r1734714585: CCSF 2024

I think there might be a RAL bugfix involving long strings, but the primary star of the show here is cdsp-tools, as announced in CCSF 2024.
...nobody was noticing all the development activity in this repo around CCSF, right? Right?
Well, anyway, I hope the tools added here are useful.

r1708347852: Covering new ground

So a lot of stuff has happened since the last release, but none of it was really worth a proper release by itself. However, 2.296-ce-b1-c kind of forced my hand, since now colour-depth-fix needed an update.

assorted-caos

Introduced last-minute to store a script to quickly get reference copies of CAOS documentation.

colour-depth-fix

Added support for engine 2.106-demo and engine 2.296-ce-b1-c. The latter is almost certainly more important to you, but the former can be fun for those who want to go spelunking in history (i.e. you can get a CAOS reference using the mentioned script).

RAL

RAL's been updated with experimental support for passing macros as parameters ("lambdas"). I'm sure if you try to break it you'll find a way, but for everybody else it should be a useful feature for cleaner code.

It also now has support for a "custom engine" mode that should allow particular Pinkie-adjacent ponies percolating possibilities of their own CAOS-based engines to use RAL if they so wish. If nothing else I documented all the places where RAL refers to CAOS constructs directly, which may be useful.

Internally, there's been a split of some functionality into a "common" Java library, but this isn't expected to result in anything meaningful... for now. It mainly affects Natsue.

TOB

TOB is being shipped as markdown files with the release, just in case anyone wants it. At this point we're sort of at the stage where the version number gets increasingly close to Pi -- nothing big's going to happen anymore. There's stuff that could be documented in the High-Level section, but that's about it without going into the depths of CreaturesArchive and other stuff that's technically on-topic but also out of scope. It'd be like documenting PRAY.

Python stuff

So. This got a massive rework due to kc3dsbpy and what was necessary to support kc3dsbpy. Sorry-not-sorry. Yes, setup is a pain. No, kc3dsbpy is not yet in the main release chain. It's only got one project that uses it and it gets shipped with that anyway.

ciesetup

ciesetup is likely going to be deprecated very shortly.

Stuff regarding it doesn't seem to really have gone as planned. And I have it on good authority that the engine workarounds are going to cease to be necessary soon. Basically, the main salvagable element is the idea of getting C3-on-DS-engine, which needs reworking anyway.

Licensing/dependency notes

RAL uses the https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java/ library, which was released into the public domain. (This should already be in the README.md, but I've added this notice here just in case. This notice doesn't imply that library endorses RAL or so on.)

r1671924896: RAL, and the CPX OS weirdness workaround

This release introduces RAL, a programming language that compiles to CAOS meant to improve the general sanity of code for C3/DS.

A manual is included that should hopefully be useful.

It's been under development for some time and now it's finally getting a proper release.

It also includes tooling, including it's own CAOS debugger which is hopefully more reliable and useful than the official one.

Because most RAL users probably do not want creature-monitor-gd (it being 30 additional megabytes), the download has been split into the full release and the SDK release (just RAL + CPX).

There's also been a small change to the CPX protocol, an alternative method of contacting the CPX server to work around issues some Windows users have been having.

Licensing/dependency notes

RAL uses the https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java/ library, which was released into the public domain. (This should already be in the README.md, but I've added this notice here just in case. This notice doesn't imply that library endorses RAL or so on.)

r1663083207: CMGD replaces CM

Hopefully for the best, hmm?
CMGD uses Godot Engine instead of me trying to build yet another C++ UI framework.
Results were very good and it doesn't eat resources the way a browser would.

EDIT: Retroactively pointing this out because it wasn't properly noted here due to the CMGD focus:
@Tomeno contributed a blinking tray icon for the CPX server that finally appeared in this release.

r1661367669: CM v2

Now the D button enables a dendrite view. Yaaay.
Code is still terrible.

r1661123749: add creature-monitor and do some house-cleaning on the Python imports

Note: creature-monitor is a terrible program but given that people have mentioned official BIAV is unstable on "75%" of computers I figure it's good to get this out here now

creature-monitor usage instructions:
backspace goes back to the selector
enter switches between chem/brain view modes

the code is terrible
have fun

r1656327716: ciesetup actually vaguely usable, CPX Inverter, etc.

I thought I undid the release-id.h change

r1655665702: CPX server extension for game path, highly incomplete CIE stuff

This contains some in-progress stuff with CIE, and includes the CPX Server W32 stuff for game path

CPX Server CIE is still really waiting on both CPX and CIE being generally viable so expect it to stall as ciesetup advances for now.

Fixed caosprox.exe

So I messed up when converting the build system over.

Release 1655480689 (Or, the first release)

release-1655480689

Release build infrastructure