To sum up changes since the last version, we should start by noticing a big improvement on Artificial Intelligence (which is starting to give me a hard time to win, which is a good thing ), the correction of a bug of installation on windows/seven (log file misplaced, crashing the app :]), and a better windows installer (proposing optional installation of dependencies (python/pygame/numpy), which are necessary to play.

Without waiting more, links to the various packages!

• Ubuntu: natty narwal (or the PPA ppa:usf-team/usf)
• Other linux: zip version
• Windows: installer here tested on xp and seven
• MacOSx: dmg built and tested on snow leopard by Largiel

Obviously bug reports are as always more than welcome here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ultimate-smash-friends

Update: corrected tar.gz release, fixed shortcuts to game in windows installer.

I have just finished to make the Windows installer (with aspidites work :p) with a standalone binary. Since we have never released a Windows version with the .exe and the installer, we need tester for it…

So it is here: http://download.tuxfamily.org/usf/release/win32-beta/ultimate-smash-friends-win32.exe

If it works (or not), please leave a comment to say what is your windows version, if you have already installed USF before (and describe the bug if there is one).

UPDATE: I have just fixed a bug in the setup, it is updated.

We are currently working on the next release, and we have improved some things in the GUI (and in the game, of course).

First, we got a FPS counter (it is at left at the top). This counter is optional, it can be enabled in the configure/screen menu.

On the background of the menu you can see above, some character column, they are animated: they fall down.

You can also noticed that the menu is in French, I have just finished the French translation and I set up the translation system on Launchpad. So, you can help us to translate USF here: https://translations.launchpad.net/ultimate-smash-friends/trunk/+pots/ultimate-smash-friends. Another contributor started the Italian translation and we had already the beginning of a Spanish translation.

In game, we improved the physics, and fixed some little bugs. There is no big changes but few little ones…

The level editor, by Feelie

Feelie started a level editor and Aspidites is working on a character editor.

So, a lot of good news…

In this version, USF has got a new GUI : the code has been totally rewritten and samuncle made a new theme :

There is a lot of new widgets, e.g. in the sound option :

Or in the credits menu :

And a new character called Sorlo was born by Doudoulolita (it isn’t finished yet) :

He will have his own world soon (not in this release, in the next one !) :

For download, see our download page !

Of course, the PPA is updated, do if you are an Ubuntu user and you have laready install our PPA :

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

The PPA is available for Karmic Koala and Lucid Lynx.
You can install it by enter in a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xapantu/usf
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ultimate-smash-friends

You can now launch the gmae with the menu in “game”.

The first version of the 0.1 serie is out !

Ultimate Smash Friends is available for :

Windows : http://usf.tuxfamily.org/wiki/Download#Windows

Debian based (Ubuntu, Mint…), Archlinux and all others Gnu/Linux distribution : http://usf.tuxfamily.org/wiki/Download#Linux

For Mac OS X, we haven’t a proper app but you can use the zip or the tar.gz !

This is a video which shows the gameplay of Ultimate Smash Friends :

I’m not going to gaurantee that it is perfect, but I will gaurantee files get installed where they are supposed to this time.  This release also re-introduces the debian binary packages. Keep in mind that this installer does not automatically install Python or PyGame, so you will need to have those installed first. Some of the devs are looking into adding that feature to the installer, but please don’t mark my works or hold your breathe.

At this point, the only platform that USF is not confirmed to run on is Mac OS X, and that is only due to a lack of resources.

Head over to the download page and get it!

c:\Python26\python.exe setup.py bdist_msi

Which puts an MSI  installer in the newly created dist directory.

It would appear that bdist_msi and bdist_wininst are broken by design. As such, the previously published command is useless. I am currently in the proccess of creating an installer with InnoSetup, so hopefully this horror story will turn into a love story.

There has also been a bit of code refactoring, AI work by xapantu, as well as the addition of a Pyramid level designed by samuncle:

Get it while it’s hot!

Well, technically the config system isn’t that new, considering it was created a while back. However, it wasn’t until recently (thanks to xapantu and tshirtman) that the system was capable of being fully integrated into USF. This accomplishes a few different things:

For Users

• Only 1 configuration file to maintain. Before, it was neccessary to modify sound.cfg, config.cfg, and keyboard.cfg. Now there is a single config named user.cfg (Though technically, the game can be configured with the GUI).
• New config options no longer break user configs. Before, every time the config options were added, you had to delete your old config file. Now the new config options are automatically integrated meaning your changes aren’t clobbered
• Cross-platform support. The config is now saved in a sane spot, depending on which platform you are running in. In fact, if you decide to run USF locally, your home directory won’t be polluted by unneccessary config files

For Developers

• Creating new config options no longer breaks users configs. Simply add your configuration option to system.cfg, and if the user hasn’t already done so, their user.cfg will be updated accordingly.
• Easy access to all config options. The Config class automatically creates a new dictionary for each section in the config file (currently general, audio, keyboard). Adding a new section will create a new dictionary. Assigning a new config value is as simple as assigning a new value to a dictionary key: config.section['option'] = value (eg config.audio['SOUND_VOLUME'] = 0
• The new config class is smart enough to do duck typing on configuration values. In the example above, sound volume would automatically be converted to an integer.

New Build System

I’ve leveraged the power of Python’s built-in distutils module to create a setup.py that will automatically, given the correct command line parameters, create source tar.gz and zip packages, rpm packages, and  deb packages. I was attempting to make this script generate exe files for Windows uses, but I have hit a road block that I can’t seem to get around: files don’t install to the correct location. For Mac OS X, I don’t have access to such a machine, and as far as I understand it, it’s not feasibly possible to run Mac in a virtual machine, so I haven’t come up with a solution for that platform.

I have  thoroughly tested the produced source tarbals (which are great for creating packages for Arch Linux, Gentoo, etc), and tshirtman has had some success building debian packages with it (he’s using them on Ubuntu), but we have yet to test the RPM packages, though I suspect we will not run into any problems on that distro.

If you have any experience with distutils and Windows or Mac, please don’t hesitate to contact one of us or post a comment. We definately want USF to be accessible to everyone, not just Linux users.

Download for others (linux/mac/windows)

New features :

- An AI

- A new character : BiX

- Many code cleanup, bug fix, improvements (new config system performance…)

- A new level : Cave