This is the first sound effect which is generated from scratch
using Csound. The advantages of this are:
- Real source code for sound.
- Anyone with a text editor can tweak the sound effects.
- Source code is much more compact that the sound file itself.
- Sound files can be regenerated with arbitrary quality.
Before, all the ships were moving at exactly the same speed, making them appear
static on screen. Now, Chris is moving slowly to the right, but the WEAPCO
fighters are changing velocity now and then, both horizontally and vertically,
never quite reaching Chris but increasing their attempts.
When travelling between planets, while the progress bar was growing, it was
possible to click on planets, thereby changing the final destination planet.
The old technique was to overlay a semi-transparent red rectangle over an
existing ship image, and then make 50% red pixels transparent. For some reason,
the transparency is not working correctly. Instead, don't overlay anything,
but set the red component of all non-black pixels to the maximum value.
The code always tries to overwrite some data files when not using a .pak
file. This is only useful for upstream development. Put #ifdefs around
this code.
- We now have both minPlasma* and maxPlasma* variables.
- *PlasmaRate now goes from 1 to 5 just like Damage and Output.
- Internally, plasma now goes into the primary weapon, there is no
temporary weapon anymore.
- When upgrading the primary weapon, the new minimum amount of Damage,
Output and Rate immediately goes into effect when starting the next
msision.
- Super Charge now works exactly the same again as in the original.
- But shows blinkenlights in the bottom status bar when it is in use.
- Explicitly mention all the authors and licenses used for the new graphics
and sounds.
- Remove credits for the old music.
- Mention Valgrind and cppcheck under the Quality Assurance section.
- Add myself as additional programmer, Astrid as replacement graphics and sound
finder.
There were three flags, WF_STRAIGHT, WF_THIN_SPREAD and WF_WIDE_SPREAD,
when only one flag, WF_SPREAD suffices. This makes the code simpler and
gets rid of some duplication.
Put the maximum amount of rockets that can be caried in the description, and
also adjust the amount of rocket pods one has when buying a secondary weapon.
The laser and charge beam will remove all rocket capacity. To soften the blow,
you get at least capacity for 5 rockets when buying homing missile systems,
or 10 when buying normal missile system.
Before, if a value was over one of the limits, it would be set to the
other limit. For most usecases, that was fine, however for the starfield
this would cause stars to become aligned to each other after a while.
Some images are made from scratch, others are taken from various sources
with CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA and GPL licenses, mostly from OpenGameArt.org
and NASA.
All functions and variables are now defined in graphics.cpp.
Before, the functions would be compiled again and again for every source
file, now it is compiled only once, halving the size of the stripped
starfighter binary.
Guus Sliepen
Astrid S. de Wijn
Guus Sliepen