1.7.37 (build 22139, api 9, 2024-12-19)

• Bumping api version to 9. As you'll see below, there's some UI changes that will require a bit of work for any UI mods to adapt to. If your mods don't touch UI stuff at all you can simply bump your api version and call it a day. I'm hopeful that api version won't need to be bumped again for along time (if ever).
• I am pleased to announce that after years of hard work from many members of the community, PirateSpeak is now complete and available as a language choice. This changes everything.
• Heavily reworked and cleaned up the logging system. There is now a 'ba' Python logger and various logger categories under it such as 'ba.lifecycle', 'ba.connectivity' or 'ba.v2transport'. By setting these individual loggers to different levels such as 'debug', one can easily observe and debug specific parts of app behavior. Over time I will better organize the logger hierarchy and wire up more functionality to be logged this way.
• Added a 'Logging' tab to the dev-console. This allows easily setting log levels for all existing Python loggers, as well as resetting them all to defaults. Levels set here are restored on startup, so it is possible to debug app startup behavior by setting log levels and then relaunching the app. Previously this sort of thing would generally require setting cryptic environment variables which was not feasable on all platforms, but this new system should work everywhere.
• Log messages printed to both the command line and the in-app console now include timestamps and logger names, and are color coded for severity (DEBUG=blue, INFO=default, WARNING=orange/yellow, ERROR=red, CRITICAL=purple).
• efro.log is now efro.logging which better lines up with other logging module names. It was originally named log to work around a mypy bug.
• Went ahead and fully removed efro.call.tpartial (since we're breaking compatibility anyway by bumping api version). If you are using efro.call.tpartial anywhere, simply replace it with functools.partial.
• The newest Pylint update (3.3) added a check for 'too-many-positional-arguments'. This seems like a good idea, so I updated various functions to conform to it and set some others to ignore it. Basically if you see a function like def dothing(a, b, *, c, d) then everything after the * needs to be passed as a keyword. So you can't do dothing(val1, val2, val3, val4); you need to do dothing(val1, val2, c=val3, d=val4). Requiring keywords for complex functions generally leads to more readable code and less breakage if arguments are added or removed from the function.
• Playlist customization no longer requires pro.
• Soundtrack customization no longer requires pro.
• Campaign hard mode no longer requires pro.
• Full player profile color customization no longer requires pro.
• Removed nag screens for purchasing pro or bundle offers.
• Removed continue logic. Continues have been disabled server-side for a while but now removing the client code to clean things up a bit.
• Switching over to the new 'toolbar mode' UI that has been in the works for several years. This includes a number of handy things such as consistent buttons and widgets for league status, currencies, inventory, and the store. It also adds a fixed back button on phones that should be easier to hit and a dock for earned treasure chests at the bottom of the screen (will finally use those treasure chest textures!). This is a substantial change so please holler if you run into anything that looks broken or doesn't behave as you think it should.
• When running in 'small' UI mode (phones) the engine now uses 1300x600 as its virtual resolution. This gives a wider 19.5:9 aspect ratio which lines up with most modern smartphones, so people with such phones should no longer see wasted space on the sides of their screen. The virtual resolution on 'medium' and 'large' is now 1280x720. This gives the same 16:9 aspect ratio as the old resolution (1207x680) but is a cleaner number. The 16:9 aspect ratio still works well for tablets monitors, and TVs. When writing a UI, always be sure to test it on 'small', 'medium', and 'large' modes to make sure it fits on screen and feels similar in scale to the rest of the UI. Ideally when 'ui_v2' rolls around we can make it possible to build UIs that adapt better to screen sizes so things like fixed aspect ratios will no longer be necessary.
• Split the main menu UI into two classes: bauiv1.mainmenu.MainMenuWindow and bauiv1.ingamemenu.InGameMenuWindow.
• Removed some bits of bauiv1 which were never fully implemented and which I feel were a flawed/outdated design. This includes UILocation, UILocationWindow, UIEntry, and UIController. The whole purpose of these was to add a higher level layer to the UI to make things like saving/restoring UI states easier, but I now plan to use WindowState classes to accomplish much of that in a more backward-compatible way. More on that below.
• Removed touch-specific button target-area adjustements. If you find any buttons that are now hard to hit accurately on a touchscreen, please holler.
• Added a new bauiv1.Window subclass called bauiv1.MainWindow which handles what was previously called the 'main-menu-window' system which was a bit ad-hoc and messy. MainMenuWindows have a built-in stack system so things like back-button handling are more automatic and windows don't have to hard-code where their back button goes to. There are also other benefits such as better state saving/restoring. When writing a MainWindow, pretty much all navigation should only need too use methods: main_window_has_control(), main_window_back(), and main_window_replace().
• Finally got things updated so language testing works again, and made it a bit spiffier while at it. You now simply point the game at your test language and it will update dynamically as you make edits; no need to download any files. Example: if you are editing PirateSpeak, you should see an id such as 'PirateSpeak_2248' in the website url. You can then go to the game and run import babase; babase.app.lang.testlanguage('PirateSpeak_2248') and you should instantly see some lovely pirate-speak. Also, any changes you make on the website should show up in the game within a few seconds. Enjoy!
• Added urllib3 to our bundled third party Python modules. The engine will be doing more heavy downloading with Asset Packages coming online so its time to upgrade to a more modern web client library than Python's basic built in urllib stuff.
• Pasting a single line of text followed by newlines to the dev console now works. Previously it would complain that multiple lines of text aren't supported, but now it just ignores the trailing newlines.
• Added an 'AppModes' tab to the dev console, allowing switching between any AppModes defined in the current build for testing. Currently this is just SceneV1AppMode and EmptyAppMode. This will become more useful in the future when things like SquadsAppMode (Squads mode) or RemoteAppMode (the revamped BSRemote app) happen.
• Added a 'UI' tab to the dev console allowing debugging virtual screen bounds and testing different UI scales dynamically.
• Renamed SceneV1AppMode to ClassicAppMode and relocated it from the scene_v1 featureset to the classic one. This makes more logical sense since classic is more about app operation and scene_v1 is more about gameplay, though realistically it doesn't matter since those two featuresets are hopelessly entangled. Future parallels such as squads and scene_v2 featuresets should be more independent of eachother.
• Removed the warning when calling ba*.screenmessage in a game context. Hopefully most code has been ported at this point and it has done its job. As a final reminder, ba*.screenmessage() will only show messages locally now; you need to use something like bascenev1.broadcastmessage() to show things to everyone in a game.
• Removed efro.util.enum_by_value() which was a workaround for a Python bug that has been fixed for a few versions now. Instaed of enum_by_value(MyEnumType, foo) you can simply do MyEnumType(foo).
• Removed bauiv1.is_party_icon_visible() as it is now always visible.
• 'ui_scale' is no longer available in _babase.env() since it can now change; use babase.get_ui_scale() to get it now.
• Removed the UIScale control from the devtools window, which was only partially wired up (it did not affect native layer bits). For now the official ways to test UIScales are by using the UI tab in the dev-console or by setting the BA_UI_SCALE env var. If we can get UIScale switches to feel seamless enough at some point, it may be worth adding to display settings.
• There is now a ba*.app.classic.save_ui_state() method that should be called right before jumping into a game/replay/etc. This will save a state that will automatically be restored the next time the main menu activity is entered.
• (build 22010) Added the concept of 'auxiliary' windows and used them to make various window navigation more intuitive. Example: previously, if you were on the co-op screen and pressed the trophy toolbar icon to see your league rank and then pressed back, you would be taken back to the top level main menu. Now it will take you back to the co-op screen.
• (build 22018) Hardened SDL joystick handling code so the app won't crash if SDL_JoystickOpen() returns nullptr for whatever reason.
• (build 22028) Fixed a longstanding issue that could cause logic thread bg-dynamics message overflows.
• Added a close button to the dev-console as an alternate to using key presses to close it.
• (build 22063) Added a 'Copy History' button in the Python tab in the dev-console. Note that this will copy all cached log history; not just what is displayed in the dev-console. This should be handy for diagnosing problems in the future.
• (build 22072) Added a 'Use insecure connections' option in settings -> advanced. This may make it possible to play from places such as Iran where ssl connections are being blocked. Do not enable this if you don't need to.
• (build 22085) Added protection against an attack consisting of spamming invalid game-query packets.
• Using prefab builds on a Mac now requires an Apple Silicon machine (M1 or newer). Mac x86 prefab builds were becoming a major bottleneck in pushing out updates. Please let me know if you are making substantial use of prefab builds on an x86 Mac and I can reconsider. Note that this only concerns the prefab build system; regular official game builds still fully support x86 Macs.
• Added the test-fast Makefile target which skips some slower tests, and wired up make preflight to use this to keep things moving a bit faster. If you are not familiar with it, the preflight target is handy to run before committing code to git.
• The app-modes tab in the dev-console now uses the meta tag system to discover testable app-modes. Previously this would simply list the default_app_modes listed in the projectconfig.json. So now it is possible to make and explicitly test new app modes via mod scripts on vanilla game builds. Note that the game still uses the default_app_modes projectconfig.json value when selecting app-modes at runtime; to change this you need to either change your projectconfig and rebuild or replace ba*.app.mode_selector at runtime with a custom selector that selects your custom app-mode(s).
• The ba*.app.threadpool_submit_no_wait() method has been merged into the threadpool object, so it now is ba*.app.threadpool.submit_no_wait().
• Clarified project rules for snake_case methods in C++ and updated various methods accordingly such as Object::Ref::get() and Object::Ref::exists(). See 'Getter/Setter Function Names' in https://github.com/efroemling/ballistica/wiki/Coding-Style-Guide for more info.

