** This is a required update **
The third in the Odamex 0.4 series of releases, 0.4.2 brings some long sought after changes that will surely benefit both players and server administrators alike.
Perhaps the most noticeable change for players will be the improved mouse support for Windows operating systems. Thanks to some crafty work from our friends at the
ioquake3 project, we have packaged a modified SDL with the Windows Odamex packages that should remedy the "jerkiness" that you may have experienced with mouse input. However, there's much, much more! Check out a more extensive list in the
release page.
For those that use Odamex as a single player solution on various platforms, the saving and loading functions from zdoom 1.22 have been restored to the engine (thanks to Randy Heit) after being stripped from the code in csdoom. The code went through some minor adjustments to fit in Odamex's more optimized code base. Please report any issues you may experience with this restored feature if problems arise.
The biggest change in this release will be for server administrators as the Odamex team has taken measures to make it less complicated to run certain types of game types. For instance, to run a CTF server before server administrators would need to check that three separate cvars, "deathmatch", "teamplay", and "usectf" were all set correctly. Now, through the use of the new "gametype" cvar administrators will be able to set these modes while only managing one cvar (for CTF, "gametype 3"). Please refer to the
Gametype article for more information on this.
Other neat features introduced for server administrators in this release include the new "shufflemaplist" cvar which enables a random shuffle of the maplist similar to how a music application shuffles a playlist. All maps will be played in a random order until the entire list has been played which can help add new excitement to a known maplist order.
The new "sv_teamspawns" cvar also allows maps only designed for teamplay to be played in standard deathmatch gametype as well as random spawns in TDM/CTF gametypes. Manual flag return CTF has also been fixed for the 0.4.2 release.
The Odamex team would like to remind our users that the Odamex project thrives off of user input, particularly when it comes to resolving bugs in the engine. If you would like to be involved in helping Odamex's development move forward, please take a moment to sign up for the
Odamex Bug Tracker. The team consistently refers to the bug tracker to determine how development should move forward. If you come across an anomaly not listed in the tracker, please submit it! Odamex can only truly succeed with the help of dedicated users!
If you are interested in tracking official Odamex releases more easily, you can subscribe to updates in one of two ways:
1) You can subscribe to the Odamex releases
rss feed.
2) You can receive
email alerts (requires a sourceforge account or an openid).
POST-RELEASE NOTE: The issue with the launcher displaying 0.4.2 Team Deathmatch servers as coop has been noted. Expect a patch shortly.
