Thanks for hosting it, Senator. It was loads of fun!

I did actually want to play it out HHC, yeah. But you're in luck, Run destroyed me in the semis for the both of you; what an ouch that game was.

Syc said he'd be streaming his games and maybe other people's too, he's here: https://www.twitch.tv/siliconner

Yeah actually, I think having Mortar and Cluster Bomb both at 3 star power in Team17 is my second preference, personally. I recognise that the scheme is in concept and practice different enough from league variants of Intermediate that it should be able to sustain those weapons at their standard values, even if you're then still stuck with the weird disparity between getting a single Mortar and three Cluster Bombs from a crate.

So, I'd be pretty happy about doing it this way myself (as you may be able to guess from previous discussions, I am a bit of a standardisation nutter), but I know there have been more than a few players over the years who just straight up hated these cluster weapons being able to do 80+ damage, to target worms who often didn't get the chance to try and hide from it, or simply couldn't justify it over doing something else. Similarly to how introducing Kamikaze to the Team17 scheme would mess with players' late game expectations, powerful Cluster Bombs (Mortars to a lesser extent, I know) feel like they would mess with their notion of what is and isn't a good hide throughout the game, especially since for whatever reason, both T17 and Elite schemes have historically had Cluster Bomb nerfed all the way down to 1 star power. Having them at 2 stars is then a) already a buff compared to what the majority of players are used to and b) actually just quite strong in real terms, not much worse than 3 star power would be.

But yeah anyway, for this one tournament where Senator specifically wants to be testing some of the proposed changes out, I don't think it matters either way. He'll know best what he is and isn't interested in trying out, and we can continue the discussion about the scheme in general elsewhere, as we have been.

Excellent. I don't know yet whether I'll be around on the day, but I'm keeping an eye on this. Complex island maps are so much fun for T17.

Oh hey Senator, is it too late to touch the Mortar and Cluster Bomb powers in the scheme for this? Bring them in line with Intermediate's 2/2 instead of the current 3/1, respectively? Or is that not one of the changes you wanted to be testing? I'm honestly okay with either for the tournament, but in general I do prefer 2/2 for all these ground schemes now, makes the most sense to me.

Quote from: DassFass on July 31, 2020, 04:10 AMnow im trying to figure out how to use custom maps without hostingbuddy.... i put them in WormsArmageddon/User/SavedLevels, but there is nothing but default maps when i make a game....

You're probably looking at the drop-down menu under the map preview, instead of right clicking on the map preview (when it's showing a randomly generated .LEV terrain, which you do by left clicking on the map preview). That's actually where SavedLevels maps are! You can sort them into folders as well.

Right, I'm updating these proposed schemes with 3.8 rule enforcement once TUS starts handling v3 scheme files.

Sure, I don't see why not. If you think it's the best move available to you, you go for it, right? And at least sometimes, it is the best move, maybe even by far. As in any scheme that doesn't specifically forbid it as part of its design, there's nothing wrong with using all the tools available to you at any time.

But I don't think the 5 star Torch and Drill are even better than the 3 star ones for attacking... certainly they're not strictly better, better in every situation. So yeah, I don't think that reasoning for buffing their power holds much water. Maybe there are other reasons people can think of for doing it? Dunno, this whole thing is quite confusing for me.

Because there weren't enough things to agree on about Team17 already, I went and added another one that's been making me angry and confused over the past few years:

Quote from: KoreanRedDragon on September 05, 2014, 08:09 PM
16. As it turns out, almost every modern Team17 scheme I come across these days has Blow Torch and Pneumatic Drill power set to 5 stars. Although I'm not sure, I think this may have its origins in either the 1Percent scheme that the #Team17 channel on WWP's WormNET used, or in some kind of official tournament scheme that Team17 (the company) had settled on around the time official rankings were taken down on WA... which then must have made sense for future leagues to keep, possibly because they liked the idea of these two utilities doing a bit more damage in situations where no useful weapons had yet been collected from crates. But I feel like there's a big problem with this, namely that the higher power setting makes both Torch and Drill knock a worm harder (farther away) than their 3 star counterparts, which in practice quite often means that the target worm gets damaged fewer times as a result, especially when torching. This is already weird enough on flat, open terrain and on slopes. But when you consider that it also makes it (almost?) impossible to trap a worm inside the torch tunnel that you're digging, which is otherwise a flashy play in other ground schemes such as Elite and Intermediate, I fear that there may just be too little logic and too many downsides to having the two F7 tools set to a power different to what players might be used to from other schemes. So, should we "standardise" their power to 3 stars, where all the rest of the weapons in the scheme are, and keep their knock power consistent with Elite and Intermediate? Back when I was first uploading these scheme proposals to TUS, I didn't even realise I may have been breaking tradition by having them at 3 stars, because that's just how my T17 scheme always was, it's what made sense to me. Am I alone in that? Hmmm.

Discuss.

Yeah, I know. I wish nobody ever even considered those when looking for games to buy.

