Doomseeker 1.4.0

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Zalewa
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Joined: Wed May 30, 2012 3:28 pm

Doomseeker 1.4.0

#1

Post by Zalewa » Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:08 pm

Image I'm happy to announce the release of Doomseeker 1.4. This release features the user-configurable server filters presets, rework of the --portable mode, support for different Doomseeker configurations, and a bunch of new websites for Wadseeker. The fixes include the particularly painful problem with automatic installation of Zandronum testing versions where the versions wouldn't install because Doomseeker had trouble parsing the version of the game.

In some less happy news, we have decided to discontinue the support for the Sonic Robo Blast 2 plugin. Due to the practice of modding through exe files (multiple, incompatible versions of SRB2) and the master server of SRB2 being discontinued we wished to find a maintainer for this plugin among SRB2 developers. No one there expressed the desire to pick up the maintenance. So, Doomseeker 1.4.0 is released without it, and it won't load any previous version of the plugin by default.

The full list of changes and fixes is here:

Code: Select all

## [1.4] - 2023-01-21
### Added
- Upgrade the IpToCountry.dat file format to version 3. The license text
with translations and the database's homepage URL are now embedded into
the database itself.
- Server filters can now be saved as presets. (#4079)
- A tri-state filter for password-protected servers. (#4008)
- A button to reset the game's master server back to default. (#3756)
- New command line argument `--basedir` that changes the base directory
where Doomseeker stores all of its managed files: settings, cache, managed
data. (#3452)
- New command line arguments `--enable-plugin` and `--disable-plugin` for
users who wish to force allow or force deny loading of a plugin.
- Check if the demo storage directory exists and is writable when demo recording
is enabled. If there's something wrong, warn the user. (#3501)
- Granular filters for banned, "refreshed too soon" and not responding
game servers. (#4002)
- The additional files list in the create game box now responds to plus
(add empty), minus and delete (both remove selected) keys on the keyboard.
- Demo manager now openable with the F3 keyboard shortcut.
- Hide/reveal password checkboxes to all password inputs.
- Wadseeker: add a bunch of websites to the WAD search list: (#4053)
    - https://doomshack.org/wadlist.php
    - https://wads.firestick.games/
    - https://euroboros.net/zandronum/wads/
    - https://static.dudoomers.com/wads/
- Cyprus country flag.
- Zandronum, Q-Zandronum: add "Don't count monsters in the 'end level' sector
towards kills" checkbox to the Create Game box. (#4055)

