Warsow FPS 1.5 Released!

Jason Padpork, the heroic pig of war, has gone through a complete visual makeover. The new player model has been created from scratch by Matteo Pignatelli and funded by the Warsow community. We believe the new model manages to better represent the character that Padpork is, and to bring the player model up to date with the modern advances in Warsows visuals.


As moving around in the world of Warsow is one of the key skills a player has to master, we concluded that improvements to the movement mechanics were due. The newly improved default movement makes it easier for new players to get a grip of the basics, while simultaneously allowing experienced Warsowians to even further express their art of movement. However, old school movement is still available as a possible movement style.

Localization support has arrived to Warsow. For a game played all around the world, we feel that language-independence is a welcome addition to the global audience of this fast-paced shooter. Warsow 1.5 ships with 11 community-translated localizations (in Russia Russian, Japan Japanese, France French, Poland Polish, China Chinese, Netherlands Dutch, Spain Spanish, Hungary Hungarian, Germany German, Italy Italian and Finland Finnish), and there are many more to come. Warsow 1.5 automatically detects the language of your operating system and uses the localization of that language whenever available. Remember to check out this wiki article for a guide on how to participate in translating Warsow to your language!


In addition to a whole new Padpork, Warsow 1.5 also introduces other beautiful changes to the games visuals. The latest installment of our qfusion engine supports FXAA, a fast and powerful anti-aliasing method which can improve image quality when hardware anti-aliasing methods like MSAA or CSAA are not available or affordable.

Le dream on, the extremely popular duel map known to many as wdm2, has gone through a major facelift with stunning new textures and added details. Additionally, the improved qfusion engine introduces beautiful soft particle effects to explosions and halo shaders.


There are many cool things happening in the world of Linux gaming, and Warsow 1.5 is one of them. We have taken great care to make our latest release run smoothly on the open source radeon drivers, the input code utilizes XInput2, and our shipped binaries are fully compatible with Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian Wheezy.

Server hosts will be happy to hear that 1.5 features a built-in HTTP server that significantly simplifies map downloads by removing the need to serve downloadable files through mirrors.

Full Changelog:

Engine:
+ Feature: added built-in HTTP server (TCP port 44444) to serve UI AJAX queries and file downloads to clients.
+ Feature: added localization support to User Interface and HUD (the language is autodetected at the first startup).
+ Feature: added support for TrueType and OpenType fonts.
+ Feature: distinguish between left and right ALT, SHIFT, CTRL key presses.
+ Feature: gzip-compression of demo files.
- Feature: dropped support for Quake1 and Quake2 maps.
- Feature: dropped support for bitmap fonts.
+ Improvement: entities with active events use distance-based server side culling (prevents fast moving players from suddenly appearing in POV).
+ Improvement: optimized cinematics playback by offloading YCbCr->RGB color-space conversion to the GPU.
+ Improvement: domain names for master servers are resolved asynchronously at startup to prevent slow or N/A DNS servers from blocking.
+ Improvement (Linux): updated input code to use XInput2.
+ Improvement (Linux): hint the window manager to bypass compositing in fullscreen mode.
+ Improvement: increased the maximum number of simultaneously loaded models, sounds and shaders.
+ Bugfix: fixed various audio/video synchronization issues with cinematics.
+ Bugfix: force vertical synchronization during playback of fullscreen cinematics.
+ Bugfix: resampled Ogg/Vorbis sounds had the looping position set to wrong value.
+ Bugfix: editing a democam or adding a new one doesn't break spline paths.

Maps:
+ Improvement: Revamped wdm2 visuals.
+ Improvement: Improved wdm12 lighting.
+ Bugfix: added missing clips to wbomb6.

Models:
+ Improvement: upgraded Jason Padpork player model.

Music:
+ Feature: Added 5 new tracks from Warsow OST.

