Worms Armageddon ReadMe (English)/v3.6.29.0 Beta Update

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v3.6.29.0 Beta Update (2008.07.28)

Fixes

• In Windows Vista, if the game was minimised in the front-end, attempting to restore it would result in a non-functional black screen. Restoring the game now works, but may be complemented by a corrupted colour palette; minimizing and restoring it again usually fixes the problem.
• Pressing the Apps (context menu) button while a text edit field is focused no longer brings up the Windows context menu (which was non-functional and appeared discoloured).
• In a combo/listbox (e.g. Levels, Schemes) with too few entries to allow scrolling, moving the mouse wheel down would clear the entire list (whereas moving it up would make the list reappear). Now the mouse wheel does nothing in this case.
• If the game resolution has been set to a value that the current display driver does not support, in the Options screen it was supposed to revert to 640×480; it did so, but still displayed "Custom Resolution" in the button. Now, it reverts to the highest available legacy resolution (1024×768, 800×600 or 640×480), and the button is synchronised with the reverted resolution.
• The Language and Resolution list boxes in the Options menu were disabled if there were no teams present (i.e., if the WG.WGT file was missing or empty).
• If the font "Small Fonts" didn't match the size of the standard English version, W:A would crash when opening the Host/Join screen, and would display the Weapon Options screen incorrectly (widely spaced, with many of the buttons off-screen).
• After a Quick CPU game, in-game options such as volume and detail level were not being saved.
• The Map Editor's Import function (which is mostly obsolete) is supposed to show an empty black map while prompting the user whether to Shrink or Crop a bitmap larger than 1920×696, but if Placement Holes had been enabled in the previously loaded map, that map would continue to be displayed. It was also possible for the Import function to crash under certain circumstances.
• Upon exiting the Map Editor, it would sometimes falsely claim that the map had too many colours (more than 113) and needed to be dithered.
• W:A would crash if a player tried to join WormNET if someone else was connected with the same nickname.
• WormNET lobby (IRC)
  • After W:A was minimised while in the WormNET lobby (especially after a long time), it would often crash upon being restored.
  • Due to a parsing bug, occasionally random pieces from the user list (and potentially other text from the server) would be printed out of context in lime green. In some cases, the same piece would be printed repeatedly.
  • Entering a very long line reportedly caused a local crash for some users. We were unable to reproduce this bug, but assuming it is related to the crash in the host/join chat that was fixed in v3.6.28.0 (with a crash-inducing line length of >=256 chars), it has now been fixed.
• In WormNET, if a game was hosted with exactly the same name as another game, only one of them would be listed. The one listed would not necessarily be the same as the one joined by double-clicking.
• If someone attempted to join a game that was already full, the connection would time out; W:A would also stop accepting connection for that game, making it unjoinable (even if someone left or was booted, making room for new players).
• The emulation message for a test version recommended downloading the latest version of W:A from http://wa.team17.com, even if the test version in question was based on the latest game logic version.
• In the Host/Join screen, if the host changed the map while a client was minimised, that client would not be able to light up. (This bug happened consistently on some systems, and not at all on others.)
• The Host/Join screen for a client in a network game now centers the name of an intrinsic map under the picture of the map, rather than left-justifying it.
• On some systems, a network game started with an intrinsic map (Cars, Polar, etc.) would pop up an "The parameter is incorrect" message and desynchronise.
• Some improved or missing Spanish translations were contributed by OutofOrder.
• In Spanish language mode, the in-game comment for 14+ kills had "LANG_NUMBER" printed inside it instead of the number of kills.
• The game used nearly 100% CPU during online play and offline playback (this was linked to the rendering of the chat panel, even when it was hidden).
• When the game was minimised, sounds from in-game would sometimes play at 100% volume.
• The sounds "Perfect", "Amazing", "Excellent" and "Brilliant" were being played inappropriately. Due to a bug, they were never being played as they were intended to - but enabling the "correct" functionality caused them to be played after every turn where the total damage dealt from an exploding projectile was greater than 50% of the maximum damage possible from such an explosion, thus altering the gameplay too much. They have been currently completely disabled.
