I didn't read whole, but will be real time worms? like real time ttrr etc. If no, its very sad.

Quote from: Asbest on December 31, 2018, 10:44 PM
I didn't read whole, but will be real time worms? like real time ttrr etc. If no, its very sad.

Not YET, that's 4.0


If you want Real Time Worms, OpenLiero is your answer.

Wow that makes my longest post ever look like nothing 

But seriously, these are the new things i'm most excited about:

QuoteIt is now possible to start an offline game with CPU teams only, and no human teams present, pitting the CPU to play against itself.

QuoteIt is now possible for the host in an online game to add CPU teams. The game will only be allowed to start if all clients present support this feature.

QuoteAuto-place worms by ally (checkbox) – When worm placement is automatic, group worms by team colour. May make automatic placement feasible even in Fort-style maps. Default off.

I'm really interested to know more about auto-placement, we've been dying to have this in Darts for as long as we can remember, there are many people who don't like the scheme specifically because they must wait a while placing worms at the start, this changes everything there! Couldn't be happier!

Great work on the bug fixes, I didn't realize the game had so many issues... Will be nice to try some of the other things too

I hope i'm still alive for 4.0, not even joking!

Quote from: Deadcode on December 31, 2018, 12:10 AM
(Endless list of bugfixes and features)

Quote from: Kradie on December 31, 2018, 12:41 PM
You have my gratitude! Thank you so much for your hard work CyberShadow & DeadCode!

This will surely put smiles on many faces and continue to bring life to this legendary epic game! I am so proud of everyone

Quote from: Godmax on December 31, 2018, 11:02 AM
Ok so....it fixes non existing bugs (I have never encountered?!). How about a way to continue games after a disconnect how about that?

Didn't you read we're going to be able to save maps mid-game? It isn't a real way to "continue" a game, but it certainly will be helpful. Also, it's about time you start behaving like a real person, your character isn't even remotely fun anymore.

It's nice to see this update has become a reality in the near future. Hope it brings this game some of its life back.

Quote from: TheKomodo on January 01, 2019, 12:24 AM
Wow that makes my longest post ever look like nothing 

But seriously, these are the new things i'm most excited about:

QuoteIt is now possible to start an offline game with CPU teams only, and no human teams present, pitting the CPU to play against itself.

QuoteIt is now possible for the host in an online game to add CPU teams. The game will only be allowed to start if all clients present support this feature.

QuoteAuto-place worms by ally (checkbox) – When worm placement is automatic, group worms by team colour. May make automatic placement feasible even in Fort-style maps. Default off.

I'm really interested to know more about auto-placement, we've been dying to have this in Darts for as long as we can remember, there are many people who don't like the scheme specifically because they must wait a while placing worms at the start, this changes everything there! Couldn't be happier!

Great work on the bug fixes, I didn't realize the game had so many issues... Will be nice to try some of the other things too

I hope i'm still alive for 4.0, not even joking!

It probably places them in a similar way to Forts, but don't worry: They'll probably do a similar thing that applies to Darts before 4.0 starts development

thanks.

Thanks! Great Job!

As a reminder for anyone who wants to have CPU-only games (with no human teams present), you can already do so by using this WormKit module. It allows the "start game" button to be pressed.
You will have to delete the module when 3.8.0 is released.

Good Job

Quote from: StepS on January 02, 2019, 10:19 AM
As a reminder for anyone who wants to have CPU-only games (with no human teams present), you can already do so by using this WormKit module. It allows the "start game" button to be pressed.
You will have to delete the module when 3.8.0 is released.

YOUPRMISED ME TO BE AVAILABLE HOST BY http://snoop.wormnet.net/snooper/. FOR NOW I AM NOT EVEN AVAILABLE WRITE THERE ! xdddddd

Personally I'm super excited and grateful for this new update. THANK YOU for persevering and (soon) releasing this monumental effort.

