Worms Armageddon ReadMe (English)/v3.7.0.0 Update

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v3.7.0.0 Update (2012.12.20)

Fixes

• [DC, CS] Compatibility and interoperability
  • [CS] Windows 8 compatibility has been improved.
  • [CS] When W:A is run under Windows 8 for the first time, it will offer to configure Windows compatibility flags which should improve compatibility and performance under Windows 8.
  • [DC] Problem introduced in v3.6.30.0: WA.exe triggered a false positive in some virus detection programs.
  • [DC] Support was added in v3.6.28.0 for opening land*.dat map files from OnlineWorms and WWP Aqua in W:A's Map Editor. However, three land*.dat maps (land07.dat, land21.dat, and land27.dat) from the Korean small version of OnlineWorms could not be opened.
  • [DC] With the command-line parameters /getmap, /getscheme, and /getvideo, the use of forward-slashes instead of backslashes in the file's path name was not supported.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.23.0: After connecting to a non-WormNET IRC server that attempted ident authentication, W:A would fail to properly join channels.
• [DC, CS] Default files, folders, settings, and persistence of settings
  • [CS] W:A will now create empty user content subdirectories on start-up if they do not exist.
  • [CS, DC] W:A will now create a default team file if one doesn't exist.
  • [CS] The /register command-line parameter will now report errors, and also save W:A's install path.
  • [DC] When registering its associations, W:A did not override the current "Open With" user choice.
  • [DC] When a host enabled one of the "test versions" (BattyRope, RacingStuff, etc.), this state was meant to persist both through multiple rounds and new matches, as if the enabled test version were part of the scheme. However, it did not persist through new matches.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: After returning from a Mission or Training, the default scheme would be incorrectly set in Offline Multiplayer.
  • [DC] Intrinsic maps were not remembered in Offline Multiplayer mode; every time a Multiplayer screen was entered (including the end of a game round), a selected intrinsic map would be overwritten with a randomly generated map.
  • [DC] When a replay file using an intrinsic map was launched, the current map (stored in current.thm) was deleted. If this was done while another instance of W:A was open, this would cause the map thumbnail in that instance to become empty (or, in versions before 3.6.29.0, garbled).
  • [DC] When an online game was joined, and the host loaded a .BIT or .LEV map (without necessarily starting the game), on the client's side, it would result in a state in which part of the representation of the current map was not updated. In this state, if the client-side user entered the Offline Multiplayer screen, the last map loaded by the host in the online game would be shown — but if the user then right-clicked it to open the Map Editor, the incorrect map would be opened.
  • [DC] After a round of Training, in-game options such as volume and detail level were not being saved.
• [DC, CS] User interface
  • [DC, CS] Compatibility tweaks in the Advanced Options screen that were obsoleted by v3.6.31.2b have been removed.
    • [CS] The "Slow Frontend Workaround" setting is now a checkbox, which selects between the previous "Off" and "Alternative" settings. The previous "On" setting has the same effect as as "Off".
  • [DC] When playing on very wide maps (at or close to the map width limit), moving an aiming cursor (e.g. Teleport) to the right edge at high speed (especially when using Shift and/or the middle mouse button) could result in the cursor wrapping around to the left edge.
  • [DC] In the Map Editor, when moving the mouse out of the map and back in while holding Alt (for fine tuning) the entire time, the coordinate at which the brush cursor re-entered the map did not match the coordinate at which the mouse cursor actually re-entered.
  • [DC] When moving the mouse over the Map Editor's drop-down list of files, the help text for controls underneath the list box would be shown.
  • [DC] Despite the wraparound fixes in v3.6.28.0, when playing on very wide maps (at or close to the map width limit), a worm flying off the right edge of the map at very high speed could cause the camera to wrap around to the left edge. A speed sufficient for this was only possible if "no maximum speed" was enabled (e.g. by TestStuff).
  • [DC] In the Options screen, if a team was created, edited, or deleted, the Language combo box would have the entire list of languages repeated at the bottom of the list (in an A-B-C-A-B-C manner); this would continue to happen each time (A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C, etc.), until exiting the Options screen.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: In an offline game, selecting a weapon using the mouse (in the weapon panel) would cause the next attempt to open the chat panel (to make replay annotations) unsuccessful — the chat would open a little bit and then immediately close itself.
