Countdown to final alpha

[Snake Man]

Countdown to final alpha is ON!

Read the ridiculous background reading of Getting ready for final alpha release during the past four months.

I'm going to spam this topic with tight updates on the release status. Heck, I haven't anything else to do and we have been waiting for so long time for the release so lets spice it up a bit.

To start, I've now done the initial release part:

I binarized and pbo packed the latest build. I tested it on one of my latest missions and then on the official stresstest mission, ran fine.

I then created small readme which points to an upcoming online manual link, rarred up the addons/ dir, VTE_LOGO.ico and the readme into several RAR packets. The full size in rar is 1.15gb, will surely go smaller with 7zip which some of the news sites are using.

Why several rars? well my internet connection sucks, it only allows 20kb/s rate on uploading in optimum conditions PER CONNECTION, so as I have now 12 rar's, usually in 100mb per piece, I'm uploading with multiple connections.

I'm using WinSCP to upload into one of my linux boxes, I have now 6 connections running and they seem to go about 7kb/s a piece, whee the thrill of speed. Hopefully the speeds will pick up as the traffic settles on my net service provider.

At the moment it looks like the first 6 packets are on ETA 3h 20mins depending a bit, so in theory it would take about 7 hours total to upload that sucker if everything goes well.

So, I'll post more to this topic as hours pass and I have something to say... err spam.

[Snake Man]

Building the online manual in my local http server here (cant be bothered to do it through net with a lag etc). The greatest problem right now as with any documentation... is that I don't know what else to add. I'm sure there is tons of stuff users would want to know but I cant visualize it now in my mind what that might be.

There is installation instructions, class names, terrain descriptions, mod history, release history, historical unit information and credits.

Upload is going at stable speeds as before, now the first 6 packet batch is on 64% complete.

[Snake Man]

Writing the manual is coming along ok, I guess the rough overview is in now. The whole point is that I'll update it as we go along and people post questions / issues.

Upload is now progressing in the second batch of the files, remaining 6 rar's is going up which looks to be 25% complete now.

It will be a bit fiddle when the upload is complete as I need to repackage it on the shell box, then make sure the online manual is up too and then send the download link to those big news sites.

Hopefully I get the main hosting link up too, it just looks like it will be just around the time of day when the admin is sleeping, so we'll see. Hopefully the upload aren't complete just when the european scene has gone to bed and there is nobody awake to host the file

Hell, what ever happens with my 6 connection upload I've done huge progress today, otherwise it would have taken FEW DAYS for me to upload, so we're all good...

[Snake Man]

Got dragged to the background for a sec. Now the upload is complete.

I'm now repackaging the rar's in the shell and when this is done it is ready for the news sites / mirrors to pick up. Unfortunately due my background activities I missed the main mirror host admin's availability, damn.

[Snake Man]

We are on good track for a release.

Code: Select all

/tmp$ rar t VTE_final_alpha.rar

RAR 3.00    Copyright (c) 1993-2002 Eugene Roshal    14 May 2002
Shareware version         Type RAR -? for help

Testing archive VTE_final_alpha.rar

Testing     addons                                                    OK
Testing     addons/vte_objects.pbo                                    OK
Testing     addons/vte_wpn.pbo.PMC.bisign                             OK
Testing     addons/vte_config.pbo                                     OK
Testing     addons/vte_land.pbo.PMC.bisign                            OK
Testing     addons/vte_air.pbo                                        OK
Testing     addons/vte_terrain.pbo.PMC.bisign                         OK
Testing     addons/vte_sea.pbo.PMC.bisign                             OK
Testing     addons/vte_terrain.pbo                                    OK
Testing     addons/vte_chara.pbo.PMC.bisign                           OK
Testing     addons/vte_wpn.pbo                                        OK
Testing     addons/vte_sounds.pbo                                     OK
Testing     addons/vte_config.pbo.PMC.bisign                          OK
Testing     addons/vte_objects.pbo.PMC.bisign                         OK
Testing     addons/vte_sea.pbo                                        OK
Testing     addons/vte_chara.pbo                                      OK
Testing     addons/vte_sounds.pbo.PMC.bisign                          OK
Testing     addons/vte_land.pbo                                       OK
Testing     addons/vte_air.pbo.PMC.bisign                             OK
Testing     VTE_final_alpha_readme.txt                                OK
Testing     VTE_LOGO.ico                                              OK
Testing     keys/PMC.bikey                                            OK
All OK

All OK

[Snake Man]

PMC Tactical linux dedicated server was upgraded for VTE final alpha. Going to give it a test run right now...

[Snake Man]

While I was testing, I got urgent real life call... man do I hate when people interrupt perfectly fine editing/playing session

Just got back to the computer.

[Snake Man]

And now the release is done, forum topics posted, RSS feed updated...

Now I'm crashing to bed to get some sleep