[tsc-devel] [ANN] TSC 2.1.0-beta1 released

Marvin Gülker | Mon, 16 Dec 2019 21:25:47 UTC

Dear List,

as the project lead of The Secret Chronicles of Dr. M. (TSC), I am 
pleased to announce that the first beta release of the new TSC version 
2.1.0 is now available. The release has been tagged on the Git 
repository as v2.1.0-beta1 and has been uploaded to our web server. 
The source code can be found at the following URLs:

Source code:     https://ftp.secretchronicles.org/releases/TSC-2.1.0.beta1.tar.gz
PGP signature:   https://ftp.secretchronicles.org/releases/TSC-2.1.0.beta1.tar.gz.sig
MD5 checksum:    6cad7277f34864ac09cd36f95a03885
SHA256 checksum: eb142df2c65f270d517771e72a9d60d167022c98d40fc0eea61894ca2b3e2a9b

The TGZ file has a total size of 237 MiB. Please consider this before 
downloading.

Precompiled versions will be made available soon via the website.

                      Why did this take so long?

TSC is a project entirely driven by volunteers in their free time. We 
all know that free time is scarce. TSC has a massive code base written 
in C++ over a course of now more than 10 years, as it builds upon the 
original codebase of Secret Maryo Chronicles (SMC). The inherited 
code's quality is rather poor and it is difficult to work with this 
inherited code.

                          What has changed?

Our last stable release was version 2.0.0 in 2015. Since then, lots of 
improvements have been made to the game. A detailed listing can be 
found in the file CHANGELOG in the source tarball, and even that 
listing does not include all the improvements. These are the 
highlights:

* Several new background music tracks
* Switched some SMC graphics for original TSC ones
* New enemies: Larry and Doom Larry, which fuse and ultimately explode
  if hit
* Improvements to level scripting
* Editor UI overhauled
* Levels load much faster compared to 2.0.0
* Secret Area markers are available in the editor
* New in-game scripting console on pressing [F7]
* Several bugfixes
* Upgrade CEGUI dependency from 0.7.9 to 0.8.7
* Support for and requirement of a C++11-capable C++ compiler

The CEGUI upgrade deserves a separate mention. CEGUI 0.8.x broke their 
API and as more and more people do not have access to the outdated 
CEGUI 0.7.9, it was necessary to conduct this upgrade. This upgrade 
however bound so many of TSC's team resources that the 2.1.0 release 
ultimately ended up with fewer new features than it was originally 
intended. Now that the upgrade has been done it should be much easier 
to compile TSC on modern Linux distributions than it was the case with 
the old 2.0.0 stable release.

A feature that will sadly not make it into 2.1.0 is a story. We have 
adopted a final story draft for the future of the game, though. It 
can be found here: <https://github.com/Secretchronicles/documents/raw/master/gd/documents/pdf/18-001.pdf>

                When can we expect the final release?

The current plan is to release the final 2.1.0 version early in 2020.

                   What happens in the Beta phase?

The beta phase is intended to polish the rough edges of TSC. No new 
features are introduced into the game anymore, but any bugs found will 
be fixed. Additionally, the following changes can happen:

* Addition of new static assets, namely of music and static images
* Addition of translations
* Addition of new levels
* Fine-tuning of the build system (this is not a user-visible aspect)

We reserve the right to make other changes as required if an urgent 
need arises.

                    Can I help TSC as a user now?

Yes, you can! Please set yourself into possession of a copy of TSC and 
play the game. Report any bugs found either here on the mailing list, 
on the forum, or directly on our bug tracker at 
<https://github.com/Secretchronicles/TSC/issues> (requires a GitHub 
account).

Please make levels and submit them for inclusion into TSC 2.1.0 here 
on the forum. As of now, the levelsets of TSC 2.1.0 and 2.0.0 are 
nearly identical. The TSC team depends on the submission of levels by 
users as the work on the C++ code does not leave much time for the 
creation of new levels. The TSC team especially welcomes work on 
levels that implement parts of the aforementioned story draft.

  -quintus
  On behalf of the TSC team.
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