We just released the first update for OpenClonk 4. It contains almost exclusively bugfixes.

Download here

Notably, the dependency issues with our Linux binaries (freetype and glew) have been resolved. Also, the 4.0 release inadvertently included the development test scenario folders Issues.ocf and Experimental.ocf which will be deleted on update again. Though, as the latter includes unfinished and experimental scenarios, it is still included in the development snapshots.
Also, OpenClonk works on Mac again now.

OpenClonk 4.1 changes
=====================
+ Fix game does not initialize when OS runs for longer than 30 days or so
+ Delete Issues.ocf, Experimental.ocf and Experimental.ocd on install (#1029)
+ Fix Mac builds
+ Fix DarkCastle null pointers and intro (#1034)
+ Fix selecting the clonks via hotkey (#1031)
+ Fix possible block in tutorial 2 (#1036)
+ Fix boomshire's door solidmasks (#1035)
+ Add option to link Boost dynamically (#1025)
+ Use pkg-config over CMake to find Freetype (#1024)
+ Make acid corrode coal and firestone (#1032)
+ Fix the pickaxe creating huge amounts of earth (#1030)
+ Fix update via *.ocu on Windows 7 (#870)
+ Fix issues with Crash.ocs intro (#951)
+ Fix statistics in player selection dialogues ignore linebreaks (#1027)
+ Change a LogFatal() to Log() when loading of a player failed (related to #693)
+ Fix a typo in English translation
+ Move Dialogue to Helpers.ocd to avoid copies
+ Fix save as scenario for Dialogue
+ Removed double Title1.png from Arena.ocf

Even more great news after the 4.0 release, OpenClonk has been nominated for Project of the Month by the Linux Game Awards initiative!

Being nominated is one thing, winning is another … So we need votes, your vote to be exact!

You can vote here by either making a new account on the website, or by using your Google, Facebook or Twitter account. Many thanks for voting and increasing the popularity of our favorite game.

As announced, we released OpenClonk 4.0 on schedule.

Download here
for Windows, Linux

So, whats new?

Content, content, content:

The main new feature in this release is the new Missions scenario folder.
The folder contains 9 settlement challenges, most of which have been created by the hands of the the very master of settlement: Sven2. Clonk-Karl and Maikel also contributed notably to the creation of this folder.

Other than the Worlds folder (renamed from Settlement.ocf) which contains mostly peaceful settlement rounds focusing on simple goals and an open world, the Missions folder contains settlement challenges, often with a story, where all players work together and need to find solutions or engineer technical constructions to solve to reach the scenario goals.

Below, let me spotlight a few of the new scenarios:

Dark Castle

Kill the evil tyrant King Horax in this combat oriented settlement round, featuring a rudimentary AI to oppose the cooperating players. The scenario was announced in this blog before, read the article here!

Acid Drilling

You will have to pump an acid deposit from the other side of a volcano to a basin into your home base here. For the lack of other power options in this scenario, you will have to use pumps to generate energy to power the pumps transferring the acid… wait, what?
Yeah, Sven2 and Newton reworked the pump to be able to generate power: If you pump liquids upwards, you need power, if you pump them downwards, power is generated. The bigger the height difference, the more energy is consumed / generated. Here, you can put this to the test.

The other new scenarios are: Crash Landing, Ruby Cave, Deadly Grotto, Mine Rescue, Frosty Summit, Mount Brame, Acid Gold Mine, Skylands and Golden Mountain

The Parkour and Arena folder has also been extended by a total of four scenarios: Hot Ice, Volcano Escape, Volcano Escape EXTREME and Heart of the Mountain.

The first two have already been introduced in this blog, read the article here. Volcano Escape EXTREME is the same as Volcano Escape, only that the volcano is erupting while you escape, uh oh!

The last one, Heart of the Mountain is a huge randomized claustrophobic maze in which you must find a tiny gemstone deposit and be the first to carry one ruby back to the start, without getting killed by the other players who are greedy for it of course. It is easy to get lost, so every player gets a spray can to breadcrumb his way around the cave system.

Other features

• Quadrillions of bugfixes!!! No, honestly, there hasn’t been any other version of OC for which so many long standing bugs have been resolved. Those visible in the bugtracker are only the tip of the iceberg. The biggest bug hunters were Newton, Sven2, Isilkor, Maikel, Clonk-Karl and Mortimer.
• Oliver Schneider, Günther and Newton implemented a feature that makes keyboard input independent of the keyboard layout. So, you are using DVORAK, Neo or perhaps you are French? No problem the keys stay the same.
• Following some interesting discussions about how to make mining more challenging, Newton added the firestone material to replace sulphur. From firestone veins, you can dig out firestones directly, so you have an early access to basic explosives. Be warned however, that explosions on firestone veins could lead to devastating chain reactions.
  Also, Sven2 changed the pickaxe to not be able to go through granite anymore, making it a barrier more difficult to overcome.

