Anachronox Patch 1.02 Build 44 to 45 file

The Anox Build 45 patch updates the Build 44 patch and is an unofficial secondary patch created by one of the ION Storm Anachronox team members.

Anachronox Patch 1.02 Documentation

This is the second Anachronox Patch, public release, build 44.

IMPORTANT CHANGES:

For those of you on your nth playthrough, you may find the backslash key useful for speeding up the game.
There is a new autosave feature which will save your game every fifteen minutes (of Earth time) during map transitions as well as before important cinematics. This deprecates the old, broken view-cinematics menu and changes the load game screen. The old save game (Timeminder) menu has not changed.
Compatibility issues with Windows 2000/XP should be fixed. 3d-sound disabled.
If you want to make the game run faster or you are having copy-protection incompatibility issues with your dvd-rom drive you can play without the cd by copying the contents of CD-2 to any directory on your hard drive (like c:\anoxcd) and adding to your game shortcut:
+set cddir c:\anoxcd

IMPORTANT WARNING REGARDING YOUR SAVE GAMES:

If you are installing this patch, and you are standing in the City of Votowne, go to the Republic Inn and save. We did have to change that map (Votowne), and any save games in that map will be invalidated!

IMPORTANT WARNING REGARDING OLD VIDEO CARDS:

If you have an old video card that does not support alpha blending of alpha textures (like the ATI Rage LT series) make sure you add to your Anachronox shortcut:
+set gl_fake_additive 1
Otherwise particles in the game may have a strange rectangular outline.

If you have an old video card that does not support projective texture matrix (like old nvidia, ATI, or 3dfx cards) add to your Anachronox shortcut:
+set gl_no_tex_matrix 1
Otherwise you will not properly see certain reflective surfaces in the game.

HOW TO INSTALL THIS PATCH:

If you are reading this then you've probably already installed the patch…
Double-Click on the file "anoxpatch2.exe", this will launch a new window. Click the "Accept" button to accept the laughable license agreement.
If you have installed Anachronox to the default directory (C:\Anachronox), then click on the "Install" button. This will install the patch, then launch this readme file when completed. You may now continue playing the game.
If you have installed Anachronox to a directory other than the default, use the "Browse" button to locate the Anachronox folder, then click "OK". Now click on the "Install" button. This will install the patch, then launch the readme file when completed. You may now continue playing the game.

THINGS FIXED IN PATCH 2

Well, it took a year for me to finish the second patch in my spare time. Yip. It contains about 7000 lines of new code and many more lines of modified code. The other year it took to release this patch was mostly due to the project gathering dust on my hard drive as I worked and attended school.

· Speed up the game by holding down the backslash key. See those animation bugs!
· Filesystem code rewritten from scratch. Improvements to performance and flexibility. Any part of the os filesystem, a dat file, or a zip file can be mounted anywhere in the anox virtual file tree. For example, the patch is packaged in a zip file (anox1.zip) and mounted to root alongside the actual anoxdata directory. Probably a couple pointer bugs were fixed in the process, since the old filesystem code was such complete and utter ass.
· If old patch files are detected sitting around when the game starts for the first time after patching, they will be deleted. So, if you tooled around with files that were included in the old patch files, then they will not be automatically deleted if their contents were changed, in which case you will have to nuke them manually (or do a clean install). Ignore all this if you haven't modified any game files yourself.
· Command line tool afscmd which allows conversion of dat files to zip files, and adler checksums of files stored in compressed files or in the filesystem. Note that the game will not, by default, load retail dat files which have been converted to zip.
· If you want to speed up load times and are sick of digging around for CD2, copy the entire cd to some directory on your hard drive and add +set cddir to your shortcut.
· Somewhere along the patching way, minimum and normal install problems have been fixed. All three installation sizes should run without any problems.
· Completely new savegame generation system implemented. It is triggered on a map transition every fifteen minutes or on a map transition before an important cinematic. These "story saves" do not save any map entities since it takes place between maps and is much more stable. In many cases it replaces the very buggy "View Cinematics" menu which contains code I dare not gaze upon lest my eyes be blinded.
· There is no limit to the number of autosaves and story section saves that can be generated. Load them up by scrolling in the load game screen, which is improved and displays more information. Sorry, no pictures.
· Fixed a crash bug when loading old patch1 or retail savegames that were created while a door or elevator was moving somewhere in the level. Fun with remapping absolute code pointers. Rewrote entity function mapping code from scratch.
· Fixed an evil pointer bug or three. There was a really fun one that would randomly write a backslash to a random part of memory every time a model was loaded. Oh, and another one where free would be called on an invalid pointer, slowly fragging memory. I don't understand how people were able to finish the game at all...
· Wrote a new afex system from scratch, in perl. Afex was our poor broken asset crawling tool which would start at the first map of the game and attempt to find all scripts, textures, models, etc. references. But being a broken pile of crap, it missed a lot of important files. So the size of the patch is bigger to include these missing sounds and other files.
· Lots and lots of little typos and gameflow bugs fixed. Big thanks to the patch testers for all of these. Important ones are the Hyrax quest, getting stuck in the bricks elevator shaft, etc.
· Jake and Richie made a nice taxi service so you can get around the bricks easier.
· Fixed copy protection incompatibility problems with certain new DVD-ROM drives.
· Updated libpng to 1.2.4 (less crashing on corrupt input) and zlib to 1.1.4 (fixed buffer problems).
· Rewrote dual parabolic environment mapping back into the new shader code, also using q coordinate of texture matrix on newer cards.
· Oh, plenty of other stuff I forgot to mention.