1.7.36 (build 21944, api 8, 2024-07-26)

• Wired up Tokens, BombSquad's new purchasable currency. The first thing these can be used for is storage packs on ballistica.net, but this will expand to other places in the game soon. For a full explanation on why these were added, see https://ballistica.net/whataretokens
• Paid private hosting now uses tokens instead of tickets.
• Wired up initial support for using asset-packages for bundled assets.
• bacloud workspace commands are now a bit smarter; you can now do things like bacloud workspace put . or even just bacloud workspace put and it will work. Previously such cases required explicitly passing the workspace name as a second argument. Both workspace get and workspace put now also have an optional --workspace arg if you want to sync with a workspace different than the local directory name.
• Cleaned up look and feel on horizontal scrollbars, especially when and how they fade in and out.
• Fixed an issue where ConfigNumberEdit objects would draw incorrectly with textscale set to non-1.0 values.
• Fixed a nasty bug with the new stdin handling from 1.7.35 which could cause the stdin thread to spin at 100% cpu usage in some cases (such as when launching the Mac build from the Finder and not a terminal).
• Added a draw_controller_mult arg to bauiv1.imagewidget() to control how brightly the image pulses when its controller widget is selected (can prevent brightly colored images from blowing out too much).
• The Mac version is now correctly rendering to a sRGB colorspace instead of P3. This was causing some bright colors to render extra-eye-destroying bright.
• Fixed an issue with the Repeater() class which could cause key presses in UIs to get lost if many were happening in short succession. An easy way to observe this (at least on my machine) was to press left and right repeatedly in the main menu - some presses would be lost and the selection would 'drift' one direction.
• Replaced all efro.call.tpartial calls with Python's built in functools.partial. Mypy's 1.11 update added full type checking for functools.partial so there's no benefit to maintaining our own special version anymore. This also applies to ba*.Call which is redundant in the same way. Both efro.call.tpartial and ba*.Call will probably be marked deprecated and go away at some point (or more likely simply not included in newer apis such as bauiv2).
• Added a Delete Account button directly to the account section in-game.
• The app now includes build number when looking for custom sys scripts in the mods dir. Previously it would have looked for something like sys/1.7.36 but now it will look for something like sys/1.7.36_21940. I was seeing a lot of crash reports from people creating sys scripts using early builds of some version and then upgrading to later builds of the same version containing incompatibilities with the older sys scripts. This should help with that problem.

1.7.35 (build 21889, api 8, 2024-06-20)

• Fixed an issue where the engine would block at exit on some version of Linux until Ctrl-D was pressed in the calling terminal.
• V2 accounts have been around for a while now, so the old V1 device login button is no longer visible in the account panel. It is currently possible to bring it back by checking 'Show Deprecated Login Types' in advanced settings, but please consider this a warning to upgrade/migrate your account to V2 if you have not done so yet.
• The 'Sign in with a BombSquad account' option is now simply 'Sign In' when that is the only option. So nice and tidy! When other options such as Google Play or Game Center are available it is now called 'Sign in with an email address'.
• The engine now supports signing in or creating email/password accounts in a pop-up web dialog to avoid taking users out of the app. This currently works on the native (not cmake) Mac build but will probably expand to others in the future.
• The ba*.app.env.version and ba*.app.env.build_number values are now ba*.app.env.engine_version and ba*.app.env.engine_build_number. At this point any functionality that cares about versions should be looking at engine version anyway. In the future we can add separate app_version and app_build_number values for spinoff apps, but in the case of BombSquad the app version/build is currently the same as the engine's so we don't need that just yet.
• Reworked the 'Enter Code' dialog into a 'Send Info' dialog. The sendinfo command is 99% of the reason for 'Enter Code' existing, so this simplifies things for that use case and hopefully clarifies its purpose so I can spend less time responding to app reviewers and more time improving the game.
• The Network Testing panel no longer requires being signed in (it just skips one test if not signed in).
• Took a pass through the engine and its servers to make things more ipv6 friendly and prep for an eventual ipv6-only world (though ipv4 won't be going anywhere for a long time). The existing half-hearted state of ipv6 support was starting to cause problems when testing in certain ipv6-only environments, so it was time to clean it up.
• The engine will now establish its persistent v2-transport connections to regional servers using ipv6 when that is the fastest option based on ping tests.
• Improved the efficiency of the connectivity system which determines which regional ballistica server to establish a connection to (All V2 server communication goes through this connection). It now takes geography into account, so if it gets a low ping to a server in South America it won't try pinging Warsaw, etc. Set the env var BA_DEBUG_LOG_CONNECTIVITY=1 if you want to watch it do it's thing and holler if you see any bad results.
• Servers can now provide their public ipv4 and ipv6 addresses in their configs. Previously, a server's address was always determined automatically based on how it connected to the master server, but this would only provide one of the two forms. Now it is possible to provide both.
• Spaz classes now have a default_hitpoints which makes customizing that easier (Thanks rabbitboom!)
• Added docker-gui-release, docker-gui-debug, docker-server-release, docker-server-debug, docker-clean and docker-save targets to Makefile.
• Fixed an issue in Assault where being teleported back to base with a sticky bomb stuck to you would do some crazy rubber-band-launching thing (Thanks vishal332008!)
• The windows-debug and windows-release Makefile targets should properly run the game again (these build the Windows version of the game from a WSL environment).
• WSL Windows builds are now more strict about their locations. Currently this means they must exist somewhere under /mnt/c/. It is turning out that a significant number of behavior workarounds (for file permission quirks, etc.) need to happen to keep these builds behaving, so I'd like to enforce as limited a set of conditions as possible to give us the best chance at succeeding there.
• Added a workaround for WSL Windows builds giving permission errors when staging asset files that already exist. Please holler if you are building with WSL and still running into any sort of errors, as I would love to make that path as reliable as possible.
• Fixed an issue where WSL Windows builds would re-extract everything from efrocache when anything in the cache-map changed (which is the case for most commits). Please holler if you are still seeing lots more 'Extracting:' lines when running builds after pulling small updates from git.
• Added github workflow for making docker image and sphinx docs nightly
• Added github workflow for making build release on tag creation

1.7.34 (build 21823, api 8, 2024-04-26)

• Bumped Python version from 3.11 to 3.12 for all builds and project tools. One of the things this means is that we can use typing.override instead of the typing_extensions.override version so the annoying requirement of installing typing_extensions first thing when setting up the repo introduced a few versions back is finally no longer a thing. I'll try to be careful to avoid falling back into that situation in the future.
• The project now maintains its own Python virtual environment in .venv where it automatically installs whatever Python packages it needs instead of asking the user to do so in their own environment. This should greatly simplify working with the project and keep tool versions more consistent for people. There will likely be some bugs related to this needing to be shaken out, so please holler if you run into any. Namely, most all Makefile targets will now need to depend on the prereqs target which ensures the virtual env is set up. A target that does not do so may error if run on a freshly cloned/cleaned repo, so holler if you run into such a thing.
• There is now a config/requirements.txt file which controls which pip packages are made available in the project's internal virtual environment. Note that this is only for tooling; the actual engine bundles a different minimal set of pip packages.
• Since config/requirements.txt now exists and pip stuff is handled automatically, stripped out the old manual pip requirement management stuff. This includes the list_pip_reqs and get_pip_reqs pcommands and the requirements list in batools.build.
• Some executable scripts such as tools/pcommand and tools/bacloud are now generated dynamically so that they always use the shiny new internal Python virtual-environment. This generation should happen automagically when you build make targets, but please holler if you run into a situation where it does not and you get errors.
• _bascenev1.protocol_version() now properly throws an exception if called while scene-v1 is not active.
• The efro.dataclassio system now supports datetime.timedelta values.
• Usage of pcommandbatch is now disabled by default. To enable it, set the env var BA_PCOMMANDBATCH_ENABLE=1. This is primarily due to rare sporadic failures I have observed or have been informed of, possibly involving socket exhaustion or other hard-to-debug OS conditions. For now I am still considering pcommandbatch supported and may continue to use it myself, but its speed gains may not be worth its added complexity indefinitely. As core counts keep increasing in the future, the time expense of spinning up a new Python process per pcommand decreases, making pcommandbatch less of a win. Please holler if you have any thoughts on this.
• Renamed the prereqs Makefile target to env. This is more concise and feels more accurate now that the target sets up things such as the Python virtual environment and generally gets the project environment ready to use.
• (build 21810) Fixed an issue where AppSubsystems could get inited multiple times (due to functools.cached_property no longer being thread-safe in Python 3.12).
• The server config file is now in toml format instead of yaml. Python has built in support for reading toml as of 3.11 which means we don't have to bundle extra packages, and toml has more of a clean minimal design that works well for config files. Also I plan to use it for AssetPackage configuration stuff so this keeps things consistent.
• The server config can now be set to a .json file as an alternative to the default .toml. This can be handy when procedurally generating server configs. If no --config path is explicitly passed, it will look for config.json and config.toml in the same dir as the script in that order.

1.7.33 (build 21795, api 8, 2024-03-24)

• Stress test input-devices are now a bit smarter; they won't press any buttons while UIs are up (this could cause lots of chaos if it happened).
• Added a 'Show Demos When Idle' option in advanced settings. If enabled, the game will show gameplay demos (a slightly modified form of the stress test) periodically after sitting idle at the main menu for a bit. Like an old arcade game. I added this for an upcoming conference appearance but though people might like to enable it in other cases.
• Replays now have a play/pause button alongside the speed adjustment buttons (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Players now get points for killing bots with their own bombs by catching it and throwing it back at them. This is actually old logic but was disabled due to a logic flaw, but should be fixed now. (Thanks VinniTR!)
• Updated the 'Settings->Advanced->Enter Code' functionality to talk to the V2 master server (V1 is still used as a fallback).
• Adopted the @override decorator in all Python code and set up Mypy to enforce its usage. Currently override comes from typing_extensions module but when we upgrade to Python 3.12 soon it will come from the standard typing module. This decorator should be familiar to users of other languages; I feel it helps keep logic more understandable and should help us catch problems where a base class changes or removes a method and child classes forget to adapt to the change.
• Added a reset button in the input mapping menu. (Thanks Temp!)
• Respawn icons now have dotted steps showing decimal progress to assist players on calculating when they are gonna respawn. (Thanks 3alTemp!)
• Replays now have rewind/fast-forward buttons!! (Thanks Dliwk, vishal332008!)
• Custom spaz "curse_time" values now work properly. (Thanks Temp!)
• Implemented efro.dataclassio.IOMultiType which will make my life a lot easier.
• Punches no longer physically affect powerup boxes which should make it easier to grab the powerup (Thanks VinniTR!).
• The 'Manual' party tab now supports entering IPv6 addresses (Thanks brostos!).
• Fixes a bug where Meteor Shower could make the game-end bell sound twice (Thanks 3alTemp!).
• Leaving the game or dying while touching your team's flag will no longer recover & return it indefinitely in a teams game of Capture the Flag. (Thanks 3alTemp!)
• Added a server config setting for max players (not max clients) (Thanks EraOSBeta!)
• Added a UI for customizing Series Length in Teams and Points-to-Win in FFA (Thanks EraOSBeta!)
• Implemented HEX code support to the advanced color picker (Thanks 3alTemp!)
• Players leaving the game after getting hurt will now grant kills. (Thanks Temp!)
• Sphinx based Python documentation generation is now wired up (Thanks Loup-Garou911XD!)
• Renaming & overwriting existing profiles is no longer possible (Thanks Temp!)
• Cleaned up builds when running under WSL. Things like make mypy should now work correctly there, and it should now be possible to build and run either Linux or Windows builds there.
• Added an allow_clear_button arg to bauiv1.textwidget() which can be used to disable the 'X' button that clears editable text widgets.

