KDE 1452 Published by

Boson 0.12 has been released



Release of Boson 0.12, a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game for the K Desktop Environment.

A lot has changed since the last release - so much that we can't even remember most of it anymore. In particular Boson has moved away from CVS to subversion and away from autotools to cmake. The cmake change will probably cause some trouble in the beginning, as it completely replaces our build system. However it will make many things a lot easier - the autotools version could barely be maintained anymore.

A few highlights:
* Shadows. Units and terrain can now cast and receive shadows. This feature uses shaders, so a pretty recent videocard supporting DirectX 9 is required (NVidia GeForce 6xxx series or ATI Radeon X series card is recommended).
* Radars. A completely new, much more realistic radar system has been implemented that allows for several independent radar stations. Even different radars for different unit types (land and air) are supported.
* Ammunition. Units can make use of ammunition now. Most units have an infinite amount of ammunition, but the feature is there. This sets the grounds for several interesting possible unit types.
* Power Plants. The power plant unit has been in Boson for a very long time - now they actually generate power! If a player has insufficient power, several tasks (such as building new units) take more time.

Note that many core features are still in development and thus Boson is still mostly unplayable.

For a longer, though still very incomplete list see
http://boson.eu.org/announces/changelog-0.12.php

Requirements
You can find a list of hardware and software requirements at http://boson.eu.org/info.php
Note that proper 3d acceleration is required.

Downloading and installing Boson Source packages can be found at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=15087&release_id=419522