This sale is very much legit, going for another four days or so, and it gets you a Steam key:

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/worms-armageddon

I've been trying to keep track of these. There's a lot:

https://www.game-news.co.uk/news/UK/77343/Worms-preparing-to-celebrate-25th-anniversary-milestone
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Ba3CByZU-EJ:https://www.player2.net.au/2020/07/aint-no-party-like-a-worms-party/
https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/517224545/38-is-f@#!ing-out
https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/517242801/worms-armageddon-38-is-out
https://www.tus-wa.com/forums/announcements/worms-armageddon-v3-8-released-32795/
https://steamcommunity.com/games/217200/announcements/detail/4889171591903920897
https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/17/worms-celebrates-25-years-fan-made-update-worms-armageddon-13003712/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/worms-armageddon-is-getting-a-free-update-with-a-6/1100-6479850/
https://thenerdstash.com/worms-celebrates-25-years-of-non-stop-action/
https://www.smartworld.it/videogiochi/worms-armageddon-3-8.html
https://www.pcgamer.com/worms-armageddon-has-been-updated-21-years-after-it-launched/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/hsvy8r/worms_armageddon_patch_38_trailer/
https://wormtube.worms2d.info/121/worms_armageddon_the_2020_trailer
https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/07/17/worms-armageddon-patch-3-8-fan-made-out-now/
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/after_21_years_of_availability_worms_armageddon_has_been_updated/1
https://www.wepc.com/news/brand-new-update-to-worms-armageddon-now-live/
http://world-today-news.com/worms-armageddon-received-an-update-team17-responds-to-negative-feedback-about-the-new-installment/
https://sport.rambler.ru/other/44525327-teper-mozhno-i-poigrat-k-worms-armageddon-vypustili-masshtabnoe-obnovlenie/?updated
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/07/17/worms-armageddon-gets-a-modernising-update/
https://kotaku.com/worms-armageddon-just-got-a-major-patch-21-years-after-1844421416
https://www.engadget.com/worms-armageddon-update-21-years-225928208.html
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/682297456
https://cyber.sports.ru/games/1087055542-v-worms-armageddon-vyjdet-obnovlenie-spustya-21-god-posle-reliza.html
https://www.ixbt.com/news/2020/07/18/worms-armageddon-21.html
https://www.pcgamesn.com/worms-armageddon/update-patch-38
https://www.pcinvasion.com/worms-armageddon-update-21-years/
https://www.4players.de/4players.php/spielinfonews/PC-CDROM/481/2191563/Worms_Armageddon-Update_38_fuer_das_21_Jahre_alte_PC-Spiel.html
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/worms-armageddon-update,3359984.html

Yeah Dave, just use this or this to unlock Full Wormage for your WA team, which will be somewhere like here:

\Worms Armageddon\User\Teams\WG.WGT

Yeah HHC, Balee did a lot of work on this a while back!

https://worms2d.info/User:Balee/CPU_Improvement_Proposal

Quote from: Anubis on June 24, 2020, 01:38 PM
What was changed specifically regarding rope responsiveness? can you elaborate? Like a before/after comparison. And maybe some technicalities like how many ms is the difference etc. Would be appreciated.

So, the way render tweening was implemented in WA means that on average, you get to see your roping worm in its new, updated position half a frame* early compared to 3.7.2.1, all other things (like renderer, v-sync settings, number of buffered frames, desktop window manager messing with your games, etc.) equal. Some of the time it'll be exactly the same, other times up to almost a whole frame less input lag, depending on how the tween phase of the sprites works out, but distributed evenly so that it averages out to 0.5 frame. The difference from this alone isn't massive, of course, so people who aren't heavily into roping (or rope with v-sync enabled) might not even notice it. But lower input lag is just always good, and I think someone like you probably would be able to tell, actually. Although on the other hand, tweening just makes the entire roping experience more enjoyable because of the smoothness of motion, so I suppose it's tricky to say precisely what's going to be responsible for any perceived improvement.

We'll see, but I can't imagine anyone will actually want to go back once 3.8 is out.

Disclaimer: I'm going mostly by how I remember Deadcode explaining this a rather long time ago, in a discussion I can't find right now, so caveat lector.

*Not in-game (engine) frame as far as I can recall, but monitor (GPU) frame, where on a 60 Hz panel one frame corresponds to ~16.7 ms.

Hmmm, I don't think I necessarily agree that bazookas and petrol bombs not exploding when placed gently on terrain or on worms is "clearly a glitch and not intended behaviour."

For one, it makes logical, physical real world sense that a glass bottle (even one filled with petrol, with its fuse lit on fire) wouldn't break in that scenario, and explosive projectiles wouldn't go off. In terms of game logic, we know that the situation is accounted for by the existence of a hidden fuse present on every projectile in the game that makes them explode after a while anyway, so calling it obviously unaccounted for by the original developers is probably not entirely honest either. And further, if we were to go looking for every single event and scenario in the game that clearly couldn't have been anticipated by Team17 back in 1998, I imagine the list of what should be considered a glitch would grow alarmingly, and in some cases uproot literally two decades of tradition; purism might not be the way to go with these things.

Not to say that any of the above is alone a reason to allow this "glitch" to be used in Shopper in particular, but neither I think is the opposite the case. Even if this is ultimately considered a real glitch, it's the sort of glitch that can theoretically bring value to at least some schemes, so if Deadcode at some point were to "fix" it, it would be done as a scheme setting and likely by default, it would be set to the way things currently work. Rather, in the case of Shopper, it might be more sensible to be having the discussion of whether or not starting with infinite bazookas shifts the focus of the scheme too far away from, you know, shopping for weapons and making do with what you get from them. But that really is, and should be, a separate discussion... because it's extremely, extremely unlikely that the one thing keeping the scheme from being competitively fair and balanced even when played in a casual setting is this exact singular property of the humble bazooka weapon.