Announcing new Windows client - Netrek XP 2006
Bill
for public release.
It can be downloaded at
http://www.netrek.org/files/NetrekXP_2006/netrekXP2006-v1.0.zip
Just unzip the file, and place it in the directory of your choosing.
It comes with a decent netrekrc file, with good window placements, a
well designed keymap, lots of macros, and some more stuff.
The client works on Windows 95 through XP. However, Windows 95/98/ME
users will not be able to take advantage of some of the newer options.
See the README file in the docs directory for details.
This client is based on the latest version of Stas's client (Netrek XP
Mod 4.4.0.4), however there have been numerous features added, not
limited to, but including:
new ship bitmaps
new planet bitmaps
new weapons bitmaps
new sound effects
quasi-3D stereo sound, with up to 16 sounds playing at once
increased observer sound and game options support
new dashboard status timers
double buffering support to reduce screen flicker
RCD highlighting (beeplite)
det circle
and much more...
See the changes.txt file in the docs directory, or just read the next
post, which will have the new changes in their entirety.
Hope you enjoy it!
Bill
Bill
- added "rotatePlanets: (on)/off" to use rotating planet graphics, only
works with new planet bitmaps
- rotating planets! Well, just the unknown (?) planet for now, lack of
art is the holdup, it might be awhile till the rest of the planets are
done
- fixed tractor/pressors which overlap window border so that they don't
overwrite border
- fixed continueTractors option (it wasn't working at all)
- changed default team window size from 8 to 7 lines
- fixed some inconsistencies in how a few RCDs were named - "taking"
renamed to "take", "generic" renamed to "help", "help3 and help4"
renamed to "help1 and help2", and "doing3 and doing4" renamed to
"doing1 and doing2"
- added "saveWindow: (on)/off" and "saveBeeplite: (on)/off" to allow
saving of window placments and beeplite macros to the netrek.sav file.
- save options now can save windows placements, review window .allow
settings, and beeplite macros
- changed some default window sizes/locations that were either too
small (i.e. help window) or in a bad spot (i.e. planet window)
- cambot works now with double buffering, and added cambot howto to the
NetrekXP manual
- team select screen no longer uses 99% cpu power
- planet kill messages now show armies dooshed (if any)
- fixed colorful phasers to work as intended (cycle through 4 colors
and then your team color). This feature hasn't worked right since
netrek moved to 10 updates/sec.
- added a better default netrekrc file (my personal file), which has a
better keymap, window placements, and macros than your average rc :).
Plus it has all the settable rc options listed. The format of the
netrekrc is nearly identical to that of the netrek.sav file that can be
generated in game from the options menu. Currently the only difference
between the two is custom observer/servernick/servertype settings.
- fixed bug with observers with short packets on which was causing
incorrect drawing of local map in the case of losing player/planet lock
(most noticeable effect was a single background star being drawn at all
times, instead of the usual blank local).
- fixed phaser stats reporting for long packets
- fixed longstanding bug with UDP where display was redrawn too
frequently (once for udp redraw, and again anytime a TCP packet was
sent, like with warning messages).
- observer support for show speed on tactical
- added "showArmy: (on)/off" to show army count of planet you are
orbiting. Can be changed in game via planets menu.
- added "detCircle: on/(off)" to show det circle on tactical. Can be
changed in game via ship menu.
- pushing transwarp key will automatically lock you onto your team's
base, and send the practice robot request that starts transwarp, if
your team has a base, and if you aren't locked onto any player already.
For games with multiple bases on the same team (i.e. chaos), you will
have to lock onto the base of your choice, otherwise it will send you
to the first base on your team's player list.
- added observer support to show repair/declare war flags on dashboard.
Observers can also now change lock if they are observing a transwarper
(server side fix, but good to know).
- readded the ability to see tractor/pressors if they go off screen
(such as in the case of ATT tractors).
