Determinance screenshot

Archive for May, 2010

Server down for upgrade – hopefully this one will actually do it

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Server down for upgrade - hopefully this one will actually do it

Hopefully only down for an hour.

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Server offline for upgrading

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Server offline for upgrading

Hey guys.  The server will be offline for the next hour or so while I do preparation for shifting to the new box.

Ian

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News

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

News

I have now successfully moved house, and I have the internet due to a wonderful neighbour dropping a lan cable out of his window for me.  He couldn’t remember his wireless password. Ah 2001, I’ve missed you.

Despite moving house, I managed to release a new game mode last week. I’m going to update the rules of it slightly to require you be over the line for a minimum of three seconds to win, but apart from that (which will have made no sense to most of you) I’m a big fan of it.

I’m pretty sure the next full client patch will have an auto-updater involved, because that’s something people want (and rightly so).  However, that patch probably won’t be out for about 8 weeks or so, so grab the dev version (instructions in the afrore-linked forum post) if you want the latest.

My ISP are now receiving death threats from me in relation to our server.  They have promised me a nice shiny new one will be in place this week.

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Scoring back in at some point today

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Scoring back in at some point today

Should have a version of scoring which doesn’t bring the (STILL OLD) server to its knees in today – will keep you updated.

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Fan-logo

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Fan-logo

A really rather awesome FS logo to adorn a post about FS, titled “Psychic Cyberpunk TRON SWAT Chess”

(I’ve had to resize it to fit on the blog – click through to see the non-scaled version)

Love it.

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Patch#1 released

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Patch#1 released

Patch#1 has been released – please log into FS and the Message Of The Day contains the link to the new installer.  The Mac installer is coming later today. For a couple of days the patch will be optional so that I can find any serious bugs, but you will eventually be locked out of the server until you upgrade.

While that’s happening there will be some weirdnesses, most often a “score mismatch” error which you can safely ignore.

I am now turning my attemtion to speeding up the server – both with new hardware and better database code.

Here’s the eventual changelist – not that much larger than the initial one posted:

Changed max number of active games shown on list
Fixed random generator to not spawn units in visibility of each other
Fixed not allowing the – character in email addresses
Fixed Extermination scoring – no more weird -3 kills
Hostage scoring fixed
Added Client “status” to the opponent token in the top right
Added Dark/Light to the gamemode display in the opponent token
Relegated Challenge Messages to an ignorable pop-up message
The game mode is displayed in the Challenge Message
IRCBox has been made smaller and defaults to a (hopefully) better position
Added the ability to send quick-messages to your opponents (open the irc chat and type a message and click “Msg Op”)
Duplicate
Bug fix: in Duplicate Disputed the boxes were appearing in different locations on the same duplicate map.
Friends lists added.
Sidebar now shows more personalised leaderboards, showing the top 10 players but outside that only showing your friends.
Made the “user is already logged on” message more informative, to indicate that if you’ve recently been eroneously disconnected you will need to wait 90 seconds to log back on.
Serious error which was producing “desync” situations found and fixed
Another serious error which was causing “desync” with explosive units found and fixed
Your friends appear first in the “People Online” sidebar section
Admins are only emailed for “lonely” players if number of people online is < 8
Added feature: opponent ghosts show time since you last actually saw them
Stopped the crazy-mouse-pointer behavour on disconnect
Added a quit button!
Defenders in hostage games now get turn1-fire advantage
Added option to not get emailed by FS about new games/turns
You are allowed to see Duplicate Data for Duplicate Maps you haven’t played after that map has left the rotation (currently 24 hours)
Only games which have a “new turn” are shown in My Active Games
Increased the length of time that games will show up in My Active Games to 4 days
Posting a comment now clears the comment text box
Added license text for several APIs we use into the readme.
On pressing “(<)” when in an online game, you will be taken to that game’s gamePage rather than the feed.
Previously was requesting your own player page whenever you log in – now only happens when you actually press the “Players” button.
Draws are now correctly reported in the player page.
Draws are now correctly reported on the feed
If you don’t have any friends, the feed will show 20 entries.  If you do have any friends, it will show the top 4 entries regardless, and the rest up to 20 from friends.
“Hide all other units” has been moved from the ‘h’ key (where it was being hit accidentally) to “shift+h”
Probably fixed the “matchmaking yourself to yourself” bug
Fixed a bug where you could see the initial orientation and stance of Dark Secure opponent units
Added working generators for all 4 game modes into the “Advanced” game creation screen
If you select a Hostage, there will be lines drawn to the exit zones
Fixed a bug where games were sometimes not showing up in a user’s Player Page or My Active Games list.
No longer possible for terrorists to kill hostages in their Hostage Zone with explosives (CTs can still kill them with explosives)
Fixed a bug where you could drag units outside of their valid deploy zones (thanks to Blindsight for helping with this one)
Fixed a bug where corpses could trigger the “unit stuck in a wall” message.  Really surprised I didn’t see this one reported more!
Added the ability to choose the colours of your units and your enemies’ units
Previously if you were kicked from the server and clicked “Play Offline” the game would freeze.  Fixed.