1.7.32 (build 21741, api 8, 2023-12-20)

• Fixed a screen message that no one will ever see (Thanks vishal332008?...)
• Plugins window now displays 'No Plugins Installed' when no plugins are present (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Old messages are now displayed as soon as you press 'Unmute Chat' (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Added an 'Add to Favorites' entry to the party menu (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Now displays 'No Parties Added' in favorites tab if no favorites are present (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Now shows character icons in the profiles list window (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Added a Random button for names in the Player Profiles window (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Fixed a bug where no server is selected by default in the favorites tab (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Fixed a bug where no replay is selected by default in the watch tab (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Fixed a bug where no profile is selected by default in the profile tab (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Fixed a number of UI screens so that ugly window edges are no longer visible in corners on modern ultra wide phone displays.
• Added a player_rejoin_cooldown server config option. This defaults to 10 seconds for servers but 0 for normal gui clients. This mechanism had been introduced recently to combat multiplayer fast-rejoin exploits and was set to 10 seconds everywhere, but it could tend to be annoying for local single player play, dev testing, etc. Hopefully this strikes a good balance now.
• Removed the player-rejoin-cooldown mechanism from the C++ layer since it was redundant with the Python level one and didn't cover as many cases.
• Restored the behavior from before 1.7.28 where backgrounding the app would bring up the main menu and pause the action. Now it is implemented more cleanly however (an on_app_active_changed() call in the AppMode class). This means that it also applies to other platforms when the app reaches the 'inactive' state; for instance when minimizing the window on the SDL build.

1.7.31 (build 21727, api 8, 2023-12-17)

• Added bascenev1.get_connection_to_host_info_2() which is an improved type-safe version of bascenev1.get_connection_to_host_info().
• There is now a link to the official Discord server in the About section (thanks EraOSBeta!).
• Native stack traces now work on Android; woohoo! Should be very helpful for debugging.
• Added the concept of 'ui-operations' in the native layer to hopefully clear out the remaining double-window bugs. Basically, widgets used to schedule their payload commands to a future cycle of the event loop, meaning it was possible for commands that switched the main window to get scheduled twice before the first one ran (due to 2 key presses, etc), which could lead to all sorts of weirdness happening such as multiple windows popping up when one was intended. Now, however, such commands get scheduled to a current 'ui-operation' and then run almost immediately, which should prevent such situations. Please holler if you run into any UI weirdness at this point.

1.7.30 (build 21697, api 8, 2023-12-08)

• Continued work on the big 1.7.28 update.
• Got the Android version back up and running. There's been lots of cleanup and simplification on the Android layer, cleaning out years of cruft. This should put things in a better more maintainable place, but there will probably be some bugs to iron out, so please holler if you run into any.
• Minimum supported Android version has been bumped from 5.0 to 6.0. Some upcoming tech such as ASTC textures will likely not be well supported on such old devices, so I think it is better to leave them running an older version that performs decently instead of a newer version that performs poorly. And letting go of old Android versions lets us better support new ones.
• Android version now uses the 'Oboe' library as an audio back-end instead of OpenSL. This should result in better behaving audio in general. Please holler if you experience otherwise.
• Bundled Android Python has been bumped to version 3.11.6.
• Android app suspend behavior has been revamped. The app should stay running more often and be quicker to respond when dialogs or other activities temporarily pop up in front of it. This also allows it to continue playing music over other activities such as Google Play Games Achievements/Leaderboards screens. Please holler if you run into strange side effects such as the app continuing to play audio when it should not be.
• Modernized the Android fullscreen setup code when running in Android 11 or newer. The game should now use the whole screen area, including the area around notches or camera cutouts. Please holler if you are seeing any problems related to this.
• (build 21626) Fixed a bug where click/tap locations were incorrect on some builds when tv-border was on (Thanks for the heads-up Loup(Dliwk's fan)!).
• (build 21631) Fixes an issue where '^^^^^^^^^^^^^' lines in stack traces could get chopped into tiny bits each on their own line in the dev console.
• Hopefully finally fixed a longstanding issue where obscure cases such as multiple key presses simultaneously could cause multiple main menu windows to pop up. Please holler if you still see this problem happening anywhere. Also added a few related safety checks and warnings to help ensure UI code is free from such problems going forward. To make sure your custom UIs are behaving well in this system, do the following two things: 1) any time you call set_main_menu_window(), pass your existing main menu window root widget as from_window. 2) In any call that can lead to you switching the main menu window, check if your root widget is dead or transitioning out first and abort if it is. See any window in ui_v1_lib for examples.
• (build 21691) Fixed a bug causing touches to not register in some cases on newer Android devices. (Huge thanks to JESWIN A J for helping me track that down!).
• Temporarily removed the pause-the-game-when-backgrounded behavior for locally hosted games, mainly due to the code being hacky. Will try to restore this functionality in a cleaner way soon.

1.7.29 (build 21619, api 8, 2023-11-21)

• Simply continued work on the big 1.7.28 update. I was able to finally start updating the Mac App Store version of the game again (it had been stuck at 1.4!), and it turns out that Apple AppStore submissions require the version number to increase each time and not just the build number, so we may start seeing more minor version number bumps for that reason.
• Windows builds should now die with a clear error when the OpenGL version is too old (OpenGL 3.0 or newer is required). Previously they could die with more cryptic error messages such as "OpenGL function 'glActiveTexture2D' not found".

1.7.28 (build 21599, api 8, 2023-11-16)

