News - April 2001   

Monday, 30th April 2001

  • Ahh, it's good to be back.  XMaps 208 gets 10/10 in the review over at ModSquad.
  • There's also some extremely significant news today for those of you who run UT servers ... the first version of the network HUD menu was replicated and rendered successfully this evening.  You're witnessing the birth of a monster ... 8-))

Saturday, 28th April 2001

  • Added Open and Close sounds to the HUD menu.
  • Completely rewrote the HUD menu creation routines so that it works correctly even if the player's console doesn't have a root window.
  • Replaced the sort routine for the maplists in the HUD menu so it works or large lists.
  • Fixed the bug where the Game Switching setup page displayed the wrong selection after 'Every 3 maps or so' is chosen.

Friday, 27th April 2001

  • XMaps 208 released.  This includes the enhancements and fixes since 207, described below.

Tuesday, 24th April 2001

  • Added a Server Options button to the Setup window so that you can get XMaps to automatically log you in as an admin user when you're running XMaps on a server.  This should make the admin-level features, like map and game switching on the fly, a lot easier to use.  Thanks to Chris DeFrancisco for letting me know that this needed automating.

Monday, 23rd April 2001

  • I've managed to enhance the in-game HUD menu so that it now closes when you use the Escape key, and record the HUD state so that you don't lose your preferences when you use it.  I've also made the map list sub-menus sort their contents alphabetically, and increased the number of Extended and Favourites lists from 64 to 100.  There should be a public release by the end of the week ... a BIG thank-you to Scott Arnold for his input on these issues.
  • I've also increased the number of maps per list to 150 and changed the HUD menu so that it pauses the game when you use it ... this should make things a bit easier to manage.

Friday, 20th April 2001

  • XMaps 207 finally released.  This includes all the enhancements and fixes described below; it's also the first public release to include the in-game HUD menu.

Wednesday, 18th April 2001

  • Introduced the configuration of Mutators for Extended Map lists - now you can configure Mutators that XMaps will load per game type and per Extended Map list!  It's been a long time coming, but this has to be almost #1 on the XMaps users' wish-list.

Monday, 16th April 2001

  • Greatly improved the handling of Assault games during game switching.  XMaps' behaviour when you terminate an Assault game using the HUD menu or Mutate commands to switch games is now the same as UT (the game is reset ready for the next Assault game).  When automatic game switching kicks in after the first part of an Assault game, it's behaviour is now configurable by the user (to either continue with the second part or switch game types).  Many thanks to Lee Brink and Joseph Stanczak for the heads-up...

Friday, 13th April 2001

  • Added new commands to the HUD menu: 'Add Current Map' for Extended Map lists and Favourites, 'Switch to this List' to change the Extended Map List for the current game type.
  • Added a new 'Map Select Mode' menu to the HUD menu, so you can change the Map Selection mode on the fly, and removed the Mutators menu (let's face it, it was pretty useless).
  • Added Import controls to the Extended Map Lists setup window; now, any map list known to UT can be imported into XMaps.

Wednesday, 11th April 2001

  • Fixed the bug in Extended and Favourites map list storage where the fiftieth list got the settings of the fourtieth (and vice versa).  Many thanks to Scott Arnold (yet again!) for finding this one...

Saturday, 7th April 2001

  • Added a Clear MRU button to the Extended Map List setup page.  This clears out the MRU so that XMaps starts a 'clean rotation' of the Extended Map List (thanks to Joseph Stanczak for the idea).
  • Added a Copy button to the Extended Map List setup page, so you can make copies of existing map lists, and fixed the Replay bug in the HUD menu (it Skipped instead of Replayed).

Wenesday, 4th April 2001

  • Started up the FAQ page ... if you have any questions or hints for other users, drop me a line and I'll add them to the FAQ.
  • This network-compatible in-game HUD menu is proving to be a bitch ... Many thanks go to BDB, the author of the excellent MapVote, for pointers and advice.  With the amount of data that I'm going to need to replicate, it's beginning to look like this might have to be a separate mutator (I don't want clients to have to download the whole of XMaps just for the HUD menu).  The design process continues ... although to be honest, I'm seriously considering abandoning the idea, since servers probably won't want to switch game types or maps on the fly ... perhaps the automatic switching that XMaps already supports is enough ...
  • Thanks to Pedro Roque, I've found a few areas in XMaps where game type support is lacking compared to XMaps' ability to manage up to 256 game and mod types.  Consequently there are a whole bunch of changes that I've implemented... The demand for more maps per list has also been addressed - check the changes out below:
  • Increased the number of maps that Extended Map Lists and Favourites can hold from 64 to 128.
  • Increased the number of games that users can switch between, the number of game-to-map-list settings that users can configure and the Mutator list to support the number of game-types that XMaps supports (256).
  • Changed the game- and map-switching routines to restore the user's configuration of minimum players and/or bots.  XMaps only used to do this at the end of a game (which doesn't happen when the map- and game-switching commands are used).
  • Fixed the bug where the wrong index was being saved for Favourites lists. This would only rarely affect XMaps configurations, but it was worth changing.