============================================ QuickFox.org's Scorched Earth 2000 changelog ============================================ Note: This changelog works from top to bottom. 07/04/2006 - Friday ========== - Setup old QuickFox Scorched Earth 2000 site (started back originally in 2002) by the request of a friend. - Current developers (alphabetical): Ash-Fox and Sebbe. - Restored old database. - Added simple homepage with updated statics every 5 minutes (cronjob) on the top list. - Accidently deleted database and restored with the old one again, which essentially removed one new player. - Added search system to website. - Setup development enviroment on the server. - Discussed adding a forum that uses the Scorch database. 08/04/2006 - Saturday ========== - Changed default "play" to use a lower resolution, good for 1024x768 monitors for everyone. - Updated sourcecode to a newer version. - Messed around with sourcecode. - Increased chat delay. - Worked on forum code a little -- Ran into nickname case-sensitivity issue. - Added Armageddon bomb. - Added (Vietnam) Funky Napalm. - Feature (honest!): Firey remains from Funky Napalm can become land features. - Increased price of Armageddon to 4000000. - Set a limit on the maximum amount of starting money to 99999. - Moved development enviroment off the server (it's not good to develop on a live running server when people are playing, and annoying for testing locally). - Made install system, to easilly upload changes to server. - Modified internal server statistics system. - Discovered applet doesn't work on MSJAVA anymore -- annoying. - Tried various workarounds to get working again -- failed. - Considering making standalone desktop application by using MS VS.NET J++, .NET application can run on Windows and Linux. - Played with concept of laser weapon -- Too much work right now. - Played with concept of teleportation -- Too much work right now. 09/04/2006 - Sunday ========== - Debated issues on getting CVS/SVN -- agreed, need to setup CVS, but haven't yet. - Discussed need for build numbers in version, as it's getting hard to tell if one is using a new/old applet on the site. - Changed price of Armageddon to 0 (can't buy). - Removed 99999 limation from starting money. - Discovered Skype between developers is quite good. - Tried more workarounds to get the game working in msjava -- failed. - Discussed "no weapons of mass destruction" option, talked about tournament mode. - Attempted to implement build number in version -- failed. - Added check for username of different case -- no longer allows nicknames using different cases. - Password authentication issue caused by encryption which uses the first and last letters of the username case. - Made fun of the fact that you can put anything in a e-mail field. - Poked fun and made a error, that one should use the correct first and last letter of the nickname case if one cannot login. - Removed error on wrong case and added workaround that changed case of the username on the client if wrong. - Tried to add dynamic colors - annoyance: Java does not have globals. -- Perhaps another time. - (homepage) Rewrote top users list system in PHP, to be dynamic with caching functionality. - (homepage) Rewrote search function for users in PHP, to be dynamic with caching functionality. - (homepage) Remade index page to use SSI instead of PHP (far more efficient, less strain on the CPU). - (homepage) Added multiple resolution buttons to the front page. - (homepage) Changed back to "Play!" button, with the exception of a little javascript that specifies your resolution. - Discussed adding "In communist Russia" button to website in top list. - (homepage) Added Top100 list. - (homepage) Remade play page into PHP, resizes java applet based on resolution provided via the URL. - Considering adding caching system (one minute) at gateway apache server to prevent the server going over from a 'slashdot' effect. - Fixed "System" button 'click' annoyance when firing with spacebar. - Worked on adding dynamic colors -- ran into too many annoyances. - Worked on forum code a little more. 10/04/2006 - Monday ========== - Wrote and added changelog.txt to the site. - Forgot about cronjobs and deleted them (crontab -r). - Added link to changelog.txt from homepage. - Considering adding a 'Slashdot' variable, for hosting the .jar file on the coral network if we get referer URLs from high bandwith sites. - Noticed that the top lists show those of us who played on the game before 2005 (before the database actually stored dates), that we're in the 1970's, time paradox? - Bug discovered: Resolution issue, apparently different resolutions are completely different fields -- Needs to be fixed ASAP. - Bug fix: Resolution issue, switched back to static resolutions, pondering alternative fixes. - Added tournament functionality. - Bug resolution issue: It's not a bug, it's a feature! --Sebbe - Discussed splitting up the scores for lamer mode, normal mode, tourney mode. - Correction to changelog (thankyou Sebbe). - Tournament mode added to homepage, which works perfectly thanks to Sebbe's 'feature' (one pixel can make a difference!). - Changed server writes to database from fifteen minutes to one. - Seperated scores for lamer, normal, tournament. - Moved old scores to