Zone code changelog

[qan]

Going to try and keep this thread up-to-date with some changes made in the code around the zone. Yeah, pipe dream, I know. Well, eh, let's give it the ol' community college try, at any rate.

I'll keep the thread open but all replies will be deleted before posting a new change, to make it easy to read them all. So you can post etc but I wouldn't put up your best iCarly fanfic or anything.

Bug reports and feedback appreciated.

[qan]

Pub

• Logging in and playing pub more than 15 minutes a day for multiple days in a row will now earn you a loyalty bonus. This bonus will continue to increase until day 7, where you will receive a mega-bonus between $25K and $250K.
• You can now sponsor a Terr or Shark on freq 0 and 1 by using !st and !ss. The money will be provided every minute. For example, !st 100 will give $100 each minute to the Terr on your freq, allowing them to afford bursts and ports. Players have to be actively playing to receive the sponsorship. When you leave, the sponsorship will automatically finish, or you can type !st/!ss by itself to cancel at any time.

[qan]

Zone

• Amount of pubbux received as a thank-you gift for donations through http://www.trenchwars.org/donations has been increased substantially.

Pub

• Many !buys reintroduced from the 75% off sale are now a regular part of the store. (Super, shield, baseterr, roofturret, 100-length brick for weasel)
• Super and shield !buy time extended from 20 seconds to 45 seconds.
• Ball introduced as an experimental feature, with goal beneath flag. All players on the freq will receive a reward for each goal made.
• Ship-passable holes opened in all 4 lower base ears to allow a larger variety of opportunities to enter base. Main tube is still the fastest point of entry.
• End round bonuses increased, especially for longer games.
• Rock-paper-scissors games (!rps) now show as arena messages when over a certain amount.
• Basic bot spam protection.

[qan]

Pub

• !buy ballpower charges up the ball for 30 minutes, making it increase the strength of weapons when held. An interesting buy for LTs, in order to get those legendary L4 bombs. (Currently set to 10min; will be increased to 30 on next bot reboot.)
• !buy greet:<msg> leaves a message and $5000 for the next player who joins the game
• Large !fruit wins ($100K+) are now shown in arena messages

[qan]

Pub

• Extensive testing done on !fruit odds. (Thanks to Iam for help in testing.) After running 50,000,000 spins on the old algorithm, the payout rate was found to be slightly too low (around 90% payout rate if not receiving the bonus for in-game !fruit playing).
• Added a new possible win on the fruit machine to compensate. "Spec-Hunting an LT Matchup" is Spectator, Terr and Levi, and will give 7x payout (or 8x if in-game).
• New odds were tested (30,000,000 spectator spins, 50,000,000M in-game spins). Payouts have improved on average by roughly 3% for spectators and 4% for in-game players. In-game players now receive odds similar to some of the loosest slot machines in the world. ("Loose slots" are slot machines set up in casinos in a prominent, central location that can be seen from many directions, specifically set at a high payout rate to encourage people to play nearby, lower-paying machines.) ...Good luck!

[qan]

TWDT

• LVZ rebuilt with graphics files split up to fix game-crashing error on certain newer systems

Pub

• Daily bonus now resets at 3AM EST / 12AM PST / 7AM GMT
• !stats now shows info about daily bonus. 3 states are: playing now will start the bonus cycle; playing now will give you the daily bonus; playing now will not give you daily bonus, but the next stage will be available in X time. Also shows number of consecutive days you have received the bonus. Please report any bugs you see in this feature
• Decoy cost reduced from 1400 to 900
• Potential fix for new players entering zone and not seeing walls/money after download
• Raised !fruit win announcement to $150000 and above
• Fireworks now include sound
• !servertime shows summer time in regions that use it
• Being in spec no longer reduces total time played (was leading to extreme playtime displays on !stats while in spec)

[qan]

