227 release notes/v227a and v227b

Release dates

• December 26, 2007 (v227a)
• February 10, 2008 (v227b)

Changelog

• A native Linux port is now availible, which runs with OpenGL and SDLSoftDriver for grafix and FMOD for sound. Built in SuSE, works on LFS as well, but needs glibc2.3.
• The OpenGL, D3D8 and D3D9 renderers have been completely reworked and heavily improved with the files from [1]. These renderers support S3TC Textures and make Unreal compatible with most recent grafix cards.
• New Sound Drivers OpenAL and FMOD:
  • OpenAL - Provides hardware support for recent soundcards (best for creative cards), EFX (EAX) reverb soundeffects and full support for multispeaker setups.
  • FMOD - Provides hardware support for recent soundcards, original Unreal reverb soundeffects and full support full support for multispeaker setups.
• Added commands for banning and kickbanning:
  • uhelp: Prints the explanations below
  • uplayers: shows for all players the name, ID, IP-Address, IdentNr and Identity
  • ukickid: kicks a player with a given ID
  • ubanid: kicks and bans a player with a given ID (full ban by IP and Name, even after a restart of the game/server)
  • ubanlist: shows a list with all banned players
  • uunban: unbans a player with the number X (see in banlist for the ban-number)
  • utempbanid: kicks and bans a player until server is restarted
  • utempbanlist: current list of temp-banned players
  • utempunban: unbans a tempbanned player with the number X (see in tempbanlist for the ban-number)
  • utempunbanall: unbans all tempbanned players
• Added: Support for footstepsounds and footprints. However, in order to use these new features, the texture properties need to be changed; there are now 4 slots for different sounds (FootStepSound) the texture produces when walking on, and one variable (Footprint) which defines if the texture should display (or not) a footprint when walking on.
• Added UI-FX - Particle Emitters, Weather Simulator, Vegetation Generator and many things more. Details can be found in the forums.
• Added support for skeletal meshes like UT.
• Added support for HTTP-redirect for map downloading, like in UT.
• Widescreen users can now adjust the FOV in order to adjust Unreal better for their screens (Maybe some mods will override this setting).
• New setting in NetDrv: AllowOlderClients True/False. If set to True, 224, 225 and UGold Clients can join the server, if False, they will get the Upgrade Message. Either way, there's a problem: since the upgrade URL is defined in UpgradeMenu.uc, old clients will be redirected to the old dead upgrade page, and there's nothing I can do about that.
• Added Coop options for easy configuration of Weapon, Items, Flares and Seeds spawn time:
  • bInstantWeaponRespawn
  • bInstantItemRespawn
  • bHighFlareAndSeedRespawn
  • FlareAndSeedRespawnTime
• New and fully working QuadShot, which replaces the old unusable and unfinished quadshot.
• Decals have been added to all Unreal weapons (including the monster weapons): Decals can be added to custom mods as well, but can be turned off if wanted. All weapon decals (or subclasses of Scorch) have a configurable variable called DecalLifeSpan. This variable affects ONLY clients, servers need not apply. This is located under "Decals" then "Lifespan" in preferencesDefault is -1.
  • -1 = default behavior, the effects will disappear upon not being rendered for some amount of time.
  • 0 = infinite. Decals will NEVER disappear. use at your own risk.
  • >0 = time in seconds, 1.1 is 1.1 seconds. 30 is 30 seconds.
• Added support for new difficulty levels (up to 6) for Coop & Singleplayer: they needs to be set with the commandline parameter ?difficulty=X (X=4, 5 or 6)
• New parameter for commandline: -timestamplog, forces Unreal to put a Timestamp after the logfile name, so if you would simply start Unreal with -timestamplog, the logfile will be UnrealYear_Month_Day_Hour_Minute_Second.log If you start it up with -log=server.log -timestamplog, the logfile will be: ServerYear_Month_Day_Hour_Minute_Second.log.
• New Blood effects: Gibs now have blood impact decals. If enabled on client, and the server is 227, dynamic blood splatter will occur on all standard (and most mods) pawns/carcasses. If enabled on server, bleeding will occur, damage is optional. Blood pools will spawn for killed pawns.
• Added 2 new engine consolecommands:
  • GameInfo.ConsoleCommand GetPreLoginAddress, can be used during Event Prelogin call for retreiving the connecting client's IP
  • PlayerPawn.ConsoleCommand UGetIP, smilar to GetPing but returns instead the Client IP.
• Added new parameter in ZoneInfo: If a new damage type and zoneDamageString is supplied in a damaging zone, players will now receive that death message.
• Updated UBrowser Server browser: Bigger default vertical size of that window to show full info of all servers (servername, players, ping, IP, port etc...), without having to resize it.
• Added server version number, which appears on the server list like UT.
• Added "Join with password" button option, when you right click at a server from the list. This window has an ability to save the password so next time you normally connect to that server (through UBrowser) it automatically uses that password. When connecting to an "unknown" server (one where you haven't inputted any password for) it will join with a randomly generated password to protect you from password stealing.
• Added U227GameRules class: can enhance serverside mutators, such as modifying player spawn point, modifying damage, preventing deaths, blocking/modifying chat messages etc... Note that some of these functions may not work with some custom game types that modifies the game. Also using this class will force your mod to be for 227 use only, so try to keep it in use only on server (a nondownloadable package) so older clients can still join the server aswell.
• Added new JumpPad class, UJumpPad.
• Added new setting for Mousehandling to enhance precission with high-resolution mice: Mouse smoothing can be turned off.
• 2 new menus are available: Unreal classic-style and new UMenu (Unreal Gold) style.
• Naliplayer can now be played ingame.
• New implementation allows to use localized chars such as "ö,ä,ü" or other language specific symbols while using say.
• UnrealED 2 used for map editing.