0.3

[Lucifer]

Are we ready to start up the development series? Here we are getting the third release in 0.2.8 and still no development series.

What do y'all have for showstopping bugs in the development series? I just fixed the only one I knew I had, the one where the game crashed if you went beyond the playlist in either direction. What else?

If there aren't any, then I suggest we get our newly created QA team some builds to sanity check and push 0.3 out. Since it's our first development series, we need to make doubly sure to tell people this isn't a stable release. It's new to them, after all, from us anyway.

[Lucifer]

Bump.

[Z-Man]

With the old or new sparks?

I think I'll have to fix a bug with the instant chats first, the ones ending in \ get a weird character appended when they're loaded. And the build module's makefile is in bad shape, it doesn't work out of the box, has to be rerun and you manually have to delete stuff sometimes. Horrible.

No objectsions otherwise from my side. We've got all the bugfixes from the branch merged. We should follow a minimal release procedure; that means, an alpha snapshot gets built from current trunk first. The builder keeps the checkout as it is, awaiting reports. If no complaints come in, that alpha gets to be the release. During that time, noone should commit too experimental stuff to the trunk.

Should too many bugs be found, well, we'll see what we do then. Either branch starting from the alpha build workspace, or the release manager can selectively update his alpha checkout to only get fixes for reported bugs. The checkout gets mixed/skewed that way, would there be a convenient way to resore it later (short of tagging it)?

Perhaps someone other than me should be the release manager this time? It should boil down to "check out the trunk/cd build/make tarsource".Of course, I can still do the Windows builds. And RPMs. And autopackages, for static libxml2 linking, you need a prepared libxml2. Argh.

[Z-Man]

Oh yeah. In the view of potential configuration destroying bugs (don't have to be bugs, some settings simply disappear), mabe we should now make it so that the experimental release initializes its configuration from a previous 0.2.8 client's configuration, but saves changes elsewhere, say in user_exp.cfg?

[Luke-Jr]

Someone should fix music/sound

[Lucifer]

Someone should say exactly what's wrong with music/sound, because it works for everyone that I'm currently aware is running off the trunk. I also fixed the playlist bug that caused a crash when the end of the playlist was reached.

Old sparks, the new ones are still waaay too experimental for my taste for release. But they'll be in the source distribution, you just have to configure --enable-particles, which will crash on some systems with explosions, but apparently only mine as of right now. We'll need to note that in the release notes.

Hey, we should have a wiki page for us to collect release notes.

[Luke-Jr]

Shrug, it just only works once every 10 times or so I start the game. Usually, if I listen there's some quiet noise in the pattern of the announcer's speech tho.

[Lucifer]

If it only works once every 10 times or so when you start the game, I'd suggest looking at your sound card drivers and/or sound server (if you run one). Some users (z-man and a couple of others) have reported that it doesn't work at all with arts, KDE's sound server.

Also, it requires sole possession of the sound card, so if any application has it open for any reason (such as kaffeine sitting in your system tray), then it will fail to open the sound device.

Also, try some other games that use sdl_mixer.

Volume is already set at max. There are some other things it kinda depends on. If your computer is too slow, the announcer won't sound right anyway, it gets garbled or all announcements come at once. Heavy load, like what you get between rounds slows playback quite a bit.

And finally, there is no cycle sound at this time. So you're only going to hear turns, explosions, the announcer, and music. I think there's a grind, too.

[Z-Man]

Ok, the backslash bug is fixed, and the build module works much better now. It's no longer managed by a single big makefile, but several smaller ones. Any problems with it should be fixed in the 0.2.8 branch.

I'm currently working on the autopackage build. FTGL is a little problem, it's a C++ library and no skeleton file is available. I guess it's best to statically link it, it's small.

When I'm done, all that is required is
- build libxml2 and FTGL with CC=apgcc CXX=apg++ set
- "make autopackage" in the build module
to get the autopackage build. I'll write the detailed instructions into a README in the autopackage subfolder. When you find that in the repository, everything is ready for an alpha build, as far as I'm concerned.

With the sound, on the rare occasions when my soundcard is working, I have a bit of a crackling noise problem. As if the buffers are not big enough. Are they still configurable in the sound options menu? (Perhaps we should disable those menu entries that currently have no effect?)

[Lucifer]

Hmm, I'll have to check which menu entries have no effect on sound, but iirc, the quality entry has an effect, or did at some point. It should also be easy to make the buffer bigger, that crackling is probably because the buffer is too small. Um, the problem with changing the frequency is in mp3 playback, actually. If the mp3 is 44.1khz and you choose 22.05khz for output, then mp3's playback at half speed. If the mp3 is 22.05khz and you choose 44.1khz for output, then mp3's playback at double speed.

I'm kinda torn on disabling menu entries that have no effect, mostly because its work, albeit not much at all. So to resolve this I'll see if I can make all the sound entries have an effect, that's work I'd rather do thn disabling the entries.

Yes on static-linking ftgl. FTGL isn't available as a package for some distributions, Mandriva in particular.

[Luke-Jr]

If it only works once every 10 times or so when you start the game, I'd suggest looking at your sound card drivers and/or sound server (if you run one). Some users (z-man and a couple of others) have reported that it doesn't work at all with arts, KDE's sound server.

I don't use a sound server. Just plain old vanilla ALSA. When it doesn't work, there's a quiet crackle-like noise when there should be audio.

Also, it requires sole possession of the sound card, so if any application has it open for any reason (such as kaffeine sitting in your system tray), then it will fail to open the sound device.

In practice, I've found that it seems to steal control of the dsp if something else is using it, regardless of whether it works.
Eg, if xmms is playing music, xmms will stop and the crackling noise (or sound) will play.

Also, try some other games that use sdl_mixer.

Neverball works fine

And finally, there is no cycle sound at this time. So you're only going to hear turns, explosions, the announcer, and music. I think there's a grind, too.

Interestingly, I get debug messages for play_continuous

[Lucifer]

Sounds like the buffer isn't big enough. It's actually kinda low anyway, only like 64 samples or something. Slower computer?

[Lucifer]

Ok, now there's SOUND_BUFFER_SIZE. It's multiplied by 512 to get the actual size of the sound buffer. Defaults to 0.5, for a 256 sample buffer. A buffer size of 256 samples fixes the scratchy music between rounds bug for me.

Ummm, that's weird, Luke, that in practice you find arma steals the sound card, because I used to start xmms before armagetron precisely so xmms would control the sound card.

Screenshot attached of a showstopper bug. Text isn't wrapping anymore in the console.

[Luke-Jr]

Sounds like the buffer isn't big enough. It's actually kinda low anyway, only like 64 samples or something. Slower computer?

Athlon64 3200+

Now I don't get any sign of sound...

[wrtlprnft]

Screenshot attached of a showstopper bug. Text isn't wrapping anymore in the console.

Oops, sorry. Fixed.