Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.8

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.8 (test version).

• Nothing of its own this time: this release brings the parts all six games share up to date.

• Discord status (new, off unless you switch it on): under F4 > Game > Discord status, your Discord profile shows which Skylanders game you play, with which Skylander (and its vehicle or the villain in its trap), in which level and for how long, while the Discord app runs on the same PC. With two players it says co-op. Only the game's own names for figures and levels go out, never a figure's nickname.

• Smooth shadow edges at a higher internal resolution: at 2x and above, shadow edges could have small stair steps. Where a game draws its shadows at half resolution and blends them up to the full picture, that blend picked the wrong pixels at a higher resolution. Shadows are as soft as on the console now.

• A little less work per draw: the graphics thread keeps the last shader it used at hand instead of looking it up again.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.8.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.7

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.7 (test version).

• "Nightmare from the start" no longer slows the game down (#16): with the option on, the game looked closely at every check its scripts make, many times a frame, and the frame rate and the sound suffered. It now looks at each one once.

• Smoother where the game is busy: less work for every thing the game draws, on the thread that hands the game's graphics to your GPU. Where that thread was the limit, the game gets more frames: in Spyro's Adventure's busiest level about 6 % more without a frame limit (50 to 53 FPS). Where your graphics card is the limit, nothing changes.

• Your name stays out of the log: the log you attach to a problem report no longer has your Windows user name, your user folder or your PC's name in it (they show as %USERPROFILE%, <user> and <computer>).

• The log says which version it is: its first line names the game, its version and build, Windows, the processor and the memory, so a report tells us right away what it ran on.

• What got tested, and how it went: every story level of all six games and many of the others, every figure, the end credits, on the test status page.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.7.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.6

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.6 (test version).

• The log now says where you were. When a level has its Skylander, every few minutes of play, at a crash and with a problem note (F4 > Game > Report a problem), the log gets a line like Where: Level_Hub_2014_01 at -2265.19 -0.43 -2132.13: the level and your Skylander's position. With a report we can go straight to that spot, so most reports no longer need your save. Nothing else about you is in it.

• When the game wants a Skylander back on the portal first, the portal menu says which one and puts it back with A or B (as in Giants).

• Play from a USB stick: with Core of Light's new "Portable data" setting (Core of Light 0.3.0-beta.3), a game in Core of Light's Games folder keeps its saves, figures and settings in the Skylanders folder next to Core of Light, on any PC and with any drive letter.

• What got tested, and how it went: every level of all six games, the figures and the end credits, on the test status page.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.6.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.5

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.5 (test version).

• Smoother sound on audio devices with big buffers: the game kept about 43 ms of sound queued. An audio device that asks for more at a time (Wine and PulseAudio on Linux can) played the rest of every request as silence, so the sound came out choppy and slow. The queue now grows to cover what the device asks for. The log names the device's chunk size, and once a minute it says if the sound ran dry, so a report shows where the problem is. In all six games.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.5.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.4

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.4 (test version).

• See who's in which trap (#17): every trap card in the portal menu shows the villain it holds (or "Empty"), the trap's details say "Holds ...", and the portal overview names the villain of the trap that's on the portal. Thanks to darkmattereli-hue for the idea.

• A sound bug that could freeze the game: when a sound stream's read position ran past the end of its piece of audio, the decoder gave up and tried the same thing again thousands of times a second. The sound got choppy, the log filled with one error (100 MB in a few seconds) and the game could freeze. It now moves on to the next piece, as the console does, and says so once. Found with the logs from ImaginatorsRecomp #16; the fix is in all six games.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.4.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.3

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.3 (test version).

• Fewer surprise crashes: the port didn't handle a jump the games use to recover from their own small errors (C's setjmp/longjmp). Where a game recovered fine on the console, here it went on into shutting down and crashed. All six games now recover the way the console does.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.3.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.2

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.2 (test version).

• Smoother on slower CPUs: the thread that turns the game's drawing commands into PC graphics looked up every register the game writes in a long table, only for a debug message nobody sees. Without that, Spyro's Adventure's Chapter 1 went from 51-55 to a steady 60 FPS here (1080p, frame rate limit off). All six games run the same code; handhelds and older CPUs should gain the most.
• Better crash reports: when the port stops on one of its own fatal errors (like "Call to invalid or unregistered function"), the log now also says where in the game it happened, so a "Report a problem" file shows the spot.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.2.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.1

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.1 (test version).

• The portal overview runs smoothly (Back + Y, F5): while it is open the game holds still, and the overview itself was drawn only ten times a second then, so its portal animation stuttered. Now it runs at your frame rate limit.
• Fewer leftovers in long sessions: some system objects the game creates (events, network sockets, I/O completion ports) were never freed; now they are. A fix from ReXGlue, the recompiler these ports are built on.
• Stricter checks on saved games: when the game creates or opens a save, only a real success counts as one now (another ReXGlue fix). Your saves stay where they are, and the previous version is still kept as a backup.
• One version for all six games: from now on the six games come out together with the same number. Under the hood they share much more of their code, so a fix reaches all of them at once. Nothing should look or play differently.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.1.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.7

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.7 (test version).

• The portal menu opens on the right traps at the villain vault (#12): pick a villain to catch and the menu comes up by itself on that villain's element (Sheep Creep: the Life traps). Before, the vault's villains came up on all traps.

Everything from 0.2.0-beta.6 is in it too: softer shadows at resolution scale 2 and up, and a rare start-up crash fixed.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.7.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Trap Team Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.6

Trap Team Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.6 (test version).

• Softer shadows and blur at higher resolution scales: at resolution scale 2 and up the game's shadow and blur filters got squeezed by the higher resolution, so shadow edges could look harder than on the console. They keep the console's width now, so it looks as at scale 1, just sharper.
• A rare crash at start-up fixed: the sound system was started from the wrong thread and could, once in a while, crash the game right as it started.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run TrapTeamRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.6.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.