OpenPax 0.1.3

A small update to the first release of OpenPax, an open-source engine for Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. OpenPax comes with none of the game: you need your own copy from GOG.

This is an early release: expect rough edges, and please report what you find.

What's new in 0.1.3

• OpenPax updates itself. On start it checks GitHub for a newer release. If there is one, the main menu offers it: one click downloads it, checks it against the release's SHA-256, puts it in place and restarts the game. Saves, settings, the imported game and your own mods are kept. Options has a new UPDATES tab: turn the check off, choose whether pre-releases count, or check now.
• The window remembers where you left it: the same monitor, position and size, maximized if it was, and fullscreen if it was. If that monitor is gone, it opens centered on the main one.
• A tidier folder: the program is now a single file, with only the graphics, sound and video libraries beside it (and the docs, fonts, mods and tools folders).
• Simple Combat: missile bases, battle stations and fighter bases now fire as hard and as fast as in the original's battles (half again a ship's power, and faster reloads). Before, a lone missile base barely scratched an attacking fleet. Two new settings in simple-combat.toml, orbital_power and orbital_reload_share, tune it.
• Fixed: the Options tabs ran past the edge of their panel.
• This is the last update you install by hand. Unzip it into a new folder and run it: your saves, settings and imported game are in your user folder, so nothing needs copying over. From here on, the game updates itself.
• Fixed: on Windows, the import opened a console window for each movie it converted (0.1.2).
• Crash reports (0.1.1): if OpenPax stops unexpectedly, it says why and writes crash.log and openpax.log to your user folder (%APPDATA%\OpenPax\OpenPax\ on Windows).

Everything else is as in 0.1.0, whose notes cover what's in OpenPax.

Getting started

1. Download the bundle for your system below and unpack it.
   • Windows: OpenPax-0.1.3-win-x64.zip. Unzip the whole folder, then run openpax.exe. Windows warns about an unsigned program: click More info, then Run anyway.
   • Linux: OpenPax-0.1.3-linux-x64.tar.gz, then run ./openpax.
   • macOS (Apple Silicon): OpenPax-0.1.3-osx-arm64.tar.gz. Run ./prepare_mac.sh once from the unpacked folder, then open OpenPax.app.
2. On first start, point OpenPax at your copy of the game: an installed copy, or GOG's offline backup installer (setup_pax_imperia_2.0.0.12.exe). The small GOG Galaxy installer holds none of the game.
3. The import converts the game once, into your user folder (a few minutes). Then the game starts.

Source

The bundles include FFmpeg (LGPL libraries, and a GPL movie converter built with x264). The exact FFmpeg and x264 source archives they were built from are attached below as source-…; see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

License

OpenPax is free software under the GPL-3.0. Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain was developed by Heliotrope Studios, and the game and the Pax Imperia name belong to THQ Nordic GmbH. OpenPax is a fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Heliotrope Studios, THQ Nordic or GOG.