• In a game where the local player had more than one team of the same colour, if the weapon panel was opened when it was not the local player's turn, and kept open, the panel would become "stuck" during the local player's turns (of any of its teams except the first of that colour), and attempts to access the panel would result in a second, glitchy panel appearing. (The "stuck" panel could only be closed when it was not the local player's turn, or automatically at the beginning of the local player's first team's turn.)
• When opened at certain times in team games, the weapon panel wasn't being redrawn.
• The "Tools" terrain will now appear with a correct background.
• In playback of recorded game files, custom soundbanks were being ignored and replaced with the default soundbank.
• The "ally group / team color" field was unchecked when loading a WAgame replay file. Playing back replays with hacked team color fields could result in crashes and strange or unpredictable behavior. W:A now refuses to play back a WAgame file with out of range team color values. Range checking has also been added to the "online player slot / CPU intelligence" field.
• Replays of "online" games that were actually played offline would play back with checksum errors.
• In an Exported Log, the total turn times included turn time used during Worm placement. (This did not always make a difference, because the 10 seconds of "turn time" during placement are preceded by Hot Seat time). Also, 0.02 sec was being added to the total retreat time for each worm placed.
• Crashes
  • W:A would sometimes crash due to the front end receiving focus while a game was in progress. This bug was quite rare, but on the systems on which it occurred, it did so regularly.
  • For some users, W:A crashed upon starting a game (during the pie chart loading stage).
  • With ambient music enabled, W:A would sometimes crash upon starting a game (after the pie chart loading stage had finished).
  • Having a 24-bit bitmap image in the "User\Flags" or "User\Graves" folder will no longer crash the game.
  • A Wine compatibility change has been introduced, which works around a crash with some Wine configurations.
  • If W:A fails to initialize the video mode, it will display an error message instead of crashing.
  • W:A now works on some virtual machines without requiring additional guest-side software (e.g. Guest Additions for VirtualBox).
• TestStuff
  • Girder Radius Assist was meant to be enabled, but was not. This feature will be delayed until it is added to the scheme format or TestStuff6.
  • There was a bug in skipwalking facilitation. If a player held Up or Down while walking and then shot the Ninja Rope (while continuing to hold the Left/Right and Up/Down arrow keys), the rope would not extend or retract until Left/Right had been released.
• Fixes affecting game logic
  • If a roping Worm was damaged or skimmed water exactly at the same moment as its rope attached, and if its vertical velocity component did not exceed a certain speed, the rope would successfully attach (whereas in other circumstances the damage or skim would destroy the Worm's rope and result in a loss of control).
    • It was possible to continue roping after a skim. (This kind of skim is revealed by the sound effect and slight loss of speed.) This ability has been preserved.
    • With the "invincible Worms" option enabled, it was possible to survive a explosion and continue roping. This glitch has been fixed.
    • With BattyRope enabled, if a Worm was fatally damaged at the same moment as its rope attached, it would cause the game to fall into an endless loop; the Worm would continue hanging from the rope with zero health, and the next turn would never begin.
  • With Stockpiling or Anti-Stockpiling enabled, it was possible for two types of "invalid" weapons to appear during a Crate Shower: Strikes (in a Cavern landscape), and superweapons (with superweapons disabled in the scheme). This bug was introduced in v3.6.25.1.
  • When "Draw Round" was activated in an offline game before all worms had been placed, stockpiling carried across an additional 1× Teleport for the team that was active when "Draw Round" was activated. This only applied to schemes with manual placement and either stockpiling or anti-stockpiling.
  • When landing from the Jetpack, the worm's sprite was not being updated to reflect the land slope it landed on.
  • If a worm has been poisoned during the turn directly before Sudden Death and the Sudden Death action was set to be a nuclear explosion, the nuclear explosion poison was not being added to that worm's poisoned status.

