Sorry I haven't put out any status reports lately, it's been a very busy time for me as testers have been breaking this and that. I've been making progress plowing through bugs. For those of you who are interested in helping out with the testing, please PM Blacksun for beta keys, and join us in Discord (https://discord.gg/bxjXt7r) to take a few whacks at it. If you can, try to grab up a few others and try out a game.
I believe that I've finally fixed the mystery server crash that has been bugging me for a while now. There was some code in play when you shoot your own drones with FF on that I suspect was the cause.
Also, for everyone who starts up a game, you'll get a limited time beta achievement in Steam! Better act fast, after 9/15 it's no longer available.
Speaking of Steam, we had a minor setback in the review process. The Steam reviewer found a bug in the client, and could not get onto a server to try starting a game. The issue has been fixed, and I'm hoping to get a green light on Monday or Tuesday. Of course, that was the first time that issue popped up. :/
I was also disappointed to find out that Steam does not do any additional checks to ensure that a client is actually running under DRM. The official response was "Secure your server so that clients can't hack". As we all know, when it comes to Allegiance, that's easier said than done. So, I have been working on securing both the artwork and the game client with a couple of different strategies. Artwork can still be selectively protected so that you can modify things like voice chats, but not official cores. The .exe is protected by DRM, and the DRM check is now done between the game server and client so we have some modicum of security. It's slightly better than what ACSS is providing mostly because of the Steam wrapper on the game itself.
I will start updating the security pieces after the Steam review is complete.
Thanks everyone for helping pitch in with ideas and testing, and even some code patches as well.
More soon!
-BT
