0.2.8.0_rc3: Release process and bugs

[Phytotron]

Right, so I don't know whether this would qualify as a bug, but it's at least an oddity, or a quirk, if you will. And who knows whether this will be replied to with another "duh, that's expected behaviour" or "that's OpenGL being strange" response. But here it is anyway.

Background: As you know I have difficulty seeing dark-colored tails on my black floor. So, as a temporary remedy when faced with such a player, I turn Floor Detail to "dual textured plane" while keeping Floor Texture off. This way I just get a solid color floor without any substantial hit to my framerate, right. So awhiles ago I was messing with the floor RGB in a local game to find a floor color with which I'd be content. I set my cycle color to RGB 2, 2, 2, which was close to black on my screen, and I set the floor RGB to 0.3, 0.2, 0, which is a brownish color.

Then here's what I noticed would happen (or you could just watch it in the recording, presumably):

1) I start a new round with the floor detail off. The cycle tail is blackish.
2) During this round, I turn on dual textured plane. The tail is still blackish, but now I can see it against the brown floor.
3) I crash. A new round starts, but now the cycle tail appears as a lighter greyish color.
4) During this round I turn floor detail to off again, and the cycle tail is still this lighter grey which I can see against the now black floor.
5) I crash and start a new round and it's back to black.
--or--
I turn dual textured plane back on, crash, and when the next round starts it remains grey.

rinse, repeat

Kinda weird, me thinks. And this happens whether I'm using the moviepack or not, and regardless of what dir_wall texture is used. So, I've attached a folder which includes a recording demonstrating this, as well as two screenshots in case the color change thang doesn't show up for some reason when youse play back the recording—just to show I'm not nuts, heh.

[Z-Man]

Silly: It's expected behavior The code tries to keep the cycles' colors a bit away from the floor color. However, it does not know about the effect of the textures (they have dark areas making both the trail and the floor darker), so it takes guesses. Apparently, and I forgot about that, it DOES know that turning the floor off will make it black, so it sees different colors to avoid depending on your floor rendering settings. It doesn't take the brightening up due to no texture into account, though.
The right thing to do would be to average over the real textures that are used, but that will have to wait. Or maybe be abandoned altogether when our graphical content gets more flexible and we have to think of something all-new to keep the cycles visible.

About the DTD: Anonymous is dead right as the default for the author. If no author is given, it's anonymous. Note that author=Anonymous is not the same as putting a file in the public domain. There is a correlation between the two, but it's not forced.
For the default of "unsorted" to Category: The whole thing was one of the uglier discussions that I don't want to wade through, but the default was set right after that discussion. By me, IIRC. I guess it was one of the rare cases where Luke gave up
But yes, version needs to be required.

The Attribution thing is a nice idea, but maybe a bit too formal and rigid. Why don't we define two comment strings, one short, one long, that can be filled with whatever the author desires and that will be displayed by a future, hypothetical resource browser? Along with a preview picture, of course.

Ghableska: No worries, your vote is withdrawn when you leave the server. Also, you won't be able to vote several times by connecting with several clients at once.

Invader: sorry to hear that. Have you tried both the GCC and VC6 build? Or the previous rcs?

[Phytotron]

Well, that makes me two for two on this release. >:/

I'll keep my eye out for more unnecessary and foolish things to report.

[Lucifer]

good work silly, we depend on you for this.

[Luke-Jr]

About the DTD: Anonymous is dead right as the default for the author. If no author is given, it's anonymous. Note that author=Anonymous is not the same as putting a file in the public domain. There is a correlation between the two, but it's not forced.

Then it is impossible for anyone to redistribute or modify "Anonymous" works, since the terms are unknown.

[Z-Man]

The license needs to be written explicitly in the file anyway. You can't assume to be allowed to copy and modify a CD just because it is filed under "Various Artists"

[Luke-Jr]

The license needs to be written explicitly in the file anyway.

Not if we declare "Anonymous" as non-copyrighted.

You can't assume to be allowed to copy and modify a CD just because it is filed under "Various Artists"

"Various Artists" still has the artists' names somewhere. If the artist refused to associate his/her name with the music and just credits it to "Anonymous", I would presume it is a public domain work.

Edit: This is off-topic here. Forking it off to its own thread under Development.

[Z-Man]

The license needs to be written explicitly in the file anyway.

Not if we declare "Anonymous" as non-copyrighted.

Well, we don't. I can't remember a discussion about it until you brought it up here.

"Various Artists" still has the artists' names somewhere. If the artist refused to associate his/her name with the music and just credits it to "Anonymous", I would presume it is a public domain work.

Check the included files in Anonymous, they still tell you who made them, and they explicitly state they're under no license restrictions.

[Luke-Jr]

Well, we don't. I can't remember a discussion about it until you brought it up here.
Check the included files in Anonymous, they still tell you who made them, and they explicitly state they're under no license restrictions.

This is off-topic here. Forking it off to its own thread under Development.

[dlh]

During the "waiting up to n seconds for So and so to stop chatting" in Fortress the camera behaves oddly. For example when I glance, it will glance very slowly. No recording, but I can get one if you need it.

[Phytotron]

Yesterday I was reminded of one that is actual (making me only two for three as of this posting), and nemo already knows about it (I think it's only in the mac version), and though last time we spoke he/you didn't know its cause, I bring it up again as perhaps a reminder or nudge or whathaveyou (wow, nice run-on sentence, huh). Simply, the Q bringing up the menu—kind of a pisser when I'm thinking I'm hitting W to turn but accidentally bring up the menu and crash instead.

[Z-Man]

Just bind some other silly action to q, like one of the camera movement keys. The reason for q being hardcoded for the menu unless bound otherwise is the fear that some keyboards may not have the escape key and if they the keybinding is lost, those people using one can't leave the game... Of course, that's kind of pointless if it can be overridden anyway.
Are there keyboards without escape key?

[meriton]

Erm, I have bound "glance left" to Q, but sometimes (especially between rounds) I still get the menu instead. Want a recording?

[Tank Program]

Erm, I have bound "glance left" to Q, but sometimes (especially between rounds) I still get the menu instead. Want a recording?

I've got this too.

[Z-Man]

Yes, please. A recording of this would be useful.

Nemo: that's because the camera update code uses the game timer, and that is paused then. It would be a bug that the camera moves at all, I'll check that.