Wintermute Engine Development Kit Changelog

What's new in Wintermute Engine Development Kit 1.8

• WME is now available in two versions, Direct3D 8 and Direct3D 9. You can select which version of the runtime should be used in project settings in ProjectMan.
• New option "Hardware T&L" in ProjectMan to enable hardware accelerated transform and lighting for 3D models.
• New WindowEdit tool for editing windows, inventory boxes and response boxes.
• Windows Vista integration support. WME games can now be integrated in Vista's Game Explorer. The changes are too numerous to be listed here. Please see the "Windows Vista support" chapter in the documentation for a detailed description.
• Changes to animation handling for 3D characters:
• The StopAnim() method now accepts an optional transition time.
• There is a new actor3D.AnimStopTransitionTime property for specifying the time it takes to transition back to default pose once animation ends.
• Non-looping animations played using the PlayAnimChannel() method no longer get stuck at final frame.
• New WME crash reporting library which can upload crash details to a database or send it by email. Please upload crash reports so that common crash causes can be analyzed and fixed.
• Optimized rendering speed of tiled images, bitmap fonts and particles.
• New format for 2D actors definition file. It allows you to define any number of named animation sets. The animation sets can be then switched at runtime using the new actor.IdleAnimName, actor.WalkAnimName, actor.TalkAnimName, actor.TurnLeftAnimName and actor.TurnRightAnimName properties. Additionally you can load new animation sets at runtime using the actor.MergeAnims() method and unload them using the actor.UnloadAnim() method. The actor.PlayAnim() method now accepts either a script filename or an animation set name. Basically all this is an effort to make 2D actors handling more flexible and more similar to the 3D actors model.
• Direct keyboard movement for 3D characters now also works for scenes with 2D blocked regions.
• New "Require sound" option in ProjectMan. If enabled the game will not run without a sound card (can be used for games which heavily rely on sound design).
• String tables now accept space as a separator, not only tabs.
• WME Integrator now also supports UEStudio.
• The numpad and - keys in SceneEdit now also work for adding waypoints, not only region vertices.
• Changed the way method calls are terminated (see this forum thread for a detailed description). Since this is a potentially breaking change, it's possible to restore the previous behavior using the "Compatibility" property in ProjectMan.
• New debugging options in ProjectMan. You can now specify that you want to include the crash reporting library with the compiled games and that you want the FPS display / debug mode to be enabled for the compiled games. It's useful for building alpha/beta versions of the game.
• New "copy as is" file filter in ProjectMan, which specifies that certain file types aren't included in game packages, but rather copied to the output directory. Useful for TrueType fonts and AVI videos.
• ProjectMan now displays short help for all the project options.
• New property Game.MaxActiveLights which returns the maximum number of lights supported by video card.
• New property Game.HardwareTL to check whether the game is using hardware transform and lighting.
• New property Game.StartupScene and a corresponding setting in ProjectMan. The standard template now takes advantage of this property instead of hardcoding the filename of the scene.
• New Scene event SceneShutdown which is triggered just before the scene is about to be changed.
• New method Scene.GetLightColor() for querying the color of a 3D light.
• New Game.GetFileChecksum() method for calculating a checksum (CRC32) of a specified file (useful for copy protection schemes).
• New scene methods and properties for querying lights and 3D nodes: Scene.NumLights, Scene.GetLightName(), Scene.IsLightEnabled(), Scene.IsNode3DEnabled().
• New method for storing the saved game thumbnail (i.e. you can now specify the exact moment when to take the screenshot if you need to, instead of letting the engine do it automatically) - Game.StoreSaveThumbnail(). Similarly, the Game.DeleteSaveThumbnail() can be used to release the stored thumbnail.
• New 3D actor methods for checking if an animation is playing: actor3D.IsAnimPlaying(), actor3D.IsAnimChannelPlaying().
• New 3D actor methods for specifying animation transition time for various animation pairs: actor3D.SetAnimTransitionTime(), actor3D.GetAnimTransitionTime().
• New 3D actor property for specifying which channel to use for talking animations: actor3D.TalkAnimChannel.
• New global functions for working with the HSL color model (Hue, Saturation, Luminance): MakeHSL(), GetHValue(), GetSValue(), GetLValue() (requested for easier changing of light intensity).
• The video subtitle files (.sub) can now use the "localizable" form of text ("/string_id/actual text") which means you can localize video subtitles using the string table, just like any other in-game text.
• The Game.PlayVideo() and Game.PlayTheora() methods now allow you to explicitly specify a video subtitles file.
• ProjectMan now provides two actions for files: Open and Edit. Double-click defaults to "Open". These actions use the Windows Explorer file associations.
• ProjectMan now allows you to compile a single package, so that you don't need to recompile the entire project after making minor changes. Right-click a package in ProjectMan and choose the "Compile this package" command.
• FIX: Custom scene properties were not reset on scene transitions.
• FIX: Compiled game packages were sometimes referencing more files than how many they actually contained.
• FIX: The check-boxes in the settings dialog no longer disappear when pressing the Alt key in XP/Vista.
• FIX: When using multiple particle sprites the particle emitter was always choosing only one of them.
• FIX: The engine no longer issues absolute path warnings when working with personal saved games stored in "Documents and and Settings" folder.
• FIX: TrueType fonts are now only registered for WME, not for all applications (Win2000/XP/Vista).
• FIX: Fixed many hard-to-replicate crash bugs reported by users using the new crash reporting feature.