Difference between revisions of "Worms Armageddon ReadMe (English)"

• The Trymedia/Trygames online-downloadable version of Worms Armageddon cannot be patched, and is equivalent to v3.5 Beta 2. When the current Beta has stabilised sufficiently, it will be sent to Trymedia to be incorporated into a new Trygames version of W:A.

• When minimised during the end-of-round screen in an online game, W:A will crash if the host clicks the "Play Again" button before you have restored.
• When entering the Team Editor, W:A will crash if there are any custom graves or flags not matching the required bitmap dimensions and colour depth.
• After minimising from the WormNET lobby, W:A may crash on an attempt to restore.
• When entering the Map Editor screen (and possibly other screens) the screen may go blank, possibly due to applications such as Winamp running "Always On Top".
• There are crashes that reportedly happen for various other causes, sometimes before W:A even has a chance to start up. These have not been thoroughly investigated, but may have something to do with nonstandard or erroneous files in the directory structure of the W:A CD-ROM or installed "Worms Armageddon" folder, often due to a pirated copy of W:A.
• Norton Personal Firewall, and possibly other personal firewalls, do not gracefully detect the replacement of "WA.exe" with a new version.
  • Symptom: You can no longer connect to WormNET.
  • Workaround: Each time after you install a new W:A beta update you need to delete the entry for "WA.exe" from your firewall so it can create a new, working entry.
  • Plan: In a future version this will be addressed by "faking" accesses to the needed ports before going full-screen, so that the user has a chance to respond to firewall windows that may pop up.

• Whispers are not sent securely, and can be spied upon using a network packet logger. This applies both to the host/join lobby and the in-game chat.

• When you are not the host during an online game, and someone other than the host is disconnected, you will not see the reason for the disconnection. Additionally, if the current player is disconnected due to a desynchronisation, from that player's point of view the reason will be stated as being "due to network drop", even though the network drop is merely a byproduct of the desync.
• When a v3.6.24.1 user is present in an online game along with v3.6.23 or v3.6.24.2+ users, a desync may happen during long turns of the v3.6.23 / 3.6.24.2+ users.
• In an online game with 3 or more players, when a non-host player disconnects at an odd moment (in all or most cases due to a crash or desync), it can in some cases trigger a cascade desync, where the other players desync one by one. Also, the desync of one player during game initialisation can cause another player to be disconnected.
• In an online game, the delay between turns is perhaps sometimes longer than necessary.

• The front end may be slow/laggy sometimes. One known cause of this is MSN Messenger; if you are using it, go to Tools -> Options -> Personal and uncheck the box Show me as "Busy" and block my alerts when I'm running a full-screen program, such as a slide presentation. Another known cause is video driver related, and this is addressed in v3.6.26.4.
• When returning to the front end from a finished game session, the palette sometimes is not correctly set and is black and white. Minimising and restoring fixes it, but without this step it's necessary to operate blind.
• In the end-of-round screen of an online game, the "Exit" button sometimes stays greyed out for an unreasonable or indefinite amount of time.
• When minimised in-game, the sound sometimes continues at maximum volume. When this is fixed, an option will be added to switch between disabling in-game sounds while minimised, or keep them going at normal volume.
• When a WAgame file is launched from Windows Explorer, a refresh is triggered in Explorer, so upon returning from Playback, the selection is reset to the first file in the folder.
• A game hosted on WormNET will disappear from the list after a timeout, even if the game is still open for joining. If this is fixed before the implementation of a new rankings/server system, the fix will be an auto-renewal.
• There are some text strings (mainly those added in the beta patch) that have not been translated and are shown only in English.
• Under certain conditions (possibly related to the v3.6.26.4 "slow front end" fix) the Alt fine-tuning key in the Map Editor doesn't work properly.

• Weapons dropped by a roping worm will sometimes immediately hit or bounce against the roping worm. Examples:
• The Bazooka may hit the roping worm before it has any chance to retreat, instantly detonating even if there are no obstacles in the immediate vicinity.
• The Holy Hand Grenade may bounce against the roping worm and fall the wrong way.
• The Sheep Launcher may brush against the roping worm and drop straight down while requiring one less pressing of the Fire key than is expected to trigger explosion.
• Graves can block a Girder from being placed in certain positions that would be possible if the grave were not present. The alternative, however, would be to allow the girder to be placed, thus causing the grave to fall down through the terrain, which would be rather weird.
• The teleport may fudge sideways against the player's wishes; this can happen when the player is attempting to place a Worm directly on land, such that the Worm can jump after placement.
• It is too easy to accidentally Surrender.
• It is possible to fall onto a Crate in a the middle of Rope Roll without collecting the crate. This is very rare. (This can also happen in a Mission/Training round, if a worm continues roping after losing enough health to die; that is a separate issue, and if anything needs to be fixed in that case it is the fact that a zombie worm can keep moving.)
• When computing the possibilities for firing a projectile, a CPU worm follows the paths with staggered pixels. However, a projectile's actual collision path sweeps a 7x5 rectangle, which may collide in a place the CPU worm didn't check. This can result in the CPU worm accidentally throwing a Grenade which bounces back onto itself, regardless of its CPU skill level.
• When the Pneumatic Drill is used on top of an Oil Drum, it does not cause an explosion. (It does, however, if a corner or side of the Oil Drum is hit.)
• The camera follows an opponent's active worm and cursor even if they are Invisible. This gives an advantage to players who are running W:A at a low resolution, since this narrows down the opponent's location.
• There are several perfomance issues with large maps, particularly during spawning of supply crates.

