Lephisto : SaraCraft Studio's

SaraCraft is looking to produce a 3D RPG, similar to http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean_%28game%29
It is simultaneously being developed in Linux and Windows, with a strong emphasis on cross-platform compatability.  
The project is still early on in development, although it is just beginning to look like an actual game.

I have added audio in this release using Ogg Vorbis files and OpenAL. Music is streamed off of the disk, 
while the sound effects are loaded directly into memory. 
I still have some tweaking to do, and currently do not take advantage of OpenAL's 3d capabilities.

We have fairly complete naval battles now. 
Players periodically see ships and have the choice to investigate further or sail away. 
After the battle (assuming victory), the player may take the captured cargo. 
More work will be done as I add additional gameplay features such as nationalities and ship crews.

Basic trading capabilities are present now. You can now buy and sell goods in towns, 
as well as capture cargo in naval battles. 
I am making progress towards a more functional (and dynamic) economy.

In order to allow for the trading and the naval battles, I reworked how ships are handled and added a few new ships.
art is complimentary of a good friend of mine: Maja.

Our menu system has been reworked to make creating menus easier for the developers. It also now allows for mouse input.
Someone will still bitch at me.

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Once Maja provided the new model, I had to rewrite the model loading code so we could use it. 
The new code is somewhat of a hybrid between the old system and what is planned for the future. 
For now it still uses display lists, although I may move towards VA/VBO's in the future. 
Eventually, I'll probably write my own model format, like .scm (saracraft model) but for now it just loads .obj files.

There is a new automatic menu generation system, so we don't have to recode a basic menu everytime we need 
to create a new menu in for the game. Rather than copying and pasting code, we can now just pass this menu 
class a few lists and it will generate the menus automatically, cool huh?

The ocean rendering has been updated. 
The actual shore line no longer moves, which will allow us to improve the heightmap, 
since low elevation land won't spend half of the time underwater. 
There are also waves breaking on the shore lines. 
The actual wave motion may change some, but the effect is pretty good in general.
(Thanks to someone in ES IRC for noting that it was not too great, can not remember who)

Requirements:
SDL library
SDL_image library
video card capable of multi-texturing

Config.xml:
This is the configuration file. 
It is now fairly straight-forward xml, loaded with the tinyxml library. 
The Width and Height values should be integers and they determine the resolution of the window. 
Fullscreen should be either "true" or "false" and change whether Lephisto runs fullscreen or in a window. 
VBO should also be either "true" or "false" and specifies whether to use VBOs to draw the terrain or just vertex arrays. 
If VBOs are enabled, but not supported by the video card, Lephisto logs a warning and falls back on vertex arrays. 
The configuration loading code is now much more flexible, simpler, and more robust. 
The SDLParachute should be set to "true" unless you are trying to get a core dump for debugging 
(then set it to "false"). CompressTextures enables ("true") or disables ("false") compressing the textures when 
they are stored in video memory. Almost everyone should be able to enable this setting, but if you have trouble, 
you can try disabling compressed textures.

Game Controls:
 up - speed up
 down - slow down
 left - turn left
 right - turn right
 'm' - display the map
 'q' - Fire port (left) cannons (in naval battles)
 'e' - Fire starboard (right) cannons (in naval batles)
 'c' - abrupt turn-around (for testing)
 'd' - dump player info (for testing)
 'z' - take screenshot
 esc - go to the menu 

When looking at the map, hold 't' and click the mouse to teleport to that location. 
This is just a development feature, but it sure is useful for testing. Also, 'i' will display some debugging information.

Known issues:
- Errors loading files are not handled gracefully
- Some Cities are difficult or impossible to enter
- Closing the game window directly (without choosing "Exit" from the main menu) can cause crashes

Developers:
  Allanis

Contributors:
  VLack