Wednesday 4 March 2015

Q1 2015 Report

Hello fellow FreeRCTers!

It has been an interesting past half of a year for the FreeRCT dev team, and we wanted to take the chance to update our eager followers with what we have been up to.

Real life aside, the dev team has been contributing as much time as is possible to the entire FreeRCT project, pushing updates ranging from necessary bug fixes and improved continuous integration support all the way up to entirely new features that will excite end users, most of which are highlighted in the Changelog below.

As noted in the upcoming changes sections, there are significant features and improvements in the pipeline (or queue path :D) that we are working hard on and will hopefully be adding to the official project within the next couple of months.

To those eager for more frequent updates, there can, of course, be no promises from us; nevertheless, with this post, the hope is to continue updating you all with the most significant changes as time allows. On the plus side, the less time we dedicate to writing posts, the more time we are probably using to improve the code and assets of the game, as well as brainstorm further improvements and ideas to add to our ever-growing ideas/to-do list. :)

Until our next official update, you can follow us on Twitter (and like us on Facebook), visit our home page, watch for code updates at the official repository, read our other posts on this blog, join our subreddit, check out the wiki, and/or get involved.

Until next time,
The FreeRCT Dev Team
"FreeRCT is really good value!"

Changelog (1 September 2014 - 4 March 2015):
  • Guests 'going home' walk to the edge of the world before disappearing.
  • Thunder and (ride) state lights (not in game-play use yet).
  • More items for shops to sell to guests.
  • Toilets (Building and guest visitation support).
  • Guest mood changes based on weather and umbrella possession.
  • Initial support for guests on rides.
  • Guests are informed of ride destruction.
  • Guests exit rides.
  • Multiple improvements to the renderer.
  • Initial queuing for ride support for guests.
  • Removal of guests from a ride upon its deletion.
  • Guests stop buying food/drink upon bathroom necessity.
  • Initial path decoration support.
  • Support for Unicode character input and handling key input.
  • Underground mode view.
  • Support for single tile click (and hold-drag) path placement (and removal).
  • Ability to change (override) path type of currently placed path(s).
  • Coverity support (Travis CI).
  • Numerous bug fixes, documentation improvements, and other behind-the-scenes updates.
Upcoming gameplay changes:
  • Ability for persons in the world to handle (walk on) non-path tiles correctly.
  • Ability to pick up, move, and drop persons in the world.
  • Initial staff (employees) support.
  • Further enter / exit ride support for guests.
Upcoming engine changes:
  • Replacement of SDL2 with GLFW.
  • Replacement of window mouse modes with an improved approach.

6 comments:

  1. You forgot one:
    -Add: sgtbigman as developer.
    :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll make up for it when I eventually move my name to the dev team in the contributors file. :D

      Delete
  2. Really looking forward to this. I may join the dev team when I get better at C++

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With coding, the best way to improve your skills is to start programming using the language. You're welcome to try programming something. If you make a patch, we'll review it and give you feedback, if it is good enough, we'll add it to the program.

      If you have questions, join us at IRC.

      Delete
  3. With the demise of google code does that mean your finally swapping to github?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are currently discussing alternatives. Moving away from Google code not only means changing site, but also changing version control system. All developers should first agree on what step we make.

      Github is of course a very good candidate. We will post here after we decided.

      Delete