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Updatery

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Updatery

Hey guys.

The patch will go live around 10am GMT tomorrow – it’s in final testing today.

We have a couple of forum posts asking for help with random questions:

Fonts

Color-blind colors

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Stat!

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Stat!

Since we launched 15 days ago, we’ve had 11,000 completed matches.  Completely insane.

Posted in News | 2 Comments »

Patch Update

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Looking a bit delayed on the patch – I’m hoping to have it out on Wednesday evening (no promises yet).  To tease you, here’s the current completed change list (lots of bugs to be added to this over the next two days):


Fixed Extermination scoring – no more weird -3 kills
Hostage scoring fixed
Added Client “status” to the opponent token in the top right, it shows that your opponent is “here”, “in another game”, “in the menu”, or “away”
Added Dark/Light to the gamemode display in the opponent token
Relegated Challenge Messages to an ignorable pop-up message
The game mode is displayed in the Challenge Message
IRCBox has been made smaller and defaults to a (hopefully) better position
Added the ability to send quick-messages to your opponents (open the irc chat and type a message and click “Msg Op”)
Duplicate
Bug fix: in Duplicate Disputed the boxes were appearing in different locations on the same duplicate map.
Friends lists added.
Sidebar now shows more personalised leaderboards, showing the top 10 players but outside that only showing your friends.
Made the “user is already logged on” message more informative, to indicate that if you’ve recently been eroneously disconnected you will need to wait 90 seconds to log back on.
Serious error which was producing “desync” situations found and fixed
Another serious error which was causing “desync” with explosive units found and fixed
Your friends appear first in the “People Online” sidebar section
Admins are only emailed for “lonely” players if number of people online is < 8
Added feature: opponent ghosts show time since you last actually saw them
Stopped the crazy-mouse-pointer behavour on disconnect
Added a quit button!
Defenders in hostage games now get turn1-fire advantage
Added option to not get emailed by FS about new games/turns
You are allowed to see Duplicate Data for Duplicate Maps you haven’t played after that map has left the rotation (currently 24 hours)
Only games which have a “new turn” are shown in My Active Games
Increased the length of time that games will show up in My Active Games to 4 days
Posting a comment now clears the comment text box
Added license text for several APIs we use into the readme.
On pressing “(<)” when in an online game, you will be taken to that game’s gamePage rather than the feed.
Previously was requesting your own player page whenever you log in – now only happens when you actually press the “Players” button.
Draws are now correctly reported in the player page.
If you don’t have any friends, the feed will show 20 entries.  If you do have any friends, it will show the top 4 entries regardless, and the rest up to 20 from friends.
“Hide all other units” has been moved from the ‘h’ key (where it was being hit accidentally) to “shift+h”
Probably fixed the “matchmaking yourself to yourself” bug
Fixed a bug where you could see the initial orientation and stance of Dark Secure opponent units
Changed max number of active games shown on list
Fixed random generator to not spawn units in visibility of each other
Fixed not allowing the – character in email addresses
Added working generators for all 4 game modes into the “Advanced” game creation screen
If you select a Hostage, there will be lines drawn to the exit zones

Posted in News | 3 Comments »