Those who have been us since the release candidates, we thank you for your diligent testing and bugreporting. For the users who are only venturing to upgrade from 0.4.8, you will see a *LOT* of changes, all for the better. The various RC's have already talked about this, but let me restate the biggest changes since 0.4.8:
- Elrails: support for a fourth rail type, electrified rails with catenaries.
- YAPF: a lean-mean C++ pathfinder with far superiour performance to NPF and the original pathfinder
- TGP: a customizable random land generator
- UTF8: full unicode support throughout openttd (display, input and output)
- NewGRF: newstations, newsounds, I18n and many more fixes and features
- Multiplayer: MP stability has greatly improved, desyncs diminished
Downloads over at http://www.openttd.org/downloads.php Please be patient while SF distributes the files and we compile more binaries.
Link to RC5 forum post: OpenTTD 0.5.0-RC5
Link to RC4 forum post: OpenTTD 0.5.0-RC4
Link to RC3 forum post: OpenTTD 0.5.0-RC3
Link to RC2 forum post: OpenTTD 0.5.0-RC2
Link to RC1 forum post: OpenTTD 0.5.0-RC1
We would like to repost here some points you might want to keep in mind (from RC1):
- Win9x will ONLY work with MSLU, the MS Unicode layer. You need to download this file from Microsoft and either put it into your OpenTTD directory or into windows\system. Don't worry, you'll know when you did something wrong (OpenTTD will complain about missing 'sample.cat' and all other files).
- With UNICODE support it is possible to support non-latin languages such as Chinese. However also other languages like Russian or Hungarian can benefit from this. When you select these languages you will most likely see '?' instead of some characters. This is because the sprites don't have glyphs for these characters. You need to shut down OpenTTD, and edit your configuration file. After the small/medium/large -_font = line add your favourite font (by name or by path) and restart OpenTTD. Recommended fonts are 'Tahoma Bold', 'Bitstream Vera Bold' but you can also use 'Comic Sans MS' if you like.
- Please look at './configure -h' if you compile openttd yourself. Most options are turned on by default, but you probably want iconv as well. Check that you have fontconfig if you are planning to use fontnames in the configuration file instead of a path to a font.
- NewGRF usage information are saved within the savegame. The list of missing files is printed to the debug window and shown as 'disabled' ingame with an error message. All GRF files should be put in a (subdirectory of) data where OpenTTD will find them automatically and use if needed. You can also change grf files during gameplay, but be warned, it can crash your game!. Multiplayer games enforce grf-correctness up to binary-equality.
- Patch settings are also saved with the savegame, but not all. Patches that only affect the GUI like snap-window-radius are not saved. This mechanism allows players to share their savegames, use the same configuration yet still have their own preferences when playing.
- If you want to compile OpenTTD yourself under Windows, please download the latest openttd-useful package as it contains all needed libraries.
- If the sound is choppy on Windows Vista, you might want to increase the soundbuffer by adding some parameters to the command path: 2048bytes will double the buffer size. This solves the problem for most people. You can experience with various sizes to see what fits you best, but be aware that a too big buffer-size will make sounds lag.
Code: Select all
openttd.exe -s win32:bufsize=2048
[list]
[*]- Feature: Add the ability to load newer TTDP games (the tile information for coasts has changed) (r8738)
[*]- Feature: Selecting "end of orders" and deleting will delete all the vehicle's orders (shared mode unchanged) (r8685)
[*]- Codechange: Call GetFirstVehicleInChain only for trains thus increasing performance in large games (r8744)
[*]- Fix: Possible crashes, problems with aircraft and airport removal (r8921)
[*]- Fix: Do not show the 'edit sign' window for spectators (r8808)
[*]- Fix: Adhere order types for ship order insertion to determine destination type (r8802)
[*]- Fix: It was possible to take over buoys by building a station next to them (r8794)
[*]- Fix: Cloning unaware of articulated locomotives that could refit without refitting the front unit (r8777)
[*]- Fix: Loading times for overhanging trains are miscomputed (r8709)[/list]
List of fixes for bugs that were introduced after 0.4.8/RC5:
Changes since RC5:
[list]
[*]- Fix: [UTF8] Win9x is very picky about trailing slashes in paths, so C:\\* will not work (r8919)
[*]- Fix: Stricter checks for CmdMoveRailVehicle() parameters to curb possible abuse (r8878)
[*]- Fix: [YAPF] Large Train Stations/Trains causes assert due to wrong cost calculation (r8869)
[*]- Fix: [NewGRF] Ignore 1 byte action 0s during safety check (r8865)
[*]- Fix: Fix an off-by-one error in GRFComment (r8843)
[*]- Fix: [YAPF] Don't tell destination was found if it was only guessed (r8836)
[*]- Fix: Load station rectangle for all savegames, not only after version 27 (r8828)
[*]- Fix: [UTF8] Unable to browse directories on *nix if the filesystem is not in UTF-8 charset and special characters are used (r8821, r8823, r8824)
[*]- Fix: Correct spelling of real french townnames and 'remove' a duplicate (r8793)
[*]- Fix: Be more strict about grf-string input (r8792, r8825)
[*]- Fix: Unable to load TTDP (on *NIX) games (r8784)
[*]- Fix: [YAPF] Rail station platform penalty not calculated properly (r8766)
[*]- Fix: Crash when an old savegame had buoys on the northern edge of the map (r8689)
[*]- Fix: Assertion when getting the height of a bridge from the ramp tile [FS#617] (r8687)
[*]- Fix: Bool (uint32 in PPC) was written to as a uint8 (r8684)
[*]- Fix: Add stubs for unsupported newgrf station properties (r8526)
[/list]
and possible to see tunnels when in transparent buildings mode 