  • [CS] In-game mouse movement input handling has been improved. Previously, W:A would incorrectly accumulate earlier mouse movement input messages received within the same frame, and in specific circumstances, W:A could get stuck at a black screen when starting a game or restoring after minimizing during a game.
  • [CS] When the primary DirectDraw surface was lost, it was not being restored correctly. This needlessly slowed down restoring W:A after minimizing by one frame.
  • [CS] Rendering of background gradients (both in-game and in the main menu) has been optimized.
  • [DC] Front end buttons were not highlighted instantly upon mouse-over, but rather, only when the mouse was moved from one point on the button to another point on the button.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.19.7: In the Network Host screen, when the Start button was enabled and the host's mouse was over it, and then a remote player turned their light bulb off (disabling the Start button), if the host subsequently moved the mouse, the Start button would be redrawn as if it were enabled, but it would not highlight upon mouseover and would not respond to being clicked. It would go back to normal the next time it was enabled by having all players light up.
  • [DC] Under Wine, pressing ESC anywhere in the front end would instantly propagate to all windows, usually resulting in an instant exit.
• [DC, CS] Cosmetic video/audio issues
  • [DC, CS] Bugs introduced in v3.6.31.2b
    • [CS] The brush cursors in the Map Editor were incorrectly rendered.
    • [DC] The phone icon, meant to be displayed only when the chat panel is hidden and a remote player has just said something in the chat, would (under certain conditions) be shown fleetingly when closing the chat panel (with PageUp) or decreasing its height (with Ctrl+Up).
    • [DC] The water level slider in the Map Editor rendered its blue fill rectangle incorrectly.
    • [CS] When running the game at a high resolution such as 2560x1600, on some systems, minimisation in-game could sometimes result in a constant flicker when the game was restored.
    • [DC] In the Steam version of W:A, there was a bug in which custom soundbanks would not be heard in-game, except for the soundbank of the first team in the list of teams. For all other teams, the default soundbank of the local player would be heard.
  • [DC] Front end checkboxes would sometimes be drawn with a weird-looking solid background, if the checkbox was ticked when the dialog containing it was entered. This was random every time the dialog containing the checkbox was entered, and more likely on some machines than others (but very unlikely on most machines).
  • [DC] Front end group boxes were improperly restored after minimizing; their text captions were being redrawn in bright white instead of grey.
  • [DC] The button to open a front end list box would be temporarily erased upon opening certain list boxes for the first time after entering a dialog screen.
  • [DC] When exiting from the Offline Multiplayer or Network screen into the Main Menu, there would be a single-frame flash of incorrect palette. This had been a latent bug since v3.5 Beta 1, but in v3.6.31.2b became a reliable bug that happened every time.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.19.7: When entering a Next Round screen a second time during a Multiplayer/Online match (i.e. on the second round or beyond) the auxiliary palette of the map thumbnail would be lost. For .BIT and .LEV maps this resulted in a loss of anti-aliasing; for .PNG and intrinsic maps it resulted in a peppering of black pixels over the thumbnail.
  • [DC] In certain conditions a GDI-style 3D frame could be seen around the W:A logo in the Main Menu. Usually it was only seen upon quitting — for a moment, the border would be visible against an otherwise completely black background when the screen was cleared. However, on some systems the border would be visible at the same time as the logo, clashing with its intended look.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.19.7: In the front end, the help text for a default-disabled button would always be shown immediately upon entering a screen. For example, "You're all set let's go!" would be flashed (or shown) upon entering the Multiplayer or Host screens.
  • [DC] Activated utilities displayed in the lower-right corner of the screen (in-game) were rendered with black pixels in all four corners. The corners are now transparent.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.23.0: During playback of a game in which "god mode" was enabled, it was impossible to hide the display of crate contents and precise mine fuses, even at the minimum info detail level.
  • [DC] When W:A started the Intro after 60 seconds of inactivity in the front end ("attract mode"), the menu loop ambient sound continued to play.
