SOLDAT 1.7.0 RELEASED!

[Furai]

Leo finally left huh? It's amazing how long he endured and just hung in there lol. I remember giving him shit (looking back) for virtually no reason at all.

He's still around IRC. Hosting servers for other games. Unturned at the moment, I think. But his soldat servers are most likely gone for good.

[Petterkowski]

Great job with the release, guys. Keep up the good work . I'll have to report another problem though

My soldat forever freezes between rounds. It seems like when loading maps, the client locks up and i can't really do anything besides minimizing, turning it off in task manager and then reopening client few times untill it finally works. I just found out that it only happens when loading certain maps, and im also not able to do anything when these maps are being played, it doesn't even matter how many times i restart.

This is what happens when lothic comes out. Forever freeze until someone changes the map.


This is Guardian quite interesting..


Rotten, d2 and ib works like a charm. Didn't check the rest yet besides those mentioned. Any ideas ?

[Akinaro]

I have such freezes when my LTE router switch to EDGE or 3G mode and its limiting Internet speed. Not that often but also between rounds.
Second screen shoot look more like graphic driver problem(maybe because win xp?)

[Petterkowski]

yeah im using win xp but i updated my drivers recently, but this might be it, i don't know because i am no longer able to update some of my Windows XP content

[darDar]

try to delete all maps and get them re-downloaded from the server when attempting to join.
Also, you might try out some different settings in the config.exe
Do you play on a low end machine or why are you using such a low resolution?

updating drivers or using different drivers is also recommended. did these issues also occur in the alphas/betas/release-candidates?

[mar77a]

Daymn

Seeing how you got this ported to GL you should try making a web version

[urraka]

yeah im using win xp but i updated my drivers recently, but this might be it, i don't know because i am no longer able to update some of my Windows XP content

I feel like the root of all these problems is just the OpenGL driver being bad at dealing with low memory (or just buggy maybe). Some systems have an option in the BIOS to increase the video memory, maybe you could check that.

[CCalp]

Daymn

Seeing how you got this ported to GL you should try making a web version

hey mar77a i have missed seeing your cute avatar :]

[%%%%%%%]

Daymn

Seeing how you got this ported to GL you should try making a web version

Actually, a web version of Soldat would help the game exponentially.

PerroAZUL, do it up bro!

Imagine Soldat being as accessible and popular as agar.io

[Akinaro]

Its not that bad idea, and it would be amazing experience. Very often I plug my phone to BT mouse and keyboard and idea of playing soldat on phone/tablet is hilarious(even if once I actually tried that via streaming app) 

But that would have few huge problems and massive amount of smaller ones. Not only in code it self but typical problems that no one look at in the first place, like storing data, 100MB of default files + even more from custom sceneries/maps etc or different configuration options(especially key binding that I always find annoying in browser games), remaking/optimizing to browser system(because browser games are way more resource hungry) compatibility with different browsers, etc etc. And I would not even ask about server-client problems you could have...

[urraka]

Well, the OpenGL port doesn't really help much for a web version. Soldat would need either a complete rewrite in javascript or some compile to JS magic, which as far as I know needs some specific libraries for it to work (or you need to implement whatever libraries you use in javascript I guess, or attempt to compile them to JS). We can't even compile to linux right now, let alone to the web. I don't even know if there is something to compile Delphi to JS (and doesn't really matter, I'm assuming there is). Another thing.. networking would be limited to Websockets afaik, which is a protocol on top of TCP, and TCP adds some unnecessary overhead. A lot of people say that TCP "is just fine" but other people (including people very knowledgeable on the topic) will say that it's just plain stupid to use TCP for a fast peaced multiplayer game. My guess is that it would work decently on great network conditions but would quickly become shit with non-ideal network conditions. That's just a guess though, I haven't really tried any web based multiplayer game comparable to Soldat.

[machina]

I don't like the idea of Soldat being a web browser game. It would lower it's status as a full download-to-play game. Also, this would require a lot of code rewrite, lower performance and rather insignificant increase in players count.

[%%%%%%%]

That's just a guess though, I haven't really tried any web based multiplayer game comparable to Soldat.

There was Quake Live, but now it's on Steam.
There's QuakeJS (www.quakejs.com) which is a port of ioquake3 to JS with the help of Emscripten, and it works flawlessly; you can't tell the difference between it and a dedicated installation.

[urraka]

I think I tried Quake Live once, but it was like some kind of plugin, so probably not restricted to any of the web limitations. I don't really count anything you have to install as web based. Chrome has been dropping support for that kind of plugins afaik. QuakeJS does look like real web based. I wonder how its networking works compared to a native version. Probably not an easy thing to tell though, might need to be very familiar with the game to tell the difference or notice any flaws that come with a TCP based netcode.

