KaM Remake nightly build

[Bence791]

Would anyone be interested in having a server running for the nightly builds? I've updated the code to compile on Lazarus/Linux again, and with our new VPS we can easily host a second server for the nightly builds. I guess there aren't really many multiplayer changes to test yet, but I'm sure there will be in the future

P.S. My exams are finished, so I'll be back to working on the project

I'd say I'm interested, but somewhere I read that the nightly build is unstable (probably the readme file included). Is it true? Or what did you mean? I thought it would crash often, but if not then it's okay. At the same time I agree with sado, and I think just to test Unicode (or the new scripts of course, but probably that is a more important factor, because Unicode test is like you switch your language to Chinese, or your own and see if cyrillic/chinese text appears "correctly") it is not really worth it.

P.S.: Hehe, no-one is split from R.A, you know their password

[Krom]

Nightly builds are mostly untested, so the amount of bugs is going to be close to those in Beta versions.

[MpranavM]

NICE very NICE

[Lewin]

Well we've divided the community in the past with beta/balance testing and it didn't cause too many problems (forum/teamspeak users are a smallish part of the total player base). But given that the nightly builds will probably be quite buggy (and unlike beta/RC testing we're not so interested in fixing bugs yet because we're still implementing new features and many bugs might simply be due to half-implemented features)

[Krom]

@Lewin: Okay then Maybe we can make it one server to support range of revisions? So that we don't need to restart a server for each new build.

[Nissarin]

If new features don't require changes in the protocol then you might choose just not to "bump" it needlessly.

[Lewin]

The protocol itself rarely changes, the changes are mostly in the gameplay. Even the smallest change to the gameplay will make clients of different versions incompatible with each other, since it relies on the deterministic nature of the game (all all clients simulating exactly the same events independently). Because we don't want clients of different versions playing with each other we "bump" the server version, even though nothing in the server code has changed other than the version number.

The best solution would be to allow the server to support multiple game versions at once as long as they have the same protocol (separate the protocol versions and game versions). The server would then only tell clients about lobbies which are using the same game version when the server is queried. If we did it like this then even some major releases wouldn't require servers to be updated, because the server/protocol code doesn't change too often. But we'd probably have to layer to protocol into the "client-server" level (client connecting to server, querying, joining a lobby, etc.), and the "client-client" level (transferring of game commands, chat, changing lobby setup, etc.). Currently those things are all mixed together, which isn't ideal since the server doesn't need to know the difference between a chat packet and a game command packet, it only needs to know who the packet needs to be sent to.

[Lewin]

New nightly build released, r5937. Get it here:
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/downloads/list

This version fixes this bug:
Actions.PlayerWareDistribution did not update house orders, so houses didn't notice that the distribution has changed

There are also a lot of new script commands added by Andreus, which can be seen at the top of this file: (our wiki doesn't seem to have been updated with the latest changes)
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/sou ... stions.txt

[Lewin]

New nightly build released, r5961. Get it here:
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/downloads/list

This version adds files transfers to the lobby, as well as cinematics and some other new script commands.

[pawel95]

New nightly build released, r5961. Get it here:
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/downloads/list

This version adds files transfers to the lobby, as well as cinematics and some other new script commands.

Just tested the new version. Really fast download. Good job!(what isn´t a surpirse at a map that has not even one mb,right?! ) However I wanted say sth else:

The chat font is changed now, because it supports now all language signs right? The strange thing is, in the old KaM Remake version i could use a special polish letter in my "Nickname", in the current nightly I can´t use any extra signs.

BTW Good work with that blinking KaM Remake windows under Windows 7, looks really nice, just wanted to propose that idea soon but you are that fast xd
However also about that, it is "shining" when anyone is writing a message in the lobby. Sometimes you sit in a lobby with a full set like 1 hour, that could irritate a bit Don´t you think,it could be better to do it like now, when some player reconnects in the game / a player joined the lobby ? (Like in dota when someone pause /unpause the game ? ) because that function fits well to show the players: The Game is ready again / Game can started, because a player joined. In comparision that you get like 2 messages per second sometimes in a lobby, that taskbar is irritating a bit


Good improvements

Pawel95

[Bence791]

The chat font is changed now, because it supports now all language signs right? The strange thing is, in the old KaM Remake version i could use a special polish letter in my "Nickname", in the current nightly I can´t use any extra signs.