There is much more, but I didn’t mention all the changes since there have just been too many minor improvements to existing scenarios and objects to mention them separately. Some new objects like the grenade launcher (play The Cauldron), giant cave mushrooms or the windbag (replaces the jar of winds) were introduced, Clonkonaut added quite a few sound effects and Newton optimized the installation size by about 20%.

Interesting for developers

• A new, more powerful and and faster particle system has been introduced by Zapper. The particles are rendered much more efficiently now, making it possible to use particles much more extensively. Also, now as the particles are defined in C4Script via proplists, the developer gains more control over how the particles behave. See blog post and documentation. The fruits of his work can already be seen in the release, many particles have been reworked while being converted to the new system.
• An even more dynamic way to create randomized landscapes. So far there was the possibility to either define the landscape through a static Map.bmp or through Landscape.txt for randomly generated dynamic landscapes. Now, Sven2 introduced a third method, Map.c which is even more powerful than Landscape.txt because it is executed as a regular C4Script. It can not only be used to create a randomized map but also to modify the maps as defined in Map.bmp or Landscape.txt. See documentation.
• On that topic let me remind you that, Clonk-Karl added mape, a tool for editing and viewing Landscape.txts, to the repository. They are autobuild on each change to it’s source, see downloads page and manual and previous blog post.
• Solid masks have been reworked by Sven2. Now, solid masks are set independently of the graphics. This, amongst others, enables to use solid masks for objects that use meshes instead of sprite graphics. See documentation and forum post.
• Introduced cleaner, more upwards compatible way to save objects for scenarios by Sven2. If a scenario is saved as a scenario, the objects placed in the editor are not saved into a Game.txt but instead, the objects are serialized into Object.c, a regular C4Script file, in which only those properties are saved which are important for scenarios. See documentation and forum post.
• Mortimer made debugging of future network (desync) issues much easier, he turned the DEBUCREC compilation option into a regular option, so anyone can turn this option now on to log huge amounts of internal debugging data for later analysis.
• Many documentation updates (mainly Newton)

As the last content release lies more than one year in the past, remembering and gathering up all the features that were added during that time was quite the detective work. If I forgot anything noteworthy, please comment or write me and I will add it.

If you made it until here, I’ve only one thing left to say to you: What’s wrong with you, download and play already!! 😉

Have fun!

This is the end screenshot of a failed attempt to conquer the new round Acid Gold Mine, included in the upcoming release. The goal is very easy: Mine gold equal to the value of 225 clunkers,… if it weren’t for the active volcano beneath and the constant heavy acid rain from above… Ah, did I mention the explosive meteorite showers?

During the release tests, it turned out that it became hellishly difficult because of the introduction of a highly explosive material: Firestone veins (red in the screenshots). If there is an explosion nearby, these might become unstable and explode in a chain reaction. The scenario has been defused a bit for the upcoming release.

Gameplaywise, the firestone material replaces sulphur and aims to make settlement rounds more… explosive! 🙂

Finally, it is time for a new major release! The new 4.0 milestone is scheduled to be released this Sunday.

Therefore, we will have public betatests with the release candidate on this Saturday 25th January, afternoon throughout the evening (UTC+1). We meet at the usual place: #openclonk on irc.euirc.net.

The latest release candidate will be available on the development snapshots page. Please report any bugs or issues you may find back to the bugtracker.

The main new content we can present to you are new settlement challenges and scenarios in the new Missions folder. So of course you can play them through alone in single player, but it is oh so much more fun to join us on Saturday! Probably even some of the developers will be present.
If you want to announce that you are coming beforehand, you can do this here in the forum.

So, are you one of those gifted people who can remember all your different registration details from the shareware Clonk community? You know, one login for the German Clonk Forum, one for the English one, one for the League, one for the Bugtracker, one for the CCAN, the Clonk Forge, the Clonk-Center, the Clonk Wiki, the the the… ??!

Well, possibly thousands of forgot-password-mails later, we put this madness to an end! 😉

From now on, you only need to register once in the forum and you will automatically have an account on everything OpenClonk related with the same login credentials. Currently this includes the bugtracker, the blog if you are a developer, the wiki and soon the upcoming league.

Also note that the website has been reworked: We got a new clearer navigation and header now, the download section and the development snapshots page have been redesigned.

OpenClonk finally has functional screenshots again for the whole map, thanks to JCeasar and Sven2! One can make these screenshots in game in the chat mode (Return) by typing:

/screenshot X

where X can be any real number and determines the zoom level at which the screenshot can be taken. It is advisable to keep X between 0.1 and 10. This new feature can very well be used to view full landscapes and here is a teaser for a new World yet to come.

A full screenshot for a new scenario “Spiral” which is yet to come.

