The idea is that if you query an older server that does not support
this packet yet, the client receives an error. The assumption was
that on every "illegal packet" the connection would be closed. This
turns out to be false.
Now CLIENT_GAME_INFO aligns with the old PACKET_CLIENT_NEWGRFS_CHECKED,
which does a pre-check (which fails), and an error is sent back
and the connection is closed.
This is not a nice solution, but it is the best we got.
The lobby of a server requested some parts via UDP and some via
TCP. This is strictly seen fine, but for future extensions it
is a lot easier if just one protocol is used.
Currently we use default OS timeout for TCP connections, which
is around 30s. 99% of the users will never notice this, but there
are a few cases where this is an issue:
- If you have a broken IPv6 connection, using Content Service is
first tried over IPv6. Only after 30s it times out and tries
IPv4. Nobody is waiting for that 30s.
- Upcoming STUN support has several methods of establishing a
connection between client and server. This requires feedback
from connect() to know if any method worked (they have to be
tried one by one). With 30s, this would take a very long time.
What is good to mention, is that there is no good value here. Any
value will have edge-cases where the experience is suboptimal. But
with 3s we support most of the stable connections, and if it fails,
the user can just retry. On the other side of the spectrum, with 30s,
it means the user has no possibility to use the service. So worst case
we annoy a few users with them having the retry vs annoying a few
users which have no means of resolving the situation.
Especially if there are many players online, trying to chat with
the right one can be a visual challenge. This can be solved by
highlighting the row you are on. This visual cue is often enough
for humans to find the right row.
The GUI now more clearly shows some basic information about the
server you joined, your client name (and the ability to change it),
and what players are in which company.
It also contains useful buttons to press to join companies, chat
with other people, and for admins to kick/ban people.
Additionally, renamed "advertised" to "visibility"; this has to
do with future additions, but also because it is more clear in
wording.
This so names from other clients are known valid in the client as well, instead allowing some compromised/bad server to potentially crash clients upon certain expectations.
Strictly seen the comment is true, as it says 'e.g.', but it is
misleading. The server name is just that: the name of the server
as configured. No need to mention advertising.
When ever you saw this debug lines (which you never should), they
showed an empty address. It is also not very useful to have, as it
always points to a known server anyway.
The original idea was that people could find a server they could
talk in their native language on. This isn't really used in that
way. There are several reasons for removing this:
- the client also sends his "language" to the server, but nothing
is doing anything with this.
- flags are a bad way to represent languages, and over the years
we had several (rightfully) complaints about this.
- most servers have their language set to "All", and prefix the
servername with the language it is about. This is a much more
efficient way to do the same.
All in all, this feature should go back to the drawing board.
Maybe it could work in another form, but this form is not it.