• Turning off ticket continues on all platforms. I'll be moving the game towards a new monetization scheme mostly based on cosmetics and this has always felt a bit ugly pay-to-win to me, so it's time for it to go. Note that the functionality is still in there if anyone wants to support it in mods.
• Massively cleaned up code related to rendering and window systems (OpenGL, SDL, etc). This code had been growing into a nasty tangle for 15 years attempting to support various old/hacked versions of SDL, etc. I ripped out huge chunks of it and put back still-relevant pieces in a much more cleanly designed way. This should put us in a much better place for supporting various platforms and making graphical improvements going forward. ballistica/base/app_adapter/app_adapter_sdl.cc is an example of the now nicely implemented system.
• The engine now requires OpenGL 3.0 or newer on desktop and OpenGL ES 3.0 or newer on mobile. This means we're cutting off a few percent of old devices on Android that only support ES 2, but ES 3 has been out for 10 years now so I feel it is time. As mentioned above, this allows massively cleaning up the graphics code which means we can start to improve it. Ideally now the GL renderer can be abstracted a bit more which will make the process of writing other renderers easier.
• Removed gamma controls. These were only active on the old Mac builds anyway and are being removed from the upcoming SDL3, so if we want this sort of thing we should do it through shading in the renderer now.
• Implemented both vsync and max-fps for the SDL build of the game. This means you can finally take advantage of that nice high frame rate monitor on your PC. Vsync supports 'Disable', 'Enabled' and 'Auto', which attempts to use 'adaptive' vsync if available, and no vsync otherwise.
• Spent some time tuning a few frame-timing mechanisms, so motion in the game should appear significantly smoother in some cases. Please let me know if it ever appears less smooth than before or if you see what looks like weird speed changes which could be timing problems.
• Debug speed adjustments are now Ctrl-plus or Ctrl-minus instead of just plus or minus. This makes these safer in case we want to enable them in regular builds at some point.
• Flashing things in the game (powerups about to disappear, etc.) now flash at a consistent rate even on high frame rate setups.
• Renamed Console to DevConsole, and added an option under advanced settings to always show a 'dev' button onscreen which can be used to toggle it. The backtick key still works also for anyone with a keyboard. I plan to add more functionality besides just the Python console to the dev-console, and perhaps improve the Python console a bit too (add support for on-screen keyboards, etc.)
• The in-app Python console text is now sized up on phone and tablet devices, and is generally a bit larger everywhere.
• Added an API to define DevConsole tabs via Python. Currently it supports basic buttons and text, but should be easy to expand to whatever we need. See babase/_devconsole.py. It should be easy to define new tabs via plugins/etc.
• Cleaned up onscreen keyboard support and generalized it to make it possible to support other things besides widgets and to make it easier to implement on other platforms.
• Added onscreen keyboard support to the in-app Python console and added an Exec button to allow execing it without a return key on a keyboard. The cloud console is probably still a better way to go for most people but this makes at least simple things possible without an internet connection for most Android users.
• Pressing esc when the DevConsole is in its small form now dismisses it instead of toggling it to its large form.
• Added some high level functionality for copying and deleting feature-sets to the spinoff tool. For example, to create your own poo feature-set based on the existing template_fs one, do tools/spinoff fset-copy template_fs poo. Then do make update and make cmake to build and run the app, and from within it you should be able to do import bapoo to get at your nice shiny poo feature-set. When you are done playing around, you can do tools/spinoff fset-delete poo to blow away any traces of it.
• Public builds now properly reconstruct the CMakeLists.txt file for project changes.
• Efrocache now supports a starter-archive when building server builds. This means that if you do something like make clean; make prefab-server-release-build you should see just a few file downloads happening instead of the hundreds that would happen before, which should be significantly faster & more efficient.
• Updated internal Python builds for Apple & iOS to 3.11.5, and updated a few dependent libraries as well (OpenSSL bumped from 3.0.8 to 3.0.10, etc.).
• Cleaned up the babase.quit() mechanism. The default for the 'soft' arg is now true, so a vanilla babase.quit() should now be a good citizen on mobile platforms. Also added the g_base->QuitApp() call which gives the C++ layer a high level equivalent to the Python call.
• (build 21326) Fixed an uninitialized variable that could cause V1 networking to fail in some builds/runs (thanks Rikko for the heads-up).
• (build 21327) Fixed an issue that could cause the app to pause for 3 seconds at shutdown.
• Worked to improve sanity checking on C++ RenderComponents in debug builds to make it easier to use and avoid sending broken commands to the renderer. Some specifics follow.
• RenderComponents (C++ layer) no longer need an explicit Submit() at the end; if one goes out of scope not in the submitted state it will implicitly run a submit. Hopefully this will encourage concise code where RenderComponents are defined in tight scopes.
• RenderComponents now have a ScopedTransform() call which can be used to push and pop the transform stack based on C++ scoping instead of the old PushTransform/PopTransform. This should make it harder to accidentally break the transform stack with unbalanced components.
• Fixes an issue related to incorrect die-message handling by hockey pucks (fix #617). Thanks EraOSBeta!
• Fixes an issue where clamped player-name would display incorrectly if extra spaces are present (fix #618). Thanks vishal332008!
• Fixes an issue where King of the Hill scoreboard did not display immediately (fix #614). Thanks heLlow-step-sis!
• Fixes an issue where CTF flag return counters could get stuck (fix #584). Thanks SoK05 and Dliwk!
• In cases where there's no browser available, the v2 account sign-in URL can now be tapped to copy it (Thanks vishal332008!).
• Removed the bits from babase.app that were deprecated in 1.7.27. I know that was only one version ago, but this version has been cooking for a while now.
• Visual Studio projects have been updated to target Visual Studio 2022.
• Now that all our compilers support it, updating from the C++17 standard to C++20. This will allow a few useful things such as being able to pack 8 bools into 1 byte.
• Created a custom icon for BombSquad (previously it was just the BombSquad icon with an ugly 'C' on it). BombSquad itself will still have the BombSquad icon.
• Changed AppState.NOT_RUNNING to AppState.NOT_STARTED since not-running could be confused with a state such as paused.
• Changed the general app-state terms 'pause' and 'resume' to 'suspend' and 'unsuspend'. (note this has nothing to do with pausing in the game which is still called pausing). The suspend state is used by mobile versions when backgrounded and basically stops all activity in the app. I may later add another state called 'paused' for when the app is still running but there is an OS dialog or ad or something in front of it. Though perhaps another term would be better to avoid confusion with the act of pausing in the game ('inactive' maybe?).
• Fixed an issue that could cause a few seconds delay when shutting down if internet access is unavailable.
• Generalized the UI system to accept a delegate object, of which UIV1 is now one. In the future this will allow plugging in UIV2 instead or other UI systems.
• Headless builds now plug in no ui delegate instead of UIV1, so one must avoid calling UI code from servers now. This should reduce server resource usage a bit. Please holler if this causes non-trivial problems. In general, code that brings up UI from gameplay contexts should check the value of ba.app.env.headless and avoid doing so when that is True.
• Cleaned up quit behavior a bit more. The babase.quit() call now takes a single babase.QuitType enum instead of the multiple bool options it took before. It also takes a confirm bool arg which allows it to be used to bring up a confirm dialog.
• Clicking on a window close button to quit no longer brings up a confirm dialog and instead quits immediately (though with a proper graceful shutdown and a lovely little fade).
• Camera shake is now supported in network games and replays. Somehow I didn't notice that was missing for years. The downside is this requires a server to be hosting protocol 35, which cuts off support for 1.4 clients. So for now I am keeping the default at 33. Once there a fewer 1.4 clients around we can consider changing this (if everything hasn't moved to SceneV2 by then).
• Added a server option to set the hosting protocol for servers who might want to allow camera shake (or other minor features/fixes) that don't work in the default protocol 33. See protocol_version in config.yaml. Just remember that you will be cutting off support for older clients if you use 35.
• Fixed a bug with screen-messages animating off screen too fast when frame rates are high.
• Added a proper graceful shutdown process for the audio server. This should result in fewer ugly pops and warning messages when the app is quit.
• Tidied up some keyboard shortcuts to be more platform-appropriate. For example, toggling fullscreen on Windows is now Alt+Enter or F11.
• Fancy rebuilt Mac build should now automatically sync its frame rate to the display its running on (using CVDisplayLinks, not VSync).
• Mac build is now relying solely on Apple's Game Controller Framework, which seems pretty awesome these days. It should support most stuff SDL does and with less configuring involved. Please holler if you come across something that doesn't work.
• Mac build is also now using the Game Controller Framework to handle keyboard events. This should better handle things like modifier keys and also will allow us to use that exact same code on the iPad/iPhone version.
• OS key repeat events are no longer passed through the engine. This means that any time we want repeating behavior, such as holding an arrow key to move through UI elements, we will need to wire it up ourselves. We already do this for things like game controllers however, so this is more consistent in a way.
• Dev console no longer claims key events unless the Python tab is showing and there is a hardware keyboard attached. This allows showing dev console tabs above gameplay without interfering with it.
• Added clipboard paste support to the dev console python terminal.
• Added various text editing functionality to the dev console python terminal (cursor movement, deleting chars and words, etc.)
• Internal on-screen-keyboard now has a cancel button (thanks vishal332008!)
• Public servers list now shows 'No servers found' if there are no servers to show instead of just remaining mysteriously blank (thanks vishal332008!)
• Players are now prevented from rejoining a session for 10 seconds after they leave to prevent game exploits. Note this is different than the existing system that prevents joining a party for 10 seconds; this covers people who never leave the party (Thanks EraOSBeta!).
• Fixes an issue where servers could be crashed by flooding them with join requests (Thanks for the heads-up Era!).
• The engine will now ignore empty device config dicts and fall back to defaults; these could theoretically happen if device config code fails somewhere and it previously would leave the device mysteriously inoperable.
• The game will now show for controls with no bindings in the in-game guide and controller/keyboard config screens.
• Fixed a crash that could occur if SDL couldn't find a name for connected joystick.
• Simplified the app's handling of broken config files. Previously it would do various complex things such as offering to edit the broken config on desktop builds, avoiding overwriting broken configs, and automatically loading previous configs. Now, if it finds a broken config, it will simply back it up to a .broken file, log an error message, and then start up normally with a default config. This way, things are more consistent across platforms, and technical users can still fix and restore their old configs. Note that the app still also writes .prev configs for extra security, though it no longer uses them for anything itself.
• Converted more internal engine time values from milliseconds to microseconds, including things like the internal EventLoop timeline. Please holler if you notice anything running 1000x too fast or slow. In general my strategy going forward is to use microseconds for exact internal time values but to mostly expose float seconds to the user, especially on the Python layer. There were starting to be a few cases were integer milliseconds was not enough precision for internal values. For instance, if we run with unclamped framerates and hit several hundred FPS, milliseconds per frame would drop to 0 which caused some problems. Note that scenev1 will be remaining on milliseconds internally for compatibility reasons. Scenev2 should move to microseconds though.
• The V2 account id for the signed in account is now available at ba*.app.plus.accounts.primary.accountid (alongside some other existing account info).
• (build 21585) Fixed an issue where some navigation key presses were getting incorrectly absorbed by text widgets. (Thanks for the heads-up Temp!)
• (build 21585) Fixed an issue where texture quality changes would not take effect until next launch.
• Added a 'glow_type' arg to bauiv1.textwidget() to adjust the glow used when the text is selected. The default is 'gradient' but there is now a 'uniform' option which may look better in some circumstances.

1.7.27 (build 21282, api 8, 2023-08-30)

• Fixed a rare crash that could occur if the app shuts down while a background thread is making a web request. The app will now try to wait for any such attempts to complete.
• Fixed a bug where PlayerSpaz used bs.apptime() where bs.time() should have been used (thanks EraOSBeta!).
• Added babase.app.env which is a type-friendly object containing various environment/runtime values. Values directly under app such as babase.app.debug_build will either be consolidated here or moved to classic if they are considered deprecated.
• Started using Python's warnings module to announce deprecations, and turned on deprecation warnings for the release build (by default in Python they are mostly only on for debug builds). This way, when making minor changes, I can keep old code paths intact for a few versions and warn modders that they should transition to new code paths before the old ones disappear. I'd prefer to avoid incrementing api-version again if at all possible since that is such a dramatic event, so this alternative will hopefully allow gently evolving some things without too much breakage.
• Following up on the above two entries, several attributes under babase.app have been relocated to babase.app.env and the originals have been given deprecation warnings and will disappear sometime soon. This includes build_number, device_name, config_file_path, version, debug_build, test_build, data_directory, python_directory_user, python_directory_app, python_directory_app_site, api_version, on_tv, vr_mode, toolbar_test, arcade_mode, headless_mode, demo_mode, and protocol_version.
• Reverting the Android keyboard changes from 1.7.26, as I've received a few reports of bluetooth game controllers now thinking they are keyboards. I'm thinking I'll have to bite the bullet and implement something that asks the user what the thing is to solve cases like that.
• Added tags allowing easily stripping code out of spinoff projects when a specific feature-set is not present. For example, to strip lines out when feature-set 'foo' is not present, surround them by lines containing __SPINOFF_REQUIRE_FOO_BEGIN__ and __SPINOFF_REQUIRE_FOO_END__.

1.7.26 (build 21259, api 8, 2023-08-29)

• Android should now be better at detecting hardware keyboards (you will see 'Configure Keyboard' and 'Configure Keyboard P2' buttons under Settings->Controllers if a hardware keyboard is detected). It can be a bit tricky distinguishing between gamepad type devices and keyboards on Android, so please holler if you have a gamepad that now suddenly thinks it is a keyboard or anything like that.
• Various general improvements to the pcommand (project command) system.
• Modules containing pcommand functions are now named with an 's' - so pcommands.py instead of pcommand.py. pcommand.py in efrotools is now solely related to the functioning of the pcommand system.
• Implemented the pcommandbatch system, which is a way to run pcommands using a simple local server/client architecture, and set up key build targets to use that by default instead of regular pcommand. In some cases, such as when assembling build assets, this can speed things up by 5x or so. Run make pcommandbatch_speed_test to see what the theoretical biggest speedup is on your system. If you run into any problems that seem to be related to this, you can disable it by setting env var BA_PCOMMANDBATCH_DISABLE=1 which will cause everything to go use regular old pcommand. See docs in tools/efrotools/pcommandbatch.py for more info.
• Renamed the various App C++ classes to AppAdapter which better represents their current intended role. They are not a general interface to app functionality, but rather adapt the app to a particular paradigm or api (VR, Headless, SDL GUI, etc.). Also am trying to move any functionality out of those classes that does not fit that definition.
• Started cleaning up the app shutdown process. This will allow the app to gracefully run tasks such as syncing account data to the cloud or disk or properly closing the audio system when shutting down. It also means there should be more consistent use of the 'Quit?' confirm window. Please holler if you see any odd behavior when trying to quit the app.
• Unix TERM signal now triggers graceful app shutdown.
• Added app.add_shutdown_task() to register coroutines to be run as part of shutdown.
• Removed app.iircade_mode. RIP iiRcade :(.
• Changed AppState.INITIAL to AppState.NOT_RUNNING, added a AppState.NATIVE_BOOTSTRAPPING, and changed AppState.LAUNCHING to AppState.INITING. These better describe what the app is actually doing while in those states.

