Quantum Design

 

Quantum Design Gets a forum 9/19/2003

Nexus has set up a Quantum Design forum for me, so now there'll be a central place where you can make your thoughts on the future of TA:M heard.  It's still pretty empty, so I'm counting on you guys to start up some wild discussions and make it feel cozy.

QD is back!! And TA:M 2 is in the works 9/18/2003

  First off, please bear with me - I'm sure the site will be full of broken links for some time to come.  I only had a partial backup and I've got a lot of other things (including TA:M2 development) that I would rather spend my free time on than fixing broken links.

  After having my university-hosted site closed down some time after I graduated QD has been quietly resting in a dark corner of my hard drive awaiting the day when it would again have a chance to share it's fruits with the world.  That day is today.  I would like to thank the many kind people who offered to host me, but in the end I chose to go with TA Universe for the simple reason that it was one of my favorite TA sites when I dropped out of the TA community last year.

  Now on to the reason I decided to resurrect QD - I've decided to rebuild TA: Mutation from scratch.  The original TA:M started life as a minimalist unit manager with poorly designed code, and then just kept growing until it finally reached the point that re-working the existing code to allow a new feature to be added generally took far more time than writing the feature itself. The new code will be far better deigned so that it will be more reliable, more flexible, and hopefully a lot more fun to expand on.

  In addition to a completely new code base I'll be completely discarding backward-compatibility in favor of a new file organization scheme that will make mods a lot easier to install and manage, and (almost) completely remove the difficulties related to partially installed mods and the like.  Some advantages of the new scheme will be:

For users:
* creation of a monolithic data file will NOT be required (though it would still be recommended for performance reasons)
* almost all mods would consist of only one file
* installing new mods will simply be a matter of dumping them into the TA folder

For mod makers
* most mods won't require configuration files (f.ex. a TC that simply replaces rev31.gp3 will only need to rename it's file to be minimally TA:M2 compatible)
* configuration files for all mods will be consistent, intuitive, and much more powerful
* soft mutators can be attached to any mod (i.e. a unit could include a soft mutator that alters the damage it takes from existing weapons)

I do plan on making a program to convert TA:M mods to TA::M2 format though, so you'll be bale to convert your existing mods to the new format without much trouble.  And some time after that I'll probably expand it to a general-purpose TA:M2-mod creation wizard, so hopefully it will be even easier for mod makers to fully support TA:M2.

  Don't anyone get their hopes up too high though - I've got a lot of other things going on in my life and TA:M2 will be a fairly low priority, it may never make it past the initial prototyping phase.  But just to wet your appetite, here's a concept-shot of the new interface.

And yes, I plan to let all mods display a picture, units will just use their TA pic by default.

Anyone wishing to discuss TA:M2, or make suggestions for basic functionality that was "missing" from the original, can join in on this thread.

TAM v1.0.2 bugfix release 3/25/2002

  Ok, a couple of bugs have come up in version 1.0.1 so this version fixes them.  Namely the page-changing buttons on resized build menus are now visible and the local IP selection when hosting a TA:M gameroom is working again.  I've also added the ability to manually specify an IP for gameroom hosting, which will hopefully let people connect to gamerooms created on systems using proxy servers.

TAM 1.0.1 beta released, plus long overdue TADV II v1.2 3/21/2002

That's right, TA:M finally crossed the 1.0 barrier, you can get it in the TA:M section

The big change in this version is that the weapon ID resolver synchronizes IDs between machines in the gameroom, so there's no longer any reason not to use it.  In order to get this working though I made some serious changes under the hood so the multiplayer gameroom is not compatible with older versions. It also involved some serious changes in the control  flow so it's quite possible that there are nasty new bugs in this version, though I think I've fixed most of them.  

One slight caveat - currently the weapon conflict resolver will always be used in multiplayer games. Eventually I'll add  something so that all the computers will follow the hosts lead, but for now it's just hard-wired.  Hopefully it won't be an issue though, the conflict resolver seems to be working perfectly, and if I did my job right no conflicts will exist between machines.

Other changes include the ability for mutators to have accompanying text files, and an altered layout for resized build menus that should make it easier to get different sizes working in multiplayer, at least in theory (visually the only difference is that the page-changing buttons are now at the top of the menu). Personally I find the new layout more convenient, especially on large menus, since all the page-related buttons are grouped at the top, though it does take a little while to get used to.

Anyway, try it out and let me know if you have any problems, or if you have any strong feelings about the new build-menu layout.  You can make any comments in this thread on TA Universe.  The original thread on Annihilated.com seems to have vanished.

