Greetings, commander! patrickwieth has posted a new version of YouMustConstructAdditional.. called YouMustConstructAdditional v0.95.33. For those who are not acquainted with it, YouMustConstructAdditional.. is a Real-Time-Strategy game that uses the OpenRA engine. It forks Combined Arms, and it strives to create massive battles with GDI, Nod, Scrin, Allies, Soviet, and China. Here is the official announcement from YouMustConstructAdditional..'s staff about YouMustConstructAdditional v0.95.33:

Quote:
0.95.31:

New Features

  • Double MCV mode added. In this mode, players start with 2 MCVs instead of one. Combined with the Nukular mode, both MCVs are Nukular. The game is lost when both are gone.
  • New random faction baskets added. This allows one to get a random pick from more specific groups than just any faction. Examples: TD faction, RA faction, Good faction, Evil faction, Air faction, Tank faction, etc.
  • Allied Rifle Infantry is now Light Infantry with a new sprite.

Balancing

  • Chinese Bulldozer build range increased

Bug Fixes

  • Fix Hover Mammoth Palette


For further information about YouMustConstructAdditional.., visit the Official Website, and Discord Channel. Grab the latest version of YouMustConstructAdditional.. by clicking Here. And this is all for today! Enjoy YouMustConstructAdditional.. and provide your feedback about it so it can get better.

Krita 5.2.3 has been released!
Jun 29, 2024 - 04:33
Hello everyone! We have news for you. Krita 5.2.3 was released moments ago by the crew of Krita fixing a bunch of bugs. For your information, Krita is a free and open-source graphics editor for digital art and 2D animation. It features an advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support, color management support, and switchable customization profiles.  Here are the updates from Krita 5.2.3:

Quote:
Krita 5.2.3 is released after several weeks of testing of the beta. This is a bugfix release that primarily brings a complete overhaul of our build system, making it so that our CI system can now build for all 4 platforms (a Continuous Integration system basically builds a program after every change, runs some tests, and based on that helps us track down mistakes we made when changing Krita's code).

Beyond the rework of the build system, this release also has numerous fixes, particularly with regard to animated transform masks, jpeg-xl support, shortcut handling on Windows, and painting assistants.

In addition to the core team, special thanks go out to Freya Lupen, Grum 999, Mathias Wein, Nabil Maghfur Usman, Alvin Wong, Deif Lou, Maciej Jesionowski, and Rasyuqa A. H. for various fixes, as well as the first time contributors in this release cycle (Each mentioned after their contribution).

Changes since 5.2.3 beta:

  • Various fixes to tool canvas input shortcut behavior (Thanks, Aqaao)
  • Improved icons for Android (Bug 463043, thanks Jesse 205!)
  • Various fixes to how we use MLT for synchronizing audio to animation.
  • Python SIP type stub generation: this will help autocompletion in external Python editors that support using these stubs (Thanks, Kate Corcoran)
  • Crash fix with adding animation keyframe column on a locked layer (Bug 486893)
  • Fix update of the "read-only" state of the document when loading and saving (Bug 487544)
  • Ask to use PSD data in TIFF only if any was found (Bug 488024)
  • Reworked default FFmpeg profiles (Bug 455006, 450790, 429326, 485515, 485514, thanks Ralek Kolemios!)
  • Fix issue in KisMergeLabeledLayersCommand when masks where involved (Bug 486419)
  • Update batch exporter Python plugin to fix trim option issue (Bug 488343, thanks Nathan Lovato!)
  • Welcome Page: Fix "DEV BUILD" button going to a 404 (Thanks, Joshua Goins!)
  • Tablet Tester: Fix extreme lag with S Pen on Android (Thanks, Joshua Goins!)
  • Fix canvas fade-out when in 16-bit-uint mode on Angle (Bug 488126)
  • WEBP & JPEG-XL: preemptive check for animation (Bug 476761)
  • Fix copy-pasting selection of File Layer (Bug 459849)
  • Fix color sampler in wrap around mode (Bug 478190)
  • Replace old QML touch docker with QWidget-based touch docker to avoid problems on Android (Bug 476690)
  • Add support for XSIMD13
  • Redraw layers docker thumbnails if the canvas checkers color was changed
  • Fix animation playback freezes when pausing past the end of audio (Bug 487371 and 478185)


If you are curious about Krita, visit the Official Website to obtain further information about it. Grab the latest version of Krita by clicking Here. That's all, folks! Stay tuned at PPM for more news coverage on Krita!