1.7.25 (build 21211, api 8, 2023-08-03)

• Fixed an issue where the main thread was holding the Python GIL by default in monolithic builds with environment-managed event loops. This theoretically could have lead to stuttery performance in the Android or Mac builds.
• Did a bit of cleanup on baenv.py in preparation for some additional setup it will soon be doing to give users more control over logging.
• getconfig and setconfig in efrotools are now getprojectconfig and setprojectconfig (to reflect the file name changes that happened in 1.7.20).
• The efrocache system (how assets and prebuilt binaries are downloaded during builds) now uses a efrocache_repository_url value in config/projectconfig.json instead of being hard-coded to my server. This makes it possible to theoretically set up mirror servers. I currently keep the cache pruned to the last few months worth of files but theoretically someone could set up a server that never gets pruned and contains all history from now until forever. Efrocache is basically just a big pile of files organized by their hashes (see tools/efrotools/efrocache.py for details).
• On a related note, the .efrocachemap file now just contains hashes instead of full urls per file (which were based on those hashes anyway).
• The default efrocache file location is now .cache/efrocache instead of .efrocache. Feel free to blow away any .efrocache dir if you still have one (or move it to the new path to avoid having to download things again).
• It is now possible to set an EFROCACHE_DIR env var to tell efrocache to store its local files somewhere besides the per-project default of .cache/efrocache. This can save a lot of download time if you want to share it between multiple repos or are doing full cleans/rebuilds a lot (if it is outside the project dir it won't get blown away during cleans). Efrocache dirs are universal (again its just a big pile of files organized by hash) so there should be no issues sharing cache dirs. Another nice side effect of maintaining a single local efrocache dir is that anything you've ever built will still be buildable; otherwise if your build tries to download very old cache files they may no longer be available on my efrocache server.
• Hardened efrocache code a bit so that failures during downloads or decompresses are less likely to leave problematic half-made stuff lying around. Namely, things are now always downloaded or decompressed into temp dirs and only moved into their final locations once that completes successfully. Its extra important to be safe now that its possible to share local efrocache dirs between projects or otherwise keep them around longer.
• Experimenting a bit with adding support for Pyright type-checking. This could theoretically allow for a really great interactive Python environment in Visual Studio Code (and potentially other editors), so am seeing if it is worth officially supporting in addition to or as a replacement for Mypy. See tools/pcommand pyright

1.7.24 (build 21199, api 8, 2023-07-27)

• Fixed an issue where respawn icons could disappear in epic mode (Thanks for the heads-up Rikko!)
• The BA_ENABLE_IRONY_BUILD_DB optional build env-var is now BA_ENABLE_COMPILE_COMMANDS_DB since this same functionality can be used by clangd or other tools. Originally I was using it for Irony for Emacs; hence the old name.
• Due to the cleanup done in 1.7.20, it is now possible to build and run Ballistica as a 'pure' Python app consisting of binary Python modules loaded by a standard Python interpreter. This new build style is referred to as 'modular'. The traditional form of the app, where we bootstrap Python ourselves inside a standalone binary, is called 'monolithic'. To build and run Ballistica in modular form, you can do make cmake-modular or make cmake-modular-server. This should make it easier to use certain things like Python debuggers with Ballistica. While I expect most builds of the engine to remain monolithic, this may become the default for certain situations such as server builds or possibly Linux builds if it seems beneficial. We'll see. Modular mode should work on Linux and Mac currently; other platforms remain monolithic-only for now.
• Changed builds such as cmake and cmake-server to be more like the new cmake-monolithic-* builds; there is now a staged dir that built binaries are symlinked into instead of just dumping a ba_data into the cmake build dir. This keeps things a bit cleaner with fewer build-related files interspersed with the stuff that Ballistica expects to be there at runtime. This also allows an elegant -dist flag to be used with the staging command to copy files instead of symlinking them.
• Changed path wrangling a bit in baenv.py. All ballistica Python paths (including python-site-packages) are now placed before any other existing Python paths. This should provide a more consistent environment and means Ballistica will always use its own version of things like yaml or certifi or typing_extensions instead of ones the user has installed via pip. Holler if you run into any problems because of this and we can make an option to use the old behavior where Ballistica's app and site paths get placed at the end.
• It is now possible to manually run the app loop even on monolithic builds; just do PYTHONPATH=ba_data/python ./bombsquad -c "import baenv; baenv.configure(); import babase; babase.app.run()". This is basically the same thing modular builds are doing except that they use a regular Python interpreter instead of the bombsquad binary.
• Cleaned up the tools/pcommand stage_assets command. It now always expects a separate -debug or -release arg. So old commands such as tools/pcommand stage_assets -win-Win32-Debug . now look like tools/pcommand stage_assets -win-Win32 -debug .. Please holler if you run into any broken asset-staging calls in the Makefile/etc.
• FeatureSet.has_native_python_module has been renamed to FeatureSet.has_python_binary_module to be more consistently with related functionality.
• Renamed stage_assets to stage_build and the module it lives in from assetstaging to simply staging. The staging stuff now covers more things than simply asset files so this is a more accurate name.
• Added babase.fatal_error(). Mod code should generally never use this, but it can be useful for core engine code to directly and clearly point out problems that cannot be recovered from (Exceptions in such cases can tend to be 'handled' which leads to a broken or crashing app).

1.7.23 (build 21178, api 8, 2023-07-19)

• Network security improvements. (Thanks Dliwk!)
• You can now double click a chat message to copy it. (Thanks Vishal332008!)
• Android's audio library has been updated to the latest version (and is now much easier for me to keep up to date). Please holler if you run into anything wonky related to audio.
• Updated our C json handling code to the latest version of cJSON. Should fix some potential vulnerabilities.

1.7.22 (build 21165, api 8, 2023-07-11)

• Fixed a very rare race condition when launching threads or sending synchronous cross-thread messages. This was manifesting as one out of several thousand server launches hanging.
• Changed health box from a red cross to a green cross (turns out games aren't supposed to use red crosses for health for legal reasons).
• Cleaned up how Android sets up its OpenGL context; it should be more flexible with the config formats it allows may might fix rare cases of graphics setup failing (such as with latest Android emulator for me). Please holler if you see any graphics wonkiness with this update.
• Added SoK's explodinary icon to the game's custom text drawing because SoK is awesome.
• (build 21165) Fixed an issue on Android that could lead to crashes if device events occurred very early at launch (button presses, joystick movement, etc.)

1.7.21 (build 21152, api 8, 2023-06-27)

• Fixed an issue where server builds would not always include collision meshes.
• Upgraded Python to 3.11.4 on Android builds.
• Cleaned up the language subsystem and the process for applying app-config changes a bit. Please holler if you see weirdness in either.
• QR code textures now have a soft limit of 64 bytes for their addresses. Warnings will be given for longer addresses up to 96 bytes at which point qr code creation will fail. This should keep the images reasonably readable and avoids a crash that could occur when more data was provided than could physically fit in the qr code.
• PotentialPlugin has been renamed to PluginSpec and the list of them renamed from babase.app.plugins.potential_plugins to babase.app.plugins.plugin_specs.
• Added a simpler warning message when plugins are found that need to be updated for the new api version.
• Previously, the app would only check api version on plugins when initially registering them. This meant that once a plugin was enabled, the app would always try to load it even if api version stopped matching. This has been corrected; now if the api version doesn't match it will never be loaded.
• Fixed an error where plugins nested more than one level such as mypackage.myplugin.MyPlugin would fail to load.
• Removed the display_name attr from the PluginSpec class, as it was simply set to class_path. It seems that referring to plugins simply by their class-paths is a reasonable system for now.
• Added enabled, loadable, attempted_load and plugin attrs to the PluginSpec class. This should make it easier to interact with the overall app plugin situation without having to do hacky raw config wrangling.
• Plugins should now show up more sensibly in the plugins UI in some cases. For example, a plugin which was previously loading but no longer is after an api-version change will still show up in the list as red instead of not showing up at all.

1.7.20 (build 21140, api 8, 2023-06-22)

