fear-announce — Official announcements about new releases. Very low traffic; post by admin only.

[FEAR-announce] 0.3.9 SDK Release

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

Hi,

Quick update, major changes.  The project has been restructured so it 
can scale gracefully:

* All header files are now stored in #/fear
* The modules are organised hierarchically by type

The entire codebase was updated to accomodate these changes.


Download the release from the project page:

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=51070&package_id=44817


Regards,
Alex

[FEAR-announce] 0.3.7 SDK Release

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

Hi All,

Hot on the tails of the last distribution featuring the new tutorial,
there's been another release -- version 0.3.7. This contains a few
significant changes:

     * A completely automated unit testing framework, implemented with
CppUnit and SCons.
     * Reorganisation of files in the module directories, split into
source files, definitions and unit testing scripts.
     * Changes in the module API to simplify interaction between the
interface implementation and the private module (pimpl).
     * Abstraction of XML usage thanks to a hierarchical structured data
container.
     * Support for SCons 0.95.

So there are a few source-level incompatibilities in the Load() and
Save() procedures, but the modules remain binary compatible. Download
from FEAR project page strongly recommended.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=51070


Apologies for the irregularity of announcements to this mailing list.
The cvslog mechanism is broken in our repository on SF.net so
automatically generating the ChangeLogs for each release has not been
possible.   The 0.4.x branch will be sourced from a master tla-arch
repository, so this problem should disappear.  See the fear-commit
mailing list for the details about the changes:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=35227


Thanks for your patience!

Alex

[FEAR-announce] FEAR Source Package 0.3.0 Released

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

--- fear/README ---

FEAR Development Kit
Source Package 0.3.0


This is a preliminary release of the source code package. The 0.3.x branch 
has been in development for months and has seen huge changes.  We wanted to 
get this minimal package out to test the automated distribution pipeline; 
it needs a bit more work ;).  The full SDK with a
windows installer will follow.

This file consists only of the source code for FEAR.  There are no default 
binaries.  You should be able to build the C++ files with Visual C++ 6.0 or 
Visual Studio 7.0 (aka, .NET 2002).  Use the appropriate project file in 
the root directory.


If you want to build FEAR from scratch or with any other configuration than 
Microsoft, get the SConscript files from Sourceforge CVS.


See documentation/guide/Guide.html for more information on what to do with 
all these files.  Only one demo animat called Marvin is included.


Enjoy!
Alex

--- EOF ---

[FEAR-announce] 0.2.2 Release

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

Version 0.2.2 of FEAR has just been released.  All the packages have
been updated.  The existing module binaries are backwards compatible,
although their source has been restructured.  Some of the interfaces
are new or have been reorganised, so the version control should catch
potential problems.


Visit the project page for more information, and latest information.
<http://fear.sf.net/>http://fear.sf.net/


There are no binaries this time, since from the user's perspective the
demos are identical.  The upcoming 0.2.3 release will feature binaries,
since we're planning updates to the Q2 platform and the corresponding
aspects of the framework.


In the mean time, we encourage everyone to compile the code themselves.

- Framework code now depends on the new boost::filesystem.
- C++ framework is now fully portable; it works on:
       * VC++ 6.0
       * MS.NET Compiler
       * DevC++ with mingw
       * cygwin gcc 3.2



We decided to stick with the 0.2.x branch until the jump to 0.3.x
becomes just a step!  Improved features in this release include:

  - Specification
       * XML refactoring to simplify module definition
       * Using XInclude to separate the interface XML
       * Formalised data-handling (declarations and definitions only)

  - C++ Framework
       * Allowed personalised backend interfaces to be optional
       * Updated import/export macros to match redesign of modules

  - Modules / Backends
       * New design pattern for modules and interfaces
       * Defined relationship between manual and generated code
       * Improvements and separation of some interfaces

    ** NEURAL NETWORK module and a perceptron implementation! **


  - Demos
       * Updates to match the interface design changes
       * Simplified code in Pyrophoric slightly

  - Templates
       * Completely rewritten to match new design
       * Factored template functions
       * Simplified the code and xpath expressions

- Tools
       * Quake 2 demo downloader and installer (thanks ham)
       * Module code-generation script with interactive prompt


Plans for 0.2.3 improve a user friendlier Q2 demo, better handling
of module DLLs (lazy loading, refreshing), as well as cross-compiler
intercommunication: ABI compatibility -- this is the tough one.

Enjoy!
Alex

[FEAR-announce] 0.2.1 Release

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

Version 0.2.1 of FEAR has just been released.  All the packages have been 
updated, despite most of the dependencies not being broken by the latest 
version.


Visit the project page for more information:
http://fear.sf.net/


There are binaries for both debug and release builds; you can now run FEAR 
with the Quake 2 demo, so there's no excuse.  This is a great place to 
start!  Read the latest news item for more information.


Improved features include:

- C++ Framework
     * Personalised backend interfaces (more efficient)
     * Persistent appearances
     * Fully compliant with doxygen comment styles

- Modules / Backends
     * Collision normals
     * Visual debug allows animats to glow
     * Simpler turning commands

- Demos
     * Marvin now uses steering behaviours

- Structural Organisation
     * CVS has been refactored to reveal all aspects of FEAR
     * Updated project files
     * Installer sets-up binaries


That should be it for a while; we'll be busy working on 0.3.0 as that has 
some interesting challenges now 0.2.x is solved and stable.

Enjoy!

[FEAR-announce] 0.2.0 Release

[Alex J.C. <al...@us...>]

Version 0.2.0 of FEAR has been released on 2003/02/01.  This was a major 
release, so all the packages have been updated.

Visit the developer page for more information:
http://sf.net/projects/fear


Improved features include:

- C++ Framework
         * Abstraction of interfaces, separate to modules
         * Improvement of design to handle multiple interfaces per module
         * Nested and hierarchical AI architectures
         * Access of modules in architectures by URI
         * Factoring of code, simplification of existing source
         * Organised data-structure extensions separately
         * Clean exception handling

- Meta-Interfaces specifying module interfaces in a high-level form
         * Porting all existing interfaces to XML (Motion has been 
uploaded, check cvs)
         * XML Schema specification is done, see cvs://fear/specification

- XML Schema specification for modules

- Meta-level programming tool to automatically generate C++ interfaces
         * Generic XSLT tool has been coded (according to W3 standard)
         * XSL template for FEAR headers done

- Portability!
         * Core support for gcc
         * Dev C++ project file!

Enjoy!