Hello guys,

First I want to take a couple of seconds to rant about something that irritates me. I follow a lot of projects to see how they're coming along, and I'm constantly seeing posts on blogs, in FAQs, in forums and pretty much everywhere else, concerning people asking when version X is going to be released.

These posts are usually something along the lines of "Don't ask when it will be released" or "It will be released when it's done" or "Asking for a release date will result in a ban".

Well what a lovely way to treat people who are eager to use your product. I see a whole collection of percieved justifications for it, they usually go something like this..

It's rude to ask when something is done
It's irritating to hear it all the time
If we give you a release date and miss it you will be mad!
We don't know when it will be finished
So on

If you have the emotional hardiness of a 12 year old, these might be valid reasons, frankly if I say that I'm going to release someting on a specific date and miss that date I really couldn't care less if a small number of idiots get their knickers in a bunch, the intelligent users will be the ones to benefit and they'll also be the ones who cut you some slack if you miss a date.

So in summary, grow up, stop being so damn pretentious, and unless you have money riding on something (then its understandable) just tell people when you hope things are going to be done.

When will 0.9.10 be released?

Ok so here's the status of 0.9.10

So far all the technical stuff is pretty much done. There are a couple of bugs with animations on the rope that need to be fixed. The last large task is the schemes menu, the menu itself is technically finished, but it needs restyling. I also want to restyle the network game page to make it more obvious that there's an official server to join. (the whole server list thing is confusing in that regard).

Once these two small tasks are complete, we want to do some testing. Uncorr wants to do a week of testing at least, I want to do less, maybe a few days. I'm hoping that the styling will be finished this weekend along side the rope bug fixing. Leaving us with a "release candidate". Once we have that, we'll test the release candidate until mid week at least, so maybe Wednesday. If we find bugs, we have to fix them and test again.. depending on the severity of the bug, this might take 5 minutes or we might want to test for another day. If no bugs are found we may be able to release on thursday, if they are the release will come after they are confirmed fixed.

Either way, it's very close. I'm hoping for a release next week some time before friday. But we'll see.

There are some new features in there that no one really knows about yet, I can't wait for you guys to discover them. :)

So, you wanted a progress report and here it is.

- 0.9.10 will run on a new central server, this server will allow you to register a name and an account (or login with your existing hedgewars.org name) meaning we can begin to award rank, track stats, and award in game prizes for good performance.

-We're introducing something called game modifiers. you can see a screenshot of these here
These will modify the game in some way, most of them are self explanatory. They can be saved like weapon sets, and the framework allows us to very easily add new modifiers.

-Utility crates, these are a new kind of crate drop that contains "utilities", these are activated like weapons, and currently includes low grav, laser sight, extra time, 1.5x damage, forcefield. Screenshot of crate here

-Girders reworked. I didn't like how girders were playing out, people tended to use them to block others in, or to hide and prolonge the game. So they've been modified. Now you can lay as many girders as you have ammo, during one turn and the girders don't end your turn! However, you can only use a girder a short distance from your Hedgehog.  This means that girders will now work as a mobility weapon, allowing hogs to get into better positions to make a shot, or to bounce shots off of a nicely placed girder.

-New themes, there is now a halloween, cheese and castle theme. As well as updates to the old themes. Screenshot of castle theme here

-New maps, lots of new maps in this version. Here's a couple of screenshots, here and here

-Lots of frontend modifications to make it prettier/more usable

-The engine can now load demos without loading the frontend, meaning demos can be loaded easily with file association. Soon you'll be able to just download and run demo files from the website to view games.

-New hats, lots and lots of new hats, including a complete street fighter team, woo! Screenshot here

-New terrain options. Now you can select from a number of different terrain generation options, enabling you to generate all types of terrain in different sizes, large maps support many more hedgehogs than previous versions

-A whole load of other stuff, tweaks, fixes, other features.. but I've listed enough for now.


Almost all technical parts of 0.9.10 are complete, we have a few tweaks here and there to finish, and then it's release time. We're very close.

(Wrapup written by Nemo).

The first semi-final match between unC0Rr and Andrey was an excellent display of elegant Hedgewars.  Andrey won the coin toss.  Almost every single move resulted in a hedgehog knocked into the water with firepunch, whip and dynamite.  Two wasted moves by Andrey, one due to a missed drill, resulted in unC0Rr winning with 2 hogs remaining.

The second match was considerably longer.  Placements were more difficult, unC0Rr had a trapped hog and a case of the nerves, the toothbrushes of the bath theme made water knocks a tricky matter.  Game dragged on with use of planes, dynamite and cake until it was down to 2 hedgehogs, unC0Rr at under 30, and Andrey at 100+.  unC0Rr skipped for a while, Andrey built himself a little hideout.  Finally unC0Rr attempted a teleport to above Andrey, and missed the attempted crate collection.  He was saved by Andrey slipping up on roping amidst pixels.  Rather than attempt a baseball bat, unC0Rr went with watermelon bomb, which dropped down through the pixels, leaving Andrey battered, but alive to finish off unC0Rr with a slow UFO.

The third match was a more typical one.  Both send a hog into the water on their first turn, but Andrey picked up a crate with a watermelon while doing so.  That, combined with a clever drop of a mine down a drill hole by unC0Rr that unfortunately did not reach Andrey, and a later missrope by unC0Rr due to a few pixels resulted in the final match going to Andrey by one hog.

The final matches between Mkk-Bote and Andrey were vigorous, but Andrey clearly had the upper hand.  Once again, Andrey won the coin toss the begin the first match.  A less than optimal dynamite placement by Andrey was not enough to compensate for some misropes and wasted turns by Mkk-Bote.  Andrey finished the match with all 4 hogs remaining.

The second match was a little closer, Mkk-Bote had the start, and the terrain was low.  A good start by Mkk-Bote using multiple switch hedgehogs to move his troops out of harm's way and a nice use of drill low and close to surface for a water knock was not enough to compensate for a later miss with baseball bat, and then a misplaced dynamite on that same 70 health hog.  Andrey batted Mkk-Bote in from exactly the same position.   A final cake sacrified one of Andrey's 2 remaining hogs to finish off Mkk-Bote and give Andrey the championship.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the play in these finals, especially the first round of the semi-final which showed some good use of mines to open up girders and dynamite for knocking into water.  Andrey's victory was not merely the luck of placement, but also excellent strategy and good use of his weapons with only a few mistakes that were not serious enough to prevent a final victory.

                                      

I was bored,

Using 30 seconds of my time in 3dsmax, and augmented reality software, I came up with this:





The video is a fraps recording of my webcam, nothing more, I can rotate and play with the piece of paper and see the hedgehog move in real time, lots of fun!

Well we've finished up round 2.

Congratulations to Kaan, MkkBote, thomas, unC0Rr and Andrey for making it through.
It's time for round 3 to begin.

You have from monday the 2nd of march through until sunday the 8th to play round three. The tournament ladder has been updated (clear your cache if you don't see it) and as always I don't mind people beginning their matches early and playing today.

Good luck to everyone :)