• This seems like a good time for a refactoring release in anticipation of changes coming in 1.8. Basically this means that a lot of things will be getting moved or renamed, though their actual functionality should remain mostly the same. This will allow modders to prepare for some of what is coming in 1.8 without having to worry about functionality changing also. Hopefully this will be easier than dumping everything at once when 1.8.0 drops.
• Bumped api-version from 7 to 8. There will be enough breaking changes here that I think it's a good thing to force modders to explicitly check/update their stuff.
• Started work on the ba.app.components subsystem which will be used by different app-modes, plugins, etc. to override various app functionality.
• Removed telnet support. This never worked great, has been disabled in server builds for a while now, and cloud console mostly eliminates its use case.
• Added the baclassic package. As more modern stuff like app-modes, squads-mode, and scene-versions start to come online, code specific to more hard-coded classic ways of doing things will get migrated here to keep things clean and maintainable. Though there are no plans to remove classic functionality from the game anytime soon, this functionality may become unavailable in some contexts such as when modding cloud servers.
• Added a baclassic.ClassicSubsystem singleton accessible as ba.app.classic. Various older bits from ba.app and elsewhere will start to be migrated there. Note that the value for ba.app.classic can be None if classic is not present, so code should try to handle that case cleanly when possible.
• Moved a number of attributes and methods from ba.app to ba.app.classic. This includes things like spaz_appearances, campaigns, and maps.
• ba.app.accounts_v1 is now ba.app.classic.accounts.
• ba.app.accounts_v2 is now ba.app.accounts. Going forward, most all account functionality should go through this native v2 stuff.
• 'Model' and 'CollideModel' are now known as 'Mesh' and 'CollisionMesh' respectively. I've been wanting to make this change for a while since that more accurately describes what is currently stored in a .bob/.cob file. I would like to reserve the term 'Model' for use in the future; probably for something that can represent multiple meshes, collision-meshes, shading, etc. wrapped up into a single unit. To update your code for this change, just search for all variations of 'model', 'Model', 'collide_model', ' CollideModel', etc. and replace them with the equivalent ' Mesh' or 'CollisionMesh' forms. There should be no remaining uses of 'model' in ballistica currently so you should be able to track everything down this way.
• Added the bascenev1 package. Scene-versions are a major upcoming feature in 1.8 which for the first time will allow us to make substantial additions and changes to low-level game-related types such as nodes, models, and textures without breaking backwards compatibility. (bascenev2, etc.) The first step of this process will be to move all existing gameplay types into bascenev1. So instead of looking like: import ba; ba.newnode(), gameplay code might look more like import bascenev1 as bs; bs.newnode() (Wheeee 'bs' is back!).
• Added the bauiv1 package. This contains all of the existing user-interface functionality. Similar to bascenev1, most existing UI code now uses the convention import bauiv1 as bui. This versioning will allow us to evolve nicer UI systems in the future (bauiv2, etc.) while keeping existing UIs functional.
• Many common bits from ba are now available from bascenev1 and/or bauiv1. For instance, bascenev1.app and bauiv1.app are the same as ba.app. The goal is that most gameplay related modules should only need to import bascenev1 and most UI related modules only bauiv1 to keep things as simple as possible. The ba package is now mainly a common repository of functionality for these client-facing packages to pull from and should not often need to be used directly.
• There is no longer a 'ui' context. Previously, lots of common functionality would differ in behavior when executed under the 'ui' context. For example, ba.screenmessage() under the 'ui' context would simply print to the local device's screen, whereas when called under a game hosting context it would result in messages sent to all game clients. Now, however, there are instead unique versions for gameplay (bascenev1.screenmessage()) and ui (bauiv1.screenmessage()). These versions may differ in arguments and functionality; see docs for details. In general, the ui versions no longer care what context they are running under; their results will always just apply to the local device.
• The ba.Context class has been reworked a bit and is now ba.ContextRef to more accurately describe what it actually is. The default constructor (ba.ContextRef()) will grab a reference to the current context. To get a context-ref pointing to no context, do ba.ContextRef.empty(). UI stuff will now insist on being run with no context set. To get references to Activity/Session contexts, use the context() methods they provide.
• The following have been split into bascenev1 and bauiv1 versions: screenmessage(), gettexture(), getsound(), getmesh(), getcollisionmesh(), getdata().
• The _bainternal module (the closed source parts of the app) is now the baplus package. There were too many things with 'internal' in the name and it was starting to get confusing. Also, the goal is for this to be an optional thing at some point and I feel 'plus' better fits that role; ' internal' sounds like something that is always required.
• Added the general concept of 'feature-sets' to the build system. A feature-set consists of a high level subset of the app source that can be included or excluded for different builds. The current list of feature-sets is scene_v1, ui_v1, classic, and plus. Tests are being added to ensure that feature-sets remain cleanly independent of eachother and also that the app can be built and run without any feature-sets present. Stay tuned for more info as things evolve, but the general idea is that feature-sets will allow us to isolate and test new functionality in an efficient way and also will allow 'spinoff' projects to strip out parts of the app they don't need or add in new custom parts on the top of the base set. Modders interested in ' total conversions' may want to keep an eye on this.
• There is no longer a standalone ba.playsound() function. Both ui-sounds ( acquired via bauiv1.getsound() and scene-sounds (acquired via bascenev1.getsound()) now have a play() method on them for this purpose. So just search for any instances of 'playsound' in your code and change stuff like ba.playsound(ba.getsound('error')) to bs.getsound('error').play(). Playing sounds in timers is now especially nicer looking; instead of ba.timer(1.0, ba.Call(ba.playsound, my_sound)) you can now simply do bs.timer(1.0, my_sound.play)
• Since time functionality needs to be split between ui and scene versions anyway, I'm taking the opportunity to revise ballistica's time concepts. I revamped these in 1.5, and, after working with them for a few years, I feel that having a single time(), timer(), and Timer() call with a variety of arguments influencing behavior is unwieldy, so I'll be splitting things out into a few separate and simplified versions. Details follow.
• There is now the concept of 'app-time'. This was previously called ' real-time'. It is basically time that has elapsed while the app is actively running. It never jumps ahead or goes backwards and it stops progressing while the app is suspended (which is why I feel the term 'real-time' was a bit misleading).
• ballistica::GetRealTime() in the C++ layer is now ballistica::GetAppTimeMillisecs().
• App-time is now stored internally in microseconds instead of milliseconds, and there is a ballistica::GetAppTimeMicrosecs() call to retrieve the full resolution value.
• A number of calls, including the various time/timer functions listed below, now always accept time as float seconds and no longer accept a ba.TimeFormat value to do otherwise. TimeFormat was basically a way to transition elegantly from milliseconds to seconds everywhere, but it has been long enough now that we should simplify things. If you are passing timeformat=ba.TimeFormat.MILLISECONDS anywhere, simply divide your value by 1000 now instead to make it seconds.
• In Python there is now an apptime() function to get current app-time in seconds, an apptimer() function to set a timer based on app-time, and an AppTimer() class to get an adjustable/cancelable timer. There is also an AppTime type which is technically just float but which can be used by type-checkers to keep these time values from being accidentally mixed with others. All of these are available in ba, bauiv1, and bascenev1.
• There is now the concept of display-time which is a value that progresses mostly at the same speed as app-time, but in a way that tries to advance at a constant rate per local frame drawn, which is useful for visual purposes such as UI animations. Trying to instead use app-time in these situations may lead to visual jitters since actual times between frame draws may not always be constant. Display-time avoids this problem, trading off technical time accuracy for visual smoothness. Be aware that display-time updates may be very sparse (like 10 per second) if the app is running in headless mode.
• There is now a displaytime() function to get current display-time in seconds, a displaytimer() function to set a timer based on display-time, and a DisplayTimer() class for an adjustable timer. DisplayTime is the custom type for these time values (though again, outside of the type-checker it is simply a float).
• Within scenes, there is the concept of 'scene-time' or simply just 'time'. This was previously called 'sim-time' and is the default time value that most gameplay code should deal with. When speeding up or slowing down or pausing a game, it is the rate of scene-time progression that is actually changing.
• The bascenev1.time() function now gets the current scene-time in seconds, the bascenev1.timer() function sets a timer based on scene-time, and bascenev1.Timer() class gives an adjustable timer. bascenev1.Time is the custom type for these time values (though again, outside of the type-checker, it is simply a float). These names are the same as ballistica's previous unified time calls, but they no longer have the options to return values in milliseconds or operate on other time types. Just do int(bs.time() * 1000) if you need milliseconds.
• The 'base-time' concept within scenes remains. Base-time can be thought of as a metronome - it progresses constantly for a scene even if the scene is paused or sped up or slowed down. Some factors, however, can still cause it to speed up or slow down, including changing playback rate in a replay or excess cpu load causing it to progress slower than normal.
• There is now a bascenev1.basetime() function to get the current base-time in seconds, a bascenev1.basetimer() call to set a timer using base-time, and a bascenev1.BaseTimer class for an adjustable timer. bascenev1.BaseTime is the custom type for these values, though again it is simply a float outside of the type checker.
• Reworked frame scheduling to be much more general and no longer assume 60fps ( basically using the new 'display-time' concept). The engine should now be better at maintaining smooth looking animation at other frame-rates. Please holler if you see otherwise. Note this doesn't affect the issue where pure SDL builds like PC/Linux are locked to 60fps; that's a separate thing.
• You can set env-var BA_DEBUG_LOG_DISPLAY_TIME=1 to get display-time stat logs to make sure things are working smoothly on your setup.
• The engine no longer requires that ba_data and other required files exist in the current working dir. This assumption meant the engine would at some point chdir() to where those files live, which felt dirty and complicated passing command line args or using ballistica functionality as part of scripts. There is now ba.app.data_directory which shows where the app is looking for its stuff. It is also now possible to specify this directory on the command-line via --data-dir or -d. Note that some platforms/setups may choose to chdir() to that dir before spinning up the engine (to get clean relative paths in stack traces/etc.), but the engine itself no longer forces this.
• The -cfgdir command-line arg has been renamed to be either --config-dir or -C.
• The -exec command-line arg has been renamed to be either --exec or -e.
• Added a command arg accessible via --command or -c. Unlike the exec arg which runs as part of the app event loop, this command runs instead of the normal event loop. It can be thought of as analogous to the -c arg for the Python interpreter. This provides a clean way to do things like introspect ballistica's binary modules without having to worry about data files being present or about exiting the app after the command runs. The app simply bootstraps its Python interpreter, runs this command, and then exits.
• Moved bootstrapping code from a few different places such as ba._bootstrap to a standalone baenv module. Calling baenv.configure() will set up various Python things such as script paths, logging, stdout redirection, and signal handling. Default runs of the app will do this as the very first thing, but it will also be possible to skip this and use ballistica functionality in a more 'vanilla' Python environment. Running ballistica in the following way should be essentially the same as a 'default' run: PYTHONPATH=ba_data/python ./bombsquad -c 'import baenv; baenv.configure(); import ba; ba.app.run()'.
• Related to the above, it is now possible for ba.app.python_directory_app, ba.app.python_directory_user, and ba.app.python_directory_app_site to be None if ballistica is being run in a non-standard environment setup. Just something to watch out for.
• The ba module is no longer imported by default. Since most modding will go through other modules now such as bascenev or bauiv1 it seemed odd to be importing only ba.
• Starting to move the 'spinoff' system into the public repo (things like tools/spinoff and tools/batools/spinoff). This is what will be used to make filtered standalone versions of ballistica. More on this soon.
• The ba module is now called babase and is now just a feature-set like any other, which simplifies a lot of project logic. It can even be removed from spinoff projects, though in practice it makes little sense to do so.
• Python dummy-modules are now always generated on an as-needed basis (when running things like make mypy) and live in build/dummymodules instead of under assets src.
• Added a help command accessible via '--help' or '-h'. Prints available command line args/etc.
• Mods dir can now be overridden via '--mods-dir' or '-m' command line args.
• Ballistica has been updated to use Python 3.11 (with all bundled Python versions set to 3.11.3).
• Cleaned up bundled Python builds a bit; they now include a number of previously-not-included modules such as the rather tricky to compile 'ctypes'. Also some modules that relied on native parts that we are not building have been filtered out. If you come across any bundled modules that don't import or there are any standard modules that you would like to have which are currently excluded, please holler.
• Fixes an issue where holding a key while bringing up the chat window could leave the player moving in the same direction.
• The ballistica project config file has been renamed from 'config/config.json' to 'config/projectconfig.json'. There's a fair amount of other stuff in the config dir these days so this helps keep things clear.
• The resources directory is now 'src/resources' (though this is mostly not present in the public repo as of yet, but it should appear at some point).
• Similarly, the assets directory is now 'src/assets' and assets get built to ' build/assets'. This simplifies a lot of project logic in terms of which files get blown away during cleans, which get ignored by syncs, etc. (a single big src and build dir is simpler than lots of little ones).
• Shortened some names for meta-generated sources. Something like ' ballistica/generated/python_embedded/foo.inc' might now look more like ' ballistica/mgen/pyembed/foo.inc'. Some include paths were starting to get ridiculously long so this will save a bit of space, especially as meta-generated code is set to become a bigger deal soon.
• Renamed BallisticaCore to BombSquad. This is simply the default project name and is replaced by an actual project name such as 'BombSquad' in spun-off projects. Because there is now a 'core' feature set, this name was feeling a bit ambiguous. I also feel 'core' sounds like a small subset of a project and 'kit' more accurately sounds like the entirety of a project. Also, in the future, the default BombSquad app may be expanded with editing functionality and I feel the name 'Kit' fits better for something used that way than 'Core' does.
• The ballisticacore_internal precompiled library has been renamed to ballistica_plus. This name better describes what it actually is (basically precompiled native portion of the plus feature set). Also by removing the 'kit' from the end it will no longer be renamed in spinoff projects, meaning we should be able to recycle the same built libraries in those cases.
• Moved the ba*.app.accounts subsystem to ba*.app.plus.accounts. This is a little more verbose but is cleaner in a way since that functionality is part of plus and is not available when plus is missing. So now there's ba*.app.classic.accounts for v1 stuff and ba*.app.plus.accounts for v2 stuff.
• For similar reasons, moved the ba*.app.cloud subsystem to ba*.app.plus.cloud.
• The big single ballistica standard library Python package containing all the built in games, actors, windows, etc. (bastd) has been split out into parts associated with bascenev1 (bascenev1lib) and bauiv1 (bauiv1lib). This way, when bascenev2 comes along, it can have its own unique associated library of stuff (bascenev2lib). To upgrade existing code, go through and replace instances of bastd.ui with bauiv1lib and all other instances of bastd with bascenev1lib. That should mostly do it. Random tip: check out the tools/pcommand mypy_files as a handy tool to help get your mods updated.
• (build 21057) Fixed an issue with news items erroring on the main menu (thanks for the heads up Rikko)
• (build 21059) Fixed an issue where trying to add a new playlist would error ( thanks for the heads up SEBASTIAN2059)
• (build 21059) Fixed meta scanning which was coming up empty. Note that games must now tag themselves via ba_meta export bascenev1.GameActivity instead of ba_meta export game to be discovered. Warnings will be issued if the old tag form is found. This is necessary because there will be totally different concepts of game-activities/etc. in future scene versions so we need to use exact class names instead of the 'game' shortcut.
• (build 21060) Fixed a bug where epic mode was not in slow motion (but sounds still were hehehehe).
• (build 21062) The audio server no longer stops all playing sounds when it is reset. This behavior was intended to keep game sounds from 'bleeding' out into the main menu, but with app-mode-switches now causing resets just after launch it is making some early UI sounds (such as the 'power-down' sound if a plugin disappears) sound cut-off and broken. Please holler if you notice any sounds that get 'stuck' playing after games/etc.
• (build 21063) Improved error handling when loading plugins. If plugin code encountered a ModuleNotFound error while executing, it was being incorrectly reported that the plugin itself had disappeared, when actually it was just a problem within the plugin's code. This is now correctly handled and reported. Which is good because this situation will come up a lot for people upgrading old plugins which reference 'ba' and other modules that no longer exist.
• (build 21064) Fixed an issue where the menu button wasn't clickable in-game (thanks for the heads up Irvin).
• (build 21067) Fixed timing bugs in MeteorShower and a few other places caused by incorrect use of bs.apptime() there bs.time() should have been used (thanks for the heads- up SEBASTIAN2059)
• (build 21070) Fixed an issue where teams series would incorrectly end after 1 round (thanks for the heads up SEBASTIAN2059)
• (build 21072) Fixed a crash drawing a terrain node with no texture set.
• (build 21073) Stack traces are now implemented under windows so should show up for fatal errors and whatnot. Also fatal error logging now mentions when stack traces are not available.
• (build 21074) Added babase.native_stack_trace() to fetch native stack traces as strings.
• (build 21076) Hopefully fixed a 'file in use' error for _appstate_dump_tb on windows. Please holler if you are still seeing this. This file gets written for debugging whenever the logic thread remains unresponsive for several seconds.
• (build 21078) Custom system scripts dirs works again (complete copies of app system scripts living in your mods directory under sys/$(YOUR_APP_VERSION). Tools for creating/destroying these setups are now at babase.modutils (they had been placed under bauiv1 but that was just silly).
• (build 21080) Fixed an issue where the touch screen controller arrow on Android would not show correctly under the player.
• (build 21084) Plugin UI now has a categories dropdown for showing only enabled or disabled plugins (Thanks vishal332008!)
• (build 21095) Fixed an issue where certain buttons such as map selection buttons would draw incorrectly.
• (build 21106) Fixed an issue where in-game ping would always display green no matter how bad the ping was.
• (build 21107) Upped internal display-timer resolution from milliseconds to microseconds.
• (build 21107) Finished implementing new scheduling system for headless mode. This should fix the issue where 1.7.20 servers would have 100ms of lag by default. Server performance should now be equal to or better than 1.7.19. Please holler if not.
• (build 21111) Fixed a server crash when an individual client player leaves the game but doesn't disconnect from the server.
• (build 21113) Linux builds now use the '-rdynamic' flag which means stack traces we capture in the engine are more readable; they at least show mangled c++ symbols instead of just addresses.
• (build 21114) Fixed a bug where new chat messages would not properly appear in the chat window while it is open. (Thanks for the heads-up SatSriyakaal!)
• (build 21117) Now bundling .pdb files with windows test builds. This adds a few megs but allows us to log nice full stack traces instead of just addresses. Try print(_babase.native_stack_trace()) if you want to make sure its working.
• (build 21118) Fixed an issue where certain messages such as player-left weren't being send to clients.
• (build 21118) Renamed bascenev1.screenmessage() to bascenev1.broadcastmessage() to make it more clear that it behaves differently (sending messages to all connected clients instead of just the local screen). There is still a bascenev1.screenmessage() but that is now the same local-only version available in babase. Added a temporary warning if calling screenmessage() in a situation that in previous versions would have done a broadcast.
• (build 21121) The old app user_agent_string which was very ugly and cluttered and nonstandard has been renamed to legacy_user_agent_string. A newer simpler one is now available from babase.user_agent_string(). It looks like Ballistica/1.7.20. If OS version or platform or whatever else needs to be communicated to a server, it should be passed explicitly as extra data.
• (build 21124) Changed debug-prints for connectivity and v2-transport stuff to use log calls instead of prints. The environment vars to enable them are now BA_DEBUG_LOG_CONNECTIVITY and BA_DEBUG_LOG_V2_TRANSPORT. Set either to '1' to enable debug logging.
• (build 21125) Fixed a bug where app-modes would not have their DoApplyAppConfig callbacks called in C++, which was causing the server-mode idle_exit_minutes value to be ignored. Servers should now properly exit after being idle for this length of time.
• (build 21126) Reworked the efrocache system used by public builds for downloading built assets and binaries. It should now be faster and more efficient (though I have not tested this). Most importantly, it now supports spinoff, which means that spinoff projects created from the public github repo should now build and run. So if you run make spinoff-test-base and then cd build/spinofftest/base, you should be able to do make cmake from that spinoff project and get a running app (though it will be just a blank window). But the app at that point is 100% open source; woohoo!
• (build 20129) Fixed an issue where server builds would not build font assets (though it would install them if any recent gui builds had built them) which could lead to obscure crashing.
• (build 21131) Fixed a bug where is_browser_likely_available() would incorrectly return False on Android, causing certain things such as the v2 login screen to merely display URLs onscreen and not offer to open them in a browser.

