Version History

For loader version history, see this page.

Major releases

 

1.6 Series

1.6.0 (March 10, 2010)

New features:

  • Gallery system
    • Easily publish 3D models to a searchable gallery
    • Easily publish games to a gallery of games
    • Visual search for assets you can use in your games
  • Dramatically improved file server
    • Server Explorer allows point-and-click file manipulation
    • Support for subdirectories and file copy/move/rename/delete
    • Robust permissions system for sharing assets and collaboration
    • Ability to develop code locally and upload later
    • File mirroring and synchronization tool for easy uploading/downloading
    • Designed to be compatible with version control systems
  • Powerful debugging tools
    • Single-stepping debugger
    • Can pause program and examine data structures
    • Inject data into running programs
    • Log movements of objects
  • Other useful improvements
    • Dramatically improved development environment GUI
    • Profiling and performance monitoring tools
    • Means to implement more-responsive loading screens
    • Means to shield published games from broken links caused by asset changes
    • Support for external HTTP requests
    • General improvements to APIs throughout the system

 

1.5 Series

1.5.12 (January 21, 2010)

New features:

  • Added Rotation.getAxisAngle(), Rotation.newTwoAxes(), and SceneObject.setAxis(), for manipulation of axes in a scene.
  • Added Simulation.getUrlParameters() to receive specially-formatted parameters that might be included in the URL to a pocket.

Changes:

  • Certain core scripts that are only needed when in the Builder will no longer be loaded when you open a pocket outside of the Builder.

Bug fixes:

  • Remove some extraneous debugging output from the sound system.
  • Fix several small memory leaks and possible crashes.

 

1.5.11 (January 6, 2010)

New features:

  • Added Player.recordCheckpoint for anonymized tracking of player progress through game. Also, automatically snapshot the time spent in the game.

Bug fixes:

  • Fix bug in Camera.setPitch- was incorrectly using the old pitch instead of the distance to calculate the angle.

 

1.5.10 (November 18, 2009)

Changes:

  • Improved enforcement of 'invalid' characters in resource filenames.
  • Additional improvements to GUI rendering of non-Latin characters.
  • Decrease memory footprint/increase speed of the animation system.

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed regression in handling filesystem paths containing non-Latin characters. This is most apparent if you have a non-Latin username on your computer; Wild Pockets will no longer crash in this scenario, and will in fact put all your files in the correct places. This also allows saving scripts, uploading images, etc., from locations with non-Latin characters. Note that this is NOT related to using non-Latin characters within Wild Pockets usernames or filenames; those are still restricted (quite intentionally) to a subset of US-ASCII.
  • Results from calling Collider.castRayToPlane() with a non-normalized normal argument are now deterministic.
  • Corrected appearance of tray icon in Internet Explorer with Protected Mode enabled.

 

1.5.9 (November 5, 2009)

Changes:

  • Improved messaging when you run Wild Pockets on a computer that lacks appropriate 3D hardware, or is lacking OpenGL drivers.
  • Changed tray icon to reflect current branding.
  • Add a mechanism to allow Timer.every(0) functions to fire in a deterministic order. This is a stop-gap measure until a more comprehensive system for managing these timers is implemented.

Bug fixes:

  • Fix a crash that could occur if a particle system is created on the first frame.
  • Fixed the builder UI for Gravity as it had been broken. (Gravity itself was working, but the UI was not).
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to render non-ASCII characters in the GUI.
  • Fix scaling of some collision volumes.

 

1.5.8 (October 22, 2009)

New features:

  • The default loading screen is now animated to better indicate to the user that the engine is actually loading and not frozen/crashed.
  • Add "setBounciness" and "getBounciness" to replace the old get/setSurfaceBounce functions which never actually worked.
  • Script classes can now be assigned directly to SceneObjects at runtime.

Changes:

  • Improve error reporting when trying to non-uniformly scale collision volumes.
  • Add Vector:scale to return a vector scaled by a number.
  • Add Simulation.suppressWarnings to suppress warnings matching a pattern.
  • Script mirroring errors/exceptions now present their dialogs via the in-engine GUI, which should solve problems with them getting 'lost' behind other windows.
  • Ability to log in via the builder in case you are logged out (inactivity, etc.)
  • Add 'anchored in builder' property in builder.
  • Added color dialogs to lighting control.
  • In the builder, dragging an object while holding "C" will clone the object.
  • Added SceneManager.isDeletedObject() to determine if an object has been deleted.
  • Camera.setMode() is now case-insensitive.
  • Warn when setting mass <= 0.

Bug fixes:

  • Fix intermittent texturing problems with certain models.
  • Friction is now applied in collisions with the ground plane.
  • Fix crash when invalid values are supplied to setInertiaArms.
  • Fix scaling when loading new objects.
  • Fix various z-ordering bugs in the builder GUI.
  • Fix error if onSceneStart has not been defined.
  • Various bugfixes/cleanups in the animation system.
  • Various scripting bugfixes.

 

1.5.7 (October 2, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Bug fixes:

  • Small bugfixes in the particle system.
  • Better detection of opaque PNG files.
  • Better type-checking in the animation subsystem.

