279 Release Notes

• Fixed: there was a bug in the file unzipper that could have been responsible for chopping off characters from the beginnings of filenames and also for unpredictable crashes. That would explain several strange reports.

• Fixed: the URL history was broken, incorrect showing "host" as the name of all worlds running under the host server.

• Fixed: there was an occassional crash upon logout.

• Added a variable called parent_type. This is assigned at compile-time to allow you to make the parent type of an object something other than the default. All object types are now derived from a common ancestor: datum //base type for all data objects atom //mapable objects parent_type = /datum movable //base type for all movable objects area parent_type = /atom turf parent_type = /atom obj parent_type = /atom/movable mob parent_type = /atom/movable One nice consequence of this is that you can define new variables or procedures that are inherited by all of the atomic types. In many cases, it also allows you to easily avoid using the ':' operator so you get better compile-time error checking. Example: atom proc/Block(bumper) //define a new Bump() reaction proc bumper << "You bump into [src]." movable Bump(atom/block) block.Block(src) One note: currently the special types /list, /savefile, /world, and /client are not currently derived from /datum, as you might expect. They will be in the future