Title: New release: Kyodai Mahjongg 15.00
Post by: Nao on October 24, 2000, 00:00:00
- [Language] Updated translations : German, Polish and Greek.
- [Music] New song from our favorite composer, Miguel Samiez ! Electric Soul, with a fantastic guitar solo at the end, was first featured on the Kyodai Mahjongg Original Soundtrack CD, and is now finally available in Kyodai itself ! Congratulations for another great piece of music, Miguel ! Stay tuned for more songs from him !
- [Layout] Kyodai reaches his 100th layout. Added 18 layouts from Ernie Polegato (a Zodiac series with 12 signs, and a Chess series with 6 characters), a layout called "Coffee Cup" from an anonymous author, and "One Move" by Vincent Krebs, which originally had no name. The name comes from the fact that it only has one possible move at startup...
- [Great] Finally implemented the layout editor in 3D ! Now, you aren't thrown anymore to the 2D mode when you try to edit or create a layout... Phew ! ;-)
- [Cool] Switched to DirectX 7.0 (previously I was using DirectX 6.1). In the process, the overall performance seems to have improved automatically (I noticed a jump from 95 fps to 115 fps with all options enabled in the background cube mode). I'll try to see if I can implement hardware T&L in the future. But it probably won't help more.
- [Cool] Implemented cubic environment mapping. It is a DirectX 7 specific feature available on GeForce and Radeon cards... And it looks good ! :-)
- [Cool] Implemented emboss bump mapping. It's an effect similar to the G400's environment-mapped bump-mapping (which has been in Kyodai since v11.21), but it works on a lot more video cards. I could have implemented the same effect, but I chose to make it different - now the effect depends on the tileset, which seems to be "carved". Works fine on highly-contrasted (and not too colorful) tilesets.
- [Cool] Added an optional "specular" special effect. This simply adds a spotlight effect at some light angles. Nice effect, and easy to implement. I should have done this earlier.
- [Cool] Modified the status bar to make the text fit in all translations, and to put the layout editor bar in there as well (so as to avoid resizing the screen when not needed).
- [Cool] Now you can switch between games via the menu, without going back to the game selector. Although I still prefer the game selector method... ;-)
- [Cool] Now, the "High resolution Textures" option also improves the background texture resolution (used in the Background cube mode for example), except if you have a Voodoo or Voodoo2 card (where the texture size is limited to 256x256).
- [Cool/Fix] Fixed a lot of long-lived problems in the layout editor... More exactly, the layout name was incorrectly specified in the menus when you just finished saving a new layout. Also, there were a lot of problems with high scores being erased when using spaces in the layout name. These problems are no more.
- [Fix] Hopefully fixed all the small problems with the Shuffle feature in two-player games.
- [Fix] Removed the small lag during Rivers and Slider animations.
- [Fix] Fixed the zeros appearing in the status bar at startup...
- [Fix] Fixed a problem that would prevent unregistered users to play online.
- [Fix] Fixed other problems I forgot about. But there were a few... ;-)
|