So these days now that the BattleCity workload is over ReMoTe spends his days and the donation money golfing right?
Wrong!
I have actually been working harder and longer on BattleCity than ever before, spending WAYYYYY more time than I should be coding for the game.
This is a post announcing the near-future release of BattleCity 1.0, and what to expect. Also, the workboard has been updated to reflect all the major changes in upcoming 1.0.
As you may have experienced, there are several major problems with the 0.8.x series, ranging from excessive lag to sound driver god mode.
The socket code has been completely rewritten, partly because the threading caused problems, and also because it didn’t parse data correctly all the time, resulting in the imfamous TCP crash.
The server code has also now been made platform independent, which means it will run on Linux or any other operating system instead of just Windows, which will allow us to eventually move the server to be hosted on the more stable, secure, and better performing Linux or BSD based operating system.
SECTORS! Yes, sectors. Instead of having building and item data sent to the entire server, it is now only sent to the area and when you move into that area you will receive the data then. Also, data will be packed together a lot more tightly, to cut down on bandwidth usage.
The old account system relied on Windows .ini files, which was both slow and platform dependent. It now uses a quick little database implementation called SQLite, which is platform independent and about 1000x better than ini files ever could be. This will eventually add for detailed player statistics to be added.
New installer – In order to make the game more newbie friendly 1.0 will no longer require users to manually unpack files and will install the game for you.
Alright i’m tired of typing now so if you want to see ALL of the changes you can head over to the workboard!
-Love ReMoTe 😉