Develpment status

Hi! I'm kromxp, a new developer of Netpanzer. In the past two weeks there has been many changes in the code. It seems to be more stable now, i created a server and run for 11 hours, 114 players connected (not at the same time) and many of the 'disconected' players was for an expected reason (see the known problems #1) and there were no server crash (maybe not your case). I think is time to release a test version so more people can check the advances done.

For Linux only source code is available, but in Windows, as it is more difficult to compile, I provide a binary update.

Changes in the development version

• Server browser
  • The selected server will be highlighted in yellow
  • It will query all the masterservers configured in the .ini files
  • It will try several times to query the servers, if they timeout
  • Won't query/update the masterservers list received from masterserver, must be done by hand
  • Under some conditions pressing the 'refresh' button wouldn't refresh the games list, now should be fixed
  • Stops the query of servers when join one
  • As it has been highly rewritten some other problems should be fixed, yet some new could appear
• Networking
  • All the networking is event based now, and handled in only one thread
  • Proxy functions haven't been updated to new networking model and are not working
  • Heartbeat doesn't unregister from the masterserver when the game quits, it will be removed automatically when it timeouts
  • Compatible with current netpanzer version
• Slash (\) character is removed from player and server names (it has special meaning in the server query)
• When a player is disconected from the server, a window will appear to go back to main menu (no crash/hang)
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to kick other players
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to connect or create servers with empty names
• Fixed a bug in Windows when playing in fullscreen and switching between applications would make the colors to become wrong (thanks to Cellar Door for the report), the problem didn't happen in the old version. The only change related to video is the using of newer SDL library in the Windows version.
• Added timestamps to all the logs
• Added possibility to configure starting units, there is a new section in the configuration files spawnconfig

Known problems

• Players may disconect if their send buffer is full (in the client or in the server)
• Pathing should be rewritten
• It has been reported (not verifyed) that on Windows XP with a 64 bit CPU the server uses too much CPU (near 100%) and makes tanks move very slowly

The next step is to fix the problem of sending buffer, but it will require some time. Pathing will be next.

To configure the starting units, start netpanzer in normal or dedicated server mode, then quit. Edit the netpanzer.ini or netpanzer-dedicated.ini and the new section should be there spawnconfig. Just modify the number of tanks of each type and next time you start a server all the players joining the server will start with that number of units. Note that it is the server who decides what number of units of each type are created.

In current state, when there are many units in the game, the server could be slow, and players could be easy to disconect. It would be advisable to keep the number of units per player not to high, around 50 each 'should' be ok.

The update is available in the Download section