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Announcements / Re: Worms Armageddon v3.8 Released
« on: July 16, 2020, 07:45 PM »- [DC] The maximum host address length of a hosted game that W:A is able to connect to has been changed in the past, but longer lengths were never properly handled. In early versions, a length that was too long would cause a crash, or would result in garbage characters being printed. In later versions, hosted games with host addresses too long would simply not be shown in the list. Now, these games are shown in the list, but an attempt to join them will show the message "Can't connect. Host Address too long." Also, the maximum host address length of a hosted game that W:A is able to connect to has been changed from 39 to 49 characters.
- [DC] Bugs introduced in v3.6.19.7 and v3.7.0.0: Holding the Space Bar resulted in strange behaviour in the front end. If a button or checkbox had the current keyboard focus, then moving the mouse while holding Space highlighted the button, leaving it highlighted until Space was released. In versions earlier than v3.7.0.0, the bug still existed, but in a reduced form; the button or checkbox would only become highlighted when the mouse passed over the button while Space was being held, but would then remain highlighted until Space was released, regardless of where the mouse was subsequently moved. Now, the Space Bar acts more like it does on standard Windows buttons; holding it down presses the currently focused button/checkbox, and releasing it triggers that button/checkbox. Pressing any key other than Space while still holding it down cancels the press; Space can then be released without triggering the button/checkbox.
- [DC] When launching certain replay files, a NONSTANDARD_POWER_LEVELS dialog box would pop up underneath the SHELL_LOADING box, requiring the dialog box to be dismissed before launching would continue.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.7.0.0: The Direct3D 9 renderers did not work properly under Wine.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.6.23.0: The in-game dialog box (ESC) and chat (PageDown/PageUp) transitions were supposed to occur at a framerate-independent speed, but instead increased in speed as the frame rate increased.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: When running W:A under Vista or later with UAC enabled, after minimising in-game, the game could not be restored by clicking its taskbar button. The only way to restore it was to open its system menu (in Vista or earlier, by right-clicking its taskbar button; in Windows 7 or later, by Shift+right-clicking its taskbar button, or right-clicking its taskbar thumbnail) and click Restore or Maximize — and this method only worked in W:A v3.6.30.0 and later, since earlier versions did not support opening the system menu.
- [DC] When using 8-bit DirectDraw under Windows 8.x/10, restoring after minimising in-game resulted in severe graphical glitching. It was previously necessary to use a Windows Application Compatibility setting (Layer_ForceDirectDrawEmulation) to avoid this bug, but that is no longer necessary.
- [DC] When using DirectDraw or Direct3D 7 under Windows 8.x/10:
- [DC] Restoring after minimising in the front end resulted in a white screen. Even using the Layer_ForceDirectDrawEmulation compatibility setting was only a partial workaround for this problem, making it disappear after a few seconds or less but not necessarily preventing it from appearing in the first place.
- [DC] With "Wait for vertical sync" enabled, the frame rate was very poor.
- [DC] Restoring after minimising in the front end resulted in a white screen. Even using the Layer_ForceDirectDrawEmulation compatibility setting was only a partial workaround for this problem, making it disappear after a few seconds or less but not necessarily preventing it from appearing in the first place.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, in any front end screen that had its default focus on an edit box, after giving the focus to a different control (e.g. by pressing Tab or by clicking on the other control), minimising, and then restoring by clicking the taskbar button, the input focus would be strangely divided. The default edit box would receive input, but without showing any caret, text selection, or highlighting — and the control that had focus before minimising would be highlighted.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, W:A did not appear in the Alt+Tab list when minimised, except when launched from a replay file.
- [DC] The "Close" menu option in the Windows 7+ taskbar button context menu (as opposed to the system menu) did not have the desired effect. It would either do nothing, or in some circumstances in v3.7.0.0 and later when in-game, would restore the game from a minimised state.
- [DC] The buttons in the Scheme Options editor's "cheat" menu were not highlighted on mouseover.
- [DC] The front end had quite a bit of latency in its response to input. It is now much faster.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.7.0.0: The front end's background gradient was rendered 20 times per frame, negatively impacting the overall frame rate (depending on other factors; having vertical sync enabled, for example, could hide this problem).
- [DC] Map Editor keyboard repeat bugs (applies to features introduced in v3.5 Beta 1)
- [DC] Holding down the Alt key to improve drawing precision could result in jerky mouse motion due to the hardware keyboard repeat of the Alt key.
- [DC] Holding down the Ctrl key to constrain drawing motion into one axis could result in jerky mouse motion due to the hardware keyboard repeat of the Ctrl key.
- [DC] Holding down the Alt key to improve drawing precision could result in jerky mouse motion due to the hardware keyboard repeat of the Alt key.
