Beta 2

[Hylis]

Welcome to the beta 2 log topic.

There is three goals for this topic
1. Keep you informed of what have changed in the beta 2
2. Provide you some basic information on how it works
3. Keep you informed of what we intend to change until release in the upcoming beta versions.

We have made a dedicated topic for feedbacks here, if you wish to make one
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 0&p=133128

Here are some main subjects

Beta 2

New blocks
- techno paths
- bunkers
- wooden paths
- black&white castle ornaments
- skinnable large displays

New moves
- walljumps
- slides
- grappling hook
- bouncing rockets
- laser denies rockets

Others
- improving menus
- real time chat with buddies
- matchmaking for 1 vs 1
- teams & ranked competitions
- automated competitions tools
- simple video editor, in addition to the advanced one
- title pack clouding
- Royal & Royal Exp titles with Royal Classic & Evolution mode
- specific sensitivity for the laser weapon
- callvote for jump to map and change script settings
- http requests and xml support for scripts
- stream directly from within the game with Twitch
- bink support
- some optimizations

Before the 23rd of January release
- ladder: the inter-title ladder structure and simplified server level types (white/green/blue/red/black)
- planets: simplified transactions to convert&purchage with your economical points directly
- matchmaking: improve on the current one, open for custom tools and make n vs n.
- lan mode
- performances: we know how to reduce CPU load with many players, just have to do it
- netcode: optimizations to be done
- polish: we spent more time on features but we shall polish many things before release
- gameplay: changes and additions.
- server browser: improvements and filters
- menus: more customization for custom for titles, loading of previous replay for solo campaign
- maps: since the gameplay changed, some Nadeo maps may have to change.
- more: some new features and other stuff.

Release notes
- Jumps: as you can imagine, it is difficult to make everybody happy. Progressive jump, for example, receive mixed feelings at first. We played internally tens of hours in order to know how it feels on longer run. I think it is worth to try it on a larger scale now, even if I know some players have issues with it.
- Laser jump: we removed it for the moment. Otherwise, for Siege, it gives too much of an advantage to be able to leave the power-paths.
- You shall experience bad lighting in many maps since various blocs changed. You need to re-compute your lightmaps in order to remove these artefacts. We have kept the map compatible nonetheless at the moment but may force the re-compute later.
- Royal and Royal Exp stations are made seperate. The first one is to prepare the access to the mode and the other is to test some Royal themed modes under development. Also, with a seperate station you can have separate ladder. So, there will be servers capable to reach 100K on Royal, with specific rules.
- Keep in mind that ladder points will be reduced and the progression slowed down when the ladder update will be done beginning of January. Your ranking will stay the same since it will be a proportion applied to everybody.

Again: we have made a dedicated topic for feedbacks here, if you wish to make one
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 0&p=133128

edit 2012-12-21: Made a minor "Beta 2.0c" update to iron out a few issues with the initial beta2 release.

[Eole]

Beta 2
Mode Royal:
- Rocket deny with Laser enabled
- New scores table UI
- Early respawn: the players can respawn until the pole is captured but with only one armor point
- A map can't end in a tie anymore, another round is played until a player takes the lead
- The Laser can only remove one armor point by shot
- Double the radius of the ending zone from 8 to 16 meters
- Always display your rank on the spawn screen scores table
- Less time spent waiting between round

Mode Elite:
- New scores table UI
- Display a message when the attacker miss a shot by less than 30 centimeters (ingame distance between the laser and the targeted player)
- Updated and added XmlRpc script callbacks: BeginMatch, BeginMap, BeginSubMatch, BeginTurn, EndTurn, EndSubMatch, EndMap, EndMatch, BeginWarmup, EndWarmup, OnHit, OnArmorEmpty, OnPlayerRequestRespawn, OnCapture, OnShoot, OnNearMiss
- Wait a little bit more before unspawning the winner at the end of the round
- Automatically display the scores table at the end of the round
- Display the "Versus screen" at the start of each map