  • [CS] Elements of the background debris in the front end would only become visible when they could be drawn entirely on the screen, which caused them to materialize suddenly on the left and top sides of the screen.
• [DC, CS] Text and translations
  • [DC] The Spanish translation has been corrected, improved, and extended by OutofOrder.
  • [DC] The French translation has been corrected, improved, and extended by LeTotalKiller.
  • [CS] The Russian translation has been corrected, improved, and extended by CyberShadow and StepS.
  • [DC] In the Weapon Editor's "cheat" mode, the utilities now have proper help text.
  • [DC] The description text for the Grenade stage of Basic Training gave incorrect information in its Dutch, German, Portuguese, and Spanish translations.
  • [DC] Some English and Portuguese text has been corrected.
  • [DC] The Dutch, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish translations had some Mission briefings that didn't fit on-screen. Furthermore, briefings that reached the bottom of the text box had their bottom line of text cropped below the baseline.
  • [DC] The Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish translations of the "Spectral Recovery" mission briefing had extra text in them (compared to the English text) which may have made it easier to complete the mission successfully in fewer attempts.
• [DC] Displayed and outputted text
  • [DC] After clicking the "cheat" button in the Weapon Editor to flip into cheat/utility editing mode, and then clicking it again to flip back, the help text for the top five weapons on the left column were incorrect.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.31.0: In the Map Editor, the help text for the terrain texture button vanished when the button was clicked.
  • [DC] When changing the current language in the Options screen, the name of a currently selected intrinsic scheme (e.g. "[ Intermediate ]") was not updated.
  • [DC] The /url command in the front end network screens did not include custom ports in its output.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: When an unrecognised command with a parameter was entered in a host/join/LAN screen, the error message was incorrect, e.g., the command "/win gold medal" would result in the error message "Unrecognized command /wingold medal".
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: When copying a string from the chat history in the front end, the Unicode copy of the clipboard string was not being null-terminated. All Windows versions seem to deal with this gracefully, but in Wine, this would sometimes result in some stray characters being inserted at the end.
• [CS, DC] Error messages, prompts, and confirmation
  • [CS] Team file save failures are no longer silently ignored.
  • [CS] W:A will now display warnings on start-up when files in the current directory are not writable, or if W:A was run "As Administrator".
  • [DC] Upon starting a Mission / Training exercise, if W:A encountered an out-of-range setting while parsing the .WAM file, it showed an error message dialog — but went ahead and started a game anyway, with an incompletely initialised mission scheme.
  • [DC] In the Advanced Options screen, the Escape key would instantly exit the screen without saving changes. Now, it prompts the user whether to exit without saving changes.
  • [CS] In the Advanced Options screen, W:A will now notify the user when changing options that only take effect on the next start of the game.
  • [DC] The Delete button in the Map Editor did not ask the user for confirmation.
  • [DC] After loading a PNG with more than 112 colors in the Map Editor, exiting it and clicking OK in the dialog box that prompts the user to dither to 112 colors, there was no immediate visual response to the OK button being clicked. Now, the mouse cursor changes to the Busy state while the dithering is being done.
  • [CS] Graphics and audio error messages have been greatly improved, and now communicate detailed localised error messages, API function names, error codes and their descriptions.
  • [CS] Should the graphics system fail to initialise, W:A will now offer to reset the graphics settings to the default safe values.
  • [CS] When attempting to repair a replay containing a map error that the "Repair" feature is not currently designed to fix, W:A would display a blank message box instead of an error message.
  • [CS, DC] Text would appear cropped if W:A attempted to display a message box or confirmation box in the front end containing more text than would fit. Message boxes are now sized to fit the entire text.
  • [DC] Text in some of the Host screens' buttons would appear cropped or inappropriately wrapped in some languages. These buttons are now resized if necessary to fit the text into one line.
• [DC] Numerical ranges
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.28.0: In the Map Editor, if Placement Holes were adjusted above 255 (up to a maximum of 300), the number would be truncated (it would have 256 subtracted from it), e.g., a count of 300 would become 44. The maximum is now truly 300, but to use a Placement Hole count higher than 255, all players must be using v3.7.0.0 or later.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.28.0: In the Scheme Options editor, the health crate energy was shown incorrectly upon entering the editor if the value was above 127.