THINGS FIXED IN PATCH 1

We actually shipped this huge game in a pretty dang good state. However, some issues were found that needed addressing, and we've addressed those few issues in this patch. In this patch, we:

· Fixed the platform2 throwloonie, so people performing it from level 1 and elsewhere wouldn't get stuck.
· Unhappy Noxguard battle is tougher.
· Changed the position of a Grumpos Yammer response window to match the others.
· Fix traderbots so they trade always over $100... and actually charge you cash!
· (In HephFactory) Made backtracking after you have the fluid impossible.
· Could get two shocksphere upgrades, and thus two teslatus spheres!!!
· NPC "Krequa" was grabbing but not releasing the player. This was causing problems later in the level trying to lockpick.
· Fixed problem where player could clip through Krapto's Jail-cell when getting his bowl.
· Fixed some minor dialogue.
· Doorlord battle is no longer repeatable.
· Spawned a time minder in Whitendon 'cause there wasn't one!!!
· Rictus has 10% chance of missing now, so Travis's "whiff" can be seen.
· Rictus now has an extra 8000 hp.
· Doorlord attacks are updated to reflect "Weapon"-like boss.
· Fixed some particle effects (graphics).
· Made Barracuda Joe attack!
· Fix memory overruns on Minimum install, and ALL platforms.
· Fixed Windows 2000 compatibility issues (note: Even though this addresses issues reported by Windows 2000 users, Windows 2000 is still not officially supported by this title. As a result, Customer Support cannot deal with any issues that arise from playing this title in Windows 2000.)
· Made wimpa immune to freeze/psyslave/nuts.
· fixed battle_drop parsing error; was causing some monsters not to drop money or other things (like the snowsnake).
· Fixed bug where party followers would sometimes start floating off somewhere during dialog.
· Camera variables (height, distance, etc) are updated when switching characters instead of only when moving.
· Randomize monsters' timers when starting battle so they don't all attack at the same time.
· Update battle UI health bars when status event damage occurs (burn/poison).
· Don't let XP text display overlap borders of the plaque when experience - 999999.
· Fixed ambient status effect script playing and restarting, including firefury and stealth.
· Fixed timer bug for low framerates & timescale
· Check drive letters for drive-types once only, on startup.
· Players (and players only) being hit by freeze, nuts, or psyslave are cleared of those effects (and do not get new ones) if they were already affected by one or more of the three.
· Minimum of 100 ms (0.1 seconds) delay between ui_cursor mouse clicks.
· Added autosave toggle button to main part of main menu.
· Major DAT-file system optimization (loading speeds greatly improved).
· Changed version # from 1.00 to 1.01
· Fixed a few CDROM issues, including multiple drives.
· Fixed bug with getting the 20th TACO item.
· Fixed environment mapping & other visuals on Voodoo2 & ATI Rage.