Work In Progress

This is a preview of work in progress for the next major update to PA.

Technical Notes

TITANS Balance Changes

• Orbital fabbers can now build t1 metal extractors
• TODO: reclaim metal value based on metal cost (vs max health)

Client Improvements

• Added first pass of terrain horizon occlusion for icons, status, blips and features
• Added first pass of visible wreckage reclaim progress
• Added official support link to start menu (and removed community support link)
• Added connect timeouts to download manager and initial support for full offline / disconnected mode

System Editor Improvements

• Added export to system editor for fast backups while creating maps
• Added description, author and version to system editor

Client Fixes

• Fixed black screen issue where load event for splash image failed to fire
• Fixed strategic icons and fog of war lighting showing when units teleporting
• Fixed malloc fail crash when out of memory (will probably just fail somewhere else now)
• Fixed orbital lines showing in POV camera
• Fixed event stream links

System Editor Fixes

• Fixed system editor metal sport validation
• Fixed unselectable sunken CSG in system editor

Server / Sim Improvements

• Added continuous area load / chase and interplanetary area load / unload (queued area load / unload orders can be used for temporary ferry)
• Added terrain height adjustments to planet bulder
• TODO: reclaim wreckage value based on metal build cost
• TODO: update height of reclaimed wreckage

Server / Sim Fixes

• Fixed transport / distance with teleport load / unload exploits
• Fixed death explosion damaging their own wreckage
• Fixed incorrect initial and dead reclaim values

AI Improvements

• Added easy difficulty for AI skirmish
• TODO: AI retraining with air changes

AI Fixes

• Fixed undefined behaviour with fighter and bomber attack tasks

Galactic War Improvements

• Added normal difficulty

Toolchain

Updated software development toolchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain

• C++17
• Visual Studio 2019 latest with 142 build tools / Windows 10 SDK latest
• Xcode 11 / macOS 10.15.x latest for macOS Mavericks 10.9+ with full notarisation using hardened runtime
• Latest steam Linux runtime with gcc-9 / LTO (previously limited to gcc 6.2 and no LTO)
• Steamworks SDK 148
• Windows libcurl 7.68.0 with nghttp2 1.40.0 for HTTP/2 and multiplexing
• breakpad latest
• libpng 1.6.37 with SSE
• libsquish 1.15 with SSE
• stb_image 2.25
• stb_truetype 1.24
• lz4 1.9.2
• miniz 2.1
• zlib 1.2.11
• sdl 2.0.10 (will upgrade to 2.0.12 soon)

Modding

• Added wreckage_mesh_bounds for visible wreckage reclaim (defaults to mesh bounds)
• Added icon_vertical_offset for terrain horizon occlusion (defaults to top of mesh bounds)

Breaking Changes

• strategic icons for metal extractors now include green metal spot
• particle_icon.fs

Terrain Height Adjustment Example

Safe adjustments are around ±100.

{
    "name": "test",
    "description": "",
    "author": "",
    "version": "",
    "planets": [
        {
            "name": "test",
            "mass": 20000,
            "position_x": 13400,
            "position_y": 1200,
            "velocity_x": 17.19521141052246,
            "velocity_y": -192.0131072998047,
            "required_thrust_to_move": 0,
            "starting_planet": true,
            "respawn": false,
            "start_destroyed": false,
            "min_spawn_delay": 0,
            "max_spawn_delay": 0,
            "planet": {
                "seed": 1,
                "radius": 500,
                "heightRange": 100,
                "waterHeight": 50,
                "waterDepth": 100,
                "temperature": 100,
                "metalDensity": 50,
                "metalClusters": 50,
                "metalSpotLimit": -1,
                "biomeScale": 50,
                "biome": "grass",
                "symmetryType": "terrain and CSG",
                "symmetricalMetal": true,
                "symmetricalStarts": true,
                "numArmies": 2,
                "landingZonesPerArmy": 0,
                "landingZoneSize": 0,
                "heightAdjustments": [
                    {
                        "adjustment": -50,
                        "radius": 200,
                        "pos": [
                            0,
                            0,
                            500
                        ]
                    },
                    {
                        "adjustment": 100,
                        "radius": 200,
                        "pos": [
                            500,
                            0,
                            0
                        ]
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    ]
}

Known Issues

• TODO: Fix Linux segfault in CoherentUI_Host
• TODO: Fix Linux mesa corruption
• TODO: Fix reclaim server crash
• TODO: Reproduce line formation client crash
• TODO: Reproduce load game crash