- added "doubleBuffering: (on)/off" to control whether to draw with
double buffering (it's recommended you do so if using the new planet
and ship bitmaps). Can be changed in game through the options menu.
- fixed the -c (report players on server) option so it doesn't crash
the client
- readded the ability to autologin by using -C name -A password. No
more extra typing :).
- fixed a whole bunch of startup options (-C, -A, -h, -g, etc) that
were crashing client if not entered properly. Also made it so it
prints out option list on a misused option.
- added timer/clock back to text dashboard
- added torp count to LAB dashboard
- added new status line to KRP, COW and LAB dashboard. In order of
priority, it shows the following:
1) time left in declare war delay
2) time left in refit delay
3) time left to fully repair (if you are at warp 0 in repair mode)
4) time left in grace period after T mode drops to still take planets
(15 second timer)
5) whether you are in transwarp
6) whether you are under impulse power (default)
- new netrekrc option, "newQuit (on/off)", to use new quit window
- new netrekrc option, "planetBitmapGalaxy: (0-3)", same options as
planetBitmap, but now you have the choice to change map display planets
too! And have map and local planets use different bitmap sets. Can be
changed via planets menu.
- fixed bug where map window border wasn't being redrawn on death
- shortpackets is now "on" by default. There are some problems with
short packets, such as only reporting ship heading to 16 positions,
whereas all bitmap sets in this client use 32 positions, or in the case
of the new highres bitmaps, 256 positions. Some other minor quibbles
with short packets on is that observers do not get geno messages, and
shield/cloak status for warp 0 players are not sent by short packets.
However, short packets allows client side customization of how data is
displayed, as well as reducing bandwith, so it is the default.
Hopefully these will be fixed server side in the near future.
- fix to problem with bottom and right borders in certain windows (like
map) getting overwritten
- new planet bitmaps! Using Defcom's art. Changeable via planets
menu.
- client now recognizes planets that are flagged as "core": this shows
up in planet list menu, planet info, and core planets also use
different bitmaps in the "New Color" bitmap set
- redesigned color1 ori GA so it's not the same pic as base
- added link to genocide.netrek.org newbie manual to replace broken
link
- fix to background star jumpiness with short packets off
- fixed a bunch of stray pixels in mono color and tinted GA bitmaps
- fixed some playerlist bugs, and increased playerlist window from 21
to 32 lines
- added pretty geno bitmap (no it's not Kathy Ireland, it's a color
galaxy picture)
- Added new plasma_kill sound (Fatality!) for when someone dies to
plasma (note the sound fires based on kill messages, so if reportKills
is off, you won't hear it)
- fixed the reportKills option, it wasn't working, now it does
- Added new value (choice 3) for playerListObserver so that observers
appear at the bottom of the playerlist. Options are:
# What kind of players to list
# 0 - all (default)
# 1 - players
# 2 - observers
# 3 - players, then observers
- If sortPlayers is off, toggling playerListObserver now properly shows
the correct players (ie all, in game players only, observers only).
Furthermore, turning player list off with the L key (or whatever key
you have mapped to toggle player list) will now correctly update the
options menu to say "Playerlist is off" in the box corresponding to
playerListObserver options.
- added sound window for SDL so one can toggle sound on/off
- added a special explosion sound just for starbase explosions
- added "colorWeapons: (on)/off" to use color weapon bitmaps for torps
and plasmas! The bitmaps are a blend of COW/Ted Turner bitmaps, with
some improvements in the area of torp/plasma size and color ratio, the
addition of a separate color bitmap for your own weapons fire, and the
addition of separate bitmaps for "friendly" and "enemy" weapons, so you
can tell who is at peace with you visually by the shading of their
weapons. This option can be toggled in game from the ships menu.
- improved mono plasma explosion animation bitmaps
- added a new Playerlist menu to the Options Menus, so the other menus
are not as cluttered, and all playerlist options are now on the same
menu page
- added "newSoundAngles: (on)/off" so one can choose to use SDL sound
but lose the directionality component (sounds will still be toned down
in volume with distance, but there will be no 3d sound component).
