The Agency: Beta 1 released

Coinciding well with the commemoration of 40 years of Logo in Wired and Slashdot yesterday, we are proud to announce the official release of StarLogo TNG Beta 1 at long last.

StarLogo TNG has undergone a major transformation since Preview 4. Much of the code in our first real beta has been entirely rewritten to improve speed, usability, stability, and extensibility, and expect this code to the be the basis of TNG for quite some time.



We are pleased to release many new features, but some features of Preview 4 have not yet been implemented in this major revision. Therefore, if you must have those features, you should stick with Preview 4 for the time being. Otherwise, we highly recommend transitioning to the new version. We have made our best efforts to update projects and support backward compatibility with projects created with earlier releases, but some projects that rely on features not yet implemented will not load.

New and more extensive documentation is coming (including new sample curriculum very shortly), but in the meantime we have provided a list of changes that can be used to apply the basics of Preview 4.2 to this version.

We’re very excited about this new version. The look and feel, as well as the usability have received quite favorable reviews across the board. We hope you’ll like it too. The release is now avialable for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

You can download the beta from our website:
Changes, additions and subtractions to TNG are listed below and also available on our website at http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng.

You can also learn more about the changes, additions, and subtractions to TNG here:
http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/beta1/StarLogo_TNG_Beta_1.html.

Enjoy!
The StarLogo Team

The Agency: Preview 4.2 released

Thank you to all of you out there who downloaded Preview 4.1 and helped us track down a couple more bugs that we wanted to fix ASAP. If you downloaded p4.1 last week, please head to http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/ and download p4.2.

Here's a list of the bugs fixed in this release:

• Fixed bug with collisions. Asymmetric collisions did not always get executed. (Asymmetric collisions are the ones with two different breeds.)
• Fixed a few problems related to strings.
• Provided a batch application (starlogotng-mastercontrol.bat) to disable audio on computers that don't support it. Note that this file is for the Windows version only. All versions of Mac OS X that support StarLogo TNG also support the sound feature.

The most significant problem is the asymmetric collision bug, a regression in p4.1 that may easily break your existing projects, so we strongly recommend that all users download the latest version. Sorry for the trouble!

The Agency: Preview 4.1 released

Eric made the following announcement on the StarLogo user community mailing list today:

We are pleased to officially announce the release of StarLogo TNG Preview 4.1.

This release is hot on the tail of the unofficial release of Preview 4. If you downloaded StarLogo TNG in the past few days, you should update to Preview 4.1, which contains some additional bug fixes.

There are a number of enhancements and bug fixes in this version. In parallel, we have been working on redesigning the blocks interface from scratch. That work is well along the way, and we hope to release the first full Beta with these features in the near future. In the mean time, Preview 4.1 is quite stable and fun, and offers a number of valuable improvements over Preview 3.

You might also be interested in the StarLogo TNG tutorial on Complexity, which is linked to from the front page of StarLogo TNG (http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng)

Enjoy!

The StarLogo TNG Team

Eric also published the following list of changes:

Preview 4 to Preview 4.1

Fixed several last-minute bugs:

• Fixed rounding error that when agents are being drawn on patches
• Fixed collision bug where collisions were being duplicated that has been around for a long time. NOTE THIS WILL REQUIRE A CHANGE IN PROJECTS WHERE INTRA-BREED COLLISIONS WERE USED. IN MOST CASES THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF SUCH COLLISIONS SHOULD BE DUPLICATED.
• Fixed a bug in the keyboard controls option

Preview 3 to Preview 4

Primarily Bug Fixes:

• Fixed comma in file format for non-US users
• Fixed many bugs that affected performance, collisions and crashes
• Updates to library and Windows JRE
• Fixed installation bug on Windows
• Fixed joystick controls on the Mac

Spaceland Changes:

• New navigation with mouse and on screen controls
• Introduction of status bar
• Previous and next agent eye
• All new layout and design
• Can maximize in Windows

StarLogoBlocks Changes:

• Some new shapes
• First version of "smell" (detects agents at a distance)
• Commands to output to the status bar
• Preliminary sound support (bird, boing, claps, cork, cow, glass, hit, knock, laugh, scratch, smellrat, test)

The Agency: Fix posted for Windows Saturday afternoon

If you downloaded the Windows version of Preview 3 prior to Saturday afternoon, you may see an error message when you attempt to run the program stating that you are missing a file called MSVCR71D.dll. If you get this error, please download the program again now and reinstall it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The Agency: Preview 3 released

We are proud to announce the release of StarLogo TNG Preview 3. This version contains many optimizations/bug fixes, and also contains some exciting new features (look for the search functionality and Typeblocking in addition to graph blocks). A full change log is below.

The final push for StarLogo TNG will see an overhaul of the blocks canvas and a number of new features that we have on tap. We may release a Preview 4 in late summer/early fall before a final 1.0 release this fall. Be on the lookout and enjoy Preview 3.

The StarLogo Team

---------------------------------
CHANGE LOG

Preview 2 to Preview 3

StarLogo Changes:
— Saves more project state: workspace view and zoom, runtime speed and time, procedure block folding
— File menu maintains list of recently viewed files
— File dialog filters for .sltng files and starts from the most recently viewed directory
— Help menu items link to documentation, tutorials, and FAQ in Starlogo TNG website

SpaceLand Changes:
— 200% terrain rendering speed increase
— Faster collision detection (no computation for breeds without a collision block)
— Improved agent eye positions for all shapes
— Improved key press detection

StarLogoBlocks Changes:
— Added typeblocking on workspace (select "Keyboard moves blocks" from Options menu)
— Added incremental search box for blocks
— Added Line and Bar Graph blocks in workspace and removed graph wizard
— Added Shape Width, Height, Length blocks
— Added Dig and Build blocks to create straight-walled terrain features
— Changed behavior of Stomp and Yank to create smoother terrain.
— Variables and procedure blocks dragged onto the Global page now appear in the Global drawer
— Improved blockdoc tooltips
— Fixed saving/loading bug where blocks disappeared on project load
— Fixed sliders bug causing incorrect updates and label changes
— Fixed deleting breeds bug
— Monitors now compatible with global variable declarations
— Monitors update at higher frequency (250 ms)
— Monitors can report positive or negative infinity.
— Changed procedure block collaspe/expand icon to a triangle

Terrain Editor Changes:
— Changed underlying format to allow for vertical walls.

Virtual Machine Changes:
— Made StarLogo time no longer dependent on computer speed

As always, your feedback is valuable. Feel free to post a comment below or send email to starlogo-request@education.mit.edu.