  • [DC] The maximum air retreat time supported by the game logic is 255 seconds, but the Scheme Options editor only allowed it to be adjusted up to a maximum of 127 seconds. Any value higher than 127 (adjusted using an external scheme editor) was shown incorrectly. (Note that the game logic really does only support a maximum of 127 seconds for land retreat time, as opposed to air retreat time.)
• [DC, CS] Crashes and memory corruption
  • [CS] It was possible in theory for W:A to enter an infinite restart loop, where each iteration would start a new process instance and immediately exit. This could happen if W:A reliably crashed before it processed its command-line parameters.
  • [DC] When an error was encountered creating the output file for /getmap or /getscheme, or the output folder for /getvideo, W:A would crash instead of displaying a proper error message.
  • [DC] Bug introduced in v3.6.30.0: If a host selected a map file larger than 5120 bytes, and then switched to a map file 5120 bytes or smaller while the earlier map was in the process of being sent, the host would get an "Out of Memory" error leading to subsequent problems.
  • [DC] Certain out-of-range numeric values, or too many events, in a .WAM (mission/training) file could cause W:A to crash when loading the corresponding Mission/Training round.
  • [DC] A team file (WG.WGT) edited using an external editor to have a team name of 17 characters (with no terminating null) could make W:A crash if the corresponding team was teamed in locally in an online game, and then clicked to team it back out. Other bugs may have also resulted from having the team name and/or other strings in the team file of maximum length with no terminating null. These strings are now forced to have a terminating null if they don't already (e.g., the team name is now forcibly limited to a maximum of 16 characters).
  • [DC] Wine would sometimes crash when audio streams were played in the front end. These streams (in Data\Streams on the CD-ROM or under the main W:A folder in the Steam version) include the intro title music, the Mission/Training win/lose sounds, and the music played at the end of a multiplayer match. The front end now uses the same API as is used for in-game ambient music (also in Data\Streams).
  • [DC] Minimizing during the Intro resulted in a crash upon restoring.
  • [CS] If W:A attempted to set an in-game resolution wider than 2048 or higher than 1536 and failed, W:A would get stuck at a black screen directly after the loading pie. The lock-up was due to W:A continuously failing to move the mouse cursor position to the "center" of the expected resolution, which was outside the screen area of the actual fallback resolution (1024×768).
  • [CS] A potential security vulnerability has been fixed.
• [DC] Fixes affecting game logic
  • [DC] It was possible for a Double Time crate to fall in a scheme with infinite turn time. This was inconsistent with other aspects of the game logic; for example, crates never fall containing contents that are already at infinite ammo in the scheme.
  • [DC] A bug in the Spanish translation of "N Shots Remaining" caused an exclamation mark to be inserted in front of the number ("Quedan !N Disparos") and caused the message to be queued up, instead of flushing the game comment / morse code text queue as it is supposed to (like weapon selection messages also do). Under contrived conditions, it was possible for this to lead to a desynchronization, if there was a mixture of players, one or more of whom had Spanish selected as their language, and one or more with a different language selected. Besides being fixed, the bug is also now emulated in online games and replays thereof.
  • [DC] With BattyRope enabled, if a worm was still on the Bungee upon winning the game, its bungee would be detached (to do the victory dance); as a result it would fall down and possibly lose the game instead of winning.
  • [DC] With BattyRope not enabled, if a worm with a perfectly vertical rope attached was touching the ground, and pending damage on another worm was ready to be displayed, the rope would be detached. (This usually happened with a Ninja Rope that had just been fired straight up.)
  • [DC] If a player disconnected while their team(s) were frozen, they would stay frozen for the rest of the game (or until drowned). Teams are now automatically unfrozen upon surrendering.
  • [DC] Bugs regarding Blow Torch / Teleport and explosions / impacts
    • [DC] A worm using the Teleport (at the stage in which the wavy-light teleportation animation is showing) would have its teleport interrupted, if and when an explosion happened anywhere on the map (out of range of damaging the teleporting worm); if the worm was in the air at the time, it would also lose control. (Note, in WWP, this bug also happens for a worm using the Blow Torch.)