Changeable via sound menu (if using SDL sound).
- made it so cloak sounds don't play at your twarp flash event (happens
at warp 15, 31, 46)
- changed self destruct sound so it doesn't sound like enter ship sound
- added 2 new message sounds (they can be called by beeplite)
- add 2 new sounds for enter/exiting transwarp, and observer support
for hearing these as well
- replaced red alert sound with one less staticy
- fixed up viewbox so map refreshes properly when toggled
- fixed LAB dashboard to properly display armies/kills for observers
- change to warning sounds: changed current "warning" sound to the
yellow alert sound, and made the red_alert sound file the red alert
sound.
- change to plasma_other sounds: uses closest other_plasma for sound
location, as there is no good way to determine which torp on screen is
most recent for sound purposes.
- change to plasma_hit sounds: nothing special other than stereo
effect.
- change to phaser sounds: observers now hear phasers! Also fixed it
so observers locked onto a player hear self-phaser sounds rather than
phaser_other sounds when that player fire phasers
- change to shields up/down: observers now hear shields up/down sounds
for ship they are locked onto.
- change to cloak/uncloak sounds: under old sound (not using newSound),
observers now hear cloak/uncloak sounds for ship they are locked onto.
For newSound, you now hear cloak/uncloak events for all ships on the
tactical.
- change to torp_other sounds: uses closest other_torp for sound
location, as there is no good way to determine which torp on screen is
most recent for sound purposes.
- change to torp_explosion sounds: nothing special other than stereo
effect.
- change to explosion sounds: changed it so observers who are locked
onto a player who blows up hear the self-explosion sound rather than
the explosion_other sound.
- added a minimum distance to have the angular/distance modulation of
sound effects (so close sounds will sound like they are right on top of
you)
- added sound reduction with distance and stereo effect based on angle,
for sound events that occur on the tactical (weapons, explosions,
cloaking, etc). Current list includes cloak, uncloak, torp_other,
torp_explosion, explosion_other, phaser_other, plasma_other,
plasma_hit.
- fire_plasma_other sound now works
- added "newSound: (on)/off". Allows one to choose not to use the new
sound system. Note that this option is not settable in game through
options menu, only through the .netrekrc file.
- SDL implementation - up to 16 sounds can play at once, with sound
volume scaling with the distance of the sound event from your ship
- continuousMouse and continuousMouseFix now default to "on"
- fixed the mono fed sb bitmaps so they rotate more cleanly
- updated NetrekXP manual (in docs folder), removed old cow manuals
- all greyscale and shaded old color starbase bitmaps now rotate
- the new color fed starbase bitmaps now rotate
- keeppeace default is now "on"
- tidied up the save_options function, fixing some spacing errors, and
putting the keymap/buttonmap on the top of the list due to its
importance. Also added the sounddir option.
- fixed mainResizeable loading/saving (the option that allows you to
resize the main netrek window) from netrekrc. Also made "on" the
default setting.
- rewrote TTS centering/refresh code so that text is properly centered
and clears properly when the message expires. Updated manual to
reflect change of tts_pos variable to tts_ypos.
- readded beeplite functionality. Configuration options described in
netrekxp manual. Basic rc options are useLite: on/off to turn beeplite
on and off, and defLite: on/off to use the default settings. The
beeplite option is highly configurable, see manual for details. Can
also be turned on via the Visual Menu. Default is "on" for both useLite
and defLite.
- added preventative measures against loading bitmap files that might
not exist - if bitmaps are missing, it defaults to the mono bitmaps
- cleaned up a lot of dead space sound at the end of sound files, most
noticeably, the phaser sound
- fixed a bug in the options menu that incorrectly reported whether the
phaser window was mapped or not
- phasering plasma now has less of an effect on phaser average damage
statistics, it is counted as your average damage hit, rather than the
previous way of counting it as a 38 point phaser hit
- added "dynamicBitmap: (on)/off". Enables dynamic bitmap switching
from the options menu. If dynamicBitmap is set to off, only the
necessary bitmap files will load into memory.
