And then... there were none.

Post by **BackTrak** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:28 am

As in blockers. To a steam release.

Today I got a most welcome email from Steam:

"Microsoft Allegiance has been reviewed and no blocking issues were encountered."

And with that, the last box on the Steam control panel is now green, and the "Release Application" button has been enabled.

And now let's talk about that other blocker. The instability one. Due to an overwhelming amount of bugs, server crashes and other issues, it is with a heavy heart that I must return R8 to the back burner. It is just too much of an unknown amount of work, chasing changes that were done quite a long time ago. Where this Sunday's test cycle should have been a final shakedown with an all-clear pronouncement, it was again another cornucopia of bugs and crashes. While this is certainly not the end of R8 and the features it holds, now is not the right time to attempt to move it into production. And so, it is back to almost square one.

I say "Almost" because as of last night all of the Steam changes I have been working on are already ported into our current R7 production code base, and are up and running on my local environment. I have some cleanup to do tonight, and I hope to get a new R7 client and server out onto the steam beta so we can resume testing. This code base is now forked from KGJV's Git upload of the Allegiance SVN, so we have a full change history of what's been done to date. Believe it or not, most of the past month has been chasing R8 bugs around, and very little has been actually devoted to Steam integration. In fact there has only been one bug directly related to the new work, which was easily fixed.

I know testing the steam version takes valuable time away from the games you would normally play, and I truly appreciate the help and kind thoughts from everyone. Going forward, expect a stable client and server using the same code base that you have been playing on for years.

As we get closer to going live, expect to see a lot more information around the login process, how moderators can help, and other Steam related goodies. Oh, and I'll be extending the special limited time Beta Achievement out to an extra week. So, be sure to grab your beta key and come launch on the steam server and fly around a bit. Tomorrow tho, I still have some work to do.

We're almost there!

Thanks,
-BT

Edit: Everything is now changed over to R7, and the new client is up on Steam. Feel free to test away, and join us on Discord for testing. TenForward and Avis33 have been helping out a lot in this area playing on a 1v1, but more players would be better.

raumvogel · Post by **raumvogel** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 11:38 am

I think every evening this week we should try to have a game going for those that show up.

P.S. I'm crashing everytime I press F6 flying as well as in the station.

"The instruction at 0x56bc222c referenced memory at 0x00000003.The memory could not be read.
Click ok to terminate program"

Wasp · Post by **Wasp** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 2:32 pm

raumvogel wrote:QUOTE (raumvogel @ Sep 12 2017, 07:38 AM) P.S. I'm crashing everytime I press F6 flying as well as in the station.

"The instruction at 0x56bc222c referenced memory at 0x00000003.The memory could not be read.

I've seen this before but can't remember exactly the cause of it. In cases like this and because of the big change, I would recommend uninstalling (only the steam version) and then reinstalling.

If it continues afterward, please give some more details if you can.

I'm taking a guess here but I'm thinking you're using a laptop connected via HDMI to a tv? If so, and you still crash after reinstall, I've got an experiment for you to try if you've got the time.

Post by **BackTrak** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:04 pm

This R7 was missing some patches I put in back in 2015. This was one of them. The issue was that under some instances, miners do not assign themselves to a wing, so F6 crashes because it can't render the miner's wing name. I've re-applied my patches from this era, and also re-added Imago's mini-dump code.

Wasp · Post by **Wasp** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:44 pm

Oh hallelujah!

I noticed that this version scales properly using either the GPU or display. I don't remember previous versions scaling correctly when using the display for scaling.

Post by **BackTrak** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:02 pm

That is a little gift from Kgjv's branch. I grabbed it when I was forking things over.

KGJV · Post by **KGJV** » Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:06 pm

grats !

Djole88 · Post by **Djole88** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:24 am

BackTrak wrote:QUOTE (BackTrak @ Sep 12 2017, 06:04 PM) This R7 was missing some patches I put in back in 2015. This was one of them. The issue was that under some instances, miners do not assign themselves to a wing, so F6 crashes because it can't render the miner's wing name. I've re-applied my patches from this era, and also re-added Imago's mini-dump code.

I remember that, the issue is that under ALL instances in R7 drone wing name is an invalid ptr, yet it automagically gets dereferenced to an empty string. I remember that I concluded R7 working is a miracle

Post by **MagisterXF94** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:03 pm

BT are we go for the 16th?

Post by **BackTrak** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:11 pm

I'm afraid I had to push the date to 9/29. The issue is that Steam requires a cool down after the review, and I would like to have a successful test run to ensure that everything is working up to current standards. While I hate to move the date, if we have a successful test this weekend, then we can move it back up to 9/22.

At this point, it's all about the testing.