Alpha builds leading to 0.2.8.2: Announcements and bugs

[Z-Man]

Thread purpose clarification: No philosophical discussion or feature requests here, please. The thread should be useful for the users who want to follow the alphas without blindly downloading them, and useful to us developers as a collecting point for bug reports from testers. Therefore, only announcements and bug discussion.

Now, to business: A new build, alpha20060423, is available on aabeta. Here are the changes since the last one:

- Spectators are now regular players and can chat (server and client support needed)
Bugfixes:
- Recording and scorekeeping no longer conflict
- Input during a recording now has an end marker, making quick keypresses after leaving a menu not break it
- CYCLE_RUBBER_DELAY was overridden sometimes by packet loss tolerance
- ALLOW_CONTROL_DURING_CHAT now ignores modifier keys like shift and has been reactivated
- The camera sometimes got stuck in free mode for the first round you watch
- Crashfix in hole blowing code when no cycle was set

There is one known bug I have been unable to track down in spite of thousands of bug cries on Fortress, and I haven't got a good description yet. It seems that if two cycles drive parallel close to another and one turns away, the other sometimes dies. Any information would be appreciated.

Another known bug is that serverside recordings break down far too early, they shouldn't break down at all when played back with an identically built executable. The physics slowly diverge from recorded snapshots. Obviously, this one has top priority.

[wrtlprnft]

- the /msg command now converts the entered pattern into the internal name so if you write "/msg öäü" and there is a user named "öäü" with an internal nick of "oau" it will still get matched

[dlh]

There is one known bug I have been unable to track down in spite of thousands of bug cries on Fortress, and I haven't got a good description yet. It seems that if two cycles drive parallel close to another and one turns away, the other sometimes dies. Any information would be appreciated.

It happens frequently at the beginning of the round, when everyone splits from the initial grind.

I posted a Mac OS X build, server and 10.2.8 client will be around later.

[Z-Man]

Nemo: Thanks. I think I squished the random kill bug today, I finally got a Fortress recording that lasted to the bug cry, it was a bad side effect of the perfect 180 fix. As a side effect of the side effect fix, I think the 180 fix now works even better

Wrtl: I'll add it to the NEWS file.

[Z-Man]

alpha20060507 is up. Especially server administrators are encouraged to give it a try, it contains a fix for the excessive speed bug that has been discovered (and abused) lately. Because it's important that this fix gets into an official version soon, this alpha is a branching point. To 0.2.8.2, only critical bugs should be fixed, the less critical or risky fixes will wait for a possible 0.2.8.3.

- Team changes are now only executed when allowed, the need for the temporary/permanent team imbalance setting distinction has gone away
- Added brake toggle button
Bugfixes:
- Large timesteps are now broken down into smaller ones on the game level
- Pretend keys are released before entering chat
- Two cycle steering events were sent if you doublebind the brake
- Large speed boosts out of game rule bounds were possible during network glitches
- Debug recording reliability increased, function call with undefined return value eliminated

[Z-Man]

Looks like the phasing bug isn't completely gone. It only happens once every fortnight, but two players colliding will occasionally pass through each other. It's a safe fix to turn this into something consistent, but drastic, one of the players gets killed without respecting his rubber.

[Z-Man]

0.2.8_alpha20060515 is available on AAbeta. Fixed bugs since the last alpha:

- Direct cycle collisions sometimes lead to both passing trough each other
- Init scripts now installed correctly with --enable-initscripts
- Hopeless pending team change wishes are deleted

Everyone is invited to give it a try, those who are using the last alpha are encouraged to upgrade.