Newsletter #57 - 3.0 In Progress Again

News

Stick Adventures Online version 1.2.4 has been released! This version adds a ping display to the lower right corner of the game window.

Overall progress for the Loradon 3.0 Preview has reached 97%!
www.ifthensoftware.net/loradon_online/progress/

From the Programmer
Written by Invisible

A general warning to those of you who are porting from Direct3D8 to Direct3D9: VSync is disabled by default in D3D8, but enabled by default in D3D9. Naturally, this will cause Direct3D to stall and will force your program to be capped at 60FPS (probably). While this is probably not a problem in some cases, it can be very confusing if you are comparing FPS results between the two versions. I was quite puzzled when one of our older games was running quicker than a new one.

The font system is finally at a stage in which it can perform all duties required of it. The way in which it handles varying font sizes and styles is clunky at best, but it works well enough to create a demonstration video.

If you are having trouble with grainy sound coming from DirectSound, make sure that you do not have an old version of it's DLL anywhere that the OS might find it. After 6 hours of debugging, I finally tracked down the problem to being caused by an old dsound.dll file in the "Debug" output folder. I most likely put it there originally to make use of a debug version of DirectSound.

Artist's Easel
Written by GreyKnight

iScribble Sketches #15

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

Community Spotlight
Written by pifreak

This has been an anxious few years for many of us in the community; waiting for the Loradon 3.0 preview to be released. It is interesting to see all the work that has been finished and all the features which will make the upcoming game more enjoyable.

In the Stick Adventures Online forums, SadisticusMaxim has posted a comic with the underlying theme of forum etiquette played out with analogies. The title is "The Supreme Generation" and the description or subtitle: "The Battle is Over, but the War is Never-ending." This fan-made comic has inspired some light-hearted comics to follow, such as the spoofs jay and miotatsu created: "The Supreme Parody".  DarkTrinity also posted a comic titled "a Dark Comic" with an SAO setting.

There has not been much activity in the Loradon Online section of the forum, but there are a lot of fun games and discussions going on in the Off Topic section. And, as always, IRC is active and it is easy to join even if you don't have an IRC client. Remember that you can visit http://irc.ifthensoftware.net/ and start chatting with the community and developers! Happy New Year to everyone out there!