Worms Armageddon ReadMe (English)/v3.6.25.1a Beta Update

Fixes In Windows 2000, certain graphics in the front end were skewed/slanted. These included the team colour/handicap icons when setting up a hosted or offline multi-player game, and worm count icons when joining an online game. In 3.6.24.2 this included nation flags in the WormNET lobby as well. The OfflineRopeKnocking_Off.reg and OfflineRopeKnocking_On.reg registry scripts are now compatible with Windows 9x/ME. The hyphen character ("-") can now be entered in W:A's IP address entry boxes. This is useful if you need to specify a domain name instead of an IP address, and the domain name contains a hypen. All possible filename characters can now be entered in the Scheme combo box, and scheme names are no longer required to be at least 3 characters long. [This change was only applied to the Multi-Player menu. As a side effect, the Options menu's scheme editor was crippled. This was fixed in v3.6.26.5.] The list of players in the host/join lobby has been expanded vertically. There is an extra pixel of space before and after each entry, making the list 14 pixels taller. As a result of this, nation flags are no longer clipped, and the edge of a map download progress bar no longer gets completely hidden when it goes behind a flag. When R was pressed to restart a replay: The chat box did not clear until the first message scrolled by. If pressed during the palette fade of a Nuke, the palette was not reset to normal. If pressed during an Earthquake, the quake sound effect would continue to play. If the replay had been played past sudden death, causing the loss of worm selection, selection would not be restored at the start of the game, resulting in a desynchronised second playback. If players disconnects were reenacted, they still be shown as disconnected at the beginning. The graphical representation of the Ninja Rope was misaligned when it was perfectly orthogonal (horizontal or vertical). Bug introduced in v3.6.23.0: When playing back a Mission or Training replay that took place in a cavern, the map was treated as an island, resulting in checksum errors. [This was an incomplete fix. See the entry for v3.6.26.4.] Errors / warnings in PNG maps were not reported properly. This would only happen with a malformed PNG file, e.g. one that was hex edited. If a PNG error or warning occurred when launching a replay file, an invisible dialog box popped up, requiring Enter to be pressed blindly to dismiss it. If this was not done immediately, the "WA.exe" process had to be killed manually, otherwise subsequent attempts to launch replays would fail until the next reboot. If a PNG error or warning occurred within the front end, a dialog box popped up that was impossible to dismiss because it didn't have the input focus. In this situation "WA.exe" had to be minimised and killed manually. In v3.6.23.0, a corrupt or invalid .BIT map file would no longer cause a crash when loaded. However, some map settings would be loaded from the invalid file, and the file handle was not being released (so a second attempt to load the same file in the same W:A session would do nothing). In the Map Editor, right-clicking the Preview/Edit-mode button to convert the current map/preview into a colour map disabled Indestructible Borders if they were previously enabled. Indestructible Borders were also disabled when right-clicking on a map thumbnail when a colour map was currently chosen. If a colour map was loaded, and was automatically given a cavern roof by default, but the roof was turned off from the Map Editor by the user, and then the Map Editor was exited and re-entered, the map would be shown as having a roof, when in fact it did not; and if no change was made, after exiting the editor the map would still have no roof. Note that whereas toggling the roof on a black and white map changes the upper 8 pixels of the map, doing so on a colour map only changes the flag specifying whether the map is a cavern or not. There was a bug in the Map Editor's drop-down file browser. It was possible for the game to crash when clicking on a <folder> to enter it. The chance of this occurring was low, but existent. Miscellaneous minor improvements to the host/join flag colours (note that the new flags still do not work in host/join) Fixes affecting game logic If a Worm was releasing a herd of Mad Cows, and was fatally injured (most likely by one of the cows) at the same 1/50 sec interval when the next cow in the herd would have been released, the game would crash. (See Footnote 2) In an online game, usually (if "usually" even applies to this strange and rare bug) the crash would happen only for current player, whereas remote players would see that player disconnect. If Super Weapons were disabled in a scheme, not only would they never appear in crates (the desired function) but would be removed from the initial Ammo stock as well (an undesired side effect). With this fixed, specific Super Weapons can be now be in the scheme without any Super Weapons ever appearing in crates. The Girder was artificially constricted from being placed in the upper 16 pixels of an