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Release 1.3 Stable
bonkmaykr released this
2025-02-20 20:48:31 +00:00 | 10 commits to master since this releaseFinally, it's here! This is the first major-ish-not-really update to Firestar. You're probably thinking "what the hell took so long???"
Well, we ran into some bugs with Sony's PSARC tool and were forced to make our own experimental replacement, something we were not planning to do until Firestar version 1.4 because we knew it would be a hefty challenge. Then, we hit some snags trying to reverse engineer the PSARC format (which we expected would be manageable as it's been done many times before, albeit really poorly). Since my planned implementation for the Deploy system required this to be finished, we ended up sitting around waiting for nothing to happen and only occasionally being able to update things. The bulk of the work was completed over the course of July and August. So we were "working on it" this entire time, just... very, very, very slowly. Eventually I just said to hell with the whole idea. Sadly this means Firestar 1.3's installation logic is a bit of a mess, but hopefully the various improvements will make up for it. Notice the use of "we" throughout--everybody welcome Wirlaburla to the team! He helped out a lot with this update.
We paid attention to user feedback and made the setup experience a lot friendlier, we squashed some pretty horrific bugs, and we can finally say Firestar is complete. Now for the news. I got fired from my job and had to take on another programming project, so we are starting our own game studio. This does mean that improvements to Firestar will come at a much slower pace, but we'll still keep an eye on things. We're not entirely done just yet, I've got a lot of potential features noted down!
Clock's ticking! Without further ado, here's the changelogs. And happy 2025!
New Features & Changes
- Added the auto-downloader, allowing you to get assets without needing a degree in rocket science.
- Added the Custom Soundtrack Generator, letting you edit the WipEout in-game playlist with ease
- Added FSCRIPT support to the modding toolkit for deploy-time modifications
- Added diff patching with java-diff-utils
- Added Find-and-Replace editing
- Added XML editing
- Completely rewrote the initial setup screen to be more user-friendly
- Firestar now automatically checks for updates on Worlio Git and alerts you of new stable releases. You can turn this off in the options.
- Mod description is now scrollable.
- Mod deploy path is now configured using JFileChooser to avoid user mistakes
- PSARC dumps can now be deleted from the options.
- Deploying order is now reversed as originally intended, so mods at the end of the list will be the lowest priority instead of the highest like in older versions.
- Mod authors can use two new key value pairs, "requires" and "extracts" (both are String[]) in their mod metadata to pull assets from usually superfluous PSARC dumps when they need to be partially modified at deploy-time with FSCRIPT.
- "Requires" holds a list of PSARC bundles that Firestar will pull game assets from if it cannot find them inside the main PSARC targeted for deployment. "Extracts" lists the files that Firestar will search these extra PSARCs for. This is important for FSCRIPTs to function. Currently, this metadata can only be written with a ZIP archiver.
- Good default values will be generated by the OST generator tool assuming you have WipEout v1.04.
- Thanks to the above change, deploying no longer uses every single PSARC dump the user has even when not necessary, repacks should be much smaller and faster now. (But you will need more storage space than before.)
- Completely re-styled most of the interface to be more pleasing to look at.
- New vector artwork for icons and shortcuts
Development
- Replaced build system with Gradle
- Program resources are now embedded into the JAR file for more portable distribution. Firestar is effectively contained within a single file now, no ZIPs or Tarballs needed.
- Linux packages are no longer built using Debreate.
- Firestar never depended on Gephi, and the installation of Gephi as bundleware was not intentional. This was a... "feature" of our packaging tools. If you had Gephi installed to your system by mistake when installing Firestar, you can safely remove it now.
- Visual C++ 2012 libraries are now required for the backend functions. Most Windows installs should already have this, and WINE should handle it automatically. If you experience strange behavior with the Auto-Downloader, please double check you have these libraries on your system.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bad alphanumerical sorting algorithm which caused mod lists larger than 10 entries to rearrange themselves.
- Fixed a bug where some settings would not actually take effect until restart.
- Fixed some frankly repulsive margins on the buttons next to the mod list.
- Probably some other stuff that went unnoticed until now.
Downloads