Pub

• Round start !warp FR spawns also include mid-spawns. (Pending update; currently all !warps are midspawns) This may allow removal of the heavy-handed "no levs/LTs on roof at round start" rule
• Everyone in mid will now be warped at round start. (Pending update)
• !afkcheck available for all players. Once 2 players !afkcheck someone, a challenge code will be sent to the player in question. They must respond with the correct code in 30 seconds or be sent to spec. (Pending update)
• Players will automatically be disconnected after 5 deaths without firing weapons. (Previously 8)
• !switch reward for balancing teams now $1400. (Previously $750)
• !stats should now correctly show when next loyalty bonus is available
• Created foundation for cutting down on green spam, informing via freq or even public message for less-important details in the game.

[qan]

Elim

• Dramatically increased $ bonuses for elim wins, especially with higher numbers of players.
• Added a $ bonus for streak-breaking.
• Refitted zone-wide adverts to the [ ] bracket standard to increase visibility.

Pub

• Fix for !lagcheck

[qan]

Pub

• Help underlay graphics on the map for new players. !helpon/!helpoff to turn on/off.
• Ball Jackpot now triggers randomly between rounds. Scoring a goal after this notification will give a substantially increased reward.
• Automated handling of teamkillers when moderation staff is not available.
• PurePub and SortaPurePub are now buyable for 10 minutes at a time, at 1/3 of the cost.
• !buy beer (thanks to Zazu for this)
• !warp now allows you to toggle off low-population spawning in base, so you can have traditional-style spawn duels at low population if you wish.

+ many bugfixes across various bots.

[qan]

Pub

• TK penalties now go directly to the person TK'd
• Can forgive a TK by PMing np or !forgive
• Automatic bombing ship lockout for TKers
• Players can !shufflevote after a round
• Shufflevote will balance valuable ships across freq 0 and 1
• Totally revamped tutorial system (thanks to Mint Chocolate Chip and Wirah for the graphical work)
• Graphical alerts for many subarenas added (slightly annoying, but cuts through greenspam)
• Lottery ticket prices further reduced
• End round bonuses increased significantly, especially when there are many players
• Festival buy that increases the value of kills and end round bonuses to 500%
• Flag capture delay ("flag lag") reduced, and scales based on # of players in arena
• Fix for !switch ("Team adjustment not needed")
• !commend command to give everyone on your entire team a $500 reward. If used just after a round finishes, give the team your full win bonus

TSL

• Games will be tiered when there are 2 arenas (high and low tier)
• More value earned for killing better-rated players
• Ratings now adjust slightly based on performance
• Brute force algorithm to create balanced teams
• All ratings made public via bot and site
• Illegal subs (where player subbing in is much higher rated) now disallowed by bot

TWD

• Every game now earns points, with wins being worth significantly more
• !applytomysquad to join your ?squad without leaving game
• !accept to accept squad applicants
• Assistants can approve squadjoin requests
• Removed cooldown timer between leaving a squad and joining a new squad
• !register now automatically registers you for TSL as well

General

• Zone events and announcements now pushed to directly Discord http://www.trenchwars.org/discord
• Newsletter bot support added http://www.trenchwars.org/newsletter

[qan]

Pub

• 30 second timer before round ends (and 5 second timer before round start)
• "Flag contested" cooldown. If the flag was taken by the enemy in the last second, the timer will not advance. This should create more interesting end-of-round battles, and allow an attacking team to contest the flag more easily if they push hard at the end
• Players can once again !shufflevote, but it requires at least two people, and a majority of votes to shuffle
• MUCH more even team shuffles, splitting up terrs, sharks, fighters, and "the rest" evenly between freqs
• !buy STFU now lasts 10 minutes
• Exciting newsletter registration feature that will bother you to subscribe until you tell it to go away twice (please subscribe ... Wirah puts a ton of effort into the newsletter every week)
• Loyalty mega-bonus increased across the board
• Smarter midspawn conditions: rather than a flat population #, also takes into consideration if both teams have a Terr, and ignores Levis and duelers for the purpose of judging arena size
• !buy purepub/sortapurepub is now anonymous
• Notification of any active buys every 5 minutes, such as festival, purepub, etc.
• Kill-o-thon reward now scales with the number of kills made
• Kill-o-thon tells you number of KoTs you've won each time you win
• Small reward for 2nd and 3rd place KoT winners
• Levis and Terrs are now warned before being warped for being on the roof before the start of a round
• !forgive changed to np to make it easier to forgive players who accidentally TK you

