BZ2 1.3.6.4z13 - 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

-- GSH

[Protrector]

man, clicking on factory , etc while on satelite-view is buggy!

[GSH]

man, clicking on factory , etc while on satelite-view is buggy!

I'm sorry, that tells me nothing concrete or useful. May I suggest you read how to write a bug report? Or some alternate suggestions? Or this one? In short, clearly explain what you expected to see, and how it differed. And find a way to make it happen on my machine. On demand.

-- GSH

[Protrector]

i hoped you would test it 5 minutes...

I will see what i can do...

[Red Spot]

i hoped you would test it 5 minutes...

You could test it for a day and still not find such a thing, specially since most players hardly use the commbunker.
GSH could also simply not release these patches ...

[Zero Angel]

Really really hating the new netcode. Rubber banding, facing in random directions every world swap for minutes at a time -- etc. It's enough to make one physically sick from the disorientation that it causes.

It seems as if the new netcode punishes one twice as hard for not having a perfect internet connection. That's not my final judgement, nor is it a very objective one, and maybe i'm just being selfish by speaking out against it (having arguably the worst internet connection amongst even semi-active players) -- but maybe the new netcode penalties to those who have periodic/intermittent packet loss could be refined to not be so disorienting. It will be up to those with good internet connections to determine if the new penalties are worth using or if we should go back to something like z6.

[Red Devil]

i'm loving the new netcode; makes more sense to me and it visually reveals whose connections are lossy, either intentionally or not. lossy connections in the past have tended to ruin it for everyone else. now it affects the "loss leader". i'm also glad the default max ping is lowered.

now if a max packet loss kick could be added, it'd be perfect.

[Zero Angel]

Don't forget that BZ2 is an international game. If Europeans or Aussies have a bad time playing with North American players, or North American players have a worse time playing on Euro hosts, then I would rather tolerate a little bit of warp than have things which will exclude other players. At any rate, i'd like to see how it develops, and then choose whether to continue to promote z13 or try to get everyone to go back to z6 in the meantime.

[Red Devil]

of course you would; you have the lossiest connection i know of and having an inaccurate position gives a player an advantage, so you're rather biased.

i'll gladly give up lossy players in my game hosing up my gameplay, no matter their location.

[Zero Angel]

Doesnt matter if i'm biased. If it causes problems with regular international play, then it would be a bad thing.

I can get if you don't care if your MPI games are short a player or two because a lot of people can solo MPIs and afford to be selective about the connections of people they play with. If you have an 8/8 or 10/10 and you have players dropping or unable to participate in strats because they're punished heavily for being from Aussieland or middle europe then it's an entirely different story.

[Red Devil]

if you have a guy peeing in your swimming pool all the time, it's best to keep him out.

i set my max ping lower years ago, but that doesn't prevent lossy players from joining. it helps, but it's no cure like the current code is.

[Zero Angel]

i'll gladly give up lossy players in my game hosing up my gameplay, no matter their location.

Feel free to do so, but G66 MPIs arent all that people play, as evidenced by what the game lists say.

The hosing or not-hosing of the games is related to how robust the netcode is at any given release. I've seen releases that have tolerated bad clients and recovered gracefully, and releases that have not had this level of robustness.

Anyways thats beside the point. Your entire argument is predicated on your personal preferences -- where as mine is about how games between international players will go. You'd be foolish to think that me being biased somehow invalidates my point.

Anyways if it works out well enough then i'd gladly say 'well it sucks to be me' and take the effects caused by my own worse gaming experience, but like I alluded to it's possible for the networking code to be stable enough to tolerate lossy clients, and in fact that's still an important goal -- adding fake instability to anyone who loses packets 'in its current form' may not be the best solution. Like GSH said, the rubber banding experienced by FPS players going maybe 10 km/h is different from constantly flying ships that move at much higher velocities.

[Red Devil]

uh, scrolls back...nope. who is talking about G66 or any mod? i'm talking about stock.

oh, sorry, i forgot you and the others don't help us test - like the 10..12 hours of testing of stock that Commando, me, Sub-0, and H-B did over the weekend and over the previous weeks while you played your pet VSR mod- so you wouldn't know...

my bad.

[Zero Angel]

uh, scrolls back...nope. who is talking about G66 or any mod? i'm talking about stock.

oh, sorry, i forgot you and the others don't help us test - like the 10..12 hours of testing of stock that Commando, me, Sub-0, and H-B did over the weekend and over the previous weeks while you played your pet VSR mod- so you wouldn't know...

my bad.

Actually, nope. Several of my limited free hours of the days in the past week were spent working on the bz2maps game listing service, which is a service available to all players. I mustve put in less than a half-dozen hours of solid VSR playing AND development in the past 3 weeks. But nice try.

[Ded10c]

ZA has a sound and completely watertight argument. Punishing purely because of their location is not something that should happen, regardless of whether it improves the game for others or not.