Leandro Posted August 19, 2019 Posted August 19, 2019 (edited) This patch includes all the changes from August 11th and August 17th. Legacy Client There is a new option in your launcher, "HC Beta (Legacy)". This will launch the old 32-bit client, adapted to load the 64-bit data files. It is a stopgap measure for players who have issues launching the new client, mainly old Mac OS versions. It does not have any of the new features introduced in the 64-Bit client; its purpose is to make sure that players can still log in if they run into crashes or incompatibilities with the main client. You should still report any crashes and incompatibilities so they can be fixed! The Legacy client is a stopgap measure that won't be around forever. Edited August 19, 2019 by Leandro
Bionic_Flea Posted August 19, 2019 Posted August 19, 2019 2 hours ago, Leandro said: It does not have any of the new features introduced in the 64-Bit client; its purpose is to make sure that players can still log in if they run into crashes or incompatibilities with the main client. I assume this means just the stuff related to the 64 bit client, console controller support, and PhysX, but not powers.
Retired Game Master GM Capocollo Posted August 19, 2019 Retired Game Master Posted August 19, 2019 Powers aren't client features, so that's right.
City Council Number Six Posted August 19, 2019 City Council Posted August 19, 2019 To help clarify the difference between the now 3 different clients, there are two different branches: New client: The new client (and server) have undergone a significant amount of modernization work and this is our "future-proof" branch for ongoing development. It's built with a much newer compiler & development tools, has support for modern operating systems, has been reorganized and had a lot of old and useless code removed, has undergone a lot of cleanup to fix problems that made it incompatible with 64-bit architecture, has upgraded third-party libraries, etc. It also integrates some changes to make development easier. For example the memory allocator was replaced with one that allows us to do memory profiling in production mode without a significant performance impact - an invaluable tool for tracking down memory leaks that only show up under real-world load conditions and can't be reproduced on a developer's PC or even the test server. As a result of shifting so much around, it's also uncovered a lot of bugs that have been present in the client forever, but were rendered harmless or just never noticed by chance. A good example is off-by-one buffer issues that write 1 byte too far, but due to how the old compiler laid out memory never overwrote anything critical. We've fixed a number of these, but there may be more lurking. There are two builds of this client: 64-bit: The preferred client going forward. Supports Windows 7 and later. Requires Visual C++ 2015/2017/2019 runtime installed (included by default in Windows 8+, can be installed on 7 and most people should already have it). 32-bit: For compatibility with systems that do not have a 64-bit OS installed, or rare cases of other incompatibility. Supports Windows XP and later. Does not require any external runtime. Both of these builds will get all new features and enhancements; though some features like XInput controller support require newer operating systems to function. Legacy client: This is the current client being used on the live servers. It's built with the old compiler. The data format changes necessary for the 64-bit client have been backported in order to make it continue to work. It is being provided as a fallback in case people run into compatibility problems on the new branch. This client will not be getting any new features. As it requires extra work to backport fixes to this branch, it is being provided as a temporary measure to keep people running and will not be maintained indefinitely. The goal is for all systems to be able to run either the 64-bit or 32-bit build of the new client. If you find that you cannot use at least the new 32-bit client for some reason and must use the legacy client, please let us know! We're working hard to make sure that there is an upgrade path that will work for everyone, so we need to find out about any issues with it and resolve them before the legacy branch is retired. 3
Likara Posted August 19, 2019 Posted August 19, 2019 With all the code rearrangement and new libraries, any chance such work could make better multithreading a possibility in the future? Right now, it mainly hammers two cores, which results in my CPU being a bottleneck in this game.
Williwaw Posted August 19, 2019 Posted August 19, 2019 9 hours ago, Number Six said: If you find that you cannot use at least the new 32-bit client for some reason and must use the legacy client, please let us know! We're working hard to make sure that there is an upgrade path that will work for everyone, so we need to find out about any issues with it and resolve them before the legacy branch is retired. This is me letting you know. On Mac 10.10, the Island Rum beta chokes and dies even trying to install itself, let alone the clients. Same thing trying to install Wine through Terminal. My computer's just a bit too old to upgrade (frankly, sometimes I'm shocked it even runs 10.10), so simply upgrading to 10.11 or higher is not an option. Otherwise, that would probably be my first step. If there was some way to install Wine 2.x or 3.x in the Island Rum beta instead of defaulting to 4.0, that might let me use the 32-bit client, but I can't find the Terminal command for that, and there's some weird permission errors with Homebrew anyway (I get "make: /Applications/Xcode: Permission denied", even though the read/write permissions on that folder and file are set to Everyone) I understand that you're trying to make it work for the upcoming MacOS update, but it's starting to look like you've cut off the other end, and my computer's just too old for the new client. :/
Retired Game Master GM Capocollo Posted August 20, 2019 Retired Game Master Posted August 20, 2019 48 minutes ago, Williwaw said: This is me letting you know. On Mac 10.10, the Island Rum beta chokes and dies even trying to install itself, let alone the clients. Same thing trying to install Wine through Terminal. My computer's just a bit too old to upgrade (frankly, sometimes I'm shocked it even runs 10.10), so simply upgrading to 10.11 or higher is not an option. Otherwise, that would probably be my first step. Could you provide more information about your computer, like the model and specs?
reconfigureyourface Posted August 20, 2019 Posted August 20, 2019 Is there any anticipated date for when this might roll out from beta to the main shards? Obviously testing is unpredictable but I am just curious if you had a target date in mind. Thenew base items in beta made me decide to put the rest of my base on hold 😄 My Twitch Channel
Leandro Posted August 20, 2019 Author Posted August 20, 2019 (edited) The new client and server binaries will go live during today's maintenance, unless I find a last-minute problem. But just the code changes, not the data changes like powers, base items and so on. I've been going back-and-forth on this all week, but at the end of the day I think the safest approach is to hold back on the data changes for a week. By doing so, if a major problem is found with the new client, we can roll it back without data loss. While I don't expect problems, I think an overabundance of caution is guaranteed when the internal changes are this extensive. If there are no problems with today's patch, the data changes will go live next Tuesday, the 27th. Edit: never mind, live publish for today is canceled. @Kaylin reported a bug with the mapservers dying after defeating certain AVs, so we're delaying the patch to investigate. Edited August 20, 2019 by Leandro 2
Recommended Posts