Update Mechanism

There are scripts now for updating the EDM files. This means that you can keep your binaries up-to-date quickly and easily, without downloading a 40MB+ archive every time, without copying old config files around, etc... :-)

Updating currently works on Unix. The shell script is included in the download, or you can get it here. When run from an older edm-bin folder, it will try to "boot-strap" by extracting the timestamp from your binaries.

New Maps

2 tiny new maps by XBraten92 added. Desertstation works best for 1vs1 matches, strategy is for 2 to 3 players.

Demo Recording

The Demo recording & playback code I wrote works fairly well now, but probably needs some testing. The new commands are:

/demorec filename - record a demo
/demoplay filename - play a demo
/demospeed - set demo speed while playing
/demostop - stop demo recording / playback

Demos are not videos of any kind, but instead game events are recorded and played back by the engine. This makes the resulting files very small. Pretty much every event gets recorded, even editing can be recorded to a file and played back. This could be used for tutorials, for example.

If you record something interesting, you can send the file to me. I want to select 3 or 4 nice demos to be played on program startup.

Glassy News

Dikbuik contributed code which renders glass more efficiently on ATI cards. I added sphere mapping and a new texture to it, which gives a kind of reflection effect (which looks nice, and works even on the oldest graphics cards). The sphere mapping can be turned off with /spheremapglass 0. I solved the Z-Fighting with glass planes overlapping geometry.

ATI 'Slowness Bug'

Today Dikbuik and me located the issue which caused a GREAT slowdown on ATI cards. It's amazing what you can do with someone who can read, use a keyboard, and can actually REPRODUCE the bug.

In case anyone was wondering, the game was NOT supposed to run with 17 FPS on a modern card. This bug apparently affects some ATI cards only. A workaround is to set /noglass 1, which will be enabled for ATI cards by default until this bug is fixed.

The Message Board

...is now open, thanks to gimi and benjamin for writing it from scratch!

New Teamplay Code

Rewrote the Teamplay code. New features:
- team spawn points
- map config can define any number of teams, assigning them index, color, team player model and team description
- server keeps track of team score
- in teamplay mode, players must join an existing team to be able to spawn
- colored HUD

Menu Restructuring and new GUI dialogs

The in-game menus were restructured, especially Editing; Graphics and Input Settings dialogs were added. Thanks Abbath for lots of GUI scripting work & suggestions.

New Map

Trial-Pit: Small, vertical metal-themed DM map by Abbath

Last days' Changelog

bug fixes
- fixed 3rd person mode crash
- fixed disappearing bumper entity bug
- fixed particle init (OK for now)
- fixed stacked dynmapmodels velocity not-a-number bug
- fixed incorrect "you got the quad" msg
- owner of dynmapmodel explosions set correctly
- wrote temp. fix for world suicide bug.
- gamespeed works again
- changed radar item icons which looked like players

gui changes
- separate mouse sensitivity option for gui
- scripted widgets can add their own properties with /newproperty
- map vote dialog which is shown on end of game
- teamselect dialog

other new features
- server now makes putfile/sendmap backups.
- new command /getcfg gets the map config from the server and loads it
- editing: holding shift while texturing textures all faces
- fixed entitity position indicators in editmode
- enhanced scoreboard
- tweaked bouncing gibs code
- added teamstarts in castle map
- stepping sounds
- smoother earl built-in camera updates
- updated the editing quick guide a bit.

New Map

Twin Towers by Abbath & Wasda is finished. It is a dark, tech-themed, fast-paced symmetrical space map for Deathmatch and Teamplay (mode 3). Two teams are defined with their own spawn points at the red and blue tower. The map has a few dark corners and "special" places to sniper and camp in. Also features "bumpers" - watch your step! ... (Hi-Res Screenshots)

Last days' Changelog

Changes in the last few days: (incomplete list - I never write everything down, lazy me :)

bugs
- dynent/player collision bug fixed.
- gamespeed/fps display bug fixed.
- rendermd2 scaling fixed
- dynmapmodel negative model no. crash fixed
- fixed issue with laser tripmine placement (works better on floors now)
- fixed sky texture not being drawn.
- water: "respawn in water, drown again" bug fixed
- particles startup crash fixed
- 2 minor sound bugs fixed
- better water physics
- added stacktrace code to ded. server

gui
- window snap
- flex keyboard input handling implemented
- started textinput widget with new console-style tab completion. (use /showdialog textinputtest)
- added Sound Setup config dialog (Settings menu).