One other thing, to really give the multiplayer weapon reslover a trial by fire have the host (nobody else) download and use this Weapon Conflictor mutator.  That'll cause all the weapon ID's to by royally scrambled on the host, and if there are any problems with the weapon resolver they should show up clearly.

 

As to TA Data Viewer II, I had actually added some new features and fixed a few bugs a long time ago, and then forgot to upload the new version.  Anyway it's available now in the Files section.

TAM 0.13.3 Released 11/25/2001

By popular demand I've modified the conflict resolvers to support up to 1024 construction units and 2048 weapon IDs to take advantage of Yeha's new TA patch.  HOWEVER my unit library has diminished severely, so these features haven't actually been tested yet

 I also fixed  a major bug introduced in v0.13.2 that prevented numeric soft mutators from having any effect.

Comments can be made in this thread on TA Universe.

Go to the TAM page

TAM 0.13.2 Released 11/23/2001

This is primarily a bug-fixing release

On a "future features" note (and primarily of interest to those of you who like making your own soft mutators) I've been working on some generic utility code that would provide the infrastructure for a completely new version of the soft mutator applying code which should both make it faster and MUCH more flexible, not to mention a lot easier on the eyes (not that anyone besides me cares about that last bit).  Basically it will let me add new features like the ability to  insert new keys into specific subsections (i.e. new custom weapon damages) and do equation-based mutators (i.e. RadarDistance = SightDistance + 0.25*RadarDistance;)

However there's still quite a bit of work to do to get the new mutator code up-and-running, so let me know whether you think it's worth it or not (again, this thread is the best place to respond)

Go to the TAM page

TAM 0.13.1 Released 10/7/2001

Not really all that many changes with this version, only two actually, but I think they're well worth a new release:

TAM 0.13.0 Released 7/13/2001

No, I didn't choose the version number to match the date (or vice versa), that's just the way it worked out.  Who says number 13 is unlucky?

The big change with this version is the expansion of soft mutators so they can modify virtually any kind of file instead of only unit files.  I've also seperated the menu resizing and conflict resolving functionality so that there's no longer any reason to disable menu conflict resolution (Menu resizing caused problems with multiplyer games).

New mutators included in this release:

Long overdue news release: TAM much improved 5/15/2001

I know I've been neglecting my news updates, and some people (*cough* Quitch *cough*) have been harping on me about it, so here it is.

TAM has reached version 0.12.2 and gained some serious power as of late.  Most significantly it now does automated weapon ID and build-menu conflict resolution so that you'll never have to worry about 3rd-party units causing incompatibilities.  I've also added the ability to create tall build menus (up to 14 rows of buttons) and condense menus so that  there's no wasted slots on the build menus.  

Having it condense the OTA menus and stretch them to 6 rows tall means that most units have only a single build menu, and even the advanced construction units only fill two menus.  Menu-switching is down and life is good.

First affiliate, and a new address 12/28/2000

I've got my first official affiliate site, AfterMath Design. SirAC also set me up with an alternate address that's a bit easier to remember than the current one and will redirect you here: qd.aftermathdesign.com. He's been after me for months to be hosted on his site, so this is my concession. Hopefully it'll keep him from suffering the fate of the site's I've actually been hosted on. (I don't think any of them are still around)

If you're a TA website admin and would like to become a Quantum Design affiliate then e-mail me

Site back up and TAM v0.11.4 released 11/12/2000

 

TAM v0.11.4 adds support for strings in the [Needs] and [Changes] sections of soft mutators. it also includes a couple new mutators that take advantage of the new abilitys:

It also includes a new version of WarpGate, WarpGate 3.1, which makes it much easier for weapons to hit. It's not perfect yet, but it's beginning to act almost like a normal unit.

Go to the TAM page

TAM v0.11.3 released 10/24/2000

Several new fetures and bug fixes, I think this version has finally fixed all the bugs that were introduced with the addition of soft mutators in v0.11.0.

Go to the TAM page

TAM v0.11.1 released 10/17/2000

This release fixed a bug that caused TA to start before the soft mutators were compiled. It's also the first release to come as a self-extracting archive since I discovered that WinRAR makes very nice SEAs that are significantly smaller than an ordinary zip archive.

Go to the TAM page

TAM v0.11.0... 10/14/2000

...has now been released. First among it's new features is support for Soft Mutators which automatically mutate all units that are enabled according to a specified set of rules. The Soft Mutator support is designed so that it's almost impossible for two soft mutators to conflict with each other. Which means you can have dozens of differnet soft mutators enabled simultaneously to combine their effects.

Included with TAM are over a dozen soft mutators which I have created to show off their capabilites:

Go to the TAM page