Iter 13

[chaosavy]

Gate Travel:
Added the ability for the player and player ships to travel via gates.
Activate a gate in tactical mode then pass through it to travel to new sectors.
Added AI for ships to go through gates when a "active" gate has been designed a target for a ship

Tactical Enhancements:
Retreat command added - ships will ignore enemies and head twoards nearest friendly base
Visualizations for gate active added (both incoming and outgoing)
Ability for player to "activate" the gate for outgoing travel added. Select the gate then - must be fairly close in distance to gate for the option to appear.

Debris:
Debirs added. Debris are parts of objects that are left over after an object's destruction. EG: a wing after a fighter drone explodes. Debris can be on a timer (optional) after which they explode. Debris can also appear in tactical or not depending on their specific settings (moddable).
Debris inherit parent's angular and linear momentum - additionally you can add in more forces to give it some more spin/movement.

Misc Enhancements:
Advanced Ship switching added. So instead of blinding pressing < and > to switch ships pressing the "ENTER" key will pause the game (optional) and show a list of ships to chose from. Ships have details such as health and distance to the current player ship to aid in selection. A "camera view" has also been added to see the potential new ship and its surroundings.
Hangars can now support multiple launch tubes
"Collision only" objects added - basically invisible "rectangular objects that only test for collisions - aren't rendered, which trigger events (eg: see gate travel above)
Re-engineered shields to use collision only objects
Combat AI tweaked - ships will fire more often - the range of "close enough to fire" has been increased and coded based on weapon type - this makes the whole combat experience a bit more cinematic
Added option to flip horizontal rotation via mouse
Added option to speed up mouse movement
Can now rotate camera via left/right/up/down arrows - did this to make making videos smoother - more controlled/precise movement than via mouse
Gate spawning ships list - can now be done via a list read via the xml files and also triggers, will grab a random ship of a class from the list (therefore allowing for a neat variety of different ships in the same class - eg: Frigates)

Weapon Enhancements:
The engine now supports gun recoils
The engine now supports weapon fire causing the parent ship to be pushed back
The engine now supports projectiles/missiles/beam weapons pushing objects on hit (instant weapons already could push in previous iter)

Hud enhancements:
In ship mode the "target marker" now will also display health, distance and speed of/to targeet, meaning that when in combat you don't have to look away from the target to see these stats
The target marker will also show - three colored diamonds - green = target in primary weapons range - yellow = target in secondary weapons range - red = target is targeting you
The ship hud now also shows a 2d "target arrow" when target is off screen, this will eventually replace the 3d hud arrow. This arrow also has the same properties as the target hud box (health, colored diamonds etc)

Sound Enhancements:
"Tail" sounds added to weapons - can play after "fire sounds" told to stop.
Sound cycling added - weapon fire can play a randomized sound sequence (from a list specified in xml files)
Multiple new sounds added

Bug fixes:
Fixed crash bugs related to selecting groups or nav objects while not in the "tactical main" mode (eg: in base or shipyard management modes)
Fixed bug preventing shipyard build queues from loading
Fixed bugs with AI not getting correct sizings on objects which was used in calculation travel distances
Fixed bug of turrets firing on friendly objects when they are in auto mode and a new target is set
Fixed sound bug - ghost sounds playing when player moves into their range though they should have played already
Fixed bug with ships sometimes being perma stuck exiting a gate - causing no other ships to spawn and spawned ships not to attack bases (just patroling around the gate they exited out of)
Fixed bug with missile weapons (exiting chutes, and muzzle flashes)
Fixed crash bu gin tactical mode - when building stations - left clicking on empty space would cause crash

[chaosavy]

RESERVED 1

[chaosavy]

RESERVED 2

[Scoob Profile]

Nice. Downloading now

Should get some time later this evening to test it out - looking forward to it.

Scoob.