CIU version 138 BETA

Oh wow it got to v.139 now

Fixed in v.138.7.2 :medal_sports: Bug

5 Likes

:information_source:

Android v.138 Advance Preview

The v.138 release is very close now, and to (hopefully) catch any last-minute problems, I am providing an advance preview build of the Android version of the game.

:warning: Before you install it, however, read through the following notes:

  • This is the final build (exactly the same as will eventually become public in v.138), however until v.138 is officially released, it will still connect to the BETA server. This means that any progress you make using this preview version will eventually be lost.

  • It will overwrite any existing v.137 installation you have.

  • If you install it but then wish to go back to playing ‘officially’, you must re-install v.137 on top.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues.


Android (32-bit): https://universe.chickeninvaders.com/files/CIU.ia.armv7.1380702.apk

6 Likes

Could you please provide some behind the scenes of this issue (missing textures)?

Alright, deep breath.

Terrains are rectangular quad meshes. They are split vertically into slivers (each sliver is a single quad – two triangles):

For better deformation fidelity, they are sometimes also split horizontally across (this becomes important later):

The resulting quads are always laid out in row-major order.

To improve performance, terrains also have an optimization whereby only the visible part of the terrain is sent to the GPU for drawing. This optimization is only calculated horizontally (because terrains are typically much wider than they are tall). Only the slivers between the leftmost-visible and the rightmost-visible are drawn (there is no vertical row optimization – all rows are always drawn).

When this optimization is in effect, the entire terrain can’t simply be pushed to the GPU all as one contiguous block of vertices. Instead, it is split horizontally into rows, and each row is sent separately. This involves only sending the portion of the vertices that need drawing each time (specified as an offset and a length within the larger terrain vertex buffer).

OpenGL ES 1.0 (CI2-CI5) deals with vertices directly. This results in wasted performance, because vertices between any two rows are part of both rows and hence must be sent and transformed twice: Once as part of the top row, and a second time for the bottom row. Nevertheless, partial drawing works correctly in this case.

In OpenGL ES 2.0 (CIU), I switched to using index buffers, so there aren’t any duplicated transformations anywhere. However, the API calls are different and I messed up the call so the offset was always zero.
This isn’t a problem in the rest of the game (because all quad meshes are always fully drawn in one go), so this bug remained dormant for years.

So, for example, instead of drawing each of the 5 horizontal rows in turn, I ended up drawing the first (bottom) row 5 times consecutively. This bottom strip is not typically visible within the screen, hence the texture appears missing.

In my defense, the documentation for glDrawElements - OpenGL ES 2 - docs.gl is horrible and doesn’t clearly explain how to only draw a portion of the vertices of an index buffer. The API is re-using the same function argument either as a proper memory address, or as a numerical byte offset into the index buffer, depending on whether an index buffer has been bound :face_vomiting:

Anyway, so now you know™.

20 Likes

This fix from v138.5 does not work

Got some edition related nitpicks:
Both CI5 editions are missing the shirt reskins (skull shirts, santa clothes, elf clothes) and the frozen chick texture
Halloween edition is missing the stone debris for damaging the tombstone (alien container)
In halloween, the black holes get a green tint regardless of background
Xmas edition is missing the jellyfish boss and technically the gingerbread chicks and the wings texture with boots, but I guess they’re hard to replace without affecting the rest of CIU as well

So ye, i played the beta on my mobile device and i Can Say there is No bug or something wrong happened to me, also every planetary missions is working so good

Here is some pics from the planetary missions




1 Like

So, so you need to correct the points that I found:

  1. In the original 5th part, the scale of the “Three by Three” wave was smaller.
  2. At the beginning of each chapter, the sounds of the previous one sound for a second: Music and thunder are victorious (from chapter 8).
  3. In chapter 11, space from part 5, while I had a different background in the configuration.

This also happend on original CI5. Until now, no solution yet.

1 Like

The CI5 space-to-ground is a single jpeg. We can make separate jpegs or individual textures then use programming magic to merge them in.

Well, this change cause losing the green color of other starfield backgrounds. The CIU starfield background is an example (we can see it at the menu screen)

Uhh… i see that the bug isn’t fixed:

looks like all backgrounds in darkness turn into black and white and im not sure if that’s intended or not

(better proof)

1 Like

In the list of languages, RTL languages ​​are displayed in reverse.

Indeed, I see that the code wasn’t changed… odd. Fixed in v138.7.3 :medal_sports: Bug

Actually, the problem is that starfield colorization completely broke in v.138.7.1. Fixed in v138.7.3

:medal_sports: Bug

Fixed in v.138.7.3

Fixed in v.138.7.3

Correct. That’s right I’ve left them as-is.

I don’t see any difference. Of course, there will always be slight differences due to the aspect ratio changing from 5:3 to 16:9, but those are OK.

Fixed in v.138.7.3 :medal_sports: Bug

This is baked in the JPG and can’t be changed.

Oof. And nobody noticed this until now? Anyway, it’s not simple to change. On the list.

I think all the RTL callsigns for other players are also displayed wrong (in reverse) if you are using English (or another LTR language). Don’t see any easy fix for this.

7 Likes

Sorry about this. It was due to our negligence.

why is v.138.8 so this is suppose to be last end beta v.138.7 or update emergency patch.

@InterAction_studios
About Seasonal Content for Easter Edition, Can you add decorate the Bow tie on top of all UCOs in CIU (Example: The Yolk Star already decorated Rainbow Eggshells in CIU)

CIU (Beta) - UCOs without decoration

CI3 (Easter Edition) - UCOs with decoration

9 Likes

Oh hell yeah I want that to be added in

I wouldn’t normally make this change this time of year, but CI3U is coming and I’d have to do for that very soon anyway.
Changed in v.138.7.3 :medal_sports: Idea

Everyone, please do not suggest any more seasonal changes until the appropriate time (CI4U, CI3U, CI2U)

13 Likes

Taking BETA server off-line for 30 minutes.

Back on-line.

5 Likes