[AC] Decal - Let the storm begin!

[Sun_al-Mage]

Well, The storm has arrived, and it's time to make the announcement.

Public Alpha.

Yup. You read that correctly. Public Alpha, known to the Decal developers as "Alpha 3"

First off, we want to thank all of you who have offered to help with testing. The sheer numbers have helped change our plans a bit. We had originally planned to do another 'private' alpha with more people involved, but with so many of you willing to help, that didn't make sense.

So, what we're doing: We're posting the bits for Alpha 3 so that all the world can get it, but there are several things we need to warn you about!




This is ALPHA software. We're not responsible if it causes your machine to melt down, Krakatoa to re-awaken, R'lyeh to surface, aliens to invade your linen closet, or any lesser catastrophic events to occur should you use it.

Most things work. NOT EVERYTHING. (more on this later)

We reserve the right to make breaking changes between Alpha 3 and whatever our next 'release' is. (That means that plugins that run against Alpha 3 may not run against the next release without update). Heck, We *plan* to make breaking changes (see below).

There is VERY LIMITED support. We're hoping that our current alpha testers can handle some of the support issues.



Now, on the subject of what works (This is mostly for plugin developers):



ACHooks methods work

QueryKeyboardMap works

Old-Style HUDs (IRenderSink) 'sorta' work (Each visible HUD can impact framerate significantly)

New-Style HUDs (RenderService) do NOT work.. yet. (We may refresh alpha in a few days with an update to fix this)

Basic View rendering 'sorta' works. (They look visually right, but are still not as performant as we want)

The V1 Plugin interface (IPlugin) is deprecated, and thus V1 plugins don't work. (We've set the killbit for V1 Surrogate, and that's visible in the Decal UI)

Decal.Adapter and PIAs are included, but only install with Beta 2 of the 2.0 .NET framework.



Now we come to the first KNOWN breaking change that we'll be making after this alpha, the removal of IRenderSink. We've left this mechanism in, even with all of its performance problems because the new RenderService code doesn't work yet. As soon as that's working, and is a viable replacement, we'll be turning IRenderSink off. This lets Plugin developers get the rest of their code adjusted for the other changes earlier, which we felt was the right thing to do.

We may well have other breaking changes after this alpha, but I can't tell you today what those are, as some may depend on the feedback and problems we see from this alpha.

Now, for the information you all are waiting for, where to get it:

http://decal.acdev.org/files/Decal-alpha3-c3.msi


As for plugin availability, expect to see announcements later today from several of the plugin developers.

The Voice of Decal


http://forums.acdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3388

[Ziv]

W*O*O*T

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