Features

• The game has been fully translated to Russian, thanks to Mr.X's effort. W:A uses a custom encoding for Cyrillic characters—characters that do not have visually identical latin characters were placed in the unused code points.
• In-game sound effects are now played in stereo. Stereo effects can be disabled or reversed using the StereoEffects_Disabled.reg and StereoEffects_Reversed.reg registry tweaks respectively. The intensity of the stereo effects can be adjusted by tweaking the StereoFactor value in W:A's registry options - higher values augment the stereo effects, lower values attenuate them, negative values reverse the channels; 65536 (0x10000 in hexadecimal) is the default.
• A /quiet (or /q) command-line option has been added to facilitate processes such as batch replay log extraction. This option suppresses various message boxes and progress windows, and disables bringing console windows to the foreground.
• If you have achieved a Gold Medal in a mission, you can now adjust the number of Attempts by left- or right-clicking the number. (A higher number of Attempts generally adds items and/or events to a mission to make it easier.) [This feature was meant to be included in v3.6.28.0, but was accidentally disabled.]
• The Scheme combo box now allows you to navigate to subfolders under the User\Schemes folder.
  • The 13 intrinsic schemes (Intermediate, Pro, Blast Zone, etc.) have corresponding scheme filenames beginning with "{{nn}}". These are "fake" scheme files; they are placeholders for the intrinsic schemes. In the combo box the "{{nn}}" will not be displayed, and the intrinsic schemes' names inside "[  ]" brackets will be substituted for the filenames; you may move these placeholder files to whichever folder you want underneath User\Schemes. If these files are deleted or moved outside the User\Schemes folder, they will be recreated by W:A on start-up.
• The Scheme and Map combo boxes now automatically refresh every time they are opened. This allows adding and selecting a new scheme or map file to the folder without having to navigate to a different folder or re-open the current screen.
• W:A will now attempt to automatically forward the port used for hosting using UPnP when hosting WormNET and Direct IP games. A supported operating system and configured UPnP-compliant routing device are required for this to succeed. This behaviour can be disabled in the network options dialog.
• The player list in the WormNET IRC lobby has been made taller.
• Players in the WormNET IRC lobby are now sorted alphabetically.
• A "Snooper" pseudo-rank has been added for WormNET. Snooper users will be displayed at the bottom of the user list.
• Flags have been added for Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela.
• In the Host screen, entering the command "/u" or "/url" will now copy a wa://address-of-host URL into the clipboard. Additional parameters are automatically included if necessary, including Game ID, Scheme, and Password. Other players will be able to join your game directly by clicking this pasted URL, even if you hosted from WormNET.
• Network games are automatically reopened in-between matches. It is possible to join a WormNET game using the URL given by the /url command, provided that the game's state is on the game options screen.
• It is now possible to play a match which lasts exactly one round, even in the event of a draw.
• "Random worm order" can now be selected using the "Worm select" option. Enabling this mode will cause worms to be selected in a random order.
• It is now possible to specify the amount of Jetpack fuel, however currently this can only be done using external scheme editors. The Jetpack "power" setting must be set to 5 + the desired amount of fuel. A setting of 5 (0 fuel) means infinite fuel.
• Holding Shift while activating the camera Scroll Lock function will cause it not to be deactivated at the beginning of your next turn.
• Holding Control while activating the camera Scroll Lock function will make mouse movement not move the game camera, unless the left mouse button is held down.
• The phone icon will now no longer block the off-screen pointer of a Super/Aqua Sheep.
• Pressing the R key to restart playback of a recorded game will no longer incur a delay for reloading the terrain, provided there have been no terrain changes (explosions, girders, etc.)
• It is now possible to use the "chat" in offline games. While the chat bar is pulled down, the game will be paused. All messages typed will be displayed and recorded in the .WAgame file as "anonymous" messages.
• Added a new section to the ReadMe enumerating important additions in the Beta versions—Supplementary Beta Documentation.
• Changes affecting game logic
  • The contents of crates is now determined when the crate is picked up or destroyed, rather when the crate is created. This prevents "crate spy" cheats, making it nearly impossible to predict the contents of a crate in an online game.
  • Similarly, when the scheme setting for mine fuse is set to "random", the fuse of pre-placed mines is determined when the mine is triggered.
    • Note: like all game logic changes, these changes only affect the latest logic version, and will not function when emulating previous versions, including TestStuff versions. If you would like to exclude the possibility of cheats for earlier W:A versions, make sure the game is not emulating an older logic version.
  • When a Worm is activating Armageddon from Rope, Bungee, Jetpack, etc. the camera will no longer center on the center of the map.
• Export Log additions
  • Turn endings are now logged, along with the turn time and retreat time used during that turn.
  • The amount of damage dealt to teams in every turn is now logged.
  • In the player team list, CPU teams are now identified, including skill level. Since CPU skill level can be "fractional" in Missions, it is expressed with two decimal places, e.g. "[CPU 5.00]".
  • Used Jet Pack fuel is now logged. This is tailored to TCB (The Challenge Base) Jet Pack challenges, and is designed to replace manual counting of used fuel; it is rounded to the nearest integer fuel unit in the same way. The total fuel is reported at the end, but this total is reset every time Teleport is used (it is assumed that this is a teleport back to the start). If a weapon is fired from the Jet Pack, it is assumed that 30 units of fuel were used (this is tailored to challenge #60 - Fly For Punctuation); the actual fuel used before the retreat is noted in parentheses, but 30 is added to the total.
  • Automatic Parachute activation is now logged.