Just to clarify some things:

• This 3.7.2.2 update was not developed by Deadcode/CyberShadow. The single change was made by Charles Blessing (same as when 3.6.31.2b was suddenly released back in September 2012). There was no cooperation between DC/CS and Team17 on this release.
  
• This is not the same 3.7.2.2 update as the one that DC/CS internally developed a while ago.
  
• This is not the 3.8.0 update. It doesn't include all of 3.8.0's fixes, new features and other changes.
  
• The 3.8.0 update is awaiting some changes before it can be submitted to Team17 for release. This should hopefully happen as soon as possible.

Quote from: j0e on May 12, 2018, 05:42 PM
Got any news about the update StepS / anyone?

Nothing I can share atm.

Quote from: Sensei on May 12, 2018, 09:45 PM
Host button never works for ppl that paid money for this game

Just because people keep coming to #Help to report hosting issues doesn't mean it "never" works. People only speak when something doesn't work. But I have seen lots of newcomers silently host successful games with their partners in WormNET channels. So what you're saying is untrue.

The built-in hosting system implies that the network configuration is correct. It is taken care of by the user. Whether hosting works or not, depends on the connection type of the player. The issue is that there's no disclaimer for this, and no explanation when a "connection is failed". That is what should be improved in my opinion.

WormNAT2, on the other hand, implies that your game will be hosted no matter what. It is taken care of by the developers. That is different.
In any case the option should not be "enabled by default", even if implemented. Because hosting directly, rather than wasting community-hosted bandwidth, is always preferred especially if the user's network setup already allows that from the start. You get lower latency with direct hosting as well (which is not a concern in a turn-based game, but still). Remember the "Greetings" message? The point still stands. Routing traffic requires resources.

Also, if you think nothing is done to resolve the problem, you're wrong. In 3.6.29.0, UPnP forwarding was added, which accounts for many successfully hosted games these days, even though it doesn't work with all routers, and some networks are private.
HostingBuddy constantly pings every game hosted on WormNET. If there's a game that can't be joined, it will message the player when he comes back with further details on how to fix the problem. But of course many people will ignore the message.

Quote from: Sensei on May 03, 2018, 09:22 PMAny chance 3.8 (if it ever comes out) could implement WormNAT2 and pre-checked "load wormkit modules" box?
Every now and then there's new player(s) trying to figure out why host button not functioning properly.

This is a legal, economic, and technical problem at the same time. If the option is included officially with the game, you become responsible for making sure it always works. Because it becomes part of the product that people paid money for.

Now, as you know, our developers do not receive any money from Steam purchases. In an ideal world, part of this money would be spent on supporting the WormNAT2 proxy. That is how game dev companies provide hosting for the players. But there's no income here, and as you know, the server is prone to go offline every now and then.
Needless to say Team17 themselves are not likely to give a damn about this. Otherwise we could perhaps see something like Steamworks-driven networking, and relay servers support (which what WormNAT2 essentially is).

I hope this clears some things up for you.

It's fixed in 3.8.

Quote from: Jengu on January 28, 2018, 12:07 PM
I love the speed at which the rope attaches to the wall. WA needs that.

I don't, and I guess many people in our community will agree with me.

Did you maybe open some replays? You can always check the command-line of each process by adding the "Command Line" column to the list of columns on the "Details" tab.

Quote from: TheMadCharles on January 28, 2018, 11:27 AMyou could edit the pallete files to change the gradients in main menu. However an image itself is impossible due to the way WA indexes colors.

Not sure what you mean, the background image is in graphics\backdrop.bmp and can be modified to whatever you want (with any width).

It can be made to load an .m3u file. However, frontend menu loops are unpopular and therefore this would likely not have any use.

Clear is Num5 on the Numpad.

Quote from: TheMadCharles on January 26, 2018, 06:44 AM
invalid LMAOOO HOW DID IT WORK FOR ME THEN HAHAHAHA XDDDDDDDDD

It didn't. You only think it did, but in reality, Snow was broken in versions before 0.4.2 and invisible. All the simulations still happened, and snowflakes still flew, you just didn't see them on-screen.

Quote from: TheMadCharles on January 25, 2018, 03:13 PMhere's my wkSnow config:

Code Select Expand


[Snow]
Enabled=1
Size=Normal
Particles=0
ForceNoSnow=0

Particles=0 is an invalid value for the game. That means "use the default" and forces the regular amount of snow. Game crashes with 0 actual particles. You can set Particles=1 but at least 1 snowflake will still fly.
You can also enable "God Mode" (Ctrl+Alt+Clear) and press Ctrl+Shift+Num- two times to make the snowflake freeze in place. Lastly, you can use Size=Small and the snowflake will just be 1 pixel (multiplied by your current gfx scale) in size.
As ridiculous as it may sound, this is the solution for now. However I will probably add an option to disable debris directly in SuperFrontend (this should be an easy flip). It will not even perform simulation, so you should see the difference in performance.

