BZ2 1.3.6.4z15 - Open beta & testing

[GSH]

Download this and unpack over your existing 1.3.6.4 install's exe. This is a quick patch that re-enables construction rig upgrades and other tweaks

If you can, please install and test this. I think that this build is about 99.9% of what I want to put into a 1.3.6.5 release. Your best chance of having bugs fixed for 1.3.6.5 is to report things on the 1.3.6.4 series. Logfiles -- battlezone.log and chatlog (if enabled) -- are useful. Otherwise, reporting things in a way that makes them happen here is best.

See the changelog for the fuller descriptions of what's changed. Since 1.3.6.4n:

- Construction rigs can upgrade once again
- Much work to make griefers less able to annoy people
- Anyone can now ban anyone at any time - if you're a client in a game, you can ban a host or another client. Anyone you've banned who's hosting a game won't show up on the list of servers. Anyone you've previously banned who is a client in a game you joined is now warned about
- CUT the 1.2-style physics craft variants. The 1.3 patch series does not encourage that monoculture of overpowered scouts. Learn to explore the tech tree.
- Tweaked session registration and browsing to hopefully work around antivirus with overactive web shields better
- Chroming of objects is now SSE-powered for greater performance
- Tracked vehicle physics ought to be more solid. BZ2's collision code is still garbage, though
- On players leaving in a teamplay game, their units are redistributed to remaining players to avoid orphanage
- Upscaled shell fonts to look less klunky at large resolutions - note that this will require mods with custom extra options pages to also be upscaled
- Ingame UI can be upscaled by a preference - see graphics options, page 2, bottom right
- Input smoothing option from Ken, also pathing system tweaks and particle render from him.
- MP escape screen chat should scroll better
- Fix for input getting stuck at edges of range
- Crash logs aren't overwritten next boot, up to 10 crash logfiles and 5 regular logfiles are kept
- Smoother timeskew code, and servers will now time out delayed moves for clients to keep the game smoother.
- More work run in background thread while waiting for vsync for smoother
- More retransmits of player packets for more lossy connections

-- GSH

[Juggernaut]

Thanks for the updates! Managed to get a couple z15 - 5v5 strats up.

Pros:
1. Didn't see the white scout bug.
2. Seems alot smoother (less lag), although DD still did complain about lag (220_ping) .. as did Muffin (on VPN). Could not confirm if it was any better for them or not.
3. More stable all around it seems thus far

Negs:
1. Orders to AI often get ignored, need to repeat (ongoing issue - hold, pick me up, follow me, any order)
2. Scion Morph animation seems broken (new) (appears as a spiky sphere now during morph vs molten scrap as before - confirmed by others as well)
3. 750 ping limit is still too low imho. this will cause more autokicks as pings spike during an alt tab or autoupdate.
4. z15 creates dupe assets (same file name) for those of us who use newkeys (...\battlezone II\addon\Custom\bzgame_keys.cfg -with the new-: ...\battlezone II\addon\config\game\bzgame_keys.cfg)
I simply just rename one of the bzgame_keys.cfg files to get around this, just an fyi.
5. F7 is hit or miss. It works approx 40% of the time, other times we cannot select player on F7. Hard to duplicate and pinpoint what causes this (Note: Team 1 it may work, Team 2 NO .. (or vise versa) may be team specific)
6. In game message chat still blurry depending on background behind it (note: playerlist just above it, same color and font not affected). See screenshots below:
take note: Mission Time and player list not affected, only the chat window. Usually it is more blurry than this, depends on the backdrop.


Against a dark/solid background the text is clear.




Nice stable gameplay thus far, thanks again!!

[Nielk1]

The dupe assets is due to subbuilds placing their new files in addon. It will probably go in the patch13.pak file in the next fullbuild... probably.

[Zero Angel]

A player got a crash on z15 while playing G66. Not sure if its a g66 thing or a z15 thing. Posting log anyways:

Code: Select all

ERR |           animtypes:85   |23:58:11|1422392|i1 out of range: 192
ERR |                 log:1368 |23:58:11|1422418|abort() requested from '.\utility\animtypes.cpp':86
ERR |    ExceptionHandler:188  |23:58:11|1422622|0120B1F7 +0018B1F7 000000C1

http://pastebin.com/7wZ1imth

Other comments:

Lag at the beginning of the game was awful. Units dancing lambada and twerking. Crash occured (maybe around the time) of an extractor destroyed. Not sure of other conditions since I was thugging.

[Zero Angel]

@Juggz: Nice golden sun screenshots. Is it just me or has fog rendering improved somehow? They look like 1.2 screenshots, which had superb fog rendering.

[Juggernaut]

I believe overall lighting and fog is better for sure. I just updated the screenshots to show the 'blurry text issue' some of us are having (seems specific to Nvidia cards).

a side note: I'm running with graphics settings maxed at 1080p -- vsync and trip buff OFF (greatly reduces mouse input lag). The text blurriness I am experiencing happens regardless of what resolution I use.

[GSH]

When playing, watch for a ! (and blinking purple) in the lag column and your player's row. If that's happening, packet loss is significant to the server. See if that correlates with orders getting "lost".

ZA- read the changelog. You have early access to that.

-- GSH

[Zero Angel]

Yeah, I did. The explanation was very technical and I had difficulty understanding it. Makes a little more sense now, seeing it action.

[Commando]

Bugs I have noticed.

1. Morphing results in the msh getting garbled for a second.
2. Specular Highlights are off. They are too prominent in this build, as opposed to older builds. This is very noticeable on maulers in MPI Dunes. It is also noticeable on Morphed Warriors. Same map.

[vlad_C0M]

1. Buggy morph screen
2. Specular Highlights are off
3. Sometime Not killed wepsbox (If damage more than hp, you can kill it. Like in 1.00 version) (Mb Not correct work friendly fire?)one two
4. Turrets on the former work badly. Can't select a right place for fit == Sit down at each other. Do not deploy when I hold them.

[Juggernaut]

I joined Lucifer's game and the white scout issue cropped up. Then following games were fine. It seems to only crop up when I 1st load BZ2. Subsequent games without BZ2 restart it does not seem occur (at least to my recollection). Very minor issue though, just wanted to bring it to your attention.

[Wolfen]

I haven't seen that white scout yet juggs, don't forget that we were also playing vsr. Game seems very stable with this patch, but restricting movement is something you have to be careful with because we all get used to the maneuvering in say an MPI, then it can get harder, say to hit archers, or bombers, etc if you can't maneuver to shoot them down. I have not seen anyone complain about an opponent out maneuvering them, instead they learn to do the moves as well so I am finding it difficult to understand the restrictions in that area. Other than the known bugs on this patch the game works great, much appreciated.

[Nielk1]

I haven't seen that white scout yet juggs, don't forget that we were also playing vsr. Game seems very stable with this patch, but restricting movement is something you have to be careful with because we all get used to the maneuvering in say an MPI, then it can get harder, say to hit archers, or bombers, etc if you can't maneuver to shoot them down. I have not seen anyone complain about an opponent out maneuvering them, instead they learn to do the moves as well so I am finding it difficult to understand the restrictions in that area. Other than the known bugs on this patch the game works great, much appreciated.

IDK what you are talking about with maneuverability, that hasn't been touched in ages. Perhaps a side effect of something else?

[Zero Angel]

I haven't seen that white scout yet juggs, don't forget that we were also playing vsr.

VSR uses stock 1.3 models for all vehicles except the mortar bike. Anyways, the white bug, we suspect is related to nvidia video cards or drivers.

[Ded10c]

On an unrelated note, which file does BZ2 prioritise in the event of an asset clash?