Have to be honest I'm surprised by what I'm reading, I had pretty much given up hope for further WA development. Good to see I was wrong!

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

I use Windows 8.1, in case you're wondering, so yeah.
[/size]

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PMThe 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.

I think that there's a reason for this: reenactment, or having more chaos in schemes. Besides, the changes can actually be made while preserving backwards compatibility if Deadcode & Cybershadow spend a few more seconds in the coding room. Do you REALLY want rushed updates that suck AND break compatibility with players that want to use them?! Besides, Worms Armageddon mode compatibility may be useful for people that aren't Ancient Egyptians using stone tablets to record games. For example, we can see more chaotic matches with emulation (which can be useful for expiremental experimental matches).

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PMThe 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.

It exists, it's built-in. Next thing you know, you will complain about a non-existent CAW that exists as a template in WWE games.

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PMExtending 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.

You can always hack the game to automatically remove the additional weapons, or make a WormKit module for older versions to handle the new weapons.

Quote from: cuck on January 03, 2019, 03:35 PMIf the community has to make a leap to 3.8 and redevelop most of the modules, please at least make it worthwhile.

They have done this every update (no matter how minor) for the past decade, and they'll most likely do it again.

Quote from: generic goose on January 03, 2019, 04:24 PM
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?

That all sounds like the kind of stuff planned for 4.0 (a very major update that's a long way off).

Quote from: The Extremist on January 03, 2019, 11:14 PM

Quote from: generic goose on January 03, 2019, 04:24 PM
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?

That all sounds like the kind of stuff planned for 4.0 (a very major update that's a long way off).

Not necessarily. Maybe the new scheme format could be extended to allow "attachments" ie. custom weapon sprites, libraries, sounds and such. If those could sync automatically from host to players, we'd have the foundation of a modern-day ProjectX. The same sync function could work for custom soundbanks. I don't know that there is any more "ultimate" perfect solution planned for those functions in 4.0 anyway. With the new scheme format from 3.8 we are in really good shape already. A 3rd party coder could make this in a Wormkit module.

My guess is that true game saving (or continuing from replays) is probably, like you say, a long way off. But the new map screenshot function helps greatly. What would help a lot in the interim would be to make the game more aggressively attempt to reconnect after a disconnect. That probably would do nothing to resolve disconnects due to desynchronizations, but if it could fix drops from Hostingbuddy crashes it would be a very substantial improvement.

Thanks! I can't wait for 3.8.

you may as well ask for a display name change or sth
"SeeYouSeaKay" or sth idk

The primary concern against including RubberWorm into the base game is that many of its options would be "WTF hack" to newcomers. Like, someone joins what appears to be an usual Intermediate game, and suddenly gravity is wrong, worms bounce, shots don't end the turn and all that. Would there be some sort of notification or something if any game-changing RubberWorm options are enabled, or is it now mandatory to check all RubberWorm options in every game?

Just bring the flaming health bars back that's all I want

Quote from: WTF-8 on January 05, 2019, 08:14 PM
The primary concern against including RubberWorm into the base game is that many of its options would be "WTF hack" to newcomers. Like, someone joins what appears to be an usual Intermediate game, and suddenly gravity is wrong, worms bounce, shots don't end the turn and all that. Would there be some sort of notification or something if any game-changing RubberWorm options are enabled, or is it now mandatory to check all RubberWorm options in every game?

There will be indication when there's any change from standard values.

Quote from: Spid3yo on January 05, 2019, 08:35 PM
Just bring the flaming health bars back that's all I want

[sarcasm]Yes. In fact, let's make any animated GIF be able to be used in Health bars, I feel it could work.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, though. While the flaming health bars are a good idea, the creation of the update has already been finished. However, I can see it happening in 3.9 or 4.0, which will likely be 5 years away

Quote from: Ytrojan on January 05, 2019, 11:05 PM

Quote from: Spid3yo on January 05, 2019, 08:35 PM
Just bring the flaming health bars back that's all I want

[sarcasm]Yes. In fact, let's make any animated GIF be able to be used in Health bars, I feel it could work.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, though. While the flaming health bars are a good idea, the creation of the update has already been finished. However, I can see it happening in 3.9 or 4.0, which will likely be 5 years away

5 more years for something they removed from the game 15 years ago 

Quote from: Spid3yo on January 06, 2019, 07:36 PM

Quote from: Ytrojan on January 05, 2019, 11:05 PM

Quote from: Spid3yo on January 05, 2019, 08:35 PM
Just bring the flaming health bars back that's all I want

[sarcasm]Yes. In fact, let's make any animated GIF be able to be used in Health bars, I feel it could work.[/sarcasm]

Seriously, though. While the flaming health bars are a good idea, the creation of the update has already been finished. However, I can see it happening in 3.9 or 4.0, which will likely be 5 years away

5 more years for something they removed from the game 15 years ago 

Just to let you know, I didn't smite you for your post, I smited because of Aaron Rodgers avatar.  FTP!

Awesome! Thank you.

I'm so hyped for this update. ^^
Any plans on developing a feature that can create custom weapons like in Project X?

I think it great that developments and everything are still being made on wa.

As a biased 'classic' old schooler i don't think (would love to be wrong) the 3.8 patch will return the glory league days of wa. In fact it may just create more scheme variations and modifications making the wa community even more divided in terms of what schemes are popular and enjoyed in a competitive league environment.

WA isn't dead, but classic style is?

What are others thoughts on the release of 3.8 in relation to classic and league style?

Please note that this post isn't meant to demotivate DC and CS on their work and really appreciate their efforts to fix a game we all love. I just love classic and competitive games and want to try to get the whole community more into that instead of so many single scheme variations. Perhaps the reason the glory days worked so well was because the leagues were simply based off bng, default and rope and grew from there..