Little news as of late

[Quasar]

Eternity has gone into the hands of SoM this last week so that he can do two things:

(1) Finalize the implementation of moving 3D sides. As you know, "3D sides," or textures you can stand on basically, were introduced in v3.31 beta 1. This new extension to them allows the movement properties of a sector to be transferred to them. So if you attach them via this method to a lift, for instance, you can create a free-standing elevator. This really expands what is possible, and to paraphrase SoM, "I think this is better than 3D floors." w00t!

(2) Work on object z clipping. You probably know if you're ever in #zdoom at all that Eternity has been TRYING and TRYING to get true 3D clipping going for objects. Joel Murdoch sent me the code by Rand Phares which was stripped out of BOOM before the initial v2.00 release. I successfully put it into Eternity, only to find that Rand's comments about it being incomplete were very correct. The code had no means of dealing properly with objects on moving floors, and caused bizarre bugs. So we stripped that out the next day :(

Now SoM is working on his own from-scratch solution. The way he's doing it is a bit similar to the method Heretic uses, by coincidence, and isn't nearly as complicated as Rand's pointer-based method. He was able to get the ability for the player to move under/over things working in just a couple of hours, but since then he's been pondering how to address the problems of moving floors and the such, and as usual, real life has seriously gotten in the way, as SoM has a sucky job that makes him work non-stop everyday, even on weekends. Find out who SoM's boss is and tell him to be nice :P

So, this is where we stand. Once object z clipping is in and I have a chance to address a few more issues that I've been looking at during my time off from actual coding, we're going to release v3.31 beta 2. You should look for this release to happen NO LATER THAN the second full week of November, and hopefully next week depending on what kind of progress SoM gets to make in the next few days.

[mmnpsrsoskl]

/me kicks SoM's boss in teh nuts

Sounds like a lot of work Quas. Hopefully you get that new beta out, and just after my birthday as well...nice present :D

[SoM]

My boss does not like being kicked in the balls. Luckily I was able to shift blame to a co-worker who was promptly flogged and fired... Or just flogged, I can't remember which.

Please don't make me resort to these kinds of diversionary tactics again. Thank you.

Steven

(um, heh, yeah)

[Torn]

heh, sound nice :)

[Quasar]

Woo hoo! Z clipping is now complete, as far as we can tell at least. It, like most things in the engine, needs more testing of course. The last trouble SoM had dealt with crushers and the such, but it looks like we've worked all that out.

I also fixed a bug last night dealing with invulnerability -- it wasn't affecting flats or particles any more due to some changes we made to make deep water work right. But it was easy to fix as a special case.