    • [DC] A worm using the Blow Torch, when hit by an explosion, would not be pushed by the impact. (Note, in WWP this was fixed, at the cost of introducing the above Blow Torch bug.)
    • [DC] A worm using the Blow Torch, or using the Teleport as described above, when hit by a Dragon Ball, Longbow arrow, or flamelet, would not be pushed by the impact. (For this to happen with a Dragon Ball or Longbow arrow, "Weapons Don't End Turn" would have had to be enabled. With a flamelet, it would be rather subtle, as the first flamelet to hit would cancel the Blow Torch or Teleport, and subsequent flamelets would act normally.)
  • [DC] Bugs enabled by very high or unlimited maximum speed
    • [DC] It was possible, despite the wraparound fixes in v3.6.28.0, for a worm to fly off the right edge of the map at very high speed and wrap around to the left edge, if the worm was still in control at the moment it flew off the edge. A speed sufficient for this was only possible if "no maximum speed" was enabled (e.g. by TestStuff).
    • [DC] If the maximum projectile speed was set to a value >=200 pixels per frame, or unlimited (like TestStuff3), it was possible for an object to fall so fast that it skipped past the water and disappeared without making a Splash sound effect.
    • [DC] If the above-described glitch happened to a Worm, it would disappear without losing its energy, causing the game to prematurely end the round with an "Avoid Crash" when the game tried to give the current turn to that worm. (Note: The description of this particular "Avoid Crash" has now been edited to be more universally correct and informative.)
    • [DC] If the maximum projectile speed was set to a value >663 pixels per frame, or unlimited (like TestStuff3), it was possible for a Worm to fall fast enough that its Fall Damage would be improperly calculated, taking a meaningless value in the range 0 to 1820.
  • [DC] Health bar bugs
    • [DC] If a team surrendered before collecting a health crate, and the addition of the health to the team's total energy made it at least 25% higher than the best total energy of any team so far in the current round, then the health bar would overflow beyond its maximum length and would be drawn in a glitchy way. In extreme cases, the health bar could even stretch beyond the right edge of the screen.
    • [DC] If a team was damaged and then collected a health crate while the damage was still pending (i.e. before the damage was visually subtracted), and the addition of the health crate to the team's total energy (with the pending damage already subtracted) made it at least 25% higher than the best total energy of any team so far in the current round, then the health bar would overflow beyond its maximum length and would be drawn in a glitchy way. (This could at most make the health bar slightly less than double what its maximum width is supposed to be.)

Changes

• [DC] Resolutions are now denoted in all places in the front end as <width>×<height> instead of <width>x<height>.
• [DC] The message sent from the host in the Network Host/Join and Next Round screens, informing the players that the game cannot start due to unsupported features (map, scheme, and/or number of worms) by a subset of players who joined, has been streamlined.

Features

• [CS, DC] Advanced Options screen
  • [CS] An option has been added to load WormKit modules on startup.
    • By convention, WormKit modules are DLL files whose name begins with "wk".
    • The command-line parameters /wk and /nowk also control this behavior, and take precedence over the Advanced Options setting.
    • The command-line parameter /wkargs causes W:A to ignore following command-line parameters. This can be used by WormKit module authors to allow passing parameters to WormKit modules.
  • [CS, DC] An option has been added to use 8-bit color DirectDraw rendering. As in v3.6.31.2b, rendering is performed in software. As a result, the 8-bit color mode is more similar in performance to v3.6.31.2b than it is to earlier versions (which used 8-bit color with hardware rendering).
  • [CS] An option has been added to use Direct3D rendering. Direct3D may bypass compatibility and performance issues present with DirectDraw, and enable interoperability with software such as the Steam overlay.
    • It is possible to select using either Direct3D 7 and 9 APIs. The respective DirectX runtime needs to be installed.
    • Selecting Direct3D 9 (shader palette) causes the palette transformation to be performed on the GPU (using a pixel shader). This lowers CPU usage, but requires Pixel Shader 2.0 support on the GPU.
  • [CS] An option has been added to control waiting for vertical sync. Lowers latency when disabled, but may cause screen tearing.