- renumbered the ship bitmap sets for the colorClient option. Choices
are 0=mono, 1=new color graphics, 2=single color graphics, 3=shaded
single color graphics, and 4 = experimental high res graphics (the new
80x80 bitmaps). Default setting is still 1. Settings 2 and 3 have the
bonus effect of turning your ship color to white (similar to COW) due
to there being a greyscale bitmap library with matching ship designs.
- added a new ship bitmap set (made by Defcom). These bitmaps are
stored in 80x80 pixel blocks (rather than 20x20 for all other bitmap
sets). In addition, only 1 bitmap per ship is needed rather than 32
for each ship position - the rotation is done on the fly by Windows. To
take advantage of the high res bitmap set, Windows 2000 or later may be
required, due to needing a native Windows transform function to have
your CPU do the bitmap rotation on the fly. The long term goal is to
replace all client bitmaps with higher resolution versions, to have the
client scale/rotate as necessary, and to increase tactical size so we
can take advantage of the higher quality bitmap sets.
- added new scaling/rotation function for displaying bitmaps.
- fixed hightlightFriendlyPhaser option to work again: on for white
phasers on hits, off for flicker between team color and white
- added some more hints to the hint database
- fixed hint messages so they properly loop
- added Maximize button to title bar
Daniel Damouth
news:1149134454.1...@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> The initial release (v1.0) of my Netrek XP 2006 client is now
> available for public release.
>
> It can be downloaded at
Bill, if it's really you, how can you assure us that it's not a trojan?
You always seemed to enjoy destroying games.
-Dan Damouth
Bill
the same directory, you can compile it yourself if you want. There's
even detailed instructions on how to do so, using your choice of either
BCC command line compiler, or Microsoft Visual Studio Express (both
free).
Bill
P.S. Check www.netrek.org front page for a screen shot if you still
don't believe it's real
Erik
> Yes it's me you twink. If you don't trust me, the source code is in
> the same directory, you can compile it yourself if you want. There's
> even detailed instructions on how to do so, using your choice of either
> BCC command line compiler, or Microsoft Visual Studio Express (both
> free).
>
> Bill
>
> P.S. Check www.netrek.org front page for a screen shot if you still
> don't believe it's real
>
The source code doesn't matter if you use obfuscated code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obfuscated_code
And even if it wasn't obfuscated, who reads the source code anyway?
> Daniel Damouth wrote:
>> "Bill" <billba...@hotmail.com> wrote in
>> news:1149134454.1...@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>> The initial release (v1.0) of my Netrek XP 2006 client is now
>>> available for public release.
>>>
>>> It can be downloaded at
>> Bill, if it's really you, how can you assure us that it's not a trojan?
>> You always seemed to enjoy destroying games.
>>
>> -Dan Damouth
>
--
You say you are lying. But if everything you say is a lie, then you
are telling the truth. You cannot tell the truth because everything
you say is a lie. You lie, you tell the truth ... but you cannot, for
you lie.
-- Norman the android, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
Bill
includes both developers and players. The code is also hosted at
sourceforge.net under the netrek project, at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/netrek.
Bill
K.C Vixen
Ill risk my cpu and install it, i mean, my cpu is crap anyway so it
wont matter ?
And..after a good test
ITS EXCELLENT !!!
K.C Vixen
to change windows to fit my style, although the keymaps are a little
hard to play with (on my keyboard..the torpedoes are on one side and
shields on the other.)
The experimental hi-res bitmaps are pretty good too, a few look great a
few look ok. The saber (Assault) one is muddle but still looks good.
The old ones are funny and the fact you can use the new netrek xp ones
ontop makes it great, but i prefer the experimental ones since they are
good.
