That's rather curious, really. It was announced and made readily available to the public. The only "stipulation" I saw was alpha 3 is for "experts". Heck they even made a sticky for it, and I forget but didn't you guys have over 15,000 unique downloads or something?


It must have been all those dang drudges downloading alpha software.


If you don't want "people" to use it, don't publicize it. The same thing is being done with aplha 4(except for that at least for alpha 4 you guys stated "for developers and authors only"...so what seems to be a problem, must not be much of a problem at all. It also, strikes me oddly that plugins that are decal alpha 4 compliant are also readily available to anyone.


At any rate, I really don't care. It just gets my goat when guys jump all over people for asking simple questions or now, as it seems, for bumping/tagging an important thread. You guys like your mouths a lot, but when you get burned you cry like babies and vow never to return here again.


Peace out, I'm done.

 

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<< That's rather curious, really. It was announced and made readily available to the public. >>


From the Voice of Decal:

"This release is, as was Alpha 3, intended for PLUGIN DEVELOPERS. Really. We're not kidding."


Yes, it was made available so that anyone could download but the intent of that was for plugin developers to start working with it.

 

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Well, The storm has arrived, and it's time to make the announcement.


Public Alpha.


Yup. You read that correctly. Public Alpha, known to the Decal developers as "Alpha 3"


First off, we want to thank all of you who have offered to help with testing. The sheer numbers have helped change our plans a bit. We had originally planned to do another 'private' alpha with more people involved, but with so many of you willing to help, that didn't make sense.


So, what we're doing: We're posting the bits for Alpha 3 so that all the world can get it, but there are several things we need to warn you about!


1. This is ALPHA software. We're not responsible if it causes your machine to melt down, Krakatoa to re-awaken, R'lyeh to surface, aliens to invade your linen closet, or any lesser catastrophic events to occur should you use it.

2. Most things work. NOT EVERYTHING. (more on this later)

3. We reserve the right to make breaking changes between Alpha 3 and whatever our next 'release' is. (That means that plugins that run against Alpha 3 may not run against the next release without update). Heck, We *plan* to make breaking changes (see below).

4. There is VERY LIMITED support. We're hoping that our current alpha testers can handle some of the support issues.


Now, on the subject of what works (This is mostly for plugin developers):


1. ACHooks methods work

2. QueryKeyboardMap works

3. Old-Style HUDs (IRenderSink) 'sorta' work (Each visible HUD can impact framerate significantly)

4. New-Style HUDs (RenderService) do NOT work.. yet. (We may refresh alpha in a few days with an update to fix this)

5. Basic View rendering 'sorta' works. (They look visually right, but are still not as performant as we want)

6. The V1 Plugin interface (IPlugin) is deprecated, and thus V1 plugins don't work. (We've set the killbit for V1 Surrogate, and that's visible in the Decal UI)

7. Decal.Adapter and PIAs are included, but only install with Beta 2 of the 2.0 .NET framework.


Now we come to the first KNOWN breaking change that we'll be making after this alpha, the removal of IRenderSink. We've left this mechanism in, even with all of its performance problems because the new RenderService code doesn't work yet. As soon as that's working, and is a viable replacement, we'll be turning IRenderSink off. This lets Plugin developers get the rest of their code adjusted for the other changes earlier, which we felt was the right thing to do.


We may well have other breaking changes after this alpha, but I can't tell you today what those are, as some may depend on the feedback and problems we see from this alpha.


Now, for the information you all are waiting for, where to get it:


http://decal.acdev.org/files/Decal-alpha3-c3.msi


As for plugin availability, expect to see announcements later today from several of the plugin developers.


The Voice of Decal


After reading that, I can TOTALLY see where I was wrong. /sarcasm off.

 

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<< After reading that, I can TOTALLY see where I was wrong. >>


I can too, and I can say that without being sarcastic.

 

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im with Krackcode

 

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"We had originally planned to do another 'private' alpha with more people involved, but with so many of you willing to help, that didn't make sense.


So, what we're doing: We're posting the bits for Alpha 3 so that all the world can get it, but there are several things we need to warn you about!"


public was invited....w/ a warning not to come screaming if it blew up your comp along w/ other warnings.

 

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Krackcode.. if you notice.. the main point was about tagging threads being against rules now..


my secondary point was that this thread is outdated.. because it is.


people shouldn't be running Decal alpha really at all, as I previously meantioned, but those that do SHOULD be running the latest alpha.. it does us ZERO good to have people testing OLD versions which we KNOW are broken. That is the reason we keep releasing NEW alphas.. so plugin developers can get plugins fixed and we can find bugs. If you're not actively TESTING Alpha Decal, then what exactly ARE you doing?


This thread is old and outdated. It should NOT be bumped or tagged not just because of rules, but specifically because it is outdated. The information in it is no longer important and people should not be referring to this thread at all anymore. It's not meant for "people".

animals?

 

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"If you're not actively TESTING Alpha Decal, then what exactly ARE you doing? "


if i had posted a question like this on a decal i would have been burn out by flames several times already .


in your opinion ,if i am not testing decal what do i do with it ?


giving u a clue : i am just using it to run the pluging i use usually .


if the alpha 4 was public too , i guess most of the pluging i use would have been updated , but like it s not , i still use OLD version of decal .

Umm... FYI.. decal alpha 4 IS public.


ELTank hasn't been updated for it yet because there are still issues... but then again, it's an alpha, so go figure?


alpha software is really for TESTING only.. it's not meant to be used as you used Decal before. It's not really in a condition to play ingame with Decal for long periods of time as you used to be able to do with Decal. The purpose of Alpha software is to test it thoroughly, get solid bug reports, get the bugs fixed, and repeat until it is stable enough to be called a Beta.


Then the beta does the same thing.. it's tested thoroughly, bug reports are made for the bugs, the bugs get fixed, and this gets repeated until the product is semi bug free. Once it is in that state, then it is considered "release" and is meant for everyone to download and use as they used to use decal.


But also.. once again, it does us ZERO good for a majority of users to be using OLD Decal releases JUST because a specific plugin isn't written for alpha 4 yet. We get a lot of reports of issues which have ALREADY been fixed. Which is why this thread is no longer important and should no longer be read or used. Most of the plugins in the list have also been updated for Alpha 4 as can be seen in the currently Alpha 4 sticky on the top of this board.