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Release Notes
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| · | This is a minor release with some bug fixes for brand new hosts with no game or player database defined yet.
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| · | 2 new game variables were also added that allow text values rather then the existing 10 checkbox (on/off) values. The name can be set in the setup page and value can be set in each game's option tab. These values can be displayed in templates with the new [Game.Udef11] and [Game.Udef12] template variablesa
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| · | It is no longer recommended that you delete games in AT. It's advised to mark the game as 'complete' and leave the game defined in AT and leave the game directory. This way AT can continue to read the game's data (like player's AutoScore) even though it will no longer be hosted. To facilitate more games listed in AT, the game list page has been slightly redesigned with filters to show/hide games that are running, completed, joining or stalled.
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| · | Although I'm not aware of an instance where AT's database was lost or became corrupt, this version now keeps the last 10 backups of players (atPlayers.dat), games (atGames.dat), and connections (atConnect.dat). The extensions for backups of the 3 files are saved in this order .bak, .ba1, .ba2, .ba3, .ba4, .ba5, .ba6, .ba7, .ba8, .ba9. In the case of something catastrophic, you can close down AT, take the most recently saved data .bak file and rename it to .dat and then start AT back up.
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| AT flushes data to it's database files :
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| Various situations after checking e-mail (e.g., when a TRN comes in)
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| On the main screen when clicking the 'Games' button
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| On the main screen when clicking the 'Players' button
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| You might consider enhancing this feature by using Windows or some other utility to periodically take additional backups of these .bak...ba9 files. It depends on how active your host is, how much e-mail you get and your paranoia level.
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| · | To aid in developing/debugging teamplates and provide a way to have plain text files created a new [NoHTML] template tag has been created. See the bottom of Display Modifiers topic to read more about this feature.
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| · | AT has always 'hard coded' race names and ignored the race.nm file.. AT now recognizes customized race names and will display them with template variables Race.Name, Race.ShortName and Race.AdjName you can set with various utilities in the race.nm file.
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| · | One of the features I think will attract players to your site is to know how good other players are and compete against them in your games. The only way to evaluate how good players are and which games to join to compete against them is to have a solid Ranking System. So, some effort has been put in expanding AutoTroll's existing ranking system by allowing it to be customized by a new Ranking tab in Setup In addition, the Recalc buton on the player dialog is gone and AT automatically recalculates classes after each host run. After the host run and a new AutoScore file is created for the game, each player's ranking points will be updated. See the ranking system for a description of the difference between ranking points and ranking class.
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| If you have additional suggestions for AT's ranking system please post your comments on sourceforge.
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| Manu
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| · | New [Player.Index] template variable valid within a player cycle that shows the current count/iteration of the player. This can also be used in an [IF..] test as in the below:
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| [CycleEach Player SortBy PlayerRankPoints]
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| [IF Player.index <= 3 ]
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| #[Player.index] [Player.Name]
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| [EndIf]
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| [EndCycle]
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| · | New Cycle for active players. The length of time without an e-mail from a player before they're considered not Active is specified in setup.
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| [CycleEach ActivePlayer]
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| #[Player.index] [Player.Name]
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| [EndCycle]
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| To accomodate this new ActivePlayer cycle, the ActivePlayers variable was renamed to ActivePlayerCount. For consistency, ActiveGames was renamed to ActiveGameCount.
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| · | In addition to the ActivePlayer cycle that loops over only the active players, a new [Player.isActive] boolean variable is valid in any Player cycle. As with any template variable, this can also be used in an [IF ..] test.
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| · | To celebrate this new version, I changed the application icon to the old Red Troll icon I used on ShareNet. I never really liked that satellite icon anyway.
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| · | There were many requests to change the player "Choice" variables to not limit the number from 1..11 and to increase the number of choices. Originally it was to rank order the 11 races in your preference. But people had other uses, so no there are 24 choice variables and the values can be any integer. Some hosts said they'll used 1 of the variables for the player's total score. Another host wanted to use a variable for a count of the games the player has been in, even after the game was deleted from AT.
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| · | Another popular request was to provide a way to have longer descriptions for games. So an unlimited [Game.Memo] template variable was added. This leaves the 2 Description variables limited to 255 characters, and this new Memo with no limit. In addition, hosts wanted an unlimited notes field for players where hosts could keep notes, or any text for a player and save the notes with the player's account. So a new Note field was added to the player page.
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