It seems that the unicode letters that can be written in r5503 aren't there in the nightlies Not only the polish consonants, but a couple of vowels (á, é, í, ó, ő, ú, ű, as I wrote above) as well. At least Chinese seems fine

[pawel95]

The chat font is changed now, because it supports now all language signs right? The strange thing is, in the old KaM Remake version i could use a special polish letter in my "Nickname", in the current nightly I can´t use any extra signs.

It seems that the unicode letters that can be written in r5503 aren't there in the nightlies Not only the polish consonants, but a couple of vowels (á, é, í, ó, ő, ú, ű, as I wrote above) as well. At least Chinese seems fine

Well its strange because I can write normal polish letters in the chat "box" but not use it in my nickname That´s why I´m asking(Because it was possible in r5503).


BTW Mapmakers, make sure you first set a password/close slots before you wanna test your unpublic/unfinished map There were a guy some min ago, who joined, downloaded andreus´ map and left again

I also heard that it is/will be possible to download a savegame. That is also fantastic,because "Leaver" will be a smaller problem then,because you can let download new players the save easily and fast.


And 3 more things (Bugs)

1.) When you select a group of units and press anywhere the Left Mouse button, the group "disselect" wasn´t like that in normal kam/older remake.
2.)We tested some games and got like 10000 messages "You are under attack". Propably the remake tells us for every single unit which is under attack, that "someone is under attack" now (The Minimap is also spamed by every single attack from any unit ) [But The accurary of the icon on small battle maps looks better than before, I think]
3.) We got sth like an endless way or reconnections and disconnections of all of us 3 players. Andreus said sth about the change of "Check of random" from 10 per second to 1 per second in the nightly, so if someone lags,there are problems and it reconnect whole time(Andreus can give you for sure more details )

[MpranavM]

How is that possible?

[andreus]

viewtopic.php?f=23&p=33456#p33456 I posted all here

@devs: about random check errors - could it be so that Remake didn't notice some game state changes because of this change (10 checks per second ---> 1 per second)? So it caused mismatches, and we disconnected 100000000 times

[Lewin]

Thanks for all the bug reports, I'll fix them (I already noticed some myself like alerts behaving strangely). Krom did some massive refactoring since r5503 (moved all the code around to make it easier to maintain) so it's expected that there will be a lot of bugs (major refactoring always causes bugs).

We no longer allow special characters in player names. There was a discussion about this a while ago. If we allow any characters in player names then you will get Russian and Chinese names which nobody else can type so in the game people can't address them ("hey chinese guy, click ready", but what if there are 3 people will chinese names?). It's not unusual for online games to restrict what characters you can use in usernames.

BTW Mapmakers, make sure you first set a password/close slots before you wanna test your unpublic/unfinished map There were a guy some min ago, who joined, downloaded andreus´ map and left again

I also heard that it is/will be possible to download a savegame. That is also fantastic,because "Leaver" will be a smaller problem then,because you can let download new players the save easily and fast.

I don't think that's a problem, if you are privately testing your map then you should have a password on your lobby. If you are publicly testing your map then it doesn't matter if people download it and leave, that helps give your map to more people If the host had to authorise each transfer it would be slower and annoying for the host.

Yes save game transfers work the same as map transfers, hopefully this will help with leavers.

@devs: about random check errors - could it be so that Remake didn't notice some game state changes because of this change (10 checks per second ---> 1 per second)? So it caused mismatches, and we disconnected 100000000 times

Random checks are only there to make sure the game is still in sync between players. We could remove them completely, but then the game would be like TPR and keep running after players go out of sync. Checking less often doesn't affect the gameplay, since random checks are only there to detect bugs which make the players go out of sync (and prevent you from playing a TPR style game where both players win which is frustrating and confusing).

In this case the random check error is possibly because another crash occurred earlier (after a crash it's likely that the game will be out of sync), or there might actually be a bug where something isn't being synchronised properly.