Announcing Oolite v1.90

[another_commander]

The Oolite development team is pleased to bring you the new stable release of Oolite, tagged 1.90. The game is available for download from the Oolite website. Windows, Linux (64/32 bit) and OS X (64 bit only) ports are available.

This release brings a much improved graphics environment, with special attention paid to planets. Atmosphere appearance on planets is now configurable and custom planets now support normal, gloss and illumination maps. Further graphics improvements include filmic tone mapping, Oren-Nayar diffuse light model, increased light source radiance for better visibility of objects in space and more. Additionally, weapons now have individual sounds assigned to them, while scripts have even more properties available for access.

As always, stability has also been further improved, with plenty of bugs from the previous version fixed. For the full log of changes, please refer to the list below or the What's New page at Oolite's website.

Enough with the talking though; now it's your turn. Here is a starship and a universe. Go out there and build your legend in the spacelanes. Fly safe, Commander!





Changes between Oolite 1.88 and Oolite 1.90:

General:
========
* Custom sounds for specific lasers and specific hit types are
now defined.
* Increasing opacity of GUI cursor for increased visibility.
* Basic compass now changes shape when switching from planet to
station and vice versa.
* Cloaked ships do mass lock the player now.
* The number of turrets on a ship, if they exist, is now shown on
the Ship Library screen.
* Entities designated as excepted for collision with the player will
now not limit the torus speed variability.
* The Javascript runtime size can now be adjusted by the user.
* Default diffuse light model switched to Oren-Nayar instead of
Lambert.
* Light radiance and exposure introduced on all main shaders.
* Illumination mapping of the dark side of custom planets is now
supported on the diffuse map's alpha channel.
* Custom planets now support normal maps, with specular on their alpha
channel.
* Visual improvements made on atmospheres. Lave has now a blue
atmosphere like Earth, while Reorte now has a blue planet
terminator.
* Visual improvements made on planets, which now use correct
reflectivity values for water and land masses for more realistic
specular reflections.
* New nav and witchspace beacons deployed, replacing the previous ones.
* Added the ability to limit star and nebula textures to particular
galaxies, providing the opportunity to make galaxies more visually
unique.
* View Keyboard Settings item from start menu has been replaced with
Game Options, which are now accessible from the get-go rather than
after starting a game first.
* Requesting 16 bits per color component from OpenGL during
initialization is now an option (-16bpcc startup parameter).
* Keyboard controls to cycle and select MFDs in reverse.
* Mac port: Right mouse button to center pitch and roll should now
work the same way as in the Windows and Linux ports.
* Pressing Ctrl while handling the external camera view will now slow
rotation and zoom speeds down. Allows for more precise external
camera control.
* Changed appearance of Lave to reflect the rain forests mentioned in
its description.
* Windows port: CPU type and clock speed are now reported at the log
header.
* Added docking clearance joystick button control to stickmapper.
* Added joystick button support for docking computer (standard and fast).
* Default ambient light level set to 0.1.
* Added filmic tonemapping to default shaders.

Expansion pack development:
===========================

Modified Plists:
----------------
* planetinfo.plist: Reactivated air_color and added air_color_mix_ratio
and terminator_threshold_vector keys.
* planetinfo.plist: Added texture_normspec key for specifying the normal
and specular/gloss maps for custom planets.
* equipment.plist: Added the fx_shot_miss_name, fx_shot_hit_name and
fx_weapon_launch_name keys for controlling weapon sounds for individual
weapons.
* customsounds.plist: Added the following keys to point to the new
individual weapon and ecm-proof missile launch sounds:
[mil-laser-player-laser-miss], [mil-laser-player-laser-hit],
[mining-laser-player-laser-miss], [mining-laser-player-laser-hit],
[beam-laser-player-laser-miss], [beam-laser-player-laser-hit],
[ecm-missile-launch].
* shipdata.plist: Added the escape_pod_rescue_time key.
* Added support for equipment-overrides.plist.

Scripting:
----------
* Planet terminator color and extent is now script controlled via the
'terminatorThresholdVector' JS planet property.
* Atmosphere color for planets is now fully script controlled via
the 'airColor' and 'airColorMixRatio' JS planet properties. No more
of that "always white" atmospheres of 1.88.
* Implemetned an override mechanism for the amount of time a rescue
in an escape pod takes by means of the 'escapePodRescueTime' JS
player property.
* Added activeMissile property to allow scripts to know which of the
missiles is currently selected.
* Added 'isSunlit' to JS entity, allowing scripts to determine
whether entity is in the shadow or not.
* Added playerWillBuyNewShip and playerWillReplaceShip world events.
Replacing a ship is now considered a different event to buying one.
* Added EquipmentInfo.calculatedPrice property. This is the calculated
price of the equipment item, if the equipment item utilises the
updateEquipmentPrice() condition script function.
* Added amount paid parameter to playerBoughtEquipment event. Gives
instant visibility of the actual price paid by the player, taking
into account any rebates or adjustments in the purchase.
* addShipToShipyard can now look for and add lasers from extras array.
This is so a laser weapon can be included in "extras" array and added
to the ship.
* Station shipyard is now accessible from Javascript (station.shipyard).
* World event "commsMessageReceived" will now be triggered when the
"player.commsMessage" function is called. The "sender" argument will
be null in this case. Scripts that implement "commsMessageReceived"
will need to check for a null value, otherwise an error will occur.

Bug fixes:
==========
* Fixed occasional equipment incompatibility references not being
enforced, depending on the order of loading.
* Fixed kg and g unit commodities not being removed when player ship was
being replaced or when a new one was bought and excess kg and g
quantities beyond station's capacity remained unsold during the cargo
selling phase.
* Fixed RGB to HSB conversion in OOColor class.
* Fixed blocked station queues in case where ship in launch queue was
too big for a dock and could not be launched.
* Fixed randomInhabitantsDescription not being able to return the
plural form and fixed a typo in its error message.
* Fixed some quite important typos in the populator script.
* Fixed scoopOverride causing scoop sound to play once when set to false.
* Fixed case where an empty cargopod would be generated for specific
quantities of precious metals and gemstones.
* Fixed an 'index out of range' error on F5 Status screen.
* Fixed issue where sometimes no rows would be selected in the shipyard
screen.
* Docks scripted to not accept player docking now result in autopilot
docking rejection also in the case of fast autodock.
* Fixed native exception when a dictionary was passed to OOIsNumberLiteral
by OOJSSystemInfo.
* Fixed dust color not getting mixed with 50 percent white, as intended
when sun color was set manually.
* Fixed effectRemoved event not triggering when hyperspacing.
* Fixed bug where credits could be generated by 'failing to buy'
multiple mount lasers.
* Fixed planets' dark side always being completely dark, regardless of the
ambient light level setting.