Devlog KAG Build 2367 - Contributions Galore; Performance, Translations and a Bug Massacre

This build is the first "big" build with a lot of changes from contributors, both via github and internally.

In particular, Asu and Fuzzle have been given access to our internal repositories. Asu has taken on a variety of performance improvements, modding quality-of-life changes, and translation work. Fuzzle has focussed on fixes and gameplay quality of life, and is preparing a lot of changes that aren't quite ready for release yet, including new gamemodes and a lot of overhauled "behind the scenes" stuff.

This build should improve performance, particularly serverside. Enormous collapses should no longer "kill" servers (thanks makmoud98 for help testing this), water and fire shouldn't cause issues with certain graphics setups, the minimap should be a lot faster in general.

This build features improved (but experimental!) translation support, with more to come. We've had expressions of interest from serveral members of the community - if you'd like to help get KAG translated to your locale, Asu is probably the one to get in touch with. There's an open github issue but the forums are also a good place to discuss this. We'd love to get official translation support for lots of languages in to help KAG reach and welcome all sorts of international audiences.

There are also a lot of bugs fixed and improvements for modders, check the changelog for details on those!

Next month will be more fixes, more performance work, an improvement pass on the in-game (and discord) emoticons, yet more modder-requested functionality, and ongoing translation efforts.

I'll get something a little nicer looking up ASAP - I didn't expect the build to be released so soon :)
Max

Code:

Changelog:

Game:

	[removed] immobilise button from vehicles with drivers (thanks fuzzle)
	[added] mirror_map and water_baseline config options to kaggen

Heads:

	[added] greece head to heads2.png
	[modified] heads selection has 8 columns now to fit more heads in
	[added] extra head slot to FOTW for greece head
	[modified] mazey head (dutch pride, no antenna)

Performance:

	[fixed] angelscript on linux performance (thanks asu, furai)
	[fixed] very slow rebuild when video is enabled (thanks asu)
	[fixed] slow file hashing in launcher (thanks asu)
	[fixed] collapse performance bug (thanks asu, fuzzle)
	[added] minimap updating is batched
	[modified] flood layers (water, fire) only update minimap if a cell actually changed

Translation:

	[added] language switch menu (see misc options) (thanks asu)
	[added] french json locale (thanks asu)
	[added] extra translation support (thanks asu)
	[removed] legacy irrlicht translations

Github:

	[added] README (thanks fuzzle)
	[added] legal clarifications on distribution rights

Scripting/Modding:

	[added] kickafk and mechanisms support to challenge gamemode
	[added] GUI DrawShadowedText functions for AS
	[added] DrawTextPlain methods - the old DrawText keeps the legacy behaviour to avoid compatibility issues.
	[added] config color for console + new default colors (thanks asu)
	[modified] Improved /performance command (thanks asu)
	[modified] TextureFromFile fails rather than returning a default texture if the file doesn't exist
	[added] hasMatch() to CFileMatcher for testing if there's actually a match for the searched file or not
	[added] show script console command exceptions (thanks asu)
	[modified] new mod downloader appearance (thanks asu)
	[added] Maths::ATan2
	[added] Vec2f_lengthdir(f32 length, f32 dir) alternative vec2f constructor for people from gamemaker
	[added] Vec2f toString and string concatenation (though no working += yet)

Bugs:

	[modified] "onHit" safety pass which may help server/client stability.
	[modified] moved knight sword cling to its own script so knightlogic can be removed when dead (onHit safety)
	[fixed] initialize materials correctly (thanks fuzzle)
	[fixed] each team's flag being 1 block different on maps that don't have flag positions defined (i.e. generator maps) (thanks cameron)
	[fixed] "respawn in approximately never" happening when build time is set to 0. (thanks cameron)
	[fixed] buildOnGround tagged builder blocks (buildings) getting picked up incorrectly
	[fixed] first map in cycle skipped in non-shuffle mode
	[fixed] mapcycle "first map" behaviour to work across different script-loaded mapcycles
	[fixed] crash in toUpper (thanks asu)
	[modified] cleaned up a few places where shadowing is unhelpful in-engine (dark text)
	[modified] explain the mod verification failure to be less confusing (thanks asu)
	[modified] 'cannot create blob on client' message is now more detailed (thanks asu)
	[fixed] crash when passing a map name that doesn't exist to /loadmap (thanks asu)
	[fixed] issue with minimap updating when water/fire set somewhere impossible
	[fixed] dumb outlining on minimap

 

@Cruxiat

 

I've heard some vague "reports" of "bugs" but nothing particularly concrete, would anyone be able to elucidate things here or in the bug report forum please?

 

For what I saw yesterday, eu CTF servers started to lag heavily with high population. Somebody said it was 100% serverside lag: tomato bombs, delayed water arrow hits, delayed kills etc. This happened in both eu servers we played ( we migrated from one to the other eventually), and on the us CTF too. Will come with little things if so.

Also, psshht, the new emot doesn't work

 

Just pushed small hotfix. Apparently the AS optimisations didn't work in the previous build. Now they should be working as supposed.

 

They'll be coming but be patient

 

We can try that out next build, I'll mark it experimental for the moment :)