I've released a beta of Scorched3D version 43 to see how it goes. I've put up a server so we can also mess around with it online. This server is currently using one of the newer game modes and I will probably change it to other modes from time to time.

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Let me know if you find any issues.

Before causing an issue to report ...

Will the beta overwrite any of the users
current files or is it safe to install without
taking any precautions?

Thanks ...

Me

Good question.

If installed into the same location it will override the existing files, causing the older game to not work and newer beta to probably not work too! Probably best to uninstall the old version or install into a different location.

It will use the same display and custom settings files in the .scorched3d directory in the user's home directory, this shouldn't cause any issues but you may want to back them up just in case.

Only issue I had was that it moved a mod to a different directory stating that it was old or a different version. I compiled from the source though. I haven't noticed any bugs, either. So far looks good.

Edit: When firing a shot on your test server it doesn't shoot as soon as I fire it as it did when I played the modes in a local game. Is this the intended behavior?

Can you tell me the ChangeLog of this version?

Thanks

It's available in the source package or the svn repository. I checked the ChangeLog myself and it only has threes changes recorded there. Link below:
http://scorched3d.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/scorched3d/trunk/scorched/CHANGELOG?revision=313&view=markup

Good stuff the new game play, with some tweaking this can be a very exiting addition and it makes me wonder what else is possible with this new version.

I haven't been playing humans so far, the bot isn't much fun tough it keeps resigning on me. Could you make it a little less cowardice? I checked again and it says all players skipped moves.

Also i could use some audible aid for the countdown, i am so busy getting used to the new speed and trying to fine tune my shot that i sometime completely miss the countdown. Something like 3 ticks and a beep would help a lot.

Thanks for the good work.

Hi Gavin:

Thank you for the update. I feared messages saying, "It trashed my files!"



What I do is :

Program installation directory - program files/scorched-3d-43-beta
Shortcut Title - Scorched 3D Ver. 43 beta

This keeps both the current version and the beta intact and playable.

Most of all, thank you for hanging in there with us.
"... we aren't normal people."
and I'm sure you have suffered a great deal of frustration because of this.


Sincerely,

Rommel

There's not so much of a change log this time, although most SVN commits will have a change noted against them, this release is really a main feature change rather than a collection of smaller changes.

The main emphasis for this release was to streamline and improve (update?) the online experience, and to some extent the offline experience too. The server and networking code has been completely reworked, and this has changed the back-end from a turned based engine to a real-time capable engine. The upshot now is that the game will play more like a RTS in some of the game modes.

So some things you may notice (aims of this release):
- When joining the server you will see the game straight away without having to wait till someone takes a shot (you can join mid shot)
- When playing the game there are now no pauses what so ever for people joining and leaving the game, the flow of the game is constant (except obviously when someone leaving means the game stops)
- The buying time is used for loading the level, so people on slower computers have less time to buy but other people aren't affected.
- Other players lagging or on slower connections won't affect the game play much, other than a slight slowdown on shots being fired. Laggy players only affect themselves.
- A round timer has been introduced to put a cap on the total time a game can take
- More game modes have been introduced. The new game modes are all faster paced, one of them being completely real-time. The existing game modes are still supported for people liking the original slower pace.

I've done extensive testing on the beta already, this is mainly a test for people on all sorts of latency.

To a certain extent. Since the engine is now operating like an RTS all clients and the server are locked stepped (they all perform operations at exactly the same time). To coordinate this there is a certain amount of leeway to when things happen to ensure that slower clients aren't lagged out by much faster connections/clients. However this leeway should never be too intrusive, currently the delay cannot go over 1 second (I guess we can tune this).

Here's a picture of the in game performance window (you can access this by hovering over the graph icon top right of the screen). You'll see theres 4 new items on it.
1) Server ahead by, this is how far out you and the server's time is. Generaly this should be zero.
2) Server Round Trip Time (ping), how long it takes for the server to recieve and process your responses from you and react to them. Note: this includes server response time so isn't the network latency, although that is a part of it.
3) Server simulation step, this is how long the server will wait for each message from clients. Or put another way this is how long it will take to see the result of an action you make. This is generaly the slowest ping time of all clients + 10 ms (capped at 1 second).
4) Server choke, if you are lagging the simulation may be paused while you wait for updates from the server (choke). Choke is a bad thing and generally indicates an issue (unless its shortly after initial level creation).

The round ending happens when the bot skips and i miss the countdown.

The round also ends when i die but still have an extra life.

TankSnipe, thanks for your reply.

gcamp, whats about russification of the game? viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5658&p=53922&hilit=Russification#p53922

Good point, I missed that I'll add it to the final feature.

There were some minors problems i notice.

1.The end of line termination of the Lang.resource caused a 1 square character to appear at the end of each translated text. Can remember exactly on what combination (OS/line_termination) it happened. I think it was on CR+LF and linux. When I saved the file as LF only the problem gone.

2. Often the translated text is too long and overlap the menus. There are many cases when it is impossible too make a shorter translations.

Havent tried 43beta. This is what i remember.

Where is the new GUI mr G? Not planning to use it in the new release?