• PNG maps with more than 64 non-black colours create glitches in the background gradient, and in the soil texture when land is destroyed. This will be fixed by creating a standard for embedding gradients and/or soil textures in maps, and by allowing automatic girders to be turned off. (Note that the glitches can be avoided in 3.6.25.1+ by disabling Placement Holes, at the cost of losing soil textures and some or all background graphics.)
• During fast-forward, rising water can cause a graphical glitch in which there is a temporary shift between the terrain and sprites. (This may only happen when the resolution is high enough to letterbox a cavern terrain.)
• The sprite of a Worm holding a Mole Bomb always shows the worm as standing flat, regardless of whether it may be standing on a slope.
• In the sprite of a Worm holding a Freeze, the worm is incorrectly shown as standing on a downward slope if it is standing on an upward slope. A fix for this will be bundled with the next update of Gfx0.dir and Gfx1.dir (delayed because it is hard to get the palette just right).
• A Donor Card can give "-1x" of an item if the previous owner had an unlimited supply of that item. Collecting it has no effect.
• In the WormNET and host/join lobbies, the wrap width for previously entered long lines in a message history will not be readjusted when a scrollbar appears, causing some characters in the previously wrapped lines to be hidden from view.
• With ambient music enabled, sudden switches in the music track (for example, when Sudden Death initiates) can cause an ugly audio pop. It is unknown whether this happens on all systems.
• Sometimes (rarely) the light-bulb icon in the host/join screen is replaced by a small black square. Since the cause of this is unknown, it may happen to other buttons in other screens as well.
• Side effects of the v3.6.26.4 "slow front end" fix
  • The intro doesn't fade.
  • Resizing of the player list when hosting (to limit the number of players who can join) causes very perceptible flicker.
• When viewing a map of nonstandard size (something other than 1920×696) in the Map Editor, the cavern borders are not rescaled or moved; they are shown as if the map is still 1920×696. Also, the water level will not be proportionally correct.

• In recorded replay files of online games, only the passage of game time during turns will separate lines of chat. Chat that took place between turns or during network lag will be displayed all at once during playback.

If a Worm dismounts a horizontally-stationary Ninja Rope in direct contact with the ground, it will land instantly, thus ready to do other things without delay. It is not always possible to extend a rope to the length necessary for this to happen — since it extends and retracts 4 pixels at a time, it may stop with 1-3 pixels of room remaining between Worm and ground. Also, even if a rope appears to be horizontally stationary, it may have a microscopic amount of momentum. Following are ways to recreate the circumstances required for an instant rope dismount:

• (All versions of W:A) Worm is standing in a confined space (e.g. at the bottom of a tunnel 9 pixels wide and at least 8 pixels high), and shoots the Ninja Rope straight upward. It may then retract and extend the rope and/or fire a weapon, as long as it does not nudge the rope left or right. Then, when that rope is extended to maximum length (either by not moving at all, or by re-extending the rope as far as it will go) the Worm is in direct contact with the ground.
• (v3.6.23.0 and later) Same as above, but Worm is not required to fire the rope from a confined space. It may do so from any standing position.
• (v3.6.23.0 and later) Worm is in midair, with no horizontal velocity, and shoots the Ninja Rope straight upward. There is a 25% chance that the rope will be phased such that it is possible to put the Worm in direct contact with the ground.
• (All versions of W:A) Same as above, but Worm must be in a 9-pixel-wide tunnel at the time the rope connects.

This bug is emulated for compatibility with older versions of W:A. An emulated crash ends the game in a draw for those using a newer version. The older versions will still crash.

The wa:// protocol can be used to join or host games with advanced parameters. The format is wa://host-or-ip?param1=value1&...&paramN=valueN. Specifying a blank host/IP will cause the game to host a game with the specified parameters. The following parameters are supported:

• pass or password – specifies the game's password.
• id or gameid – specifies the game's ID, as used on WormNET.
• scheme – specifies the channel scheme to be used. This setting should be identical on all ends. Since this information isn't transmitted via the game peer-to-peer connection, unmatching values can cause a desynchronisation. For more information on the channel scheme format, see http://worms2d.info/WormNET_(Worms_Armageddon)#Channels

Using the scheme parameter, it's possible to create direct IP games with rope knocking enabled. To do this, the host must run WA.exe wa://?scheme=Pf , and other players must run WA.exe wa://host-or-IP?scheme=Pf . If the game is hosted on a TCP port other than the default one (17011), the port can be specified with the syntax: wa://host-or-ip:port?parameters...