1.7.19 (build 20997, api 7, 2023-01-19)

• Fixes an issue where repeated curses could use incorrect countdown times ( Thanks EraOSBeta!).
• Last manual party connect port is now saved. Previously, it always assumed the port to be 43210 (Thanks ritiek!).
• Added a plugin-settings window under the plugins UI which allows enabling/disabling all plugins and setting whether new plugins are auto-enabled (Thanks vishal332008!).
• Missing maps are now cleanly filtered out of playlists instead of causing errors/hangs (Thanks imayushsaini!).
• Added in-game-ping option under advanced settings (Thanks imayushsaini!).
• BA_DEVICE_NAME environment variable can now be used to change the name the local device shows up as. Handy if running multiple servers so you can tell them apart in cloud-console/etc. (Thanks imayushsaini!).

1.7.18 (build 20989, api 7, 2023-01-16)

• Reworked some low level asynchronous messaging functionality in efro.message and efro.rpc. Previously these were a little too asynchronous which could lead to messages being received in a different order than they were sent, which is not desirable.
• Added a way to suppress 'Your build is outdated' messages at launch ( see ba._hooks.show_client_too_old_error()).

1.7.17 (build 20983, api 7, 2023-01-09)

• V2 accounts now show a 'Unlink Legacy (V1) Accounts' button in account settings if they have any old V1 links present. This can be used to clear out old links to replace them with V2 links which work correctly with V2 accounts.
• ba.internal.dump_tracebacks() is now ba.internal.dump_app_state() and ba.internal.log_dumped_tracebacks() is now ba.internal.log_dumped_app_state(). This reflects the fact that these calls may be expanded to include other app state in the future (C++ layer thread states, etc.).
• Added ba.app.health_monitor which will dump app state if the logic thread ever stops responding for 5+ seconds while the app is running (to help diagnose deadlock situations).
• Various extra logging and bug fixes related to V2 accounts and master server communication (trying to get this stuff working as smoothly as possible now that it is feature-complete).

1.7.16 (build 20969, api 7, 2022-12-18)

• Fixed a bug where profile names encased in curly brackets could cause harmless error messages.
• Android will no longer log errors on ba.open_url() calls if a browser is not available (it still just falls back to the in-app dialog in that case).
• The 'Upgrade' button for device accounts now signs you out and closes the upgrade window to hopefully make it more clear that you need to sign in with your newly created/upgraded BombSquad account.
• Fixed a bug where the remote app could not connect for the first 5 seconds after launching the app.
• Added Malay language. Ick; apparently its been sitting done for a while and I hadn't realized it wasn't added to the game yet. Apologies!. And thanks to all contributors!
• Added 'enable_queue' server config setting. This defaults to True but can be turned off as a workaround for server owners targeted by queue spam attacks.
• The public party list no longer sorts servers without queues at the end of the list. This sorting was put there long ago to prioritize fancy new queue-supporting servers but now it would just make the few that opt out of queues hard to find. Doh. So opting out of queues is probably not a great idea until this build is widespread.
• Public uuids now only change once every 6 months or so instead of with every version bump. This way periods of heavy development won't put added strain on server owners trying to keep ban lists up to date and whatnot.
• Added a merch button in the in-game store that goes to the ballistica.net merch page (though it only shows up in the few countries where merch is available).

1.7.15 (build 20960, api 7, 2022-12-04)

• The cancel button on the 'Sign in with a Bombsquad Account' popup no longer respond to system cancel buttons (escape key, android back button, etc). Turns out some Android people were pressing back repeatedly to come back from a browser after signing in and immediately canceling their sign in attempts in the game before they completed. Hopefully this will avoid some frustration.
• Fixed an issue where back presses could result in multiple main menu windows appearing.