lamer. - Added build number support. - Created unique URL to applet for each build, so users always download the latest applet. - Discussed issue with the scores, sorting. - New top listing system - allows you to sort by what collum you want, just click it, default is "Normal Score". - Added "All players" button to homepage. - Updated search system - now shows person's place in the top ranking. - Discussed issues with bots being too smart for some players. - Changed play resolution to suit 1024x768 monitors, minimum. - Discussed feature: Chatting in Normal mode, sucks, being able to only talk when it's your turn, change? - Feature change: Can chat always. - Attempted todo workarounds for msjava -- failed. - Poking at protocol ideas. - Added chat button. - Added Lamer bot (really stupid). - AIs now have the ability to use shields (Only killers can buy stuff, so only killers can buy shields for normal mode). - AIs can use and buy weapons (Only Killer). - Discovered funny shield bug with bots that wasn't being transmitted so, bots were undead! - Bug fix: zombies, "A missile to the head!." --Ash-Fox. 11/04/2006 - Tuesday ========== - It's midnight, and we're still working on the game. - Made useful? (Okay, funny) feature to see the "fake" bot missiles -- Devs only. - "I think I'll do a 'man date'" --Sebbe. - "It's snapped!" --Sebbe. - Did changes to snapshot system. - Figured out how to use the diff command (it took a while for some reason). - Sebbe sees Ash-Fox's comment in the Makefile and comments, "Oh yes! That's a very helpful comment! Haha!", the line he was referring to: > touch scorch/ScorchApplet.java # Come here (touch me)... Kiss me (touch me)... Now (touch me)... - Ash-Fox synchronising sources for over a hour. - Made something spiify for the Makefile. 12/04/2006 - Wednesday ========== - Discussed MacOSX Java issues. - Working on MSJAVA compatibility. - Sebbe removed Ash-Fox's lovely 'touch me' line, it annoyed him. - Decided that we want to make Scorch compile against Microsoft's JVM classes for MSJAVA support while using a modern compiler. - Jikes does not support 'depricated' functions used in Microsoft's Java classes, so switching to Sun's JAVAC. - Sun's JAVAC 1.5 compiler doesn't support compiling for 1.1 JVM binaries apparently. Using J2sdk 1.4.2's JAVAC compiler instead. - Got MSJAVA classes to work with modern compilers properly now (big). - Fix: MSJAVA doesn't support the official randomisation function properly from newer versions of Java. Hack was devised using bitshifting! - Discovered MSJAVA compatible binaries under Sun Java is lighting fast. - Developers are proud of what they did. - Discussed MacOSX Java issues again. - Added epilepsy warning to frontpage for people who use Macs. - Decided to try to seek help from MacOSX community for information. - MacOSX developer community on Freenode didn't like the fact we were using Java and were quite unhelpful (MacOSX users are 'too good' for our applications?). - Developing for Apple's Java implementation is extremely hard when just to get the equilivant of Classes.jar files, have to force you to jump through a thousand hoops (easy to port your applications to MacOSX, HAH!). - Developed a simple wrapper that wraps the applet into it's own window for running in standalone. - Added standalone settings to default to QuickFox.org's server and attributes. - Made game restart if applet quits -- So you don't have to start it again. - Bug discovered: Can't quit game by closing the window. - Bug discovered: Can't login again to start playing again. - Bug fix for both above: Let applet quit if it wants to -- Have to restart the game now. - Added a manifest file for default opening of .jar files using 'java -jar'. - Made windows executable system (can run the game from a windows executable now -- requires sun java -- can be built on Linux!). - Discussed MONO runtime. - Discussed IKVM which can create .NET binaries from Java binaries. - Tried to use IKVM to create a native .NET application from our Java app, unfortunately AWT isn't supported and rewriting the entire interface to use GTK which isn't supported on older versions of JAVA is unacceptable. .NET isn't feasable at the moment, perhaps when IKVM supports AWT properly will it be a option. - Note: People who play different versions of our Applet can only play with people who have the same versions on the server. - Updated Makefile to upload our 'standalone' clients to the server (not linked to yet). - Firey_Kitsune asks Ash-Fox if he can put a line in about tackling him and giving him 'lots' of 'snuggles'. Ash-Fox's response is: Yes. - Discussed Apple JAVA issues shortly. 13/04/2006 - Thursday ========== - Created a simple Scorch icon, which just displays a simple red tank from our game. - Added version number to frontpage for no reason (automatically updated). - Added information of when changelog.txt was last modified (Obsessive compulsive players?). - Someone asked for a RSS feed to the changelog, will be discussed later when the other dev wakes up (currently 5am). - Discovered you can't even do DNS lookups under Sun JAVA because the Applet needs to be given permision (probably needs to be signed, then the user is prompted). - Discussed 'Slashdotted' type issues on the server. - Converted SSI stuff to PHP, since all it was doing was calling PHP in the first place and just adding additional load to the server by loading up multiple PHP instances in the proccess. - Removed "All players" button, since it was pointless with the amount of users we have currently (we have a top100 list and we haven't reached 100 yet). - Attempted to add laser weapon -- failed. 