 

1.5.6 (October 1, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Bug fixes:

  • Fixed incorrect units with angular velocity, when metric units are enabled.

 

1.5.5 (September 30, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Changes:

  • Small enhancement to better support clustered Wild Pockets backend.

 

1.5.4 (September 30, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Changes:

  • Removed some incorrect functions from Rotation that were mistakenly introduced in 1.5.3.

 

1.5.3 (September 29, 2009)

New features:

  • Physics calculations on anchored and non-collidable objects are now faster.
  • Added relative velocity support to SceneObjects.
  • Support for Subscription purchases has been added to the payment system.

Changes:

  • Many older functions with non-standard or misleading names have been renamed. The old functions will be left in place, but will generate a warning indicating their eventual removal.
  • "Metric units" are now enabled by default.

Bug fixes:

  • Bug fix to Rotation:interpolate().
  • Various graphical fixes for Intel graphics chipsets. GUI elements and normal maps should be better supported on these architectures.
  • Plug memory leak in physics subsystem.
  • Fix bug that would cause animations to stop under heavy load.

 

1.5.2 (September 15, 2009)

New features:

  • Preliminary support for leaderboards. Design and API is subject to change.

 

1.5.1 (August 28, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Fixed bugs:

  • Small correction to shadow rendering.

 

1.5.0 (August 26, 2009)

New features:

1.5 is a major new release incorporating a wide variety of new functionality. Please see the manual for more details.

  • Payment System

    The payment system provides an easy way for developers to charge money for their games or for in-game content.
  • Centralized Data Storage

    The Wild Pockets servers now include a database where games can store and retrieve data. This database can be used for high scores, saved games, and many other useful functions.
  • Scalable Back-End Cluster

    The Wild Pockets service cluster is now scalable, meaning that if your game goes viral, we can handle the load.
  • Saving and Loading of Games

    Your games can now create and utilize saved-game files on the player's computer.
  • Animation Blending

    The animation system can now blend animations together, allowing smooth transitions and separate animation of body parts.
  • Support for 2D Games

    The physics system can now operate in a planar mode, to make it easier to create 2D and 2 1/2 D games.
  • Performance Optimization

    The rendering system has been substantially optimized, as has the physics system and many other parts of the engine.
  • Particle System Enhancements

    The particle system has been improved, it supports textured billboards and more complex particle movements.
  • Loading Screens

    Your games can now easily provide an elegant loading screen with a progress bar. Loading is now faster, as well.
  • Reliability Improvements

    Wild Pockets now works better on more different kinds of hardware.
  • Basic Support for Profiling

    We now provide a ProfileTimer class that enables you to find bottlenecks in your code.
  • Dozens of New Library Routines

    We have added dozens of string, table, and path manipulation routines.

 

1.4 Series

1.4.11 (August 25, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Fixed bugs:

  • The previous release introduced a subtle resource access error with the new server architecture. This has been corrected.

 

1.4.10 (August 24, 2009)

New features:

  • This release is to support our new wildpockets.com server architecture. No other functionality has been added.

 

1.4.9 (July 29, 2009)

New features:

No new features are provided in this release.

Fixed bugs:

  • With certain video card/driver combinations (observed on late-2007 ATI drivers, but possibly others), the Wild Pockets engine may have crashed on start. This has been corrected.

 

1.4.8 (July 24, 2009)

New features:

  • Animation blending support. See the manual for more details.
  • The library in the Builder now allows for searching/browsing animations.
  • Preliminary support for saved games. Basic save/load is supported, but some additional functionality is still planned. Additionally, the system lacks a GUI as of yet.
  • Documentation can now be exported to HTML or RTF format, for printing or offline reference.
  • Individual meshes can now be addressed by name, and properties of meshes such as color, alpha, and render mode. Render mode can be standard, wireframe, or alpha test mode.
  • SceneObjects can have their rotation and movement constrained along any axis. This allows for 2D games to be constructed more easily.
  • Particle system: added undulate function.
  • Particle system: added spawnuntil function to control when spawning stops.
  • Particle system: added renderbillboards command to allow textured 2D particles that can be rotated.
  • Loading screens: added Simulation.setLoadingScreen function to control the display of the Wild Pockets logo during load. By default, the Wild Pockets logo is displayed until the end of your onSceneStart function, at which point your scene begins rendering. With this function, the logo can be held on-screen for longer while your game prepares, or until such time as your own loading screen is ready to be displayed.

Fixed bugs:

  • Meshes that use textures with alpha transparency can now be rendered correctly. The render mode of the mesh must be set to alpha test mode (see above). There is a performance penalty for this, so it is disabled by default.
  • Script mirroring would fail if it was launched first in medium integrity and then simultaneously launched in low integrity (Internet Explorer Protected Mode). This has been corrected.
  • File save/open dialogs in the Builder should now work in Internet Explorer 8.
  • File save/open dialogs in the Builder should now work on Windows 7 in Protected Mode (Internet Explorer).
  • Shader fixes for various graphics cards.