News
ECWolf 1.2 Released 2013-06-11 06:36:23
ECWolf 1.2 was tagged yesterday and is now available for download on your OS of preference. This is a fairly big release and comes with some mod compatibility issues, so be sure to update your mods! As always I feel the need to remind everyone that ECWolf will not be keeping mod compatibility until 2.0 is released.
The updated techdemo is available from the downloads page and now includes the depth fog feature. An updated version of Executor's port of Gary Ragland's Assassinate Hitler mod is available here as well.
Lets take a look at the highlights for this release:
- ECWolf will now look for *.sd1 files and if it finds them attempt to set SOD back to the original state.
- Command prompt window should now be held until the user dismisses it when an error occurs.
- A map translator can be set in the gameinfo section of mapinfo. Also translators can include the base translator via include "$base".
- Removed depthfog as an option because...
- ECWolf can now partially load RTL and RTC map sets with a little bit of work. What this does mean is some features from the ROTT map format are supported including touch plates, switches, and changing the light level. These features can be used in standard WDC format maps, the ROTT info plane is stored in the 4th plane in that case.
- Support for high resolution floor/ceiling textures (limited to powers of two).
- 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 will aspect correct the menus as well since the scaling factor can be a whole number in both directions.
- Added support for flash states.
- Added WeaponGiver
- Added decorate properties: scale, xscale, yscale, player.viewheight, player.forwardmove, player.sidemove
- Added A_Explode, A_AlertMonsters, A_GunFlash, and A_Light
- Added actor flags WEAPON.NOALERT, WEAPON.ALWAYSGRIN, INVENTORY.ALWAYSPICKUP and RANDOMIZE
- There is now a primitive status bar configuration script LATCHCFG. This is for assisting in porting classic mods to ECWolf, but will be removed once a proper scripting solution is available.
- Fixed issues with fast moving projectiles.
- Fixed mission pack save games could be loaded in normal Spear of Destiny and vice versa.
- Fixed weapon cycling skips on lower frame rates.
- Fixed various minor vanilla fidelity issues regarding animations, sprites, and sounds.
- When using an exit switch in a boss map, go to the next map and not the victory sequence like in vanilla.
- Some items can now always be picked up even if you don't need them like in vanilla. Also the gibs can be used as health like in vanilla as well (as opposed to only the blood pool).
- Fixed issues with deathcam animation and ensured proper delay.
- Fixed high resolution sprite rendering issues.
- Fixed issues with movement bobbing and victory sequences.
- Fixed issues with Mac OS X's case insensitivity.
- Fixed issues with save game versioning.
- Improved joystick support by allowing axes to be bound to any function.
- Weapon is re-raised on level transitions like in Doom (only applies for non-instant switch weapons of course).
- Partial support for loading Macbins.
- Partial SDL2 support (you'll still want to use SDL 1.2 though).
- The SDL directx driver isn't forced on Windows and will now default to windib.
The wiki will be updated with documentation for all of the new features once I get some time. Also if anyone finishes a mod for ECWolf, I'd be happy to host it on this site as well.
To make a quick note on the renderer changes and the directx vs. windib points. It seems like I've been able to the optimize the renderer to be faster while still allowing floor/ceiling textures to change scale. However, on some hardware configurations the windib back end will result in a lower frame rate and on others a higher frame rate. If the directx back end worked for you and you are getting a lower frame rate with ECWolf 1.2, you may set the back end manually through the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable.
What's next for ECWolf? As I've detailed before, I'll be working on porting Super 3D Noah's Ark. There's no schedule set in stone for that yet of course, but given that I want to do releases approximately every 6 months, we'll hopefully see Noah's Ark support within a year.