News for June 2005

Following on from the previous post,

1. I'm building a new installer using the NullSoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), which seems far more robust than the MS installer.
2. I've checked the dialogs rendering in WinXP and Win2k over the range of screen resolutions, colour-depths, font-sizes, schemes, etc. No problems were encountered. If you are experiencing incorrect window rendering, please send me an e-mail containing a screenshot, and also some info on your OS configuration (in particular, display settings). It's rather hard to fix a bug that I cannot reproduce.

Okay, so far it looks like there are two bugs with release 2.3:

1. The installer fails if you don't have a C: drive.
2. The new wizard dialogs don't render properly on some systems (possibly a Win2k/older problem¹⁾).

I apologise to those affected by these bugs, and I'll upload a fix as soon as possible.

It is done! The installer for L3DT 2.3 is available on the downloads page. Please note that L3DT now includes an end-users licence agreement. It's still free to use, but rights are reserved and liabilities disclaimed (the usual formalities).

The full list of changes may be found on the release history page. Some highlights include:

• Most of the old control dialogs have been replaced by new 'wizard' interfaces. You'll know them when you see them.
• I've polished a lot of the display management code, so the whole thing should feel a bit more tidy. The same goes for the progress bar too.

• Mosaic map support has been fixed for nigh-on everything.
• I've finally squashed the mosaic water-flooding bug, which had haunted my very existence since L3DT release 2.1.
• There was also a bug with mosaic heightfield scaling in the viewer, which has now been fixed.

• The water map can now be exported to a range of different binary terrain files (see list).
• I've replaced the dreadful old 'file preferences' dialog with a much improved tree-based version, which should be a lot easier for everyone to use.
• The file formats for the map group file (*.mgf) and the map definition file (*.def) have been substantially altered. Most of the settings previously in the MGF have been moved into the DEF. The latter is now a C-like script file that is used for both normal loading and saving of the group, as well as for generating batches of maps. Old map group files can still be loaded by L3DT 2.3, but old DEF files cannot.

There is now an official L3DT users' group, hosted by Yahoo Groups. You can subscribe directly to the mailing-list using this cute chunk of code provided by Yahoo:

The layout of the site has changed a little. I have revamped the tutorial, and added a new User support page. I've also re-done the 'getting started' guide to better help new users[Edit: No longer available]. The FAQ has also been updated.

This site still looks a little shoddy in Internet Explorer. If you see the code '⇒' around here, it is because some versions of IE don't recognise it as meaning '⇒'. (psst… )

I'm planning a release 2.3a in a few months to introduce better texture splatting support, user presets for algorithms, some long-overdue user requests, and a few other niceties. Fixes for any bugs will also be included in L3DT 2.3a.

I also have to revise the off-line version of the tutorial. It's hopelessly out of date.

However, my first order of business is to sleep. G'nite.

Grrr… debugging is never fun. Since my last post I have:

• Automated the mosaic scale unification operations.
• Debugged the new wizard dialogs.
• Debugged the map display.
• Fixed the 'save as…' bug.
• Fixed the low-level sea-flooding.

There are still a few more bugs to go. Double grrr!

L3DT 2.3 is now in the final stage of validation and debugging. This might take a week or so.