Hello all

After a while, next release of HL is done fixing outstanding issues reported by our members and adding few cool features ...

Here is cummulated changelog since lates 4.2.7 release:

Whats new:

• HL now can autostart game in to server mode via commandline option -a. First time you need setup game server options by classic way, then close HL and start it with -a parameter. HL connect to the HL server, register game session and autostart the game in to server mode. When the game exit , HL close itself. This feature is for example usefull to automatically run IL2 dedicated server within HL. This mode is compatible also with instancing.

Bug fixes:

• Do not show gameinfo popup when a mouse button is down. This will fix unwanted gameinfo popup during scrolling player lists with scrollbar.
• Friend list has not been cleared after room change.
• Slotkick has been issued when ignored user tried to use other game session. It was generated strange looking error messages from the server.
• When user is unignored his name may begin with character ?
• User from friendlist cannot be ignored anymore.
• Ignored user cannot be added in to your friendlist anymore.
• Save friendlist and ignorelist immediatly after its changed. It will prevent friendlist and ignorelist loss when HL or system crash.
• Mouse icon missing over player name in chat.
• Optimized network API.
• Fixed startup and profile selection sequence.
• Fixed several exploits.
• When DNS service fail HL will hung during reconnect session.
• Under poor network connection condition or HL server outage HL can leak socket handles during reconnect session.
• When user game end HL may fail reconnect back to HL server.

This release is primary published via HL autoupdate and support to older relases are dropped immediatly, since major bug fixes included.

If you got problems with autoupdate you may download and install this release manually from our download section and please report those issues in to our forum.

Jiri

Hello All

Some connection restrictions has been applied to the hyperlobby server to save bandwidth it consume. Those limits are max of 30 players in chat per HL room. This restrictions are not applied to users than are already in game since it not consume allmost any bandwidth.

Iam sory for this inconvenience, but i refused finance HL only by myself and for this i started HL donation system few months ago. Last moth was not enought to preserve HL service in state it was here for last ten years ...

Jiri

UPDATE: Problem has been fixed and the restrictions has been removed. Thanks guys for your support.

Hello all

Next release of HL is done. This version fixing long standing bug for users using East Asian regional settings and adding few new features.

Full changelog from latest 4.2.3 version:

Whats new:

• Popup menu have new submenu Options. Via Options menu you can show offline friends, disable friends status messages or disable automatic gameinfo.
• Added chat configuration interface. It allow configuration of any HL configuration values by a simple chat command. The commands are:
  
  /qc <item> - show value of <item> in [Configuration] section, example /qc scale will show actual scalling value
  /sc <item>=<value> - set <value> of <item> in [Configuration] section, example /sc scale=1.25 set scale value to 1.25
  /qg <item> - show value of <item> in curent game section, example /qc joinDelay will show time in seconds HL waiting before client session start
  /sg <item>=<value> - set <value> of <item> in curent game section, example /sg joinDelay=20 set wait time to 20 seconds
  
  This feature will help improve users support in future.

Bug fixes:

• HL crash when running with East Asian (China, Japan) Windows regional settings.
• Better error messages when creating HyperLobby data folder fail.
• Friendlist and ignorelist may be created in wrong location, whis can raise some runtime errors during startup.
• Some internal performance improvements.
• Input containing non ascii characters causes HL crash (4.2.6 hotfix)
• Pager messages do not accept newlines (4.2.7 hotfix)

Jiri

Hello all

After 2 weeks next release of HL is done. Its only bugfix release adding ability to adjust new gameinfo system. The problems fixed in this releas has been solved due to requests made by our forum members. Thanks guys.

Changes since 4.2.0:

Whats new:

• Added ability to change automatic gameinfo timing via settings editor, section [Configuration]:
  
  ;Gameinfo timing (in miliseconds)
  ;time to wait before gi show
  giwaitinterval=700
  ;during this period gi ignore mouse move
  giskipinterval=300
  ;timeout after mouse move to hide gi
  gileaveinterval=400
  
  To adjust those values copy them in to [Configuration] section manually or reset the configuration to default.
• autogi=0 in [Configuration] section of the settings will disable automatic gameinfo popup and enable show it via popup menu. This is an unsupported hack and may be removed from future releases.

Bug fixes:

• Installer will remember your last installed location and during autoupdate it will update previuos installation. If you had problem with this, skip autoupdate, download and install HL by standart way and select your destination folder. Next autoupdate will honor that destionation folder automatically.
• The gameinfo sometimes stayed open longer than was supposed.
• Fixes graphical glitches in gameinfo and the menu transitions.
• Optimized difficulty settings repaint in gameinfo.
• Removed ignore/uningnore menu item from games in progress and friendlist popup menu.
• Adjusted gameinfo timing to show the info later and hide sooner.
• TOS has been updated to version 2.0, TOS window is now bigger and content is better to understand.

Since 4.2.x development window is still open work at 4.3.x will delay.

Jiri

Hello all

  After short but tireless development stage next HyperLobby 4.2.x is done. During this development cycle we are focused some long standing issues and one major change in the gameinfo subsystem. The game information system was unfinished for years and was major blocker to add lots of new features than are in my development queue.

  The old way to use game informations system was clicking the games in progress slot, clicking popup menus over username, in some cases it not fit your screen etc. The new gameinfo system is completly clickless. When you mouse over an object of interest (server in games in progress or username in the player or friend lists) the gameinfo tooltip window will automatically show and automaticaly hide when its needed. Joining the game in progress can now be done only by doubleclick. Because its new feature it still may have minor issues, so feel free to inform me about it via our forum. Using this system is major change to the HL user interface and your experience with using this will change over time :)

This is briefly changelog from leatest stable release (4.1.2)

Whats new:

• New reworked gameinfo popup system.
• IL2 Sturmovik (classic) game is back in the list due to requests of players.
• Enabled ability to try join game in progress whish is not supposed to be joinable (for example coop). A warning  message will popup if player try join this type of game because it might fail.
• Added commandline parameter -i x where x is instance value. This si usefull if you host multiple servers on one computer. This feature support separate login/settings profile per HL instance and is compatible with HL autoupdate system.

Bug fixes:

• Provide detailed errors if a file operation fail.
• In some cases game path detection code will raise Runtime error 52.
• Cancel popup menu do not force lists refresh anymore.
• Improved performance of the game search.
• Replaced VB's msgbox by api equivalent. Default implementation causes HL server session corruption in some cases.
• Implemented delayed player lists updates. It was allmost imposible to click selected user from those lists under busy times. Also continuous lists updates causes HL to lag itself. The delay betwen updates is 5 seconds now.
• Close window menu item from the windows taskbar now working as is supposed.
• When you close HL when game is in progress, a warning dialog inform you than the game session will be closed too. Before this all was closed without questions.
• Fixed lots of other minor issues ...

Complette release notes you can found as always here. The development thread was closed and for information purposes has been leaved here.

For the next release i starting working at those major features:

• Player counters will be be updated form IL2 1946 game directly, so the counters will show actual player counts.
• Since the game informatons will be gathered directly from the game server i looking for posiblity to show COOP game servers in game in progress window when they are in mission prepare stage.

Thats all for now

Jiri