We have a very important announcement for you all:

Netgames are stable once again. (Thanks to Mr. Mystery for taking these screenshots of almost 32 players in a single netgame!)

Now now, before you go too crazy, keep in mind that things still aren’t perfect. There may be unexpected issues stemming solely from the fact that some parts of our game hasn’t had proper testing in years, due to the instability of netgames. But it’s safe to say that things are back to a level of stability around that of version 2.0, if not a little better than that. Special shoutouts go to LJSonik, who was the one to discover and fix the majority of these problems that had been difficult to find.

Though the stability of netgames is a huge part of this update, it’s not the only thing featured in it. See below for the full patch notes…

• Netgame stability:
  • Fixed an issue where the server wouldn’t resend packets properly. (This is a gross simplification of the issue, but it gets the general point across.)
  • It is now possible to ‘kick’ a player in mid-join, while they are downloading the game state.
  • Downloading files is now much faster, and significantly more reliable.
  • Various other minor stability improvements made during testing of the above fixes.

• The console has been heavily revamped.
  • It’s now possible to move the input cursor left and right, as well as selecting multiple characters at the same time using the shift keys.
  • Clipboard support has been added. CTRL+C copies selected text, and CTRL+V pastes any text that’s in your clipboard, similar to most other programs.
  • Fixed pressing multiple modifier keys down at the same time.

• Collision fixes:
  • Fixed Knuckles being able to climb on air.
  • Fixed upside-down springs launching themselves off of ceilings again.
  • Fixed springs (and any other non-moving objects with gravity) falling through one-way platform blocks.
  • Jumping into a solid object now properly stops your momentum.
  • Collision boxes for solid objects now extend downwards properly.

• Software renderer fixes:
  • Players don’t visually disappear into FOFs anymore if they have multiple overlays (such as the Elemental or Armageddon shields) attached to them and spindash on top of it.
  • Polyobjects planes no longer cause crashes, and translucent ones no longer lose their translucency in some situations.
  • The game no longer crashes if you view a wall with an invalid, but well-defined “texture” name (e.g.: a sound effect name, for the Play Sound linedef).
  • Repeating Midtextures no longer have messed up lighting under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed animated textures with holes displaying garbage for the first frame they’re visible.

• OpenGL renderer fixes:
  • Fixed MD2 models with too many vertices causing memory corruption; these MD2s are ignored instead.
  • Precipitation (rain, snow, etc.) actually shows up now.

• More minor unrelated changes and/or fixes:
  • The MobjThinker, MobjCollide and MobjMoveCollide hooks have been optimised, reducing their negative impact on performance in large maps.
  • Fixed problems with Egg Guards’ shields exploding a physically impossible number of times.
  • Fixed issue with switching skins incorrectly being allowed during credits and custom cutscenes in single-player.
  • Fixed the FixedFloor, FixedTrunc, FixedCeil and FixedRound Lua functions returning garbage.
  • Rope hangs and zoom tubes have smoother behavior near their waypoints.
  • Pusher specials applied to FOFs now properly account for slopes applied to the bottom plane.
  • The ” character is now treated as whitespace in TEXTURES and ANIMDEF lumps, allowing for better compatibility with SLADE’s relevant lump-editing tools.
  • Providing negative scales to v.drawScaled in Lua doesn’t crash anymore.
  • Changing sector flats in netgames using Lua scripting no longer causes the game to crash for new joiners.