Mode ModeBase:
- Added a custom sleep function allowing to call other functions while waiting for the duration passed as parameter (useful for catching UI events on the server during map or round ending by example)

Lib Draft:
- It's now possible to explicitly set the number of maps to ban and to pick (not necessary anymore to ban all the map from the server before the pick)
- Voting order changed from ABAB to ABBA
- corrected a bug when using only one map on the server

Lib WaitingQueue:
- Updated the UI: display the scores table on the right of the screen and don't let a single player appear multiple time after a disconnection (mode Joust)

Lib Color:
- Convert from HSV|RGB|HEX color code
- Generate equally distributed colors on a specific range

Lib Json:
- Allow to serialize useful informations about different ManiaScript entity: Events, Players, Users, Scores, Teams, BlockPole, etc

Lib Message:
- Added some utilities functions, mostly for cleaning Big and Status messages

Lib Top:
- Added an alternative UI style to match the one in Royal

[magnetik]

Teams & official competitions system

maniamatchTeamTour.png (4.79 KiB) Viewed 3931 times

Teams and competitions are now built-in ManiaPlanet. Starting today in beta, you can create your very own team and find competitions to play in just a few clicks.

Create your own team on the Player Page and invite your friends or the best players you can find, then take a look at our in-game competition browser.
Upgrade to an official team and win points to reach the first place in the global team rankings.

Moreover you will be able to follow any team you like to be notified when it plays in a competition :

Competition organizer will enjoy our interface to register their events:

• Create filters to control which team can register (By zone, number of points...),
• Invite team directly,
• Generate invitation code for custom events,
• Cast results easily.

Teams and competitions in ManiaPlanet are in beta, thus we would be pleased to get your comments and feedbacks on the forum.

[Fix]

Beta 2 Blocks

- TechTowers :
Those are the pillars for the aerial techno blocks : there are 3 towers :
-the large tower : mostly for decoration, can be rotated above itself, can be transformed into the pillar (above or bottom)
-the pillar ( looks like half the tower)
-the pillar core that allows to create holes in the pillar : to give more room above the powerpath, to open acess for bumpers or grappling hook trajectories and to give alternative decoration style. Can also be used as a small landing platform or jump at the end of a powerpath.

- Screens :
3x1 and 1x3 large customizable screens

- PowerPath :
-in the grass :Cross, TShaped, YShaped, GTCurve, transition to the Dirt Road

-Aerial blocks : same gameplay as the powerpath in the grass. Most are antigrav (aerial flying) blocks, but some have additional "InPillar" variants : place a small tech tower above the block, or place the powerpath in a tower .
They have barriers, they are sticky, you can't jump and can't be bumped out.

- Grappling Hook :
A machinery fixed under some standard blocks (Castle Arch, TechTower, Powerpath). See Damien's post for grappling hook instructions.

- Castle :
A lot of Castle Blocks have now the possibility to be built above themselves without having to delete them first.
The CastleCenter can now be placed above all 3 grass terrains and their intersections.

-Levels of Details : a lot of blocks have received optimizations.

-New Techno textures.

[HelSinki]

--- Animation ---

StormMan :
- Slide (New slide anim)
- Swim (including front & back)
- Glide

StormWoman :
- Swim (including front & back)
- Glide
- RunF (New run anim)

--- Blocks ---

Castle :
Castle borders without wall are now available in CornerIn and CornerOut variant.

Terrain Optimization :
the 3 grass terrain and their intersections have been converted to low poly versions by default, the high poly of the GrassHills and GrassCliffs are now stored in the Terrain HD block. The Hills are clean of rocks by default, to add the rocks use the HD terrain block and click on any hill.

Coming Next : Tech ramps (to reach Rail, Regen and Safe Zone platforms) on the Castle Borders : allows a quicker connection to the grass when placed on the ground.