Zero-K v1.12.6.0 is the most recent release of Zero-K's staff. For those unaware of what is being written here, Zero-K is a free and open-source real-time strategy game that uses the Spring game engine. There is only one faction with 100+ varied units with unique abilities. It has physically simulated units and projectiles, and it allows terrain manipulation in battle. It has a single-player campaign, a challenging, non-cheating AI, multiplayer 1v1 - 16v16, FFA, and coop, and a multiplayer online campaign. Here are the official words about Zero-K v1.12.6.0:

Quote:
Likho has a new model by brunocb, giving it a proper singularity bomb. This update also has many fixes and a few balance changes. Some of the fixes are due to an engine update, such as a decades-old bug that caused reverse-built units sometimes to try to slide off the map. On the balance front, Bulkhead now has a bit more range than Stinger, Duck is a bit better, and Disco Rave Party spins faster.


Balance


Duck is no longer the equal-slowest raider.
  • Speed 90 -> 93 elmo/s (no longer matches Bandit)
  • Missile range 235 -> 232 (matches Bandit)
  • Missile turn rate increased by 16%, so it reliably hits Dart.


Bulkhead is more sturdy and can safely shoot at Stinger.
  • Stays deployed while mid-air
  • Range 600 -> 640
  • Sight range 660 -> 700


Crab and Bulkhead can deploy mid-air.

Kodachi is killed in one fewer shots by Dagger.
  • Health 680 -> 660


Disco Rave Party has all its bearings replaced.
  • Base turn rate increased by 25%
  • Maximum fire rate increased by 6.7%
  • Spin-up rate increased by 18%
  • Increased minimum turn rate by 25%
  • Can turn without spinning down so far, as a result of the above.


Features
  • Added new Likho model (thanks brunocb).
  • Added optional radar color in LOS and fog stripes under Settings/Interface/Map/Radar Color.
  • Added animation-stun to most striders. They no longer return to a neutral stance while stunned.
  • Guarding units can now be automatically set to a lower selection rank under Settings/Interface/Selection/Filtering (thanks, Amnykon).
  • Improved overdrive payback tooltip.
  • Added metal shared, energy excesses, and energy shared graphs.
  • Mods can now include their own modoptions files.
  • Reordering factory queues no longer forgets Alt-insert.
  • Cloaked units no longer try to shoot at unseen mexes.
  • Free-For-All games are now not counted for ranking immediately, rather than being discounted when the server restarts (thanks, Shaman)


Fixes
  • Fixed rally points of factories with structures right in front of them.
  • Fixed overlob prevention vs. jumpjets.
  • Fixed a shadow bug caused by UI scaling.
  • Slowed Detriment can no longer be stolen by transports.
  • Fixed defense range circles for ballistic projectiles (thanks, Helwor).
  • Fixed Djinn deployment when told to stop while stopping.
  • Fixed being able to click twice to start a skirmish game.
  • Fixed reverse-built nanoframes sometimes sliding off the map (thanks, marcushutchings).
  • Fixed queuing dense line moves (recent engine bug, thanks, marcushutchings).
  • Fixed structure ground decals persisting after death (recent engine bug, thanks, marcushutchings).
  • Fixed an issue with action registering (thanks Helwor).
  • Made UnitLeftRadar more consistent (thanks Helwor).
  • Terraform construction can no longer catch fire.
  • East-facing morphs no longer result in West-facing units.
  • Fixed lingering noammo icon on wreck tooltips.


For further information about Zero-K, visit the Official Website, and Forums. Download Zero-K v1.12.6.0 Here. And that's all for now! Have fun and enjoy Zero-K!