The planets look great too, the rotating thing is pretty good as well.
The only thing i dont like about this, is the fact that you cant save
yur options after quitting, and the thing that when you fire your
torpedoes they are green, which doesnt fit with the world :p since they
should be orange if photon and blue if quantom.
Although this client isnt reaching the spectacular images that paradise
used to give (big booms, big color bitmaps, better torps etc etc) this
is an excellent client and definatly worth downloading. Finally some
color for us xp users !!
Thanks ! :)
Bill
> Been playing it awhile now and i can say its very good. I figured how
> to change windows to fit my style, although the keymaps are a little
> hard to play with (on my keyboard..the torpedoes are on one side and
> shields on the other.)
>
designed by Niclas, he put a lot of thought into it, it's quite good.
It's hands down the best default keymap ever put into a client.
> The experimental hi-res bitmaps are pretty good too, a few look great a
> few look ok. The saber (Assault) one is muddle but still looks good.
> The old ones are funny and the fact you can use the new netrek xp ones
> ontop makes it great, but i prefer the experimental ones since they are
> good.
>
Yup they were designed to be seen at larger resolution (i.e. larger
tactical), a feature that isn't in yet - when that gets put in, you
will really see the difference.
> The planets look great too, the rotating thing is pretty good as well.
>
Yup Defcom made some nice planets for sure.
> The only thing i dont like about this, is the fact that you cant save
> yur options after quitting, and the thing that when you fire your
> torpedoes they are green, which doesnt fit with the world :p since they
> should be orange if photon and blue if quantom.
>
Page 6 of options menu lets you save current options, it saves it to
netrek.sav, rather than overwriting your netrekrc file. As I mention
in changes doc, it does a fairly good job of saving everything from
your current rc, the only thing it doesn't save are things for
observer/servernick/servertype. Such as keymap.observer,
keymap.continuum, keymap.bronco. If you don't have stuff like that in
your netrekrc, and I imagine most people don't since it's a fairly new
feature of Stas's client, you can just rename netrek.sav to netrekrc.
If you find anything else that doesn't save right, please let me know!
As for torp color, I looked at what paradise/ted turner had. It had
blue torps for your self torps - didn't make much sense, ori torps are
blue. I wanted a color that was offwhite, so I chose green with white
tinges. Orange also would not be a good choice, as fed torps are
orange/yellow.
> Although this client isnt reaching the spectacular images that paradise
> used to give (big booms, big color bitmaps, better torps etc etc) this
> is an excellent client and definatly worth downloading. Finally some
> color for us xp users !!
>
I think the explosions are on par with paradise. Ships are better,
torps are almost exactly the same. Can you show a comparison
screenshot where paradise uses better bitmaps?
Glad you enjoy it.
Bill
Trent Piepho
You know, you could atleast credit people when you copy their ideas.
Bill
2000), however it would just be a guess on my part as to if the ideas
were yours or someone else's that you thought were good and then put in
the client. I know several of them also exist on the Netrek FOCS list.
And since your client is closed source, thus I did not copy any code,
I did not put acknowledgement in the change log. If I copied code, you
would have gotten acknowledgement.
Bill
gulv...@gmail.com
I am very pleased with your work (copied or not). Thank you. Keep it
up.
Trent Piepho
Bill <billba...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Well, I did take some of the best features from your client (Paradise
>2000), however it would just be a guess on my part as to if the ideas
>were yours or someone else's that you thought were good and then put in
Oh whatever. You know where you took them from, when you copy something from
someone, the decent thing to do is acknowledge it. But I forget, this is
Bill, who has no concept of decency.
>the client. I know several of them also exist on the Netrek FOCS list.
> And since your client is closed source, thus I did not copy any code,
>I did not put acknowledgement in the change log. If I copied code, you
>would have gotten acknowledgement.
Sure you would have. You even act like my server side changes were your idea.