlapping asteroids
Migrated from GLUT to the SDL framework. This brings several improvements like faster rendering on Mac and nicer Input programming.
Fixed message rendering problem with disabled loadout indicators
Multi-line chat is now indented to prevent spoofing
Prevent impersonations with spaces in a username

Added mouse wheel zooming in the editor
Implemented 2-tier snapping in editor -- hold space to disable grid snap, but still snap to wall corners and other items; hold shift-space to completely disable snapping
Added plugin system for the editor -- users can write scripts to generate items in the editor and bind them to hot keys. Includes simple curve generation tool as a sample.
Added editor option to disallow robots
Added 'tab' filename completion in editor levelname entry screen
Added mouse wheel scrolling for existing level names on levelname entry screen
Removed dedicated wall-editing mode (Ctrl-A)
Game statistics not recorded when testing a level from the editor

Added /leveldir admin command to change folder where levels are read. Change affects current session only, and will not be saved in the INI.
Added /ban and /banip for persistent server ban lists.
Added /resetscore command
Added /shuffle command for admins
Removed optional hostAddr cmd line parameter for -dedicated <hostAddr>. Specify host address (only rarely needed) with the existing -hostAddr option
Removed -server cmd line parameter; not sure it really ever worked at all
Incorrect admin and levelchange password entries are now logged in server log
Fixed rare crash with bot zone generation
Console command history now working in a sane manner

Robots are smarter with forcefields
Robot team messages now only go to the team
Robots only spawn if a valid script is detected
Removed deprecated getMove() method -- if your bot still relies on this, it will no longer work
Migrated onTick() to a standard event -- this will let bots unsubscribe to onTick events if they like (bot start out subscribed to onTick by default). See wiki for how to use this to make the bot sleep for a time.
Added nexusOpened and nexusClosed events. See wiki for details.
Lua added copyMoveFromObject, Lua getCurrLoadout and getReqLoadout can now be used for ships
LUA scripts print to the OGLconsole