Hello all,I have been working on the next version which has some significant rewrites that I would like to have some more thorough testing done before it goes official as a release. We will use the same development server as before (separate characters/items, etc from live). Since there were such significant changes to the core server, there are still possibilities of something that I missed that could cause instabilities or other unintended issues. Resolving them during beta will help with the overall main purpose of this release (see below). In short, I want to make sure the server doesn't crash once lots of people are cycling in/out through mostly normal gameplay over an extended period of time.
When I first ported this game from the original BBS (and later IRC) versions from the 90s, it was with the assumption that sockets would be mostly persistent. It's ironic that as technology has progressed, in this one area things have taken a steep decline in the opposite direction as far as reliability and persistence goes. As such, the game was not designed around needing anything internally persistent, it was assumed if you wanted to stay connected, you would. As we know, that is not how things are now, especially with Cloudflare. So, I set about to do some major redesigning and rewriting to tackle this problem, and that is what we will be testing.
Full release notes will be available at release (planned for Monday, Oct 19th, if all goes well during this beta testing), but here is a brief summary:- Your character data is maintained on the server for up to 2 hours (subject to change)
- This means that if you disconnect and reconnect, you will resume where you left off!
- Disconnect can either be intentional or unintentional (1001, 1005, 1006 disconnect codes, refreshing or closing your tab).
- If you are disconnected, your game client will automatically attempt to reconnect as soon as it can. (This does not apply to refreshing, closing, tab, etc).
- This includes, but not limited to: saving and resuming your currently selected character, the map, glyphs/emblems, the group, even any combat you are presently in. It also allows you to resume the master quest where you left off, should you disconnect somewhere in the middle of it!
- This does not include any skilling, those will still cancel as before as soon as a disconnect is noticed by the server (which can vary depending on what happened with your connection, exactly like it does today. In short, this has not changed from the current mechanics).
- Clicking Log Out in town will still clear your character as it has in the past.
Notable gameplay changes:- Refreshing or closing your tab will not boot you from combat. No more f5 chicken mode to avoid paralyze, or panic quit. Click the town door to return to town. (Idle disconnect timers still apply under the same conditions as they do today to auto boot you to town)
- Glyphs/emblems still continue to tick down regardless of your connection status. For instance, you had 10 minutes left on a glyph, you disconnected because you needed to reboot and reconnected 2 minutes later, you will have 8 minutes remaining.
- Disconnected group players will show their name as red and crossed out, so you can now see if someone is [temporarily, or otherwise] disconnected. You can optionally /kick them if needed, or drag them along, whatever you decide.
Some neat ways this can be used:- Start play from home, close tab (or even leave it open), and open the game from another location once you arrive (work?) and resume exactly where you left off!
- Play on the go! Start play from your pc, but you need to leave, no problem, grab your phone, login, and you immediately are exactly where you were on your pc. You can switch back to your PC in the same exact manner.
* At this point, the release changes are mostly locked, no further changes/updates are planned for this release to minimize regression testing and bug tracking.
There are also some additional bug fixes and feature addons as well, but those will be detailed later.
Here is the link for beta:https://ladderslasher.d2jsp.org/v1.31/?beta=32Feel free to post any bugs/issues here. If it was a pre-existing bug from previous version(s), if you can indicate as such, it would be very helpful. We will also try and keep this topic updated if there are issues during this beta testing.