island map. Features It is now possible to control the Placement Holes on a colour map. These are the holes that show up when the game detects there is not enough room to randomly place Worms, Mines and/or Oil Drums (or not enough floor for them to stand on) at the beginning of a game, with each hole filled with a small girder. For example, they show up in a completely full map (i.e. a Moleshopper map) or an completely empty map. When viewing a colour map in the Map Editor, right-click the Preview/Edit-mode button to toggle Placement Holes. When holes are enabled, they will be automatically previewed in the Map Editor. The Reseed button can be used to cycle the holes to a different set of random positions. All players in an online game must be using v3.6.25.1 or later to be able to play on a map with holes disabled. If this is not possible, try cycling the Reseed button until the holes go away or are in inconsequential positions. When opening a PNG file without metadata (i.e., one that hasn't been resaved from W:A's map editor) holes will be disabled by default. If you are playing with someone using an earlier version, you must either manually enable holes or open a map that already has them enabled in its metadata. When holes are disabled: A map with more than 64 colours will be displayed perfectly, with none of the glitches that occurred in earlier versions. To accomplish this, the following things are also disabled: soil texture (which appears when land is destroyed); the background layer (scrolls in parallax behind the map); background debris (gets blown by wind). The soil outline colour will be grey (in a future version, the map will be able to define it, among other things). A map can have up to 112 colours. If it has more than 96 colours, the background gradient will be black. Note that as before, transparent black is not counted; you may have up to 113 colours including black. The game will still search for up to 32 available positions. To find each position, it blindly tests up to 500 random spots for empty 40×40 pixel squares; if none are empty, it stops searching (this is the point at which it would start carving spots from the landscape, if holes were enabled). If the game does not find enough available positions to automatically place all worms, then manual worm placement will be forced. However, if there are CPU worms present, this will in turn override and force automatic placement; in this situation the game initialisation may be lagged, placements chosen may be quirky, and in a cavern map, worms will be automatically drowned if there are no available empty 9×16 pixel rectangles. There is now a front end button graphic for infinite turn time (this could previously only be accomplished using an external scheme editor). As before, when the turn time is set to infinite, the in-game timer display will count up from zero (for players using v3.6.19.17 or later). Note that in the host/join screen, people using versions earlier than v3.6.25.1 will see the turn time as "15", and people using v3.5 Beta 1/2/3pre1 will see it as "90". The player list in a hosted game now has a double-thick bottom border to indicate that it can be dragged/resized. (This is merely a visual hint for a previously added feature.) Local workarounds for emulated v3.5 Beta 1/2/3pre1 bugs When the player's worm is on the Rope/Bungee/Parachute/Jetpack, Girder and Teleport placement is not checked. This means that a girder can be placed in spots where it will intersect with land, worms and other objects. The Teleport will also accept any position, but if a teleport attempt intersects with something (even a crate), it will fail and the worm making the attempt will teleport onto itself. When emulating this bug on the local player's machine, W:A will now check teleport attempts and beep on an invalid attempt (it will even simulate a beep to be heard remotely and in the replay). Note that this is slightly unfair, as the person truly running v3.5 Beta 1/2/3pre1 will still experience the bug. Letting the timer run out during manual worm placement could throw the game into an endless loop, beeping constantly, instead of automatically placing the worm in a random spot. When emulating this bug on the local player's machine, W:A will now short-circuit the endless loop with local control. One beep will be heard. Note that if the central spot of the map has space for a worm, it will be placed there instead of a random spot. Also note that the person truly running v3.5 Beta 1/2/3pre1 will still experience the bug and throw the game into an endless loop. The context menu for a .WAgame now has hotkeys assigned to the commands (e.g. Export Log) Changes to this Readme Added release dates to the 2.0 Version History section and the Beta Update headers. Added a list of known issues to the 4.0 Known Issues section. Features affecting game logic In games with Stockpiling or Anti-Stockpiling enabled, Strike weapons collected during a round played on an Island landscape are now preserved in a dormant state during rounds taking played in a Cavern landscape. (Previously, they were lost under these circumstances.)