(Repost because I want more people to see it.)
Testers wanted!
I'm working up to the next major release of WorldPainter and I'm looking for people who want to test the next version. Here is what is new in this version:
- The Great Shift of 2012! The coordinate system has been rotated and shifted so that it now corresponds to Minecraft's and north is now finally up! The consequence is that worlds imported before the Great Shift can no longer be merged using this version of WorldPainter. If you have imported worlds which you absolutely need to be able to merge, keep a copy of version 0.7.3 around! But for most people that should not be necessary; you can just import the map again with the new version. Also, biome calculation for Minecraft versions is disabled for worlds created before the Great Shift (automatic and custom biomes still work)
- As part of the Great Shift a world rotation function has been added. WorldPainter will automatically offer to rotate existing worlds when you load them, so that north is up. You can also rotate worlds later using the new Rotate... menu item in the Edit menu, which allows you to rotate it 90 or 180 degrees. The rotate function rotates all dimensions
- New parallel export process which makes use of multiple cores and minimises disk I/O and is much quicker than the old process
- Added configurable height contour lines. By default they are turned on and displayed every ten (vertical) blocks. They can be configured using the toolbar button or the Configure view... (Ctrl+V) menu item in the View menu
- New function to export the world image as an image file. It is accessible through the menu as File -> Export -> Export as image file.... The Export as Minecraft map... function has been moved to this new Export sub menu as well. The image will be exported as displayed on screen, with the exception of the grid and the overlay image (but including the contour lines), so make sure to configure the visible layers as you want them before exporting the image
- New function to export the world image as a height map. It is accessible through the menu as File -> Export -> Export as height map.... A height map is a grey scale image file which is brighter for higher areas. The image format to use will be determined from the file name extension you use. If you don't type an extension, PNG will be used. If your world is higher than 256, make sure to use a format which supports 16-bit grey scale (such as PNG)! And be aware that not all software can work (well) with 16-bit grey scale images. Also take into account that the 16-bit grey scale height maps will be extremely dark, and may look black, because even the highest world height (2048) is only a small fraction of the highest possible value in a 16-bit grey scale height map (65535)
- Added toolbar for quick access to often used menu items and draw attention to some little known functionality
- Added toolbar to 3D view with rotate buttons to draw attention to the view rotation functionality
- Decreased maximum memory allocation for 32-bit Windows systems to 1250 MB in an effort to reduce JVM startup errors
This is a major release with some big structural changes, so I thought I'd ask for some volunteers to test it and give me feedback before I release it generally. So this version won't show up as an automatic update yet. Instead, if you want to test it, download it here:
32-bit Windows (
zip)
64-bit Windows (
zip)
Mac OS X (
tgz)
UNIX/Linux (
tar.gz)
deb file
rpm file
Please note: the merge functionality is temporarily disabled in this version, you don't have to report that!
Also note: if you don't use an installer, you'll have to follow the instructions on
this page to allocate enough memory to WorldPainter! If you don't you might not get the benefits of the new export process.
If you want to test this version, please download and install it and try things out. I'm especially curious to know whether existing worlds stil work correctlty, whether the rotation function does not introduce problems, and whether the new export process (which works on a region by region basis) produces any artefacts along region boundaries. Regions are 32 by 32 chunks (four by four tiles), which is 512 by 512 blocks, so region boundaries are at x = -513 -> -512, x = -1 -> 0, x = 511 -> 512, x = 1023 -> 1024, etc. and at z = -513 -> -512, z = -1 -> 0, z = 511 -> 512, etc.
Please send me your feedback and test results as private messages so as not to clutter up this thread! And thank you in advance for testing this new version!
(Repost because I want more people to see it.)
88
Captain_Chaos, on 17 April 2012 - 08:09 PM, said:
