New lobby 0.5.0.x - Changes, Q&A

[Ze_PilOt]

thygrrr ( for the lobby part) and Raging Squirrel (for the web/vault part) spent the last month redoing the lobby for the first official public release.

Today, you will have access to a open-beta of this new lobby.

What does it mean ?

It's not the definitive lobby. The code is entirely redone, and we need another round of beta test to be sure to solve all bugs and problems.
Some features are left out for now as we want to focus on only a fraction of the functions for now.
Some others features will be added later to this beta.
For example, the next step is redoing entirely the communication protocol with the server, to be able to add passworded lobbies, automatic refreshing of the lobby games, ...

What are the missing features from the final version ?

The main missing one is the replay vault. But a lot of little neat features are missing. You will see them when the time will come

Coop and Galactic War tabs disappears, did you drop the development ?

No at all. On the contrary, once the final version is release, these will be the main development focus. But for now, empty tabs are removed from the interface.
We are still aiming a first Galactic War public alpha test before the end of the second quarter of this year. Maybe later, don't hold your breath. But it's still planned.

Where is the FAFInstaller thingy ?

FAFInstaller is obsolete. It's now merged inside the lobby.
Also, we don't add files to your installation folder anymore.

That's mean that you can remove the binFAF folder and all .faf files from there. It's not needed anymore.

Where are the FAF files then ?

They are now in your COMMON_APPDATA folder (C:\ProgramData on most systems if you didn't changed it).

You will also find FAF Lobby and FA logs there, in the logs folder. These are file needed when you make an error report

Why are we in 3611 now ? What is inside that patch ?

Bug fixes from 3610 :

- sorian AI will now use the new units from mods like BlackOps.
-Removed chance (~50%) that air units, upon death, will vanish without a wreck and without crashing.
- Fixed uef acu drone/pod bug.
-air units now leave wrecks in water.
- Fixed UEF acu nano regen.
- Some units had incorrect sphereSize hitboxes.

[pip]

Great job on the new lobby!

[TheStrategist]

Does this mean that a special installer is not needed for the steam version of the game?

[GallantDragon]

Does this mean that a special installer is not needed for the steam version of the game?

I'd like to know about that too. Also, is there anything people should be watching out for if they're installing this on top of the old FAF?

[thygrrr]

My Steam FA works right out of the box. Your mileage may vary, but try it!


Also, thanks for all the feedback, encouragement and also the bug reports. Some of the issues were hard to pinpoint, and of course having 100 testers all of a sudden unleashed on your software can lead to hickups... I'm trying to update the lobby as frequently as possible from now on. That said, I still need till this weekend before I can confidently make release builds without the help of ThePilot (no time tomorrow and Friday night).

I fixed a big bunch of really important bugs and added a set of useful microfeatures today.

The biggest thing was definitely the fixes for people who have accents and other nonstandard characters as parts of their usernames. I also improved the performance of the Chat, I made a naive assumption about a bit of code (gave me more control over the layout) that turned out to be way, way, waaaay more CPU intensive as I wanted it to. I didn't notice it on my multicore box because every time I optimized stuff, I only used the chat for a short time and so I always thought my optimizations were, again and again, huge improvements.

One detail I want you guys to know is actually the fact that the lobby crashes rather easily (but tries to keep your running FA game alive). That was a design decision from me, I specifically added code that would terminate the lobby on every unexpected error (creating detailed, if spammy, logs), because otherwise it'd have a LOT of dormant bugs in the wild. Now, everytime I fix a crash, that bug is gone for good. I'll remove that exception hook in a little while, and will probably put a handler around it all that instead of blowing the lobby up tries to keep it together.

[thygrrr]

Does this mean that a special installer is not needed for the steam version of the game?

I'd like to know about that too. Also, is there anything people should be watching out for if they're installing this on top of the old FAF?

Two things:
You can delete your old "binFAF" folders, these are no longer needed.

And if your game starts with no sound and the standard maps seem to be missing, you can fix that by simply going to the Lobby's Options->Settings->Game Path menu, and select "Browse" there once and accept.

[Helcaraxe]

-Removed chance (~50%) that air units, upon death, will vanish without a wreck and without crashing.
-air units now leave wrecks in water.

Two great visual improvements - thank you FAF team