- [DC] The Constrain function in the Map Editor (used by holding the Ctrl key while drawing) was biased towards horizontal motion — any perfectly diagonal motion would be constrained into the horizontal axis. The constraint direction resulting from perfect diagonal motion is now chosen randomly.
- [DC] Bugs in features introduced in v3.6.19.7 and v3.7.0.0: Closing a drop-down list by clicking an item in it or pressing the ESC key did not restore input focus to the listbox control (unless that control had default focus in its parent dialog, because the bug was that focus was changed to the default control of the parent dialog). Note that this bug was present only in drop-down listboxes, not combo boxes.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.6.30.0: Opening a combo box by pressing Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown copied the name of the first item into the combo box's edit box. This happened even if the first item was a directory name (with surrounding angle brackets).
- [DC] Ctrl+Break is meant to be a synonym for ESC in Windows dialog boxes, but did not work in all dialogs/screens of the W:A front end. Now it acts exactly like ESC.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.7.0.0: It was possible on some systems for the Direct3D 7 renderer to get a lower-resolution surface than requested, for example getting a 1024×1024 surface when it requested a 1280×960 one. When this happened, it would show only the leftmost and/or topmost portion of the game viewport, filling the rest with black. Now it will fall back to a lower resolution if this happens.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.23.0: The amount of time the phone icon stayed on-screen before sliding away depended on the rendered frame rate, not the passage of real time. For example, on a 60 Hz monitor it disappeared a little bit too soon (showing for only 83% of the time it should), and on a 120 Hz monitor it disappeared far too soon (showing for only 42% of the time it should). With vertical sync disabled it disappeared even faster.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.7.0.0: Hardware mouse cursors did not work under Windows 98/Me.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.7.0.0: When hardware cursors had been active and then disabled in the same instance of WA.exe, every time the front end cursor state changed it was possible for a crash to happen. In practice, the crash is only known to have happened under Windows 98.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: If W:A was minimised while a game was being started (while the dialog box "Please wait... working..." was shown) it would enter a buggy state. In v3.6.31.2b and later, it might be playable for a while, but would eventually enter an unplayable state or crash. In earlier versions it would instantly enter an unplayable state. Either way, it would eventually either crash or require the "WA.exe" process to be killed externally.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.28.0: After mousing over a control in the Network Choice screen (causing help text to appear), and out into empty space (which makes the help text disappear), mousing back over the previous control didn't show the help text. Only mousing over a different control than the last one caused help text to appear again.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: If the WormNET screen changed modes while minimised, in most cases it would be visually garbled when restored. This could happen when one initiated connecting to WormNET, joining a channel, or parting from a channel, and then immediately minimised before the action was finished.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: If W:A was minimised during the process of connecting to an online game, then it would crash upon being restored.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.7.0.0: The automatic resizing of message boxes and confirmation boxes could potentially go into an infinite loop if the title text was very long, which could happen if a dialog box title string was edited in the language file. If the title text was just moderately long (and not long enough to trigger the infinite loop), it would cause the dialog box to expand vertically as well as horizontally, resulting in lots of empty vertical space in most cases.
- [DC] Latent bugs exposed by a feature in v3.7.0.0: When using Direct3D renderers, after W:A lost and regained focus (by minimising and restoring), certain graphical glitches would manifest until exiting from the current front end screen. (The fix to these glitches has been applied to all front end controls, so even ones that had a similar but unreported glitch will now be fixed.)
- [DC] In any front end screen with message history controls, giving focus to one of the message history controls (or taking focus from it) would cause a horizontal dotted line to flash near its top.
- [DC] Resizing the player list (in the Host lobby) would cause it to flash solid white.
- [DC] In any front end screen with message history controls, giving focus to one of the message history controls (or taking focus from it) would cause a horizontal dotted line to flash near its top.
- [DC] Latent bug exposed by a feature in v3.7.0.0: When using Direct3D renderers, upon opening any confirmation dialog box or Deathmatch win/loss dialog box, the two text regions would flash a 3D rectangular border. When entering the Mission screen, Host/Join screen, or offline or online next-round screen, the map thumbnail would flash a 3D rectangular border. (The fix to these glitches has been applied to all front end controls, so even ones that had a similar but unreported glitch will now be fixed.)
- [DC] Under Windows 2000/XP, occasionally some buttons/images in the front end would load as black 13×13 squares. It was also possible for the background debris to occasionally load as transparent emptiness, making it invisible. Both of these bugs would usually disappear upon minimising and restoring the game (although either of them could also appear after doing so).
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.28.0: Compatibility with Windows 95 was broken and has now been restored.
- [DC] When using 8-bit DirectDraw with hardware rendering under VMware on Windows NT-based guests, certain front end controls had a skew/slant glitch in their fonts.