### Changed
- The portable mode adjusted to truly support carrying Doomseeker on
a portable device. The configurable paths will be saved and stored in
the configuration as relative to the location of Doomseeker's executable.
If both the games and Doomseeker get placed on the same portable drive, it
should no longer matter under which letter/path the portable device appears
in the system. (#3354)
- Refresh the servers in a randomized order rather than the order
in which they were provided by the plugin (ergo: by the master
server, ergo: sorted by IP). This should be more fair, as the previous
method favored servers that were in the lower IP ranges.
- Updated Flag of Ukraine colors to DSTU 4512:2006. Previously, Doomseeker was
displaying the flag of Post-Soviet Ukraine, a design with lighter blue color
shade, from 1991-1992. (#3983)
- DemoManager: demo playback can now be started with a double-click or enter.
- In case if Doomseeker uses the old version 2 file format for IP2C,
redirect the IP2C licensing info to a Doomseeker's webpage instead of
displaying anything that was hardcoded at the time when Doomseeker was
compiled and could potentially not be accurate anymore at the time of
viewing. (#3952)
- Hide the IP2C update actions in the IP2C updater dialog box if the
updater determines that the local DB is the same as the remote one. (#3731)
- When user attempts to join a game without having the game configured,
the error box will now have the "Configure game" button instead of just opening
the config box indiscriminately. Also make the related error messages sound
less robotic. (#4019)
- Buttons for the custom parameters config stay in place, behave more
predictably, have tooltip descriptions. (#3754, #3755)
- The master server messages (about the user being banned) will be
automatically cleared when the user starts a full server refresh. (#3584)
- Don't count the spectators as joined players when showing how many players
can still join a game. (#4038)
- Doomseeker maintainers info in the about dialog is now labeled as such
and the email links are clickable with the `mailto:` prefix. (#4069, #4070)
- Correction of various inconsistencies in the UI (#3676):
    - Use the standard dialog box buttons anywhere the custom "Close",
      "Cancel" and etc. buttons were. This will also ensure that these
      buttons are in-line with the current OS theme.
    - Use natural capitalization for buttons, etc.
    - All "Browse directory" buttons will now have the directory icon
      and an apt tooltip and the title where appropriate. No more mixing
      between "..." and "Browse".
    - The "Default" buttons will have the Doomseeker 'D' icon.
    - The "Clear" buttons will now use the "edit-clear" Freedesktop
      icon, defaulting to a broom icon if "edit-clear" isn't available;
      they don't use the same red X that the "Remove" buttons use.
    - Toggle the visibility of the server passwords in the config
      with a checkbox as in other places, not with a button.
    - Make the "Add defaults"/Add/Remove layout the same in both cases.
    - "Delete" text changed to "Remove" for consistency.
    - The program arguments help box's title will now include the name
      of the program. Also add the terminal icon to its main menu action.
    - The labeled "extra settings" in the Create Game box will end with
      colons (#4074).
- The "Clear" button in the server filter renamed to "Reset filter". (#4078)
- The additional files picker in the Create Game box reorganized to reclaim
some vertical space and make it more clear that the buttons next to it
belong to it. (#4072)
- Hide the passwords by default!
- UI improvements to the server passwords config box.
- Plugin API: rewrite the documentation for `DataPaths`.
- Wadseeker: make the "managed data" directory (Local) the default for
WAD downloads.
- Wadseeker: added `sigil_shreds` and `sigil_shreds_compat` to the
list of forbidden downloads.
- Wadseeker: upgrade LZMA SDK to version 22.01. (#3934)
- Odamex, Zandronum, Q-Zandronum: untie the max. clients and max. players
settings when creating a server. Previously if max. clients was lower than
max. players, max. clients was increased to the max. players value. Now
Doomseeker won't make that correction anymore and just pass both numbers
to the games as-is. (#4038)
- Q-Zandronum: adapt plugin to Q-Zandronum 1.3.
- Zandronum, Q-Zandronum: rely on Doomseeker's internal mechanism to
calculate the ping to the game server rather than using the port's
feature where the timestamp is sent back in the challenge reply
packet. (#3992)
- Zandronum: remove the defunct IRC server.

### Deprecated
- Wadseeker: `Wadseeker::setWadArchiveEnabled()` (#4048)
- Plugin API:
    - `DataPaths::canWrite()`, `DataPaths::setWorkingDirectory()`,
      `DataPaths::workingDirectory()`, `DataPaths::validateAppDataDirectory()`.
    - `Server::numTotalSlots()` (#4038)

