It's been a while since I've posted, what with work, a significant birthday (I'm now officially old) and a rather nasty rootkit trojan. So here's a quick update.
First off is a treat from spazturtle: Santa hats for your Goo Balls and a wintry World of Goo Corporation. Mod available at http://goofans.com/download
World of Goo is now out in some stores in Germany a day early, although unfortunately tucked away in the budget section. I bought some copies anyway to teach them a lesson. The moon chapter is conspicuously absent. Hopefully it'll be available in a sequel or download at a later date.
Read on for more.
As far as GooTool goes, here's my current TODO file. I'm back working through this now and I should have a new version out Real Soon Now. I'm hoping to get 1.0.0 out to the world before Christmas together with my holiday level. As always, any new suggestions please let me know in the forum.
MILESTONE 0.9.6
- IMPROVEMENT: Memory usage in About dialog is now updated each time you open the window - DONE
- BUG FIX: Fix memory leaks in closing dialogs - DONE
- NEW FEATURE: command line interface to image l10n tool for the wiki site, no gui
- IMPROVEMENT: dev releases should have the actual svn version in their build filename/about version - may need to separate svn revision into an svn:ignored file
- BUG FIX: addin merging doesn't work on Linux due to windows line endings
- NEW FEATURE: let user save the tower jpgs (and the original transparent one)
- IMPROVEMENT: Rename all remaining uses of the potential racial slur "wog" to "goo"
- IMPROVEMENT: Remember the last used folder on "Install new addin" (xanax@forum)
- IMPROVEMENT: Better error display for Addin installation IOException (xanax@forum)
MILESTONE 0.10.0 (Final beta version)
- NEW FEATURE: Windows installer
- NEW FEATURE: Supported mac version and .dmg package
- NEW FEATURE: File association for .goomod
- IMPROVEMENT: Don't SAVE if unmodified on LAUNCH
- NEW FEATURE: Addin author tool: create addin from directory/create addin from wogeditor
- IMPROVEMENT: Make checkboxes in addin list actually enable/disable the addin
- BUG FIX: Dragging addins below last enabled addin should move it to bottom
- NEW FEATURE: Upload profile/tower to goofans.com
- NEW FEATURE: preference: upload tower on goo exit, or upload tower continuously during play (need to detect when process exits - java.lang.Process?)
- NEW FEATURE: backup/restore profile to website - perhaps just store their last 5 uploaded profiles?
- NEW FEATURE: mark user as cheat - requires X votes or something
MILESTONE 1.0.0 (First public release)
- All bugs from 0.10.x series fixed, no new features
MILESTONE 1.1.0
- NEW FEATURE: Option to check mods for updates on goofans.com from within GooTool
- NEW FEATURE: Auto-download required dependencies from goofans.com
- IMPROVEMENT: strip down bouncycastle to only needed classes
- NEW FEATURE: Integrated ball editor
- NEW FEATURE: Finalise the level editor
- NEW FEATURE: Changing refreshrate in config.txt - NEW IN 1.10? 1.20?
NO MILESTONE SET
- NEW FEATURE: Check for new WorldOfGoo releases
- NEW FEATURE: Drag and Drop installing of Addons. So you can drag a file from your desktop to mod list and install it
- NEW FEATURE: fullscreen preference? Involves editing pers2.dat so maybe not
- NEW FEATURE: Perhaps stop overrides of Drained files, to prevent cheating in goocorp?
- NEW FEATURE: Addin XML: conflicts
- NEW FEATURE: Addin XML: provides
- BUGFIX: Addins build.xml ANT task doesn't work under Linux.
- NEW FEATURE: .deb build: http://code.google.com/p/ant-deb-task/
- NEW FEATURE: mute music/mute all sound
- Login to post comments
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 17:19
I'll look into drupal and see what i can dig up.
I look forward to gootool uploading profiles. I have never gotten around to uploading my profile to whatever that website is that someone made (that sounded really dumb... haha).
Anyways, i think a cool feature would be to compare you to others. Kinda a percentile system
Example:
...
Tower of Goo +21 balls 89 (better than 98%) 21 (better than 80%) 0:48 (better than 93%) Overall: 87.3%
... (other levels here)...
Overall: 84% Balls: 92% Moves: 80% Time: 87%
Just a thought i had. I think it would be fun to compare how well you are doing compared to others. (OCD can only entertain you for so long)
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 18:28
"that website" is http://hell.student.utwente.nl/wog/
And yes I'm hoping to work with maks to integrate that site with goofans/gootool. It would be much more convenient to click "Upload" in GooTool or have it upload every 5 seconds while building a tower, than to have to browse and upload. And I don't see any need to "compete" with them, better for the community to have a single place to go for everything.
There's a fair bit of tower competition on the 2dboy forums, people bragging when uploading new towers and challenging each other, sharing techniques. One thing that I want to do that maks's site doesn't currently cater for is allow people to store historical towers. So you can still show your best tower, or show different techniques you've tried, even if the most recent tower you built didn't work out as well as you hoped.
I have thoughts too on integration with the 2dboy official leaderboards but for now I'm trying not to overburden Ron with requests... let them get some rest over the holidays!
-davidc
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 18:31
Because the official leaderboards are updated after every level completion, they can see "this level was completed with X moves in Y time and Z balls". But GooTool can only see the "best ever" for each of these categories individually.
For example,
I complete GoingUp with 15 Balls in 15 seconds and 10 moves.
I then complete GoingUp with 10 Balls in 20 Seconds and 15 moves.
The profile on the user's disk only shows:
Best balls: 15
Best time: 15 seconds
Best moves: 10 moves
even though I never completed the level in 15 seconds/10 moves with 15 balls.
Which is why goofans can never really show as accurate stats as the main leaderboard and hence the need for a cooperation with 2dboy to achieve this.
Sat, 12/13/2008 - 16:17
I agree, cooperation would be better. And i would love to be able to have a historical towers. Often i will build something in goo corp, and go get better scores on levels and come back and my tower has toppled over.
As for the records, i see your point. However i was just thinking that each portion would be individual. For example i beat a level in 10 moves, and save 30 balls, but take 5 minutes. Then i play it again, going for speed so i'm not careful at all, i take 30 moves, save very little balls, but win in 25 seconds.
My record would be 10 moves, 30 balls, 25 seconds. (even though i never beat the level in 25 seconds and saved 30 balls at the same time)
The other option would be to think of some kind of composite score (and i think this would take coop from 2dboy) that would be some kind of math function that gives you a score based on your moves, balls, and time. But that seems like a lot of work to me, cause i'm pretty lazy.
I look forward to more updates, keep up the good work