[Gugli]

Beta 2
Script
* Now raise a compilation error when using break/continue outside any break-able loop
* Fixed an encoding bug
* Allows HttpRequest from scripts
* allows #Consts to declare Vec3 or Vec2 types
* MathLib::Floor and MathLib::Ceiling discontinuities have been shifted to avoid surprising results
* Added TextLib::Split

Manialink
* Added Entry.StartEdition() which gives the focus to the entry
* Added an event of type EntrySubmit, recieved when someone presses enter inside an entry
* Added MlLabel.ValueLineCount, which gives the number of lines effectively displayed by the control
* Added a "class" attribute for manialink controls, allowing to fetch/match controls more easily. classes are space separated
* Now supports URLs like file://Avatars/*login*/default, pointing to the default avatar of player *login* (sad and happy variants are not supported yet)
* Can now change style and substyle attributes of a control from within a manialink script
* Bugfix : in certain cases, display was not updated properly

Shootmania
* Can now have a specific mouse sensitivity for the Laser weapon
* Can now change crosshair size from within the game
* Vote-Jump-to-map and Vote-Change-script-settings
* Ingame menu sorted out
* Script settings are now saved/read when saving/reading a playlist
* SmPlayers without a team (team==0) can now capture a pole the same way that players with teams do.
* Scripts can now change AmmoMax while the player is spawned
* Player.StaminaGain weird behaviour with small values fixed.
* Player.StaminaGain can now be set to 0
* New event of type NearMiss. Triggered when someone using Laser misses a player by less than 1m
* Added Player.ArmorReplenishDuration which allows to have a behaviour similar to the one on NurseryBlocks

First prototype of the realtime buddy system
Many things are not there yet, for example we plan to integrate a fast way to communicate with buddies from the ingame chat, without needing to use the buddylist interface (it's quite a pain without the mouse).

[Emilieng]

Mode "Royal Evolution" (=Royal Experimental), an extension of Mode Royal.

• - Xp and Level Up system.
  - Skill Points, with impact on players' caracteristics, such as ammunition, armor, speed, etc.
  - Rebirth system (after reaching the highest level, a player can go back to level 1 with a bonus) and respecialization.
  - Combo system : earn more xp points by setting your own objectives, depending on your gaming style.

Mode "King of the Lobby"

• - While waiting in a lobby for Joust, players can enjoy a special game mode.
  - Perform as much hits as possible before being eliminated to become king of the lobby.
  - "King of the Lobby" is a special manisascript library designed to be easily plugged in any game mode.

"UIFields" Framework created to help managing data exchanges between a player's UI and the game server.

"Tabs" Framework implemented to ease creation of UIs with tabs.

Bases for an "Evolution" Framework to add character pages and xp systems to any game mode.

[The_Big_Boo]

ManiaPlanet Competition Manager

The Competition Manager is an open source tool for anybody who wants to host fully automatized competitions. Install it and with only a few clicks, you can choose the rules, the maps and the schedule then do nothing else but watch people enjoying!

Also featuring pick-up competitions which haven't any schedule but start when enough players are registered and connected to a special lobby server!

Everything is already done for you:

• Manialink for players to register and see when they have to play
• Servers are launched, configured and protected so only expected opponents can play
• Results are reported and players moved to their next matches
• Planets: you can add registration fees and rewards
• Teams and competitions system: event can be registered and updated as needed

At the moment, the Competition Manager is still in beta and handles only single elimination bracket or unique match but more customizations and formats will be available later.

[Teardrop]

Media Tracker : Simple Editor

• - Easy way to cut the action you're interested in.

• - Camera track is the only editable track.

• - Editing said camera track is also easier

• - "CameraFree" mode is working : one static camera per camera block.

• - Lots of tools can't be used in the simple editor

Btw "CameraFree" mode is useable in the old (now advanced) editor.

[Kak0]

Beta 2:
Anticheat: still working on it. Please submit ShootMania replays (server's replays if possible, yours if not) to me, by private message, if you have cheats suspicions.

Before release :
Anticheat: automated reports and other tools