Specifically very excited about the new scheme format. AFAIK this has been one of the main ambitions and obstacles for WA 4.0. Now that it's implemented, many other possibilities emerge. Now that Rubberworm is integrated the playerbase will be less divided. The new scheme format is a prerequisite for implementing things like larger weapon rosters and native PX-style tweaking, so we should be very glad to have it. In previous posts DC and CS have indicated that after 3.8 they intend to have more frequent updates. Even if that doesn't end up happening as much as planned, the job of creating tweaks/features is now easier for other Wormkit module makers. Furthermore I don't think there are that many modules that need to be rereleased. StepS has said that it's trivial to make the necessary changes, and has even offered his help doing so.

I must admit on first readthrough I felt some of the bugfixes were excessive (such as the bubble size). But for all we know some of those bugfixes may have only taken a few minutes each to fix. I am glad that someone has the knowledge to find these bugs and cares enough to go to the effort of fixing them. Deadcode is a volunteer so we can't rightly criticize how he chooses to spend his time. Maybe he'd lose his ambition to continue if he knowingly left imperfections that he knew he could easily fix. The best thing about WA is how polished and perfect it is, and that is something Team17 still fails to comprehend. There will never be a worms game that comes anywhere near WA in quality. This new update cements that fact indisputably.

Quote from: j0e on January 03, 2019, 01:34 AMThe best thing about WA is how polished and perfect it is, and that is something Team17 still fails to comprehend. There will never be a worms game that comes anywhere near WA in quality. This new update cements that fact indisputably.

I'll say it again - polish is king.

In any kind of game, but especially one with heavy customization, online lobbies and peer-to-peer netcode, I can't stand jank - and I don't think Deadcode can either.

Anyhow, while lots of new features could be added at this point, it's best the current slate of bugs be cleared before more are undoubtedly added by large new chunks of code. The new scheme format alone is probably going to need another update or two to tidy things up.

Nobody's really expecting anything massive before 4.0 anyways. Interim updates that make the existing experience smoother do well enough to keep the playerbase invested, and they help clear a path for 4.0 too (enabling windowed play is certainly a big step).

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PM
Hello,

First, I think it's great that you're making things for W:A.
But I'm afraid that many members of the community are somewhat disappointed by the changeset featured in the 3.8 update. Even though fixing bugs is important from developer's standpoint, it is not necessarily the best course of action to maintain a healthy community. From my understanding, the sole thing that people anticipated from this update was a set of new and meaningful gameplay features.

From the quick glance of the changeset, most of the changes were directed towards fixing obvious bugs with windows 10 compatibility (yay!) and resolving glitches that were low level and so obscure, that we didn't know they even existed (yay... maybe?). Don't get me wrong, some technical features (ASLR) and fixes were truly necessary, but I bet that most players can live through a sea bubble skipping an animation frame.

The thing that I cannot comprehend at the moment, is why do have to stick with absolutely perfect backwards compatibility across multiple WA versions. Most folks on WormNet stick with 3.7.2.1 (because it's newest* and greatest at the moment), 3.6.31.0 (because of ProjectX) or 3.7.2.2 (because they don't know any better and just use what steam installed by default). Yet, there has been substantial amount of work put into bringing back WA 1.0 to play nicely with 3.8. Too bad, that WA 1.0 is unobtainable at the moment, so the only somewhat viable way of playing 1.0 in the year 2019, was if someone's grandma found an ancient CD and wanted to relive the good ol' days of The Berlin Wall falling down. More of the time could be spent on more meaningful changes if we just decided to drop the compatibility support and print a nice prompt to update the game when somebody joined the party with their 1920 Ford model T. Btw, even if the core game can synchronize with 1.0, the Napoleonic Wars veteran will still be kicked out/desynchronized because he lacks the rubberworm or other modules.