A small update has been released: 0.4.2.2.
Fixed crash when exiting replay playback with Hardware Cursors off. Thanks to SiD for the report.

You can use non-transparent black as XanKriegor noted above. For the game, it's the color position in the palette that matters.
You can have two 0,0,0 blacks in the palette, however most image editing programs will take the index of the first occurrence of the color, which will be always #0. Therefore you need to choose any color other than black for the position #0 that you don't use on the same map for anything else. That will be the transparent color. Once you're done, save the map, then open your PNG in TweakPNG or a hex-editor to edit the palette cell #0 to black (0,0,0). Make sure that this only changes the palette table and not any part of the image data. Now the 0th black will be used for transparent areas, while any other black you have put in the palette will be used for solid areas. Note that if you later open the map for editing again, and save it, the distinction between blacks will be lost. So you best keep two copies of the map to avoid having to perform an undo operation on the cell #0.

Note that if you're making 32-bit Project X maps, things are drastically different. For those maps, PX looks at how deep the color is. 0,0,0 is fully transparent, although things like dark reddish blacks will have two states at once: being non-solid (intangible) and non-transparent at the same time. The exact threshold of color intensity has not been measured, also it may not have been intended and thus a bug in PX. PyroMan has used this technique to create maps with custom background pictures and texts.

Quote from: TheMadCharles on January 22, 2018, 03:54 PM
how does one overwrite the laggy snow now? the frontend is unusable now

The snow only appears on Christmas. Do you have wkSnow enabled? Disable it.

You cannot move the window if you have borderless mode enabled. To move the window you first need to enable the border by pressing Ctrl+D, then pressing Ctrl+G to use your mouse and drag it to the other monitor. However, if your window already covers the entire screen, it is impossible to enable the window border during the game. You may need to lower your resolution in options.
It is not possible to start the game on a non-primary monitor by default. However, you can do something else: in your windows settings, set the secondary monitor as primary. So the left monitor will be non-primary, and the game will run on your right monitor.
MultiMonitor is an option that enables you to span the game across multiple monitors. So it will run using both monitors at once. I guess this is not what oScarDiAnno wanted.
It might also be possible to trick the MultiMonitor mode without changing your monitor from secondary to primary. For that to happen, your secondary monitor needs to be logically positioned on the left side in windows settings. After that, you disable the "AutoSetResolution" option (to prevent automatic spanning) and go into the game options to choose the resolution for your secondary monitor. Then, supposedly, the gameplay should start on your secondary monitor. However, the frontend menus will still be stuck on your primary monitor's top left corner!

So it seems that today, January 16th 2018, Team17 has created a new WormNET server. When you connect to WormNET, you may notice that there are only a few people and no bots (except ChanServ) - this may mean you're on the new server. The IP suggests it is now hosted in the Amazon Cloud, and when you try to open the main page with your browser, you get "New WormNET1". So I guess they're serious about what they're doing.

What this means is that eventually, the old UK server that has served us for so long, will shut down (we don't know when, could be as early as this week). Because DNS updates can take a while (around 12 hours), not everyone connects to the new server still; many people are on the old server, including all bots.

The move also has its problems. It seems that the new WormNET server no longer supports spaces in game names. So all HB games end up broken in the game list (because they use at least one space). If this is due to the server using UTF-8, then this is valid for any character after latin ones (e.g. diacritical + cyrillic) -- not confirmed yet.

If you're stuck on the new server with a snooper, you can use "212.110.191.17" or "wormnet.team17.com" as the server address to force connection to the old one. (Edit: this didn't seem to work, unless you use the IP and purely for IRC) Can also try "ipconfig /flushdns" in the command line.

Update: it seems that right now, Team17 has rolled back the DNS change. You should be connecting to the old server again, but some people are stuck on the new server until their DNS flushes. We also don't know when Team17 decides to do the change again, so pay attention.

Update 2: (15:54 GMT) Less than an hour since the last update, they seem to have updated the DNS record again to the new server. So people will again be connecting to the new server. This may cause a disturbance in the functioning of WormNET bots. HB is already broken. We've contacted Team17 and doing everything we can from our end

Update 3 (16:14 GMT): (see CyberShadow's reply below) It seems that the discrepancies in the distribution of the old and new server IPs are caused by an error with the two Team17's nameservers, which return conflicting results. This is bad, because this means WormNET will be in a turmoil in the meantime. You will randomly be connected either to the old or the new server throughout the day. We're trying to establish contact with Team17 still.

Update 4 (16:51 GMT): Team17 have now updated their nameservers, so the discrepancy problem should be gone for now (it uses the old server right now). We're good for now.