I've released alpha 12, which contains only a few small changes to Marcin's alpha 11.8 experimental version:
- automatically add new .grf files to newgrf(w).txt if .add file is present
- possibly fix problem with argv[0] containing file name without .exe, making
it impossible to load the language data (now also try appending .exe)
For a full list of changes, including those from Marcin's experimental releases, please see the source code page. Also note that even though I don't call my releases "experimental", all alpha versions are still under heavy development. This applies in particular to the electrified railways feature.
I've made Marcin's electrified railway graphics available now for the Windows version too, but they still aren't the final graphics, they're just to show off the feature for now. Get it all at
http://www.ttdpatch.com/src/
I haven't fixed any bugs yet, but just wanted to get everything together. I'll now go through all bug reports and try to fix everything that has come up since alpha 11.
For those who are working on the new graphics, you can now have your .grf files added automatically to a user's newgrf(w).txt. To do that, you need to include an empty file with the same name, but the extension .add or .adw for the DOS or Windows version.
For example, say you want to make a file called "abcd.grf" available, as well as its Windows equivalent "abcdw.grf". For that, you create two empty files in the newgrf/ directory, "abcd.add" and "abcdw.adw". (Actually, they need not be empty and can instead have any content you want.) Finally, you add abcd.grf and abcd.add to abcd.zip, and similarly abcdw.grf and abcdw.adw to abcdw.zip, and then you distribute the zip files.
This way, people only have to download the .zip files, and the corresponding .grf entries will be added to the newgrf(w).txt file automatically as soon as TTDPatch is first run. This only happens once, so if they don't like the new graphics, they can simply remove it again from the text file, and it won't be added again, because the .add and .adw files are deleted after the first time. This whole process only works with alpha 12 or higher, of course.
Another hint: If you've made a .grf file for the DOS version, and want to make it available for the Windows version too, follow these steps:
- copy abcd.nfo to abcdw.nfo, with no other changes
- run "grfcodec -m 0 -e abcdw"
Or, to convert them from Windows to DOS:
- copy abcdw.nfo to abcd.nfo
- run "grfcodec -m 1 -e abcd"
You need the latest GRFCodec for this to work.
Marcin