TSL

• Squad vs world!
• !backfill re-enabled
• 6v6 in base now possible

TWD

• TWDBot: Can now use !lfs to indicate you are looking for a squad
• TWDBot: !showlfs shows all players looking for a squad, and their associated TSL ratings

General

• Resolution limits removed from almost all arenas

[Rab]

?go base
- No longer need to !nominate caps. A new game will start when two people !cap.

[Rab]

TWD Website
- "Free Agents" page no longer includes players who are currently in squads. Now you can actually use this page to find people to recruit!
Link: http://twd.trenchwars.org/freeagents

[Rab]

TWD Website
- "On the Move" default filter changed to "Since 1 week". Removed: "Since 24 hours" (too short), "Since 3 days" (too short), "Since All-time" (didn't work).
Link: http://twd.trenchwars.org/onthemove

TW.org
- Removed broken link "TWDT" from "Network:" section.
- Fixed "Getting Started" link so it actually goes to the "Getting Started" guide.
Link: http://www.trenchwars.org/index.php?v=gethelp&id=2

[qan]

General

• When using a command that may accept partial name input, and there are two matches, provide a list of matches and ask which one was meant (TWD, BWJS, !ch in pub)
• !report command to send a bug report to staff Slack bots channel automatically
• !comment in pub now sent to Slack dev channel
• Reduced frequency of lottery somewhat, in response to reduced participation
• MessageBot now allows anyone to create and operate a channel

Pub

• !poker video poker added ("full pay" Jacks or better -- 99.54% payout with perfect play). !pokerinfo for more info
• !poker and !fruit by themselves now repeat the last bet made
• Landmark system greatly expanded (credit: BIET)
• Ability to turn off landmark messages, and reset your session !stats (credit: BIET)
• !commend simplified to give a set amount to all players
• !lolnope added; raised cost to $300K
• Rockets now have a 15 second between purchases, and slightly increased price
• Thor price increased
• !shufflevote refactoring
• Festival always continues until the end of the current round, never in the middle
• Intermission between rounds shortened from 100s to 40s
• $ Milestones shown only every $5K (was $500)
• Intermission extends if shufflevote is initiated

Elim

• Returned to classic base map
• !late allowed until 1st elimination
• Revised how stats are calculated, making it more difficult to get extremely high or extremely low ratings, and factoring skill in far more
• Practice mode removed
• Requiring TWD registration to earn a ladder rating and $ from matches
• Dramatically increased win rewards, especially for games with many players
• $ bonuses for win streaks/breaking win streaks
• Only Jav or WB now allowed as vote choices
• Rating confidence at 100% after 75 games played
• Names will be added with proper casing on ladder splash after next reset
• Storing round data about each player (will make it possible to show detailed stats later on)
• 3rd level of doors in WB for extremely small games (5 or fewer)

TWD

• Borrow enabled by default
• Watches on enemy deaths automatically at 8
• More time for lineups when adding time in ?go base
• !borrowlist now shows rating in TSL
• !borrowme should not expire until you log off (need to verify)
• Check for player registration before allowing borrow

Base/Jav/WBDuel

• Watch commands from TWD added
• Watches on enemy deaths automatically at 8

TSL

• Squad vs world
• Various matchmaking improvements and bugfixes
• !backfill fixed
• Show ranking of your value this game compared to other games (Just earned your #2 value this season! etc)