  • [CS, DC] An option has been added to enable additional synchronization between screen refresh and vertical sync ("Assisted vertical sync"). Enabling the option should lower latency.
  • [DC] An option has been added to enable use of hardware mouse cursors. Currently this option only affects the front end. When enabled it eliminates all perceptible lag between moving the mouse and seeing the cursor move on screen, except for the brush cursor in the Map Editor which is still software-rendered. Enabling hardware cursors results in a much more dramatic difference in this version than it would have before v3.6.31.2b, as software rendering has resulted in higher lag in the front end.
  • [CS] An option has been added to configure the compatibility flags for Worms Armageddon in the Windows registry. The configured flags improve performance and resolve GUI issues under Windows 8. (Credit for discovering the compatibility flags goes to StepS)
  • [CS] An option has been added to use a new CommunityServerList.htm file instead of ServerList.htm, which, upon connecting to WormNET, redirects to a third-party server list linking to community WormNET servers.
    • The game will automatically offer to toggle the option in case of a WormNET connection error.
• [DC] Drop-down list box (and combo box) behavior
  • [DC] When clicking outside of a list box, the mouse click used to be discarded; it now behaves like a normal click on an outside control.
  • [DC] When right-clicking outside of a list box, the mouse click used to be completely ignored (it wouldn't even close the list box); it now closes the list box and behaves like a normal right-click on an outside control.
  • [DC] Mousing over controls outside of an open list box now highlights them and shows their help text, the same as if the list box were not open.
  • [DC] The button that opens and closes a list box now behaves more gracefully.
  • [DC] If a list box is currently open, the ESC key will now close it instead of exiting the current dialog or screen. (Since v3.6.30.0, this behavior applied to the Multiplayer screen's Scheme combo box and the Map Editor's Map combo box, but no others; now it applies to all combo boxes and drop-down list boxes.)
• [DC] Scrollbar buttons now repeat-scroll only while the mouse is inside the button (while the mouse button is held down).
• [DC] It is now possible to start an "online" offline game from the Network Host screen without using the light bulb button, if there are no remote players.
• [CS, DC] Translatable strings have been moved into external text files.
  • The language files are installed to the DATA\User\Languages\n.n.n.n directory, where n.n.n.n is the Worms Armageddon version.
  • User-created language files can be placed in the User\Languages\n.n.n.n directory. This is the recommended location to place new or modified language files, as files in this location will take priority over those under DATA\User\Languages, and are not under risk of being overwritten by a reinstall.
  • The command-line parameter /langdir can be used to specify one or more directory paths which override the locations where W:A will look for language files. The directories are searched in reverse order (the last specified location will be the first one searched).
  • The language file format and syntax is as follows:
    • Each file must use UTF-8 character encoding, and start with the corresponding Byte Order Mark. (The Byte Order Mark is usually invisible in text editors with Unicode support.)
    • The first line is reserved to indicate the language name (in the corresponding language).
    • The rest of the file is a list of strings. A string is defined by its identifier (composed from uppercase English letters, digits and underscores), followed by one or more string literals (which are joined together when the file is loaded).
    • A string literal is a sequence of characters surrounded by double-quotes, and may contain the following escape sequences:
      • \" - literal "
      • \\ - literal \
      • \n - line break
      • \m - 1.5× height line break (where applicable)
      • \1 through \9 - placeholder for the first through ninth parameter
      • \, - substring separator (for randomly-selected substring container strings)
      • \{<XX, and \{>=XX, - begin conditional block. All characters until \} will be included or omitted, depending on whether the current game version is respectively smaller-than, or greater-than-or-equal the indicated version number (in hexadecimal).
      • \} - end conditional block
    • A comment begins with the # character and continues until the end of the line. Comments are ignored by the game.
  • The set of visible characters is currently limited to Worms Armageddon's custom character table ( http://worms2d.info/WA_character_table ). This limitation may be removed in the future.
  • Translation improvements and new translations can be submitted for inclusion via the Team17 forum (see section 7.0).
• [DC] Changes affecting game logic
  • [DC] When a Double Time crate is collected during retreat, the remaining retreat time is now doubled.
  • [DC] When a Double Time crate is collected by an animal, the animal's remaining fuse time is now doubled.