### Fixed
- Use signed integers to display the dmflags in the server details. (#3944)
- Buffer the messages in the RCon to fix performance issue when many
small messages arrive. (#4026)
- The "Put populated servers on top" option would not be applied to the
server list on program start if disabled. (#3772)
- Wrong amount of free server slots was reported if server allowed more
players to join the game than clients to connect to the server. (#4038)
- Bring up the context menu for the server list and for Wadseeker's WADs
table when the keyboard menu key is pressed. (#3671)
- Fix the layouting issues with progress bars in Wadseeker's dialog box. (#3707)
- When Doomseeker opened a config box for a specific plugin, it failed
to show the config page for that plugin, showing a blank page instead. (#4019)
- Create Game box: display a proper error message if the game executable
path is empty. (#3839)
- Create Game box, server page: fix the spacing of the form when various
inputs are hidden.
- Fix imprecise issue tracker hyperlinks in the documentation. (#4063)
- Pass all the original command line arguments from the auto-updater
back to Doomseeker after the update is installed.
- Auto-updater will now create a log file in Doomseeker's current local
data directory, as intended.
- When showing the command line for offline play, the demo record
command should use the unmanaged (relative) demo path, not the path
to Doomseeker's managed data storage.
- Prevent horizontal scrollbar in the server filter panel by enforcing
a minimal width.
- The `true` values in the config sometimes interpreted as `false`, leading
to Zandronum's testing builds disabling themselves if user canceled the first
time configuration. (#4080)
- Sometimes the main window of the program was expected to exist even though the
opposite could be the case, in which case the program would try to use the
absent main window anyway and crash. One such case was if the configuration box
was opened from the Create Game box after the main window was closed. Fixed that
by adding some guards that check if the main window is gone. (#4087)
- Wadseeker hyperlink in the about dialog made accessible with keyboard. (#4071)
- Wadseeker: custom (server-provided) template URLs with the %WADNAME%
placeholder wouldn't get the higher priority status that the plain
custom URLs normally enjoy. (#3996)
- Windows: updater.exe will use `_splitpath()` instead of `_splitpath_s()`,
allowing it to run again in Windows XP where the MSVCRT doesn't have the
`_s` variant of the function.
- Turok 2 Ex: fix writing beyond the size of the buffer when encrypting the
challenge packets. This used to work in Qt previously but is now deprecated.
- Q-Zandronum: set the canonical name of the plugin to `zandronumq`, which
fixes the loading of the translation files.
- Zandronum, Q-Zandronum: servers that emitted empty PWAD names in their
challenge reply would appear as errored because the plugins failed to
parse the subsequent MD5 checksum hashes for these PWADs. The plugins
will now sanitize such empty PWADs so that such servers can appear
correctly on the list. (#3624)
- Zandronum, Q-Zandronum: `+compatflags2` not set from the Create Game
box if the (Q-)Zandronum tab was not selected. (#4088)
- Zandronum: fix a failure to parse the version of the game for the
servers, which resulted in the dmflags being displayed incorrectly
in the server details and the game's beta builds from being
installed. (#4020, #4024)
- Zandronum: fix the game setup page (#4055):
    - "Keep teams after a map change" flag wasn't toggling its
      corresponding zadmflag.
    - Add proper voting flags and hide the obsolete for Zandronum 3.0.
    - Auto-correct the spin boxes in the flags page to the nearest
      allowed value instead of snapping to the previous one.
- Zandronum: update the game icon to Zandronum 3.1's.

### Removed
- Config migration from Doomseeker 1.1. (#4081)
- Wadseeker: Removed Wad Archive support due to the site shutdown. (#4048)
- SRB2: plugin deprecated, discontinued and removed from Doomseeker. (#3958)

In order to change the configuration directory of Doomseeker, simply run it with a `--basedir` argument, such as:

Code: Select all

doomseeker.exe --basedir alternative
Doomseeker will create a fresh, default configuration in a directory of your choosing.

Doomseeker 1.4 can be downloaded from the official website, and, on Windows, also from the auto-updater's stable channel.

Due to a mistake in the versioning scheme, this release is marked both as 1.4 and 1.4.0. These versions are equivalent.

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Pol Marcet Sardà
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Re: Doomseeker 1.4.0

#2

Post by Pol Marcet Sardà » Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:00 am

Let's go! :D

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phineas
 
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Re: discontinue the support for the Sonic Robo Blast 2 plugin

#3

Post by phineas » Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:44 am

I'm so confused. I thought SRB2 was something that plugged into Doom Legacy engine?
Probably, I've been living under a rock for a decade or something, eh?

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Sean
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Re: discontinue the support for the Sonic Robo Blast 2 plugin

#4

Post by Sean » Thu Feb 23, 2023 3:46 pm

phineas wrote:
Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:44 am
I'm so confused. I thought SRB2 was something that plugged into Doom Legacy engine?
Probably, I've been living under a rock for a decade or something, eh?
Doomseeker alone doesn't include any functionality for querying a port's servers, but it does provide a plugin system to add this functionality. Doomseeker includes a few stock plugins: for example, the Zandronum plugin, which adds the ability for Doomseeker to query Zandronum servers, tells it how to launch Zandronum, etc. Similar thing with the SRB2 plugin, but this has been removed from Doomseeker due to the reasons given in the OP.
<capodecima> i dont say any more word without my loyer jenova

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