Battlezone Forums

Happy Father's Day!

I think I have most of the major outstanding issues fixed now. I also had some spare time while waiting for feedback on the previous build so I took care of a few less-important but still-worthwhile issues that turned out to be easy to fix.


Downloads:

Testing Executable and Symbols
Game Assets (no changes since 2011-05-19)


What's new:

* The strategic AI prints error messages instead of exiting silently
- This should help track down the mysterious shutdown in Soviet mission 1

* Set default SeismicWave parameters to emulate "classic" behavior
- This also means units get flipped underground again
- Future adjustments can be done in seismic.odf instead of code

* Attempted to fix the blank escape and post-mission screens on Vista 64
- The game forces Windows to redraw the window contents after a mode switch

* Attempted to fix the cases where players wouldn't appear in the player list

* Added an in-game measurement of average packet loss
- This uses the ping packets sent to measure delay and synchronize clocks

* Enhanced the auto-kick mechanism
- autoKickStart: how long after join to start checking (default 10000ms)
- autoKickPing: how high an average ping to allow (default 1000ms)
- autoKickLoss: how high an average loss to allow (default 50%)
- autoKickTime: how long to allow high ping before kicking (default 10000ms)
. NOTE: this may seem high but ping and loss values update relatively slowly

* Added system messages for auto-kick events
- When a player starts lagging: "<name> is lagging" (multi_message/start_lagging)
- When a player stops lagging: "<name> stopped lagging" (multi_message/stop_lagging)
- When the host auto-kicks a player: "Auto-kicked <name>" (multi_message/autokick)
. Only the host sees this; everyone else sees the standard "Host kicked player <name>"

* Updated the CD audio system
- Reliably plays music from a virtual CD regardless of drive order
- Uses the audio mixer so music volume works on modern systems
- TO DO: stop CD playback at zero volume

* Updated the network debugging display (Alt+N)
- Draw it as part of RenderHUD so it works with hardware rendering
- Moved it just above the status display on the HUD
- Included stats for reliable messages
- What everything means:
. BW: current bandwidth in bytes and bits per second
. RX(U): received unreliable data
. RX(R): received reliable data
. TX(U): transmitted unreliable data
. TX(R): transmitted reliable data
. total: total bytes of data reported by Anet
. bps: bits per second measured over the last second
. avg: bits per second measured over the entire game
. msgs: total number of messages reported by Anet
. mps: messages per second measured over the last second
. avg: messages per second measured over the entire game
. drop: dropped packets

* Fixed BettyVoice notifications occasionally stopping and never resuming
- This would happen when it couldn't play the VO sound

* Defer chat messages when they can't be sent
- This prevents the "<error> Send buffer full, message not sent."
- The message will instead appear after a (presumably short) delay
- NOTE: exiting a shell page cancels any deferred messages

* UpdateWeapon now uses the proper bullet speed and lifetime when checking for hits
- This resolves an occasional divide-by-zero error in IntersectGameObject

* DoStuck skips dynamic objects when checking for potential blockers
- It uses IntersectGameObject in a way that doesn't work for moving objects
- This also prevents it from being blocked by things like powerups

"
* Set default SeismicWave parameters to emulate "classic" behavior
- This also means units get flipped underground again
- Future adjustments can be done in seismic.odf instead of code"

A sad face? If you don't like the change, why do it?
In either case, if it was fixed and then rebroken, I just won't play 1.5...

I'm trying to get 1.5 wrapped up soon so I decided to defer a gameplay change like that so it can get proper playtesting. The flipping underground thing looks silly but the game has been like that for over a decade so a few more months won't hurt.

Damnit, 1.5 will be done before 1.3 if you carry on at this rate -.-

To be fair, BZ2 1.3 is a huge update. I think we could have (and should have) released about half a dozen intermediate patches along the way.

1.5 was originally supposed to be a quick update to fix some critical errors, but like BZ2 it experienced a bit of mission creep along the way. Then I planned for 1.5 to be a "one and done" update so I could go back to other projects, but it's grown on me since. I think I have at least a 1.6 in me.

You don't wait to release too many patches. One of bz2 1.3's problems is the patches competing with one another.

Ultraken wrote:I think I have at least a 1.6 in me.

What would be in 1.6?

I don't know yet.

Possibly the scariest and most intriguing thing I've ever heard you say.

There's a lot of things I'd like to do but know they'll turn into huge development sinkholes. BZ is fragile enough as it is.