Howdy! Reinforcements have arrived at YouMustConstructAdditional... patrickwieth has recently made YouMustConstructAdditional v0.95.30 available for download. YouMustConstructAdditional.. is a real-time strategy game that uses the OpenRA engine. It forks Combined Arms, and it strives to create massive battles with GDI, Nod, Scrin, Allies, Soviet, and China. Here is the official announcement from YouMustConstructAdditional..'s staff about YouMustConstructAdditional v0.95.30:

Quote:
The Nukular MCV mode is now functional but will be patched in the future according to how it plays out.
Nukular MCV mode is like "Exploding Kings" in AoE2. For those who do not know this, you have a King, and if you lose the King, you lose the game. Furthermore, the King dies in a gigantic nuclear explosion. In this game, it is not a King but an MCV with the same properties. This mode is best for FFA games as it gives an almost defeated player a possible purpose: get revenge with the Nukular MCV. Also, it can be used to make Conyard Sniping much stronger than usual if desired.


New Features

  • The Transport Ship now explodes like the Nukular MCV and shows the same green tilt if a Nukular MCV is loaded. Air transports (Carryall and Dropship) also show this, but their Nukular Explosion is weak in case they are downed.
  • Transports that have the Nukular MCV loaded get a speed bonus of 50%.

Balancing

  • The Explosion of the Nukular MCV now spreads the nukes more evenly and thus deals more damage in a wider area.
  • Force Shield has its cooldown reduced, and in Nukular Mode, it is significantly reduced.

Bug Fixes

  • Fix Nona SVK turret sprite
  • Anti Tank Mines (French Cluster Mines) dealt 100% damage to all target types. Now, they only deal 100% vs. Heavy Tanks, 75% vs. Reflector, 10% vs. Infantry and Fortified Buildings.


If you are curious about YouMustConstructAdditional.., visit the Official Website, and Discord Channel to obtain further information about it. Download YouMustConstructAdditional.. Here. That's all, folks! Stay tuned at PPM for more news coverage on YouMustConstructAdditional..!

Notepad++ 8.6.8 has been released!
Jun 05, 2024 - 03:30
Are you picking this up? Good! Notepad++ has been recently improved with the release of Notepad++ 8.6.8. For those who are not acquainted with it, Notepad++ is a free and open-source code editor and Notepad replacement that runs on Windows. It supports several programming languages, multiple tabs, plugins, and is based on the powerful editing component Scintilla.

Here is the official announcement from Notepad++'s staff about Notepad++ 8.6.8:

Quote:
Notepad++ release 8.6.8 change log:

  • Fix a crash in Column Editor caused by an arithmetic overflow.
  • Fix the issue where any negative repeat value in Column Editor causes a hang.
  • Fix an extra space being inserted in the HEX mode issue in Column Editor.
  • Fix a visual glitch in the toolbar pressed buttons in dark mode.
  • Add auto-indent feature for Python.
  • Fix the issue where “show control characters” settings are not remembered when switching to another tab.
  • Fix the missing monitoring disabled state icon from the fluent icon set on the toolbar.
  • Adjusted the inaccurate naming of indent settings in the Preferences dialog.
  • Fix the issue where the customized color of the active tab in the inactive view is missing.
  • Introduce a new plugin command “NPPM_GETTABCOLORID” to retrieve the current tab color ID.
  • Allow the tree view dark mode customization for plugins.
  • Fix the popup dialog for updating, not mentioning ‘Notepad++’.


You can find more information about Notepad++ by visiting the Official Website, and Forums. Download Notepad++ 8.6.8. That's all, folks! Stay tuned at PPM for more news coverage on Notepad++!

Vengi 0.0.32 has been released!
May 31, 2024 - 02:12
Hi everyone! It has been a while since I posted for the last time. For those who confused me for a corpse, you have made a sad mistake. Moving to a new home with limited internet and a broken PC, things can get a bit tough. So, I have been acting in the shadows like the prophet, but I am ready to return to the battlefront.