- [DC] In Windows Vista or later, with DPI set to higher than 100%, and either "Use Windows XP style DPI scaling" enabled, or "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" enabled in the Compatibility settings for W:A's EXE/shortcut, the Map Editor's Import dialog box would be created without a visible scrollbar, leaving empty blackness in place of where the scrollbar should be.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: When minimising in-game, if any keys were held down at the moment of minimisation, the game would continue to act as if the keys were held down, until being restored (at which point, the fix in v3.7.2.1 would come into play, and refresh the game's keyboard state from the state of the actual keyboard). This would only have an actual effect during an online game, because minimising an offline game automatically pauses it.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: If W:A was minimised while the mouse was on a list header (e.g. "Team Name" or "Points" in the Multiplayer screen's team list), then upon restoring, the header would still be highlighted in white, and the only way to cancel the highlighting would be to move the mouse over an empty header, if any empty region existed. Similarly, if the left mouse button was pressed and held on a list header, and W:A was minimised while still holding the mouse button, then upon restoring, the header would still be highlighted in yellow, and the only way to cancel the highlighting would be to click on a header.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.7.0.0: The landscape mini-thumbnails in the Map Editor would highlight upon mouseover of their clickable rectangle, but then unhighlight only upon exiting a rectangle that was 2 pixels larger in every direction. (This is similar to a bug that was fixed in v3.6.28.0, in which the mini-thumbnails were highlighted and unhighlighted upon entering and exiting a rectangle 2 pixels smaller in every direction than the clickable rectangle.)
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.7.0.0: When the Map Editor's file combo box was open, after mousing over and highlighting the landscape mini-thumbnail on the right that it partially covered, the mouse could then be moved onto the combo box's scrollbar without unhighlighting the mini-thumbnail.
- [DC] Mouse-over help text in the Map Editor, LAN Lobby, Network Options screen, and WormNET were glitchy and less responsive than the help text in the rest of the W:A front end. The help text in these screens is now just as instant as that in the rest of W:A and follows the same rules.
- [DC] After the mouse cursor changed to a hand upon mousing over a hypertext link, it would not always switch properly back to the default arrow cursor. This would happen when single-clicking on the link and moving it out of the hypertext window fast enough, when "dragging" the link out of the hypertext window, or when minimising and restoring, if the cursor was outside the hypertext window upon restoring.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: The Direct IP hosting dialog box refused to accept a game name if it was exactly 1 character long.
- [DC] Bug introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: Certain actions in the front end resulted in temporary mouse capture (see below for list of actions that did this). While in this state, right-clicks would be ignored. A left-click would be ignored, but would cancel the mouse capture (so that subsequent clicks would work). Also, moving the mouse at least one pixel in any direction would cancel the mouse capture.
- Double-clicking a nickname in the list of nicknames on WormNET, to /msg them.
- In the Host/Join/Next Round lobby, right-clicking a nickname in the list of players, to /msg them.
- Using line memory, by pressing Up / Down / PageUp / PageDown in any edit box supporting it.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.6.28.0: If a chat message was received while the pinned chat was visible (i.e., if Ctrl+PageDown and PageUp had been pressed), then if the pinned chat was dismissed soon enough (by pressing Ctrl+PageUp), the phone icon would be visible, even though it shouldn't be after a chat message has been visibly shown on-screen.
- [DC] Upon leaving a WormNET channel, the PART command was followed by too many LIST and WHO commands (only one of each is necessary). This may have somewhat slowed down the process of leaving a channel.
- [DC] The IRC message 333 (which always follows 332, indicating the topic of a joined channel) was incorrectly being shown as green text.
- [DC] The IRC welcome message (001) was not being displayed as green text, when it should have been.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.6.28.0: The host/join chat log of the current session, stored in User\Logs, was not properly closed in all circumstances under which an online game session could be ended. This prevented the log file from being deleted, renamed, or moved, until exiting W:A.
- [DC] When quitting from the Next Round screen as a host
- [DC] When losing connection to the host while in-game, as a client
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.6.30.0: When quitting W:A while in an online game by clicking Close in its taskbar button's system menu. The file was closed immediately anyway, but LOG_SESSION_ENDED was not entered into the log.
- [DC] When quitting from the Next Round screen as a host
- [DC] Bug in features introduced starting in v3.6.19.7: When starting WA.exe with either "Auto-register associations" enabled or the /register parameter, if a relative path was specified for WA.exe, or a path containing forward slashes instead of backslashes, the associations would be incorrectly registered.
- [DC] UDP ports 17010 and 17012 are used for the LAN mode protocol, but W:A initialised them even when entering WormNET mode, and broadcast on UDP port 17012 when hosting WormNET games. W:A no longer uses these ports in WormNET mode.
- [DC] Bug in a feature introduced in v3.5 Beta 1: When scrolling a message history box with text selected inside it, if the selected text reached the top or bottom edge, the solid white selection rectangle would be drawn outside its proper bounds. Starting in v3.7.0.0, this bug was made worse, leaving a permanent trail 1 pixel thick on the top and/or bottom edge.