Version 0.3.6 released

Release 0.3.6 is out — a bugfix and  performance update: cheaper terrain drawing, fewer disk hits for sprites, and pathfinding that gives up sooner when a unit is boxed in.

What's new?

This release changed the format of saved games. Use the SAVCONV.TOS tool to convert your old saved games. It is available to all players who have donated for the game.

What's improved?

1. Rendering. Terrain drawing got cheaper by not caring about damage done to tiles also scheduled for redraw. Redraw_Objects no longer does a per-cell In_View test.
2. Redraw. CCR is now the only redraw algorithm, freeing up some data that is no longer required: map cells shrank to 32 bytes from 58, freeing more than 100kB of RAM.
3. Caches. That space (plus some additional freed RAM) went into the sprite caches: The old single-entry 64 KiB disk cache has become a more flexible 168 KiB cache, and the default sprite cache grew by 57kB to about 220 KiB.
4. Full caching. On machines with more than 4MB RAM, shape pools stay resident (TT-RAM if 4 MB remains for the other caches, otherwise ST-RAM). 
5. Pathfinding. Hopeless searches abort earlier. This removes some heavy performance regressions in later missions.

Benchmarks vs 0.3.5: about 10% on 8 MHz STe, ~14% on the longer NOD 1 recording, ~7% on plain ST with audio mostly off (~4% with YM digi), ~11% on Falcon, ~8% on TT. Due to reduction of I/O load, numbers could be higher on actual hardware. Details in Benchmark.md.

What's fixed?

1. Units getting stuck in concave obstacles. Sometimes a unit (e.g. a harvester) gave up trying to bypass an obstacle with a concave feature.
2. Stuttering STV audio. Sometimes audio during cutscenes would stutter up to a certain point and then suddenly become smooth.

How to play?

Download the new release zip and drop CNC.TOS over your 0.3.5 game folder — MIX data did not change for this release. Extract onto your (emulated or real) Atari ST hard drive and run CNC.TOS. If you happen to have old saved games in that folder, you need to convert them using SAVCONV.TOS before you can load them in the new version.

Don't hesitate to report any problems. Command & Conquer for Atari ST is a work in progress.

Have fun! — Jonas