The power of WA is it's great community, that has already proven numerous times that it *can* and *will* bring many new exciting features through the Wormkit. Even better, we are backed by two truly skilled developers with access to the game's source code, so some technical and otherwise unfeasible changes can be done at the source code level. But I'm afraid this update missed the chance to revitalize the game. Of course, nobody expected a full ProjectX reimplementation, but at least a cornerstone of a true Wormkit system could be laid. We all know, that in its current state wormkit is a fancy name for LoadLibraryA wrapper and module developers are left to figure out everything by themselves. As result, every wormkit module implements important stuff in a chaotic way that often does not play out nice with other modules or game features. Of course, now* rubberworm is a part of the core game, so it is bound to behave nicely, but all other modules need to be redone or patched anyway with the same nonexistent API.

The limitation of WA's feature development is the lack of public information (developers need to reverse engineer everything by themselves), lack of true integration between modules and the game, and the way the game's memory structures are laid out and referenced. Most of the game code and structures are easy to find and understand in a single evening's time with a 6 pack of beer. So for example, replacing bazooka's physics and behavior is relatively easy, but extending the weapon roster with that modified bazooka is a hell of a task. Why? Because there is no room. Hacking the game to think that the weapon roster contains 128 entries is easy, but when the game would check the ammunition of red team's weapon #128, it would actually check the blue team's weapon #48 or so. In order to truly add a new weapon to the game, the developer has to copy the entire weapon entry array and ammunition state array to a new area in memory, insert some buffer space between the array entries and force the game to use the new memory area with regards to extended intervals between entries - find and patch hundreds of references to the old memory address and inlined constants. Btw, even if the modder has achieved such task, there are still dozens of arrays and subroutines that need to be altered (loading custom sprites, img's, sounds and localization strings, extending the arrays containing the pointers to loaded data, modifying the weapon box to show more columns, etc.). Each task involves the same or greater amount of work and further changes to other parts of the game. On the other hand, the owner of the source code to do the same task only has to change some constants and recompile the game.

Extending the game with bigger weapon roster (alongside more team, player, sprite and other miscellaneous arrays) will break backwards compatibility (even though some protocol messages actually offer more space than needed), but if we just prompt the outdated player to upgrade the game, we will be just fine.

In regards to lack of documentation and integration between the game and modules, maintainers could develop a basic ProjectX-like environment (let's call it a True Wormkit), allowing for package management across players, dynamic hooking and unhooking api, game protocol access, easy access to game's memory structures, and reading/writing to new scheme format (I hope the new scheme format is a JSON or XML file, so modders can easily extend it to their own needs). And I strongly believe, that releasing (partial) header files of important structures and functions won't cause harm to anyone. With extended buffers and a proper modding API true miracles could be done.

If the community has to make a leap to 3.8 and redevelop most of the modules, please at least make it worthwhile.

You're entitled to your opinion. For the record, I did not delete your post or account. It may have been deleted simply because of your username, or some other reason unrelated to your post's content.

I do W:A development as a labor of love. j0e hit the nail on the head saying "Maybe he'd lose his ambition to continue if he knowingly left imperfections that he knew he could easily fix." I'm in this for the long haul; I want to make W:A as good as it can be. Taking the "quick and dirty" route of implementing features that break compatibility would sour me on the whole thing. I also predict it would result in elevated excitement in the game for a while, but would shorten W:A's life in the long term, making gameplay more ephemeral and fleeting with no permanent reliable record in the form of forward-compatible replay files. Yes, I realize that in the short term this attitude may result in some frustration. But please bear with me on this! The customizability features in 3.8.0 are just the tip of the iceberg, and there is more to come in later releases. I just want to take my time and do it right.

All of the extensions of which you speak can be done while preserving backwards compatibility, it just takes more time.

I love you guys. This update will be so great.
Only features I could ask for are some system for downloading soundbanks (steam workshop integration maybe?), a way to make custom weapons, less limitations on the map image format (they aren't very restrictive, but having none would be best, although it's probably difficult) and last, but not least, game saving.
Will any of those appear in the future?

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PM*wall of text*

not yet, 4.0 will be a thing eventually