Darwinia

Platform(s): PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Genre: Strategy
Publisher: Valve/Steam
Developer: Introversion Software

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'Darwinia' - v1.2 Update Patch Available NOW

by Rainier on April 28, 2005 @ 8:44 a.m. PDT

Combining fast paced action with strategic battle planning, Darwinia features a novel and intuitive control mechanism, an '80s retro classics graphical style, and a story concerning a tribe of video game sprites trapped in a modern 3D game world.

Get the Darwinia v1.2 patch off WP (1mb)


VERSION 1.2

- New selection box system:
- Highlighting a unit by mouse-hovering over it will bring up a yellow selection box over the unit.
- Selected programs that are offscreen will be tracked by an arrow at the edge of the screen, pointing to the programs location.

- The Radar Dish code has been significantly improved. Radar Dishes should now behave in a much more solid manner.
- Darwinians will no longer get trapped trying to enter a radar dish that isn't connected.
- The mouse cursor and new selection box system should give you strong hints about the effect of clicking on a radar dish at any time.
- When you are aiming a Radar Dish you will see a targetting crosshair not unlike the one used for the Battle Cannon.
- Squads, Officers and Darwinians will no longer blunder into a radar dish unless you specifically click on it.
- Squads should no longer get split up while entering a dish.
- Two way links should now work much better.
- Darwinians with orders to go into a Radar Dish will now correctly remember their orders when the game is saved.
- Darwinians who are in transit in a Radar Dish during a level save will no longer be left stranded out at sea upon reloading. They will now appear at the base of the destination Radar Dish.

- Task Manager Changes:
- Engineer tasks will now display their current activity and spirit count
- Tasks that have yet to be placed will flash on and off
- The new selection arrows will appear immediately when a task is selected through alt-tab, making it easier to tell which task is which
- If your Squad / Engineer / Armour dies while under your control, you will see the 'Program Terminated' message

- Engineers will now reprogram a nearby Incubator rather than travelling to a distant one, assuming you send them near the control tower. Previously they would refuse to reprogram the incubator, even if you repeatedly clicked on the relevent control tower.

- Added support for other language translations
- Language selector added to Other options screen
- Languages will be loaded from language.dat. We will distribute the latest language packs freely on the Darwinia website.

- Mod system improvements
- Mod authors can now provide their own custom strings, or even override existing strings from the game. Your strings file should be called: darwinia/mods/mymodname/strings_default.txt
- If you wish to provide translations to your custom strings you can also create the file strings_german.txt or strings_russian.txt etc, which will be loaded instead of strings_default.txt if the user has that language set in his options. Note you should always provide strings_default.txt at least.
- stats.txt will now be correctly reloaded when a mod is selected in game (rather than requiring a restart for new stats to take effect)

- Performance improvements
- Optimisations made to Darwinian combat code. Should help during big battles involving lots of Darwinians.
- Spirit code heavily optimised. Was causing serious slowdown after large battles due to large numbers of spirits floating around.
- Laser code optimised

- There are 3 possible rendering modes for Darwinia's landscape, which can be set by the preferences variable 'RenderLandscapeMode':
- RenderLandscapeMode = 0 uses Vertex Arrays
- RenderLandscapeMode = 1 uses Display Lists (default in v1.0)
- RenderLandscapeMode = 2 uses Vertex Buffer Objects
The default has now be seen to 2 (Vertex Buffer Objects), which should be faster in most cases than Display Lists. If VBO support isn't detected, we fall back to display lists.

- New bootloader : Amiga
- Created new installer for the full game using Inno Setup (the install shield installer used on the retail disks suffers from the common autoexec.nt problem under some WindowsXP installations.)

- Altered Bitmap::ConvertPinkToTransparent to reduce halo around the edges of textures that use transparency.
- Increased range of Battle Cannon when it is first given on Yard level
- Modified number of Darwinians required to complete Containment level, from 200 down to 150
- The Construction Yard will now stop producing Armour if there is already five or more Armour on the level. It will resume production when the number falls below five.

- Fixed a very subtle bug that would cause errors to occur (including crashes) if a Darwinian was running away from a grenade. Very rare occurance, more likely during intense battles with lots of Darwinians and lots of grenades.

- Fixed : If you have a Squaddie/Engineer selected and you click select an Officer, the squaddie/engineer task remains selected in the Task Manager. This means if you press ctrl-c, both the newly selected Officer AND the squaddie/engineer are terminated.

- Added a fix for people experiencing a crash during the end sequence (caused by a corrupted saved Ant Hill). This crash would also cause the levels 'Yard' and 'Receiver' to crash occasionally on re-entry.

- Fixed : Crash on startup reporting "failed to get CPU vendor"
- Fixed : Crash that could occur when Armour collided with Armour
- Fixed : After changing graphics options, Trees would sometimes be replaced with a random shape scaled very large
- Fixed : Sepulveda incorrectly tells the user he can upgrade Engineers to build bridges, which he can't.
- Fixed : Darwinians sometimes get stuck running away from a Battle Cannon.
- Fixed : Un-occupied Battle Cannons will no longer scare Darwinians.
- Fixed : Pressing CTRL-C on Armour that was low on health would terminate the task, but the Armour would remain alive.

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