New maintenance release available for Tartar Stage 3 news

Sound

• Stereo image is more pronounced with stereo separation computation "copied" from Hexen source, replacing original MBF code, and slight volume adjusment applied to sound sources behind the player
• WAV format sound effect lumps with "metadata" are now supported
• Native Doom format sound effect lumps with big-endian headers are now supported (these are found in some PWADs originating from Mac computers, in particular old versions of Wolfendoom)

Gameplay changes and bugfixes

• Game no longer crashes sporadically after loading a WAD that references a non-existent flat lump
• Intermission text is no longer cut off completely if a line which is too long to fit on the screen is encountered
• "Tall" sky textures (e.g. 256 pixel and higher) that have two "posts" per "column" are rendered without a "tutti-frutti" horizontal line
• "Tall" sky textures are no longer vertically misplaced
• Dehacked patches for PWADs originating from Mac computers can now be read, e.g. those for Wolfendoom
  (CR-terminated lines are supported and sporadic '\0' characters are ignored)
• Leaving map via a "death" (or "suicide") exit starts next level at "pistol start", does not leavel player in a "zombie" state
• New configuration propertry hide_weapon_on_flash has been added, designed to be used exclusively from OPTIONS lumps inside PWADs.
  The value is a per-weapont-type bit mask (as per weapontype_t enum) that has set bit in case when weapon main sprite has to be suppressed when weapon flash is displayed.
  The intended use is with compatibility WAD-s for Wolfendoom, where this addresses weapon sprite issues the PWADs have.
• Intermission text display has been shifted a few pixels to the left to accommodate for longer strings in some PWADS
• New intermusic property has been added to MAPINFO to select particular song to play during intermission (outtro) screen
• New set of "boss action" properties has been added to MAPINFO following UMAPINFO standard as an example.
  Code for these properties needs preprocessor definition BOSSACTION to be compiled in, which is set by default.
• bossaction_clear when present and set to anything but false cancels any "boss action" on the map;
  takes precedence over all other "boss action" properties
• bossaction_thingtype decimal thing type of the monster that acts as the boss of the map;
  only a single type of boss per map is supported
• bossaction_linespecial special line type
  corresponding to the effect to trigger when all the level bosses are dead
• bossaction_tag sector tag to apply the effect defined by bossaction_linespecial to;
  only a single special sector per level is supported; vaue of 666 is used if omitted or in case of 0

Here's an exmple of MAPINFO lump with these new properties:

[level info]
levelname=The Dam
levelpic=CWILV05
nextlevel=MAP07
skyname=SKYOR
partime=240
music=THE_DA
intermusic=DM2TTL
inter-backdrop=WWATER
endofgame=true
intertext=M6TEXT
bossaction-thingtype=16
bossaction-linespecial=23
bossaction-tag=69

Extras

• Hydrosphere.wad "helper" WAD is included with the release. Look for it under GOODIES\TAPE directory.
• KDiKDi_A.WAD "helper" WAD has been updated to reflect better "tall" sky textures supported by the source port.
• "Helper" WADs have been included for the following PWADs form Wolfendoom PWAD Collection,
  that adress weapon sprite issues:
  • Fist Encounter (aka Wolfendoom) - wlfgfx.wad
    also fixes Aftermath by Bruce Ryder
  • Second Encounter - 2nd_enc.wad
  • Treasure Hunt - hunt.wad
  • Die Fuehrer, Die - die.wad
  • Astrostein ep1 - astro.wad
  • Astrostein ep2 - astro2.wad
  • Astrostein ep3 - astro3.wad
  • Totenhaus - toten.wad
  • Operation Eisenman - eisen.wad
  • Atctic Wolf (original) - gfx1.wad and gfx2.wad
  • Rheingold ep1 - rhein1.wad
  • Rheingold ep2 - rhein2.wad
  • Halten Sie - halten.wad