Alternate Reality X - Release 0.61 Now Available!

"New" Dungeon gate graphics

Release 0.61 of Alternate Reality X is now available from the downloads page at www.crpgdev.com.

I've switched from Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 to Code Blocks for development and also upgraded to a newer version of the SFML library. These changes uncovered some bugs which had previously gone unnoticed but might have caused players to experience crashes. Compile times on Visual Studio 2010 were much slower for me than the 2008 version and I liked the option with CodeBlocks of using the same development environment and project files to compile native versions of ARX on Linux and Mac.

This release also has a few visual changes with the addition of some new encounter artwork from Ted to replace my placeholder images. I think they work really well and can't wait to see what Ted comes up with for some of the other characters. I've also added some images you might not have seen before from the 16bit Amiga version of the City and the unreleased Amiga version of the Dungeon. Hope you like them.

The main changes in release 0.61 are as follows:

• Switched to CodeBlocks and MinGW for development
• No longer requires Visual Studio C++ runtime installed
• Switched to latest version of SFML 2.0 (downloaded 1st March 2013)
• Improved compatibility for players using Intel graphics cards
• Fixed Bug #019: Offer menu won't page back when offering to Pauper
• Added check for arx.ini configuration file when the game is run
• Flags for Trolls, Goblins and Oracle now correctly included in save games
• Added "Loading..." message when loading image resources
• Added 3 new encounter images from Ted for use with alternate wall textures
• Removed the Might & Magic 6 encounter placeholder images
• Added Amiga City & Dungeon interiors for use with alternate wall textures

With the major changes behind the scenes in this release there are likely to be some new bugs I've not seen yet but hopefully you enjoy the release.

Thanks for your continued support,
Acrin1

Alternate Reality X - Release 0.61 Status

Release 0.61 of ARX will be released as soon as I fix a bug when entering guilds which leads to a crash.

The main change in this release is that at least on a temporary basis I've switched to the CodeBlocks development environment using the MinGW C++ compiler. There were 2 main reasons for this - firstly compile times increased significantly with Visual Studio 2010 from a few seconds for a change to about a minute which was really making small changes very tedious, and secondly CodeBlocks is available on Linux and Mac making native versions of ARX much easier to produce as the same environment can be used across all platforms. The switch of environment has raised a few new compile bugs though which I need to deal with before releasing 0.61.

From a player perspective the other major change I've made is that I've almost 100% dropped the use of "RenderTextures" in the SFML media library. My use of these created lots of problems for players with Intel onboard graphics and a few issues on newer machines I had access to. My code was also messier and harder to debug when I had these in. My new 0.61 version works much better on old harder which I'm much happier with. I don't see why a player shouldn't be able to use an old laptop to play something based on a 25 year old game series just because it has intel graphics.

I've also added code to better handle monster vulnerabilities and invulnerabilies to various damage types. Bit more work to do there though to make it complete.

There are a few new encounter images which I've been sent as well which are included for players playing ARX in a full window. These will hopefully gradually replace the handful of placeholder MM6 images I've used currently.

Hopefully I can have this release wrapped up fairly soon.

All the best,
Acrin1