14/04/2006 - Friday ========== - Configured a caching system on the gateway HTTPd server (Hal-9000), which normally just forwards connections to Sphinx untouched. We have forced caching of our dynamically generated content to one minute. This wil prevent unacceptable CPU loads on the server caused by mass amounts of users, or certain attacks. - Laugh at the fact, that while we can't do DNS lookups without permision, we forgot the Java applet uses sockets to connect to our server anyway, somewhat making Sun Java's security permisions look a little silly. - Created jar signature signing for the applet -- Useful, because Java implementations that support it, will be able to tell if the jar file wasn't downloaded properly (or tampered with). - Added website favicon. - Automated jar signing procedure. - Issue: Kaffe won't run signed binaries, crashes because the signing checking wasn't implemented yet (that was stupid). - Apparently Sun Java assumes when you sign a .jar file that you want full access to everything, so it asks you when you start the Jar for extra permisions because the Applet 'requested' them (it didn't). This is a annoyance, so now we removed signing -- what a waste of time. - Added signing back, but applying it to .jar files of a different name. - Made self-updating jnpl files, so people can now install the game using webstart, featuring automatic updates -- not linked to yet. - Had to use signed .jar files for the webstart, and request permisions from the user -- While we could easilly still do socket connections etc. and pretty much everything Sun Java was meant to prevent with the permission system (Seriously, where is the security in Sun Java?), we wanted to remove that somewhat annoying "Java Application Window" bar at the top. - Added Scorch icon to the webstart. - Created download page, for standalone (non-website) versions (didn't link to yet). - Added link on homepage to downloads page (now the missing links should all be falling into place). - Added robots.txt to website. - Modified table layout slightly, so
tags don't messup the layout on some browsers. - Improved search system layout and backend a little. 05/05/2006 - Friday ========== - Things have been going slowly since Ash-Fox had to put his laptop into service. - Discovered the top10/100 lists are spitting out a odd error. - Messed with borrowed Mac Mini, trying to get the UI to stop flickering. - MacOSX Java specific hacks were interesting... We can make MacOSX do a 'kernel panic' from a user-level java application. 06/05/2006 - Saturday ========== - Discovered the players.db today was entirely blank (probably from the powercut the server suffered), no users at all. Fixed it by restoring from the last backup database, which wasn't empty. - Caching system appears to be broken even though the configuration is flawless. - Removed caching system. - Stuck top10 list into a iframe for browsers that support it (No need to reload the entire page when you click a colum order after all). - Made iframe for search box. - Added some lovely Javascript that resizes the iframe's height nicely for the tables. - Seems the server doesn't like being launched as a background proccess, hangs on login, so running it as a normal program for now. 09/10/2006 - Monday ========== - Fixed server issue that caused the server proccess to take 100% CPU all the time. - Fixed the Scorch server after Sphinx had a major breakdown -- should be running now 24/7 as it should of be. - Using a workaround for when we want to run the server in the background, using 'screen'. - Still glitches on latest MacOSX runtime :(. - Tested if the Java 'kernel panic' issue still worked on latest MacOSX runtime -- Still does -- Are they ever going to fix that? - Fixed up the HTML a little on the website to be more webbrowser friendly. - Started statistics tracking using Google analytics. - Updated signing certificates since they expired... Now set to expire in 2034 -- Hopefully we won't pass that date next time we get busy with other things. - Added a clock to the play page's title -- Useful for Ash-Fox anyway. 11/10/2006 - Wednesday ========== - Fixed a small issue with database backups on the server -- should be more reliable now. 16/10/2006 - Monday ========== - Sebbe left a naughty easteregg in the code that gave me (Ash-Fox) lamer powers in normal mode (I didn't even realise it until now) -- Fixed the easter egg so I don't get anymore unfair advantages. 25/11/2006 - Saturday ========== - Gosh, can't leave this thing alone. Apparently the database got partially corrupted so I restored from back in November, this is rediculess. Going to need to run a cronjob that reports major changes in the database size in future. 04/04/2007 - Wensday ========== - Improved AI shield usage - Bots now buy and use batteries 04/05/2007 - Thursday ========== - Teleporter weapon! - Made cost of teleporter 20000 (Don't think this pricing is right, tell us!)