Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 9:38 pm Post subject:
Technical changes in DTA's next update
The Launcher interface above has most likely become quite familiar for you in the last few years. In 1.11 it was used not only for checking updates and making it possible to download custom components, but it also allowed you to change some important compatibility settings needed for running DTA on some systems. In 1.12 it has so far remained necessary for checking updates. Until the next update, that is.
With the next update, DTA's client will get a huge update. You no longer have that old Launcher interface requiring an additional click before you get in-game, but instead its functionality has been moved into various other windows. One of them is the changed options menu:
As you can see, the custom components and update settings have been moved to the options menu. With the next update we're also introducing the new Renderer option, which replaces the old, hardcoded Windows 8 fix which forced on Windowed mode as well as the possibility of disabling DDraw hardware acceleration on Windows XP. This new option makes a large difference especially for those of you who use Windows 8; now you can use the TS-DDRAW renderer, which improves performance significantly compared to the old Windows 8 fix and also makes it possible to play in full-screen mode. For more information about the Renderer setting, please read the following blog post: http://www.moddb.com/members/rampastring/blogs/explaining-the-renderer-option-in-dta
You might also notice that a few options in the Audio section have changed. The next update seperates Red Alert and Tiberian Dawn tank cannon sounds from each other, so that RA tanks use RA cannon sounds and TD tanks use TD cannon sounds. Now you can also customize which game's building crumble sound to use (the sound that is played when a building is destroyed). In testing some people found the RA cannon sounds annoying, so if you prefer the old way of Allied and Soviet tanks using the TD cannon sounds, you still have the option for that.
The next update is going to be the largest single update for DTA 1.12 yet. As such, it naturally also includes a lot of new things in addition to just technical updates. In particular, single player missions are coming back, with some new missions as a bonus. We'll detail our single player missions in a seperate news post when we actually release the update later this week.
If you played The Toxic Diversion in DTA 1.11, you already know that our missions are generally fairly challenging. Unless you're extremely skilled in classic Command & Conquer, you're going to need to save and load the missions a couple of times before you finally manage to beat them. As such, our new client naturally supports loading saved games directly from the external menu; you don't need to start a skirmish game to load a saved game anymore.
We've also changed the name of DTA_Launcher.exe to just DTA.exe. That means that your possible desktop shortcuts aren't going to work anymore; you're going to need to create new ones. We apologize for the inconvenience; we aren't planning to change the filename again in the future.
The largest update for DTA 1.12 so far, which will be released later this week, contains a lot of other changes in addition to the improved client and single player missions, including ones requested by the community. One such change is that skirmish settings will now be saved. Some CnCNet reliability issues have also been fixed. We'll detail all the significant changes and all our single player missions in a seperate news post when the update is finally released.
Until then, have fun crushing your human and/or artificial opponents both online and in skirmish!
That looks pretty cool. Two suggestions for the load game dialog would be showing whether the savegame is single player or skirmish and the faction you're playing as. QUICK_EDIT
That looks pretty cool. Two suggestions for the load game dialog would be showing whether the savegame is single player or skirmish and the faction you're playing as.
Last time I checked, the side isn't written into the saved game (at least not as a string which I'd be able to read), but only the house name is. While in most cases the player's house is named similarly to the player's side (GDI, Nod, Allies or Soviet), that isn't always the case. For example, in The Toxic Diversion the player's house is named TTEGDI, while the player's side varies between GDI and Nod.
You could just have a function which translates the read in house name, that doesn't support custom missions but that isn't much of an issue. As a pre-caution to that you can have your translate function translate a bunch of non-existing house names, which map makers can use if they desire to add extra houses. So to support custom maps/missions map makers just need to name their extra/custom houses like one of the extra house name strings you added to translate. QUICK_EDIT
Edit:
I linked to the wrong one before; that one crashed the game whenever you'd press Esc to open the options menu. I now changed the link to an older version where that doesn't happen.
Take in mind that menus are quite slow however, although this is less of an issue in DTA since it bypasses the main menu (and even more importantly, the map selection menu). _________________ Last edited by Bittah Commander on Sat Apr 26, 2014 1:13 am; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
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