Add dev log for v24.12 (#26)

Author: AaronVanGeffen

_pages/download.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ tagline: "Get the latest and the greatest release here."
 layout: single
 classes: wide
 permalink: /download/
-latest_version: "24.11"
+latest_version: "24.12"
 ---
 
 # Downloading the game

_posts/2024-12-28-openloco-v24.12.md

@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
+---
+title:      "OpenLoco version 24.12"
+tagline:    "Release blog post"
+author:     "Aaron van Geffen"
+date:       2024-12-28 16:00:00 +0100
+layout:     single
+classes:    wide
+categories: news
+
+---
+
+OpenLoco v24.12 is out! This release mainly focuses on bug fixes,
+but there's some exciting changes under the hood as well!
+
+For a complete summary of changes, please find the
+[OpenLoco changelog](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/releases/tag/v24.12) on GitHub.
+
+## Jukebox rework
+
+The Locomotion jukebox features various tracks for the game's different eras. These can be played
+in their original order, but you can also make your own playlist. There was an edge case, though,
+where a playlist with your one favourite track would stop playing after that one track!
+Fed up with this, new contributor @LeeSpork removed the cause in
+[#2750](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2750). Moreover, he refactored the jukebox code,
+so it now lives in its own compilation unit in [#2771](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2771).
+Nice work!
+
+## Paint interop removal
+
+The game's various drawing routines for rendering the world viewport, called paint routines,
+have all been implemented as of last month. This marked a huge milestone for the project, and while it
+is still early days, we're already seeing the first benefits: we were able to drop all the so-called
+interop code from the paint namespace. This code was used to interface between the vanilla Locomotion
+game and our implementation while not all paint routines had been implemented in C++.
+As of [#2772](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2772), this could all be removed!
+Not only does this make the code quite a bit cleaner, it also paves the way for more advanced rework
+in the future, such as multi-threaded rendering!
+
+## Train collision detection
+
+When do trains collide with one another? The question may seem obvious to us, but due to how
+the game engine works, collisions have to be implemented explicitly. In
+[#2587](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2587), @duncanspumpkin unravelled
+how the vanilla implementation works, and reimplemented it in C++.
+
+While it should work as before right now, this implementation will allow us to improve the
+behaviour in the future. For example, right now, road vehicles can't collide with track vehicles!
+While vehicles clipping into one another may be interesting in its own way, it doesn't make
+for a very realistic simulation...
+
+## Vehicles not producing sound
+
+Something that has puzzled some players for a while, is that various custom objects would not
+produce any sound effects. It turns out their frequency specifications were zeroed out, which
+in [DirectSound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectSound) had the effect of disabling
+direction-based frequency shifting. In 2022, we moved to OpenAL as the audio backend, so this
+niche feature no longer worked, and in fact muted the sound effect completely!
+As of [#2806](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2806), we now mimic vanilla behaviour
+by disabling the frequency shifting for small frequency values.
+
+## Further demystifying of the company AI
+
+Resident wizard @duncanspumpkin has been working on further demystifying the company AI
+by reimplementing more parts of it in C++. In [#2783](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2783),
+we figured out how AI allocated tracks are removed. This is basically the equivalent of
+the 'ghost' elements used by human players, but can stick around for much longer.
+Further, in [#2789](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2789) a similar thing
+was reimplemented for track signals.
+
+While you should not see any difference in gameplay yet, understanding how the current AI
+works paves the way for future improvements, so this is all very exciting!
+
+## Crashes after moving your Locomotion install
+
+Remember how we introduced having multiple locations for objects
+[a few releases ago](https://openloco.io/news/2024/10/openloco-v24.10.html#updates-to-object-index-and-selection-2629-2650)?
+Well, it turns out our new code didn't like people moving their Locomotion install.
+This doesn't happen very often, realistically, but caused an unexpected crash for some players.
+After figuring out what went wrong, @duncanspumpkin patched this nicely with more flexible
+(de)serialisation of the object index in [#2761](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2761).
+
+## Bug fixes galore
+
+It's hard to crunch out a bunch of code without introducing a few bugs along the way.
+Thankfully, @duncanspumpkin found some time to fix a bunch this month.
+
+Let's start with [#2782](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2782),
+which fixes issues with bridge painting. In the last release, people quickly noticed something
+we missed, which is that some bridge pieces were missing their railings!
+Having penned the code responsible, Duncan quickly fixed the issue.
+
+Some players noticed that the same name would show up for an industry, and some industries
+would not be named at all! This took a bit of digging, but was ultimately fixed in
+[#2798](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2798).
+
+Another issue was that people lining up for a tram or bus stop would all show up in
+the same colour! This had to do with what we internally call the cargo density —
+and yes, people are considered cargo too, in this game...
+A quick fix, thankfully, so patched as of [#2799](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2799)/
+
+Finally, it was brought to our attention that the sound effect being played for company bankruptcy
+has been inverted! This meant the 'crowd' would cheer insted of boo your company when it goes
+out of business. It's a simple mistake, with amusing consequences. With
+[#2800](https://github.com/OpenLoco/OpenLoco/pull/2800) in, the right sound effect is played once again.