engine
- less z-fighting with editmode selection
- added socket timeout in edm_ping tool + enet. fixes bug which caused /updatefrommaster to hang when net connection flaky. (reported by phil)
- scripting: at and listlen commands handle quoted strings, eg. "at [ [word one] [word two] ] 1" would return "word one".
- CTRL+G toggles mouse+kbd grab. new var: input_isgrabbed

gameplay
- made barrel dynmapmodels explode when shot. they respawn after some time at the map entity's position. This way, players
can build (and destroy) ways to places which would otherwise be unreachable. See map watertest for an example (push the barrel near the red light to reach the quad damage).
- walk bobbing

Misc

- Bouncing gibs - squirmy meat things like in Quake :)
- Misc. changes to make the code more BSD friendly (I hope)
- Network protocol changed; clients must update to connect to test server

Clipping Bug Fixed

I fixed a serious (and rather stupid) bug related to clipping today. It also affected lighting (bad clip planes).

Missing Models uploaded

The hudgun model for the E.A.R.L. and the Sticky Note model were missing because of an upload error. I didn't notice because I had local copies... If you see any strange messages like "Model Error" or something, tell me please.

64-bit cleanups

Code should now compile without too many warnings for x86_64, with gcc 4.0.3 as well as 3.x.

Jumppads - Jetpack

The Jetpack doesn't smooth out Z velocity any more, so the Jumppads should now push you the same amount whether you have the Jetpack or not which makes the Jumppad behaviour more predictable.

New Weapon

EDM has a new weapon. It is similar to Unreal's Redeemer, but it works slightly different and isn't quite as strong. Attack (mouse button 1) fires a slow moving rocket which you can steer by pointing. Secondary fire (/altattack, new!, bound to mouse2 by default) fires the same rocket but you can steer it from the rocket's built-in camera. An Ammo Pack gives you 2 of those rockets. Place this entity with /newent earlammo. You can carry at most 6 E.A.R.L. rockets at once. There's a rocket pack hidden in Castle but I don't say where. ;-)

(BTW, E.A.R.L. stands for "Enhanced A-something Rocket Launcher". If you have a better name, or you know what the A stands for, tell me. :-P)

I use Sabretooth's rocket launcher model for the HUD, which would have been overkill for the normal rocket launcher but fits quite good for the E.A.R.L.

In-Game Menus

The menu is being rewritten for the new UI, and is currently incomplete. So if you don't find an option in the menu, use the console instead if you can.

Dynents bug fixed

The bug where dynents didn't move properly in edit mode should be fixed now.

Server Ports Changed

The EDM server ports are changed so that Sauerbraten and EDM servers can now run on the same machine (user request). The masterserver should be working now.

Sticky Notes

This is a feature that probably no first person shooter had before: Post-It Notes! :-) Leave a message for your friends (or enemies) to read... Notes have your name and a custom message written on it. To make one, enter "/postnote your message" at the console (T key). 3 notes are allowed at once, per player. You can remove notes you wrote by shooting them. Notes are especially useful in Coopedit. And they look like this. :-)

EDM GUI in development

Flex is a GUI/windowing system I wrote several years ago. It was planned to be a cross-platform GUI development kit. The standalone version had graphics drivers for SVGAlib, SDL, and OpenGL. It features translucent windows, flexible positioning of primitives, the ability to create and clone Window Groups, and it aims to be both resource efficient and easy to use for the programmer (and for the user of course ;). Now, development on Flex continues as a scriptable in-game GUI for EDM. Source code is available under the BSD license. Some screenshots are here.

Documentation Section

Documentation will be available here. Some info about Mapping and the Flex GUI is already there.

Site online again

After a long pause, this website is up again... It is now hosted on a dedicated server together with the game server. You can get files from the Download page as before.


Old News