Talking about the battlefront, reinforcements have arrived from Vengi as Vengi 0.0.32 has been recently posted by mgerhardy. For those who are not acquainted with it, VoxEdit is a voxel art editor that supports several volumetric pixel file formats, such as Command & Conquer vxl, Minecraft, Quake 1 bsp, Ace of Spades vxl, as well as some other voxel editors such as Goxel and MagicaVoxel. It uses the vengi voxel engine.  Here is the official announcement from Vengi's staff about Vengi 0.0.32 and also 0.0.31 which was released during my recent silence:

Quote:
Changelog

A more detailed changelog can be found on github.

Join our discord server.

See the documentation for further details.

Known issues.

0.0.32 (2024-05-29)

General:

  • Add mesh optimizer support (new cvar voxformat_optimize)
  • Fixed missing region shift for vxl (Command and Conquer)
  • Fixed MagicaVoxel vox file loading for files that don't contain instances but only models
  • Added vxc thumbnail support
  • Fixed a translation-related crash for all apps on Windows

VoxEdit:

  • Converted the text-voxel-rendering into a new brush
  • Fixed undo node transform changes as first action


0.0.31 (2024-05-09)

General:

  • Fixed memory leak in fbx loading
  • Added support for starmade templates smtpl format
  • Fixed merging of nodes when pivots are used
  • Added support for litematic Minecraft support
  • Extended supported Minecraft materials
  • Extended Lua bindings for keyframes and transforms
  • Extended Lua bindings for HTTP requests
  • Fixed face culling for negative scale values
  • Added command and cvar dialogs to the help menus
  • Added cubzh version 5 (older version) support
  • Added support for writing uncompressed qubicle qb files
  • Fixed qubicle qb version number
  • Added basic support for rooms.xyz thing file support
  • Optimized file dialog for large directories
  • Added translation support (po files)
  • Fixed error in up-scaling volumes
  • Fixed x-axis flip for cubzh 3zh files
  • Added cvar voxformat_rgbweightedaverage to control the color contributions for a triangle
  • Added the ability to upload crash dumps
  • Improved support for reference nodes in a lot of formats
  • Improved pivot support in a lot of formats

VoxConvert:


  • Added zip archive support for --input
  • Added the ability to export into slices with --slice when --output is a png file

VoxEdit:

  • Added support for browsing the remote voxel collections to the asset panel
  • Added modelmerge all parameter to merge all nodes at once
  • Added presentation command to cycle through all models in a scene
  • Improved position panel to edit transforms
  • Improved start-up times
  • Pasting from a different palette will search for the closest colors
  • Fixed off-by-one error in ve_regionsizes cvar handling
  • Re-enabled the yocto-pathtracer panels again
  • Moved some UI elements into other panels
  • Improved stamp brush features
  • Fixed brush regression in combination with the override mode
  • Added pathfinder brush preview

Thumbnailer:


  • Fixed logic error in skipping camera nodes

Packaging:


  • Renamed AppStream package to io.github.vengi_voxel.vengi.voxedit for DBUS compatibility


For further information about Vengi, visit the Topic at PPM Forums, Official Website, and Discord Channel. Download Vengi Here. And that's all for now! Have fun and enjoy Vengi!

Hello, ladies and gentlemen! There is a new quick patch for Metal Factions known as Metal Factions v2.41c. Metal Factions is an open-source game made with the Spring RTS game engine. It's an evolving real-time strategy game with four factions: Aven, Gear, Claw, and Sphere. It features 3D terrain and units, intuitive physics with real-time simulated gravity, collision handling, and projectile trajectories. It has over 400 units, including humanoid robots, tanks, ships, aircraft, buildings, defenses, etc. The changes from Metal Factions v2.41c were announced with the following words:

Quote:
- Fixed rare lups-related error
- Modified chat message and map marker sounds yet again


For further information about Metal Factions, visit its Official Website, Forums, and Discord Channel. Download Metal Factions v2.41c Here. And this is all for today! Enjoy Metal Factions and provide your feedback about it so it can get better.

