Well, sound is better anyway. I've done some work on things that were pretty blatantly missing before, particularly rocket and footstep sounds. Also, all of the sounds have been replaced with some that I generated with sfxr so the only thing I'm aware of that's not free license compatible is the music. In general I like them better than the old effects anyway, especially the new autocannon sound. You can feel that one in your bones. :-)

Which means that I should have a little more free time coming up, although there have been a number of unexpected things that have also come up recently so there are no guarantees.

I know I said I was going to schedule some playtesting in the near future, but that was about the same time that they started building my house and time has been a bit tight for me lately. I could carve out some time to do playtesting, but I wouldn't really have time to work on the game to fix any problems that come up so it wouldn't make sense to do it now. The next two or three months are probably going to be super busy, but I will be back at it after that.

Third time's a charm. For once I have updater news that doesn't involve the phrase "it's broken". :-)

And the Linux updater is still broken. No, you're not having deja vu, that is what my last post was about. It seems that my fix for that problem created a different problem, so Linux users will need to download the binary-only file again to get the fixed client. If you don't, the update may appear to work, but the actual game executable won't be updated properly and you'll be stuck on the old version. Hopefully this is the last time we need to have this talk. ;-)

Apparently my testing of the updater was not good enough, and when I tried to download the update with all of the new textures, it failed to work properly. Unfortunately this means that in order to properly update everyone will need to download a new copy of the files.

As promised, here is an update on the status of the new textures to replace the ones that I wasn't supposed to be using. As you can see in the attached image, the mech and base textures have been significantly reworked, even beyond just the required replacement of the base texture. The mech's normal map is much simpler now because I realized that you rarely get close enough to see the fine details anyway, and I was never entirely happy with the old normal maps. The other major change was that the mech is now weathered. There is dirt and grime and wear on the edges of panels.

Due to some unfortunate timing on the discovery of a security flaw in the version of Exim running on this server, it was compromised by what appears to have been a script kiddie. A rootkit was installed and an ssh server started for their use, but according to the server logs neither was ever used. Admittedly the logs can't be completely trusted in this situation, but the rootkit wasn't sophisticated enough to cover its tracks well so I doubt it touched the logs.

Well, it is so, I'm afraid. However, not to worry, I still plan to get back to working on this at some point in the near future. I just haven't had time lately due to a very busy summer and another project that required my attention for a time. Fortunately, that project is now winding down (and summer is over) so I'll have more time to devote to Coldest.

One last update: All builds are now available. A Linux update has been pushed out as well to get it to the same level as the Windows build.