Tavli 3d / News: Recent posts

In this version the option to play a match against the computer has been added (in either one of the games or by cycling through all of them).
There are, also, new (textured)models for the pieces which should fix a bug present in some cards(all pieces appeared to be white).
Last but not least, the windows version should no longer display a pop-up console window while playing.

Other than the in-game changes, in this release there is no pre-compiled binary and rpm package.
Both of them relied on the fact that I kept four distros installed in my system only for the shake of making these packages. So my apologies to anyone that will miss them but I cannot produce them anymore. The compilation though is standard,easy and bound to succeed in any system that has the proper dev libraries(which are very common anyway).

Tavli3d 0.3.3 is now released.
This version brings a lot of changes, mainly in the code,
but also a few important ones in the game itself.

In-game changes are:
Dice rolls display correctly the numbers rolled.
Dice get rolled on normal view now and stay there.
Framerate is now adjusted automatically
(player gets now to adjust the maximum fps).
Any scenes with frame-related duration, have now
a constant duration, regardless of framerate.... read more

Framerate adjustement could result in a negative delay. This number wrapped around(it is unsingned) and resulted in infinite delay, Thus the program was not responding, if maxfps could not be reached.

This could affect both the linux and the windows version.

The windows Version had an issue with dice rolls.
It was trying to get results from /dev/urandom (which of course doesn't exist) so all rolls were doubles. Now rolls(under win) are based on srand and rand calls, which should provide random results.
This version is still in beta-testing.

This release exists only for beta testing purposes. It is not recomended to download the windows version, since it is only tested to work under WINE and not under any real windows systems.
The source code though, should compile and run normaly under any linux systems. So if you want the linux version, you can either wait for the normal release(which will include deb and rpm packages) or download this.
News about changes in this version will follow as soon as the final release comes out.

Due to busy schedule, development has stopped for the last month or so, and it will be about another month before I have time to spend on it again.
I'm just writting this to avoid the misconception that the project is dead.
Changes in the next versions will probably incorporate a functional multiplayer mode. A lot of work has to be done on the A.I. part too. And of course there is endless space for performance tuning. If anyone has any ideas, suggestions or any opinion related to this project please either drop me a mail or post in the forums.

This release is a mix of bugfixes, minor enhancements and options enrinchement.
Also, now tavli3d uses ALSA for sound.
(though it is still possible in compilation to use OSS, if ALSA libraries or headers are not found)

Most notable bugs that were fixed are:
1)/dev/dsp open check which in failure caused random dumping on terminal(though this is irrelevant, now that ALSA is used)
2)fixed resolution check .If game resolution was greater than that of the root window BadValue error occured.(now game resolution gets truncated in order to avoid the error)... read more

Starting from 0.3.1, RPM packages will be made available for every release. The packages have been tested with Mandrake 10.0 and Suse 9.3

This release addressed issues in configuration and thread termination.

More specifically, libpng and libvorbisfile require extra linking in order to be found during configuration. Though they were recognized in some distros, in some other they failed to link.
Now they should work on all distros.
Also all threads were terminated with calls to exit. Though this worked fine in Ubuntu and mandrake, it caused crashes and hangups in slack and suse. Since no functions were registered with atexit or on_exit, all calls to exit have been replaced with calls to _exit(which executes as expected everywhere).... read more

This release brings minor changes in the game but major ones in the code.
As far as the game is concerned there are two major differences.
First, the models have been updated (board and pieces). And as of this, positioning has been fixed.
Second, /dev/urandom is used for dice rolls(if present). The old srand(), rand() combination didn't perform really well, but now dice are really random.
As far as the code is concerned, there are many changes, in the direction of making the game multiplayer.
1) with the source realease you will find a server script in python, which almost does the job.
2) The client(the game) has now the appropriate menus and all the functions needed, to handle connections.... read more

This release fixes a few bugs of the previous ones.
Most important is the picking of finished sound threads(the previous release didn't perform this, so the huge number of threads could probably create unpleasant problems,though none was noticed).
Also a few illegal moves that were allowed in plakoto and fevga have been fixed and now cannot be performed.
Last but not least, a console has been added(which for the time being is useless but will be of use as soon as multiplayer mode is added).
Next focus is multiplayer.

Starting from 0.2.1, debian packages will be made available for every release.

Sound has been added (through /dev/dsp).
Added dependecy for libvorbisfile.
At last, the dice are rolling...

Tavli consists of three games:
Portes,plakoto and fevga.
As of release 0.2 all three games have been implemented and are fully playable.
A tutorial section has been added were the specifics of each game are explained.
Generally, the game is now a lot more polished and slowly enters beta phase.