248 Release Notes

• Fixed: The stat panels were occassionally getting corrupted and crashing Dream Seeker when restarting a new world. (Gazoot)

• Fixed: Proc declarations using several variables of the same declared type were having those variables grouped together with intermediate variables shuffled to the end. That's hard to explain. Here is an example:

  proc/MyProc(MyType/A,B,MyType/C) //arguments declared like this proc/MyProc(MyType/A,MyType/C,B) //were actually interpreted like this

  So values passed into the proc were showing up in the wrong variables.

• Fixed: Changing savefile.cd to an expression like "../.." was moving up three directories instead of two. The other notation is "." for the current directory, ".." for the parent, "..." for the parent of the parent, and so on. That was working. Now "../.." is equivalent to "..." instead of "....".

• Fixed: The compiler was ignoring additional input type information without generating a warning, which was misleading. Now it detects this case and generates an error message. For example:

  mob/verb/test(M as mob/MyType) //error: input type must be atomic (ie just mob)

• Fixed: There was a crash in list.Copy() when handling associative lists.

• Fixed: Duplicate variable declarations were not being detected for uninitialized object variables.

• Fixed: fdel() was not working on file() objects.

• Fixed: Some numerical overflows should be detected now that were being ignored before. It actually depends on the floating point chip whether certain operations generate an overflow or whether they just result in a special value of "infinity". This introduces a slight platform dependence, but I think the extra overhead required to soft-code stricter checking would not be worth it.

• Fixed: Errors such as running out of memory while loading a world are now caught so the server exits gracefully rather than mysteriously crashing.

• Fixed: Expressions such as (X in Obj.contents) were not working whereas (X in Obj) was.

• Fixed: Even though area.contents is advertised to be a list, not only of the turfs directly contained by the area, but also of the contents of those turfs, the expression (usr in area) or equivalently (usr in area.contents) was never true because only the turf contents were applied. Now it behaves as expected.

• Fixed: In lazy_eye mode, the user was accessing the verbs of the area containing the eye rather than the mob. That was not consistent with other things (like computation of visibility) which take the mob's perspective.

• Fixed: overlays were not being preserved during the operation of flick(). (DerDragon)

• Fixed: The new resource file searching algorithm had a bug in it. Possibly responsible for the old 'bad icon' reports? (Guy T., others)

• Fixed: Variables of the /client type were generating compilation errors when used as the variable in a for loop applied to a list. Now filtering of the /client type works just like any other type. It is also possible to output a client object as text (client.key is displayed). (Deadron)

• Fixed: There was a potential crash point when the server deletes an object. This may fix the strange smooth movement glitch in which a new object created next to an object of the same type that was just deleted appeared to move from the deleted position to the new position. (Guy T.)

• The host server can now handle a connection topic to the target world. This is specified by appending an additional # to the end of the URL. For example: byond://dantom#dan/nightmud#new_player connects to Nightmud with the initial topic "new_player" (which happens to cause any old savefile to be deleted). This syntax is consistent with world.Export() which also handles forwarding of messages to hosted worlds.

• Added client.SendPage(msg,target). The target of the page can be a single mob (or key) or it can be a list. The player is prompted to authorize the page and the number of pages successfully delivered is returned to the caller. This is used in the new BYOND Home so people could place "calls" to others, summoning them to their home for a chat. Obviously, the player could enter the page directly through the client, but this indirect method makes it fit into the reality of the home world a bit better.

• The default URL at the client URL prompt was getting set equal to the last successful connection, but sometimes that address was a temporary one that might not be valid a second time. Now the last non-temporary address is used instead. This is consistent with the server connection history. So, for example, the address byond://dantom#dan/impy would be remembered instead of byond://dantom.com:4561 or whatever address the hosted world happened to use.

• FILE_DIR definitions were always taken to be relative to the home compilation directory rather than the directory of the source file containing the definition. That made it awkward to include resource files in library code. Now it is always relative to the source file directory.

• By default resource files are searched for relative to the compilation home directory. Now it also searches the directory of the source file containing the reference to the file. This serves the same purpose as the above FILE_DIR modification, allowing library modules to use their own resource files.

• Added client.inactivity. This is equal to the length in time since the player's most recent action (such as clicking an object, moving, or executing a command). This is updated _after_ processing a new action so you can check how much time has passed since the last one. Example:
  mob/verb/inactivity() usr << "You have been inactive for [client.inactivity/10] seconds."

  (Zilal)

• The client command parser is now case-insensitive. It even corrects the case for you when expanding commands. (Zilal)

• The icon-editor can now copy pixmaps to the clipboard and paste them from other programs.

• A number of other improvements have been added to the icon-editor, including a circle tool, arbitrary rotations, and a more noticeable palette selection (Al, Zilal, DerDragon, others)

• There is an "update" button on file panel of the compiler gui; it causes the file tree to automatically reflect the actual directory structure (in case files were added or deleted). This gives the same effect as reloading the environment, but it is quicker and doesn't force a save. (Spuzzum)

• You can now copy compiler error messages to the clipboard. (Al, Zilal)

• The external browser links (ie- the gui help pages) now popup in a new web browser, rather than using an existing one. (Al)