June 1st, 2006PBCup Summer 2006XtremeBain has posted the details for the upcoming PBCup season over at pbcup.com. There's also a forum thread about it here and a German translation here. They Dugg It!toM|vendettA posted an article on digg.com about Paintball2, and enough people dugg it to make it front-page news. There have been a ton of new players recently as a result. Hopefully some of them will stick around and become part of the community. May 23rd, 2006Forums Being RelocatedAs you're probably aware, there have been a lot of problems recently with the forums being slow or inaccessible. We're currently moving the forums (along with the rest of dpball.com) to a new server, so it should be much faster and more stable. March 24th, 2006Invalid Instruction FixIf you get an error along the lines of "Invalid Instruction" when trying to run the Linux version of Paintball 2 Build 16, it probably means your CPU doesn't support SSE instructions. I've created a small patch that disables SSE optimizations. You can grab it on the files page. Do not use this patch unless your CPU doesn't support SSE. It will cause slight prediction errors due to variations in the floating point calculations resulting in laggy gameplay. March 3rd, 2006Paintball 2.0 Build 16 ReleasedYes, we skipped a build. You can search the forums for build 15 if you really want it, but we felt it had too many bugs to be released publically, so here we are now with build 16. What's new since build 14? The key things would be new player models, reflective water, and the global ban list. What's a "global ban list?" In short, if you get caught cheating on one server, you get banned from all of them. Read this for more details.
Here's a (mostly) complete list of what's changed:
build016: - Bugfix: Various security patches from R1CH (R1Q2). - Bugfix: Fixed ctrl+k and other ctrl/shift combos (broken in build 15). - Bugfix: Fixed some roundoff errors. Note: This may make the game choppy/laggy if the server and client are running different versions. - Bugfix: Fixed "sticky" strafe jumping bug that randomly causes players to stop or lose momentum. Also requires client and server to be running the same version. - Bugfix: gl_swapinterval (vsync) properly maintains the setting after video mode changes. - Bugfix: Fixed several potential buffer overflows. - Bugfix: Fixed some bugs with reflective water. - Bugfix: Scoreboard now refreshes when player names change. - Tweak: Increased max lightmap resolution from 34x34 to 128x128. - Tweak: Made noipx default to 1, since pretty much nobody uses ipx, and it can cause various problems having it enabled. - Tweak: Serverlist requests are printed to the console to help troubleshoot issues people have been having with the in-game browser. - Tweak: Increased MAX_STRING_TOKENS from 80 to 512 to prevent truncation of data. - Tweak: gl_anisotropy defaults to 8, so people have improved graphical appearance by default. - Feature: cl_sleep now configurable (ie: cl_sleep 100 will make the game run at 10fps, but with much less CPU usage). - Cvar: r_oldmodels allows players to use the old .md2 models if the new ones don't work properly. - Cvar: cl_language allows players to select different language translations for the menus and game events. No language files have been created yet. - Cvar: cl_centerprintkills allows players to enable/disable printing kills and deaths in the center of the screen.
build015: - Bugfix: Fixed transparency overlap issue. - Bugfix: Fixed vsync setting not properly initiating when the game is reloaded. - Bugfix: Hack to fix nodraw on tranquilhavoc water. - Bugfix: Fixed clipping bug along walls with steep angles where you couldn't walk, only air accelerate. - Tweak: Fixed color splotching around dark areas. - Tweak: Made overflowed message not use extended codes on server console. - Tweak: Tweaked water jump code to work better for maps like renoir and summer. - Tweak: Stripped colors from server names in server browser. - Feature: International keyboard support on Windows (without .kbd files). - Feature: Lightmaps for transparent surfaces. - Feature: Skeletal model support. - Feature: Reflective water with fragment programs (if your graphics card supports them). Type "seta r_reflectivewater 1" to enable.
Game code v 1.82-1.83 builds 134-140 - Pong mode! - Increased player map votes to 5 points. - Fixed ip address for listuserip command. - Fixed grenade "dud" bug. - "match" command and "match_timeout" and "allow_match" cvars. These allow a server admin to set up a public match server without needing any complex web or IRC scripts. - id command tweaked (shows names faster, and shows teammates instantly). - If gren_explodeonimpact is set to 0 and somebody throws a timed grenade, it won't kill the thrower if ffire is off. All other grenades can. This is in response to both complaints about the timed grens behaving differently and the impact grenades being cheap. - Fixed func_getoutofjail to show the alive status on the standalone clients. - Fixed the "sitting on a grenade won't kill you" bug. - Revamped the grenade code - instead of spraying off of the last collision surface normal, the balls spray at random. - "nojailffire" worldspawn option so teammates can't kill each other in the jails if ffire is off. - changed default pbgren_bursts from 9 to 7 and pbgren_ballsperburst from 8 to 10 (shorter, denser explosions to reduce delayed kills). - added port to bots.tmp filename so bots don't get loaded across servers running on the same machine. - made it so flagcapendsround won't end the round if there are other flag carriers. - fixed sv_maxfps (hopefully). Added "showpps" command. - made "newmap" end the map cleanly and show the scoreboard. - Added "newmap" to sv commands, so you can do things like "sv newmap arenaball 1flag" from the console (in order to specify the game mode). - Fixed it so the server doesn't stay at the scoreboard when nobody is connected. - Idle check detects lag-frozen players, too. - "g_autofire" setting allows servers to disable automatic firing. If it's set to 0, players only fire 1 paintball per button press. - Fixed a bug in camera code that made the "Chasing" text send multiple times in a single frame. - Fixed compatibility issue with R1Q2. - Grens can't self-kill if the last person alive is the thrower and the other team has the flag (in order to prevent cheap tactics to stop flag caps). - Last person on the team can't exit-base suicide to prevent captures in siege mode. - "g_forcedgamemode" setting allows a server to force all maps in rotation to play in a certain mode, for example, if set to "dm" all maps that support deathmatch mode will play in deathmatch mode. Valid modes are: pong, ctf, 1flag, dm, elim, koth. - "removetbans" command clears all temporary bans. - Global ban list support.
Grab it on the files page, and if you have any feedback, post it in this thread. Also, I think I neglected to mention this anywhere else, but there's a simple little external server browser included just called "serverbrowser.exe". It's a bit more detailed than the in-game browser. March 2nd, 2006DPCon at QuakeConUnfortunately Atlantis Gaming Center is no more, and we didn't have very big turnouts there anyway because of the location. This year, however, we'll be doing something different. We're going to make DPCon a "sub-con" of QuakeCon. It won't be anything very official, as in sponsored by QuakeCon, but we'll have the typical tournaments, prizes, and whatnot. There certainly won't be a shortage of people this year, I can assure you of that. As of now, the date and location of QuakeCon is unknown, but it will probably be somewhere in Texas in August. Keep an eye on quakecon.org for more information. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to discuss them in this thread.