Release Notes for Build 115

Release date: January 12, 2006

• This is a tune-up build that corrects some existing problems, most of which are rather minor, and makes various improvements in the sample game module.

• Changed the way that grenades behave in the game module. Previously, the grenade controller determined that a grenade should stop when it collides with something if the velocity component along the collision normal was small enough. This caused the grenades to stick to surfaces if they were shot at a low enough angle even though they still had a lot of speed tangent to the surface. The grenade controller now takes the tangent velocity into consideration and won't stop a grenade that's still travelling too fast.

• Modified the CharacterController in the engine module and FighterController class in the game module so that they allow the player to jump if he is within a certain distance of the ground instead of requiring that he actually be on the ground. Previously, a character running around on an uneven surface (like terrain) would have a hard time jumping because he frequently falls for very short distances and wouldn't technically be standing on the ground during those times.

• Made some changes to the CharacterController that prevents the character from missing collisions with the terrain. However, the character can now get stuck in some corners if you try hard enough. I've come to the conclusion that using a curved surface for collisions against an arbitrary triangle mesh with smooth sliding is inherently non-robust, so the current system is temporary and will be replaced.

• Moved the SpectatorCamera and BenchmarkCamera classes into the engine module and tweaked them a little bit.

• The MarkingData structure used to be nested inside the MarkingEffect, but this was a little unwieldy. It's now defined outside MarkingEffect, so any previous declarations of MarkingEffect::MarkingData need to be changed to just MarkingData.

• Fixed some bad collision settings in the demo level.