However, a lot of new settlement scenarios can already be played in the snapshots, among them Gem Grabbers where you need to collect gems from a series of sky islands. But there is many more to be discovered, so be sure to check the snapshots or stay tuned for the next release!

Grab gems from sky islands.

Over the last few weeks, I wrote a new particle system for OpenClonk. The main difference for the player is that it should be a lot faster *).
Developers now have a new, finer way of defining the behavior of particles which makes more aesthetical effects possible than what the old particle system could provide. I am excited about what interesting effects the scripters will think of.

my test particles

The next part of the article is probably only interesting for scripters, since it explains some of the technical details 🙂

Most information from the old Particle.txt is not needed anymore. What remains is the Name and Facet (to define the particle graphics). The other properties of the particles’ behavior are defined directly in script using a proplist. Here is an example of such a proplist:

var particles =
{
 Size = PV_KeyFrames(0, 0, 0, 100, 1, 750, 1, 1000, 6),
 Alpha = PV_KeyFrames(0, 0, 255, 750, 255, 1000, 0),
 DampingX = 700, DampingY = 700,
 ForceY = PV_KeyFrames(0, 0, 0, 750, 0, 900, -10 * GetGravity()),
 R = 255,
 G = 255,
 B = PV_Linear(255, 0),
 Rotation = PV_Direction(),
 BlitMode = GFX_BLIT_Additive,
 Phase = PV_Step(1, 0, 2),
 Stretch = PV_Speed(2 * 1000, 1000),
 CollisionVertex = 750,
 OnCollision = PC_Bounce()
};

for (var i = 0; i < 500; ++i)
{
 var angle = Random(360);
 var speed = RandomX(5, 40);
 CreateParticleEx("Fire", 0, 0, Sin(angle, speed), -Cos(angle, speed), RandomX(5, 1 * 36), particles, nil);
}

As you might see in the example above, you can animate a lot of the particles’ properties now. For example the size, the color or even the new physics properties like damping or a constant force that is applied to your particles to simulate wind or gravity.
For more information you can have a look at the particle documentation or at the reference for CreateParticleEx.

The old particle system is currently still in place, but you are encouraged to use the new one.

some of Matthi’s experimental explosions

*) The new particle system renders all of the particles of the same type with a single draw call to the GPU, which should speed up the drawing a lot. Additionally the particle physics are simulated in a thread parallel to the normal game logic (moving objects etc.), which might also yield a few extra FPS.

Researchers from the Delft University of Technology, in The Netherlands, are using OpenClonk for a project on dynamically adapting game interactions (example: rope gun length) to your play style. The first step of this project is to automatically collect anonymous data on how you play OpenClonk. This also involves analyzing data to figure out how players play the game, which is in turn very relevant for OC development. Therefore, they (and also we) need as much players as they can get, to compile big piles of meaningful data. More information regarding the research can be found on this blog or in this forum thread.

The research server is now up and running!

Interested in participating? The researchers kindly thank you. Just start playing on this server:

Server Name: TU Delft
IP Address: 131.180.123.41
Game Version: Latest release (5.3.3)

We will keep you posted on more developments about this project.

We got a new stable version for OpenClonk 3. It is a pure bugfix release. Below are the fixes and changes relevant for players and creators.

Download

OpenClonk 3.3 changes
=====================

 + map creator: don't crash when using a template within itself (#534)
 + Draw particles with subpixel precision
 + do not pass controls to disabled cursor anymore (i.e. via SetCrewEnabled)
 + Don't crash on Call()
 + Hold a reference to the temporary proplist used in case of script errors
 + update: Log an error message when extracting the update program fails
 + Make dedicated server compile with fmod
 + Script: continue in a do-while loop jumps to test instead of start of loop
 + Fix #including a definition that has local variables with proplists
 + gtk: Make the window fullscreen even when not changing the resolution
 + Fix missing mouse cursor in fullscreen without resolution change
 + Adapted stone door to open for all players if set team == 0
 + Fix walking animation with xdir=0 (#887)
 + Producers: consume required material (#885)
 + Win32: Mark OC "DPI aware" (#891)
 + Abort SimFlight if no more movement can occur (#914)
 + Fix incorrect reloading of animations (#837)
 + Fixed a typo in Tutorial01
 + Fix Call() in global context (required for ScheduleCall)
 + Attached objects with SolidMask (slave elevator case) can carry objects
 + Fix C4Command::Jump, i.e. jumping as part of pathfinder.
 + Fix snow melting in lava/durolava
 + fix material conversion on insertion into converting liquid
 + Fix SolidMasks not moving objects if the top left of the landscape was solid
 + fix typo in catapult script
 + Cleanup main texture map. Remove unused and duplicate entries. Added Earth-earth.
 + Fix crash when INT_MIN/-1 and INT_MIN%-1 in C4Script
 + Fix sound volume when using OpenAL
 + Comment out assertion on cleaning up script engine after a round
 + Fix an assertion in the network lobby