Hello ladies and gentlemen! Openage has some interesting updates posted recently by their crew. For those unaware, Openage is a free cross-platform Real Time Strategy game engine that provides the mechanics of Age of Empires, replicating its look and feel, making it more moddable, and allowing multiplayer games with more than 8 players. Here is what you need to know about the progress on Openage:

Quote:
Hello everyone, we are happy to have you here for yet another openage update. For the latter half of the month, we have taken a small break from pathfinding to work on other small internal projects that have been piling up, e.g., some leftover tasks in the renderer. That also means that, unlike last month, this update won't be 100% pathfinding exclusive, so those of you who enjoy more variety have something to look forward to!

Pathfinding in nyan API

Since the pathfinding system in the engine is mostly finished, we have been making efforts to officially use it in the movement systems of the game simulation and build it into our rudimentary map generation. The first major step in this direction is the integration of new pathfinding-related objects into our nyan modding API. This allows game objects to utilize the pathfinding functionality in several ways.



The new API object PathType can be used to define grids in the pathfinder. Usually, there exists more than one pathfinding grid per game. For example, AoE2 has two grids, one for land-based units and one for ships. If you are very generous, you could additionally consider that there is a third "air" grid, as the ambient birds flying all over the map have separate pathfinding rules. A unique air grid is also used for flying units in Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.

PathType objects can be referenced by other API objects to reference a specific grid, e.g., by the Move ability with its new member path_type. This tells the engine which grid to search for pathfinding when the ability is used by a game entity. For dynamically influencing the cost of the grid, there is now a Pathable ability that changes the cost of grid cells for one or multiple grids at its location when it is active. The latter ability may, for example, be used by buildings to make parts of the grid impassable as long as the building exists.

For map generation, the Terrain API object now allows defining the pathing costs associated with each terrain via the path_costs member. This member simply assigns a cost value to each grid defined with PathType. When the map is created, the terrain generator uses these values to initialize the cost fields for the grid in the pathfinder.

Rendering Multi-textured Objects

After adding all the relevant pathfinding types to our API, we are finally able to put all the pieces together and make units move with proper pathfinding. However, there was one minor problem that we wanted to resolve first: While the game state has supported tiling with terrains for a while, the terrain renderer couldn't display them properly yet. In fact, the renderer would only use the texture of the first tile for texturing a whole 10x10 chunk, so all chunks looked like they only contained a single terrain type. Given that this is rather distracting when we want to test whether pathfinding based on specific terrain costs works, we took a slight detour to extend the renderer first. You can see the result in the screenshot below.



Previously, each terrain chunk in the renderer was handled as a single mesh that would be drawn with one texture in the shader. In the new implementation, the chunk is split up so that all tiles with matching terrain textures get their own mesh. For example, if there are six different terrain textures, then there would be six meshes created for the chunk. All of the meshes are drawn individually, but this is practically unnoticeable as the meshes border each other seamlessly. You may have also noticed the lack of terrain blending, which currently makes the tile edges very distinct.

After we updated the terrain renderer, we also applied similar changes to the world renderer (which draws unit sprites). Here, we added support for rendering animations with multiple layers. In the above screenshot, you can see this in action when you look at the castle, which consists of a main layer and a shadow layer.
The main layer is the building sprite, whereas the shadow layer is the semi-transparent grayscale sprite to the left of the building. Previously, the renderer would only draw whatever layer was defined first.

The principle is roughly the same as for the terrain chunks: Every layer gets its own mesh which is drawn individually. Draw order is a bit more important in this context because animations of different units are more likely to overlap each other than tiles in the terrain renderer. Therefore, we added the possibility to insert renderable objects by priority into the rendering pipeline. As a result, all animation parts should now be displayed properly in the game.

What's next?

Now that the terrain renderer actually displays what's happening in the gamestate, we can start working on integrating the pathfinder again. In theory, this is pretty trivial to add, but we'll have to see if we encounter some errors in the implementation.

The next obvious step for the terrain renderer is blending support. This could be much harder as we would have to find a strategy that can handle the blending styles of all the old and new releases (AoE1, Conquerors, and the Definitive Editions all have different approaches). We will probably try to tackle the classic Conquerors blending first and then iterate and adjust gradually for other styles.


You can check more information about Openage by visiting the Official Website, Forums, and YouTube Video Channel. And this is all we can offer for today regarding Openage!