Renderer:
+ Feature: moved renderer from the engine core to separate DLL.
+ Feature: rewritten rendering backend, GLSL2+-compatible.
+ Feature: GLSL shaders are now loaded from disk allowing customization and easing development.
+ Feature: added support for foliage surfaces and instanced rendering.
+ Feature: added 'soft particles' effect to explosions and halo shaders.
+ Feature: added FXAA support.
+ Feature: added RGB shadowmaps (fallback rendering path when GL_ARB_shadow extension isn't available).
+ Feature: added r_brightness cvar, useful for monitors that are too dark.
- Feature: removed planar stencil shadows.
- Feature: removed bloom.
- Feature: removed r_ignorehwgamma cvar and associated functionality.
- Feature: removed r_lighting_diffuse2heightmap cvar and associated functionality.
+ Improvement: Q3A shader commands previously processed on the CPU are now processed in vertex shaders on the GPU.
+ Improvement: optimized shadowmaps and changed them to use orthographic projection.
+ Improvement: added LOD support to shadowmaps (shadowmaps dynamically lower their resolution depending on the distance to the viewer).
+ Improvement: optimized VRAM footprint on modern GPUs for maps and models using half-precision floats.

Mapping:
+ Feature: added misc_video_speaker entity to steam synchronized samples from the nearby videomap shader with audio spatialization.
+ Feature: added func_timer entity.
+ Feature: added target_relay entity.
+ Feature: added target_delay entity.

HUD scripting:
+ Feature: new drawing commands: drawStringRepeat, drawStringRepeatConfigString
+ Feature: added new set of font commands: setFontFamily, setSpecialFontFamily, setFontSize and setFontStyle.
+ Feature: added #WEAP_INSTAGUN constant.
+ Improvement: improved scoreboard sorting (thanks hettoo).
+ Improvement: upgraded crosshair images to higher resolution (thanks adem).
- Feature: removed setFont command.
- Feature: removed %MATCH_TIME variable.

UI:
+ Feature: TAB-completion of player names in chat box.
+ Feature: added callvotes menu.
+ Feature: added "Watch on TV" button to chasecam menu.
+ Feature: Added Russian, Japanese, Frenсh, Polish, Chinese, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian, German, Italian, Finnish localizations (language can be set manually with the “lang” console command).
+ Bugfix: fixed rare crash in server browser menu.

Console:
+ Feature: CTRL+MWHEEL up/down increases/decreases console font size.
+ Feature: added TAB-completion for "demo", "cinematic", "exec", "whois" and "stats" commands (thanks hettoo).
+ Feature: "imagelist" and "shaderlist" commands now accept glob pattern as an optional parameter.
+ Feature: CTRL+R now does bash-style command history search.
+ Feature: CTRL+C now works in Linux (thanks Kalhartt).

Gameplay:
+ Change: changed knockback from splash weapons from linear to quadratic and removed horizontal distance clamping.
+ Change: changed riotgun pattern from spiral to a more traditional one, with wider horizontal spread.
+ Feature: added cg_gun_alpha console variable to control gun opacity.
+ Feature: picked up items now leave ghost trails in warmup mode.
+ Feature: allow vote changing. The maximum number of changes is controlled with server console variable g_vote_maxchanges (thanks hettoo).
+ Feature: added opcall "specstotv" which moves spectators to connected TV servers.
+ Improvement: improved autojoin balancing (thanks hettoo).
+ Improvement: optimized AI code.
+ Improvement: default movement physics are now closer to old movement style
+ Bugfix: map rotation now considers the current map too (thanks hettoo).
+ Bugfix: maps were always missing one spawn indicator.
+ Bugfix: walljumps had direction bias (more obvious on larger maps).
+ Bugfix: removed silent bits from hit sounds (thanks adem).

SDK:
+ Feature: game modules are now C++ - compatible.
+ Feature: AngelScript 2.28.1.
+ Bugfix: fixed compilation with Clang.
+ Improvement: map models (prefabs) are now bundled with SDK.
- Improvement: C-compatibility layer removed from Angelwrap library.

Linux:
+ Change: downgraded to libpng 1.2.

Download: Linux & Windows , SDK, Torrent
Warsow.net, #warsow, Original Post Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.