Camo Patterns, Team Chat and things!

The highlight of this release is the ability to choose a camo pattern for your units, in addition to solid colors. There are hundreds to choose from, so have fun picking the ones you like most!

Also, you can now send a message to only those in your team. This can be done by starting your chat message with /t or /team. For example:

/t Defend our right flank from the hills, I'll hold them at the river!

New Features

• Camo patterns can be previewed and applied to your units
• Team chat can be sent and seen only by members on your team
• Added loading screen starfield
• Added animation easing to SRMs and LRMs to make them look cooler when fired
• Updated admin games view to see staged and chat users list
• Added server broadcast chat ability for root and admin users only, which can be done by starting a chat message with /b or /broadcast. For example:
  • /b The server is going DOWN in 10 minutes to update to release v0.2.19!

Bug Fixes

• Corrected Stalker STK-4P showing as 75 tons instead of 85
• Corrected issue where a user that has left the staging for a game could still appear connected to chat
• Fixed #30, backend exception when user logged out while connected to staging/game

Teams, Alpha Strike, Friendly Unit Info, Staging Updates and more!

There's a lot of goodies in this release, since it will be a while before the next release due to work starting on AI for playing solo or cooperatively against the machines! The highlights are that you can now form teams during the staging of a battle (among other nice staging enhancements), there is a new "Alpha Strike" button to make it easier to select all (or deselect all) weapons firing with a single click, and you can target friendly and owned units to see their details and damage when not their turn.

Now, on to the full list of new features and fixes!

New Features

• Teams can be formed (Issue #26), and as a team can win a battle (Team Free-For-All). This can only be selected during staging and cannot be changed for the duration of the battle.
  • Friendly units on the same team but not owned by the same player will have their own shape and customizable color to differentiate them (triangle=enemy, square=friendly, circle=yours).
• You can now click on any unit, friendly or enemy, to "target" them and see their info. You will not be able to shoot at a friendly unit however, because team killers suck.
• You can now see more info about units on the staging display, their tonnage will show up next to their image, and you can click on any unit row to show a pop-up display with a summary of that unit's information.
• An "Alpha Strike" button has been added (Issue #3), which appears when you are able to fire at least one weapon at an enemy target, and is used as a quick way to select/deselect all weapons for firing instead of having to click them one at a time. You will still have to press the "Fire" button to confirm the selections and fire them.
• Full list of staging users now shown in the chat area. Just like in battle, blue highlighted users are considered to be currently connected, grey are not currently connected.
• Added obvious ready button to staging

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Issue #28 A unit destroyed by falling as a result of damage from another unit should count as a kill
• Reduced amount of floating "CRIT" noise when a limb is destroyed (for example, for every actuator in the limb), now only weapons in that limb will show the floating message.
• Fixed some timezone related issues when viewing timestamps display from a different timezone from the server.
• Touch interfaces should now be able to drag around the dialog elements in most places by pressing and dragging.
• Fixed issue where a weapon that could not hit could still show as selected if selected before moving to a place where it can no longer hit
• Updated staging map and unit selection dialogs to have a max width so they won't become too wide in large resolution windows.

Missile trails, and over a hundred new mech variants to shoot at!

This release has quite a few goodies, read on below for details!

New Features:

• Over 100 new variants of existing mech chassis
• Improved unit selection dialog to make variant selection and filtering better
• Added smoke trail effects to all missile launcher projectiles (LRMs, SRMs)
• Improved automatic panning to focus on weapons fire before continuing to next turn unit (Issue #25)
• Added version number link to release page at bottom of game index page

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed #1, Charging is allowed even when the hex cannot be entered due to elevation
• Fixed animated zoom behaving strangely
• Fixed rare issue where deleting the chat user from the database would cause a table locking exception

Improvements to user interface and server startup performance

This patch should see improved startup performance, especially for slower machines (such as the small Cloud instances), and also a small but important set of user interface updates that should make the experience even sweeter!

New Features:

• Added unit turn order list and indicator during battle (Closes #24)
• Added simple client side detection of whether all users are ready before allowing launch
• Added sorting ability to Administrator's User interface for join and last login dates (Closes #22)
• Improved server startup load times with extra caching and batch inserts for the large lists of Names/Surnames

Bug Fixes:

• Removed unnecessary modal loading dialog that appeared as a result of other players' actions during staging (Fixes #23)
• Fixed tablets from constantly showing touch keyboard during unit selection (Fixes #19)
• Zooming now focuses on center of window, or mouse location if using scroll wheel (Fixes #18)
• Corrected jump jet mass for mechs based on mech mass

The Release That Makes Things Groovy

There's been a few fixes and enhancements put in at the request of the first couple of testers, but also the application is now ready to be deployed quickly and easily for free by anyone using the new Quickstart that I have developed for the Red Hat OpenShift cloud service. See the Cloud Deployment wiki for more information on how to set that up.

This release contains the following enhancements and fixes:

• Players in staging will now automatically become un-ready if they perform any changes while ready
• Added missing combat logs for shutdown/power-on unit status
• Added maximum armor for that mech's tonnage next to that mech's total armor count
• Added ability to have the first user registered be the administrator (so that manual modification of the config file won't be necessary except to tweak afterwards)
• Added ability to reset password using email confirmation (if email config setup), and to update password via the logged in user's Profile page
• Added MySQL as a supported external database option
• Fixed some issues with user registration

The First Real Patched Release

A handful of fixes are now in to solidify the first release, the only gameplay affecting one is to correct the amount of reported heat sinks mechs have based on their engine size.

Another notable fix was to make long-polling work properly, which is required to get the game working on the Amazon and RedHat clouds, both of which have some amount of free services. Instructions for getting the game up and running on these are now in the Wiki!

Complete patch notes:

• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed engine heat sinks not being counted correctly
  • Fixed long-polling as the fallback client socket connection
  • Fixed a rare error when loading a chat user into staging
  • Changed login screen label from "Username" to "Email"
  • Added missing image for Wolfhound
  • Added secondary sort for unit selection to be its name, so they are in order when sorted by tonnage
• Minor features
  • Added ability to enter a number into the unit selection filter to show units of only that mass (tonnage)
  • Added server configuration option for defaulting to long-polling
  • Added autofocus to the email field in the login screen
  • Added link to top of page in all pages

The First Real Release

The PvP release of RogueMek is now available, enjoy!

Refer to the BUILD.info file for instructions on building the web application or running without a Tomcat server:
https://github.com/harbdog/roguemek/blob/v0.2.15/BUILD.info

Refer to the DEPLOY.info file for instructions on deploying the release RogueMek.war to a Tomcat 7 server:
https://github.com/harbdog/roguemek/blob/v0.2.15/DEPLOY.info