[Petterkowski]

A warm thank you for all your help, guidance and support, guys. I finally got it fixed i think, but first things first.

1. try to delete all maps and get them re-downloaded from the server when attempting to join.
2. Also, you might try out some different settings in the config.exe
3. Do you play on a low end machine or why are you using such a low resolution?

4. updating drivers or using different drivers is also recommended. did these issues also occur in the alphas/betas/release-candidates?

1. This is what i tried at first and to my surprise it somehow solved some of the problems. Amazingly, guardian started working with 600 fps(lol). I couldn't really believe it because even with tweaking some settings I have never been able to reach 150 before. Unfortunately, shortly after the influx of enthusiasm, i found out other maps were damaged and my mood went from 100-0 real quick.. For instance, this is what ive been receiving while trying to enter Death2


2. I tried this the second time and I got no results. I think ive tried all possible configurations - no results whatsoever. Then i decided to delete all my textures, mods, old edges etc. How much greater was my surprise when I opened Soldat and saw this

Some parts were still invisible but it was a good start and a motivation for me to keep on searching the key , and i did so and went further which is now my next point - I reinstaled Soldat, but it didn't help at all unfortunately. My client was showing a blank white screen no matter what i did.

3. Well, this is what was happening to me when i tried using different resolution

Anyways Ive never used other resolution than 640/480. I got used to it, im using same settings since the very beginning and i wouldn't be able to perform my best using any different one. I tried it once for fun and it was awful, i couldn't even move my leg and i was dead, ive seen glaciers move faster than me on higher reso, lol..

4. Yeah it did occur in betas and alphas and i decribed my problem before and received a helping hand from urraka.

yeah im using win xp but i updated my drivers recently, but this might be it, i don't know because i am no longer able to update some of my Windows XP content

I feel like the root of all these problems is just the OpenGL driver being bad at dealing with low memory (or just buggy maybe). Some systems have an option in the BIOS to increase the video memory, maybe you could check that.

Okay now it's getting exciting. This was my last resort. Yesterday I tried to increase the dedicated video memory in BIOS and it worked! Well, it's either this or new drivers because i decided to update them AGAIN using different ones from amd.support. Anyways i played few gathers and it seems like my Soldat WORKS! Well, almost works. There's just one little problem left - i am unable to see medics. They heal me but i can't see them. Any ideas ?

oh.. and sometimes i couldnt connect to the server again, like when i was trying to join the server, it only said "requesting server" but i was not being moved to the game. It only happened twice maybe. I didn't experience the same problem today and i played few hours.

[urraka]

Well, that sounds like good news

iLLskiLLs reported a similar problem - unable to join server. We don't really know why that happens but he said it just stopped happening after system restart.

Invisible medikit sounds really odd. Did you check if the image file looks fine? It should be 'textures/objects/medikit.png'. We have both png and bmp there but png always takes priority. You could try removing the png one to use the bmp instead. Maybe that works... for whatever reason.

[darDar]

iLLskiLLs reported a similar problem - unable to join server. We don't really know why that happens but he said it just stopped happening after system restart.

He did also change his firewall settings to never block c:\\programsx86\soldat

Still, the fileserver is borked in 1.7.
I'll see if I can get it reproduced on the weekend to make a proper report on the 'wrong map version detected' loop issue, which won't let you update the map version but keeps kicking you from the server in a loop.

[jrgp]

Still, the fileserver is borked in 1.7.
I'll see if I can get it reproduced on the weekend to make a proper report on the 'wrong map version detected' loop issue, which won't let you update the map version but keeps kicking you from the server in a loop.

This did happen to me on a random pub a few days ago. Kinda sucked because the pub had like 10 players and it was hosting a map I made 10 years ago and I really wanted to play it with other people instead of bots. After getting kicked with "wrong map version" 5 times or so it let me join which made me happy.

[CottonTheMoth]

Had a bit of an odd thing happen. I had a ctf server up and running for a friend and I to play on through soldatserver.exe, and we loaded it up with oh, some 7-12 Boogie Men. He only had 50 ping and stable internet, but certain bots just completely didn't show up for him at all. There was no rubberbanding, no lag for him, so he would just get impaled by a bot randomly. I even spectated him once and saw him standing directly beside an enemy flag-carrier and he said that that particular bot didn't have that flag. It was odd. In the kill feed for me, all appeared normal (joining my local IP) but for him, I'll have to doublecheck, but he said that when he died the killfeed reported that he killed himself with the chainsaw. No ping warnings were given or anything.

Could this in theory be because I set the server player limit to 8 but exceeded that with bots? I feel like that could potentially be what happened...though I have no idea why it would just fail to show him that player altogether.

I kicked them all then added less and that solved the problem.

[jrgp]

Btw, I just upgraded all of the servers on #sna.gather to 1.7.0 and brought it's bot back. Now that channel can come back to life.