[F4-users] 0.3.0 Released

[J. P. <ja...@37...>]

I have just released F4 version 0.3.0. This is mainly a cleanup 
release, so it doesn't add much new functionality (see the changelog 
below), but a lot of code has been shuffled around. A notable 
omission from this release is the scene management code (Node, 
etc.), which I have removed. The system used in 0.2.1 was too 
inflexible and too tighly coupled to the other services. This makes 
F4 more low-level, but more flexible as well.

I have also moved all of the source code into cvs on sourceforge, 
details are on the website.

My goal for the 0.3.x releases is to develop a distributed scene 
manager. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, insights, or references 
on the topic they would be willing to share, please let me know!

Jason
379

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Version 0.3.0 (08-Apr-2002)
----------------------------

Removed as many interdependencies between services as possible.
The only engine code that is now truly "required" in an F4
application is the core and scripting services, the memory
manager, and the platform and math libraries. Most of the
changes in this version (and there are a *lot*) reflect this
newly enforced separation.

The scene graph system used in previous versions turned out to
be a dead end, and it has all been removed. This release does
not include a scene manager, specifically so I can make sure
that it can work independently of one. As a result, many of the
service interfaces have become more low-level.

The collision service now uses ODE under the hood and supports
all of the ODE shapes.

Overhauled the memory manager, added code to pool small (<4K)
allocations together into larger pages to improve performance
and reduce memory fragmentation. <memory.h> has been removed
from <core.h>, and must now be included manually in each file.
This allows it to always be last, avoiding conflicts.

Upgraded Lua to 4.1-work3, made some performance improvements
in the scripting interface.

A bunch of new work on the I/O service. Mounted filesystems
are now named and must be referenced explicitly during file
operations. Added OutputStream for data output, and IOFilter
for processing data as it moves to/from a stream.

Created a new Text service to handle both font generation and
rendering. Uses code from FreeType2 to generate new texture
fonts on the fly from TrueType or Type1 files, pretty cool.

The StdIO library now includes a .BMP importer, a .PNG
exporter, support for my own .4FNT format for texture fonts,
and a zlib filter for reading and writing compressed streams.

Created StdLib package and started added some basic shape
services for quick prototyping.

Took a first pass at the mouse event handling.

The physics package now provides a ContactPhysics service for
specifying the physical properties for a collision response.

The input mapping code has been moved out of System and into
the StdLib package. Additional parameters have been made
available to control the button<->axis conversions.