1.7.14 (build 20958, api 7, 2022-12-03)

• Android Google Play logins now provide V2 accounts with access to all V2 features such as a globally-unique account tag, cloud-console, and workspaces. They should still retain their V1 data as well.
• V2 accounts now have a 'Manage Account' button in the app account window which will sign you into a browser with your current account.
• Removed Google App Invite functionality which has been deprecated for a while now. Google Play users can still get tickets by sharing the app via codes ( same as other platforms).
• Updated Android root-detection library to the latest version. Please holler if you are getting new false 'your device is rooted' errors when trying to play tournaments or anything like that.
• Removed a few obsolete internal functions: _ba.is_ouya_build(), _ba.android_media_scan_file().
• Renaming some methods/data to disambiguate 'login' vs 'sign-in', both in the app and on ballistica.net. Those two terms are somewhat ambiguous and interchangeable in English and can either be a verb or a noun. I'd like to keep things clear in Ballistica by always using 'sign-in' for the verb form and 'login' for the noun. For example: 'You can now sign in to your account using your Google Play login'.
• Fixed the 'your config is broken' dialog that shows on desktop builds if the game's config file is corrupt and can't be read. It should let you edit the config or replace it with a default.
• ba.printobjects() is now ba.ls_objects(). It technically logs and doesn't print so the former name was a bit misleading.
• Added ba.ls_input_devices() to dump debug info about the current set of input devices. Can be helpful to diagnose mysterious devices joining games unintentionally and things like that.
• Added 'raw' bool arg to ba.pushcall(). Passing True for it disables context_ref save/restore and thread checks.
• Added ba.internal.dump_tracebacks() which can be used to dump the stack state of all Python threads after some delay. Useful for debugging deadlock; just call right before said deadlock occurs. Results will be logged on the next app launch if they cannot be immediately.
• Fixed a low level event-loop issue that in some cases was preventing the Android version from properly pausing/resuming the app or managing connections while in the background. If you look at the devices section on ballistica.net you should now see your device disappear when you background the app and reappear when you foreground it. Please holler if not.
• Device accounts are now marked as deprecated, and signing in with one now brings up an 'upgrade' UI which allows converting it to a V2 account. It is my hope to push the entire client ecosystem to V2 accounts as quickly as possible since trying to support both independent V1 accounts and V2 accounts is a substantial technical burden.
• Fixed an issue where Log calls made within EventLoopThread::PushThreadMessage() could result in deadlock.
• Fixed an issue where some Android hardware buttons could theoretically cause rogue game controller button presses (due to downcasting int values > 255 into a uint8 value).

1.7.13 (build 20919, api 7, 2022-11-03)

• Android target-sdk has been updated to 33 (Android 13). Please holler if anything seems broken or is behaving differently than before on Android.
• Android back-button handling code had to be reworked a bit for sdk 33 ( see https://developer.android.com/guide/navigation/predictive-back-gesture). Because of this, back buttons on gamepads or other special cases behave slightly differently, but hopefully still in a reasonable way. Please holler if you find otherwise.

1.7.12 (build 20914, api 7, 2022-10-18)

• Disabled some live-objects warnings as it seems their use of certain gc module functionality might be causing some rare errors/crashes. On further inspection, it turns out that is technically expected. Basically those calls are useful for debugging but can break things. Added a note at the top of efro.debug elaborating on the situation. We can reimplement similar warnings later in a safe manner.
• Removed ba._general.print_active_refs() because the newer stuff in efro.debug does the same thing better.
• Bug fixes related to v2 account connections.

1.7.11 (build 20909, api 7, 2022-10-15)

• Switched our Python autoformatting from yapf to black. The yapf project seems to be mostly dead whereas black seems to be thriving. The final straw was yapf not supporting the match statement in Python 3.10.
• Added has_settings_ui() and show_settings_ui() methods to ba.Plugin. Plugins can use these to enable a 'Settings' button next to them in the plugin manager that brings up a custom UI.
• Fixed workspaces functionality, which I broke rather terribly in 1.7.10 when I forgot to test it against all the internal changes there (sorry). Note that there is a slight downside to having workspace syncing enabled now in that it turns off the fast-v2-relaunch-login optimization from 1.7.10.
• App should now show a message when workspace has been changed and a restart is needed for it to take effect.
• Fixed an issue where ba.open_url() would fall back to internal url display window on some newer Android versions instead of opening a browser. It should now correctly open a browser on regular Android. On AndroidTV/iiRcade/VR it will now always display the internal pop-up. It was trying to use fancy logic before to determine if a browser was available but this seemed to be flaky. Holler if this is not working well on your device/situation.
• The internal 'fallback' ba.open_url() window which shows a url string when a web browser is not available now has a qrcode and a copy button (where copy/paste is supported).
• Added a 'force_internal' arg to ba.open_url() if you would like to always use the internal window instead of attempting to open a browser. Now that we show a copy button and qr code there are some cases where this may be desirable.

1.7.10 (build 20895, api 7, 2022-10-09)

• Added eval support for cloud-console. This means you can type something like ' 1+1' in the console and see '2' printed. This is how Python behaves in the stdin console or in-game console or the standard Python interpreter.
• Exceptions in the cloud-console now print to stderr instead of logging.exception(). This means they aren't a pretty red color anymore, but this will keep cloud-console behaving well with things like servers where logging.exception() might trigger alarms or otherwise. This is also consistent with standard interactive Python behavior.
• Cloud console now shows the device name at the top instead of simply 'Console' while connected.
• Moved the function that actually runs cloud console code to ba._cloud.cloud_console_exec().
• Added efro.debug which contains useful functionality for debugging object reference issues and memory leaks on live app instances (via cloud shell or whatever).
• Lots of reworking/polishing in general on communication between the game and v2 regional/master servers in preparation of upgrading Google Play accounts to V2. Please holler if anything is not working smoothly with a V2 account.
• When establishing V2 master-server communication, if the closest regional server is down or too busy, will now fall back to farther ones instead of giving up. You can follow this process by setting env var BA_DEBUG_PRINT_V2_TRANSPORT to 1 when running the app.
• Network testing now skips the alternate v1 master server addr if the primary succeeded. The alternate often fails which makes things look broken even though the game is ok as long as primary works.
• The v2-transport system will now properly reestablish account connectivity when asked to refresh its connection (the cloud does this periodically so regional cloud servers can be restarted as needed). Practically this means your app won't stop showing up under the ballistica.net devices section after its been running for a while; a problem previous builds had.
• The v2-transport system can now establish more than one connection at a time, which allows the app to gracefully transition to a new connection when the old is about to expire without any period of no connectivity. To test this functionality, set env var BA_DEBUG_PRINT_V2_TRANSPORT=1 to see transport debug messages and BA_DEBUG_V2_TRANSPORT_SHORT_DURATION=1 to cause the cloud to request a connection-refresh every 30 seconds or so.
• V2 accounts now consider themselves instantly signed in if they were signed in when the app last ran. They still need to contact the master-server before anything important can happen, but this should help keep things feel faster in general.
• Due to v2-transport improvements, pressing the 'End Session Now' button in ballistica.net account settings should now instantly log you out of all apps using that session (ones that are online at least). Previously this would often not take effect until something like an app relaunch.
• Fixes an issue where the tournament entry window could remain stuck on top when following a 'get more tickets' link. (Thanks itsre3!)
• The main menu now says 'End Test' when in a stress test instead of 'End Game' (Thanks vishal332008!)
• Added 'discordLogo' and 'githubLogo' textures for anyone who wants to use those for UIs.

1.7.9 (build 20880, api 7, 2022-09-24)

• Cleaned up the efro.message system to isolate response types that are used purely internally (via a new SysResponse type).
• Fixed bug with 'Disable Camera Shake' option. (GitHub #511) (thanks Dliwk!)
• Fixed an issue where Co-op football would play no music.
• Accept "fairydust" as an emit type in ba.emitfx() (thanks ritiek!).
• Added epic mode option to Easter Egg Hunt (thanks itsre3!).
• The game no longer auto-signs-in to a device account when first run since we want to start encouraging people to use V2 accounts.
• Removed support for GameCircle in Amazon builds (which has been discontinued for years at this point).

1.7.8 (build 20871, api 7, 2022-09-21)

• Fixed tournament scores submits which were broken in 1.7.7 (oops).
• Added @clear command to stdin command reader.

1.7.7 (build 20868, api 7, 2022-09-20)

• Added ba.app.meta.load_exported_classes() for loading classes discovered by the meta subsystem cleanly in a background thread.
• Improved logging of missing playlist game types.
• Some ba.Lstr functionality can now be used in background threads.
• Added simple check for incoming packets (should increase security level a bit).
• Simplified logic for C++ Platform::GetDeviceName() and made it accessible to Python via ba.app.device_name.
• Default device name now uses gethostname() instead of being hard coded to ' Untitled Device' (though many platforms override this).
• Added support for the console tool in the new devices section on ballistica.net.
• Increased timeouts in net-testing gui and a few other places to be able to better diagnose/handle places with very poor connectivity.
• Removed Platform::SetLastPyCall() which was just for debugging and which has not been useful in a while.
• Moved some app bootstrapping from the C++ layer to the ba._bootstrap module.
• The game will now properly return to the stress-test window after a stress test finishes (thanks vishal332008!)
• Continue window will now pause the game to avoid running up times in the background (thanks vishal332008!)
• Keepaway and KingOfTheHill now have epic options (thanks FAL-Guys!)
• Spaz starting with gloves no longer loses it after picking up an expiring gloves powerup (thanks itsre3!)
• Starting to rename the 'game' thread to the 'logic' thread. This is the thread where most high level app logic happen, not only game logic.
• _ba.in_game_thread() is now _ba.in_logic_thread().
• Misc C++ layer tidying/refactoring.
• Split out the _ba binary module into _ba and _bainternal. This will eventually allow running without the closed-source parts (_bainternal) present at all.
• There is now a _bainternal.py dummy-module alongside the existing _ba.py one. Be sure to exclude it from any script collections used by the game (the same as _ba.py).
• Added checks to make sure _ba or _bainternal arent used outside of ba. Any 'internal' functionality needed outside of ba should be exposed through ba.internal. _ba and _bainternal are internal implementation details.
• Removed C++ Module class and simplified EventLoopThread class. The Module class was an old relic of long ago before C++ had lambdas and its existence was pretty pointless and confusing these days.
• Renamed C++ App to AppFlavor and AppGlobals to App.
• Renamed C++ Media to Assets.
• Removed 'scores to beat' list in coop which was only ever functional in limited cases on the Mac version. Perhaps that feature can reappear in a cross-platform way sometime.
• Simplified C++ bootstrapping to allocate all globals in one place.
• Renamed C++ Game classes to Logic.
• The app now bootstraps Python in the main thread instead of the logic thread. This will keep things more consistent later when we are able to run under an already-existing Python interpreter.
• As a side-effect of initing Python in the main thread, it seems that Python now catches segfaults in our debug builds and prints Python stack traces. ( see https://docs.python.org/3/library/faulthandler.html). We'll have to experiment and see if this is a net positive or something we want to disable or make optional.
• Python and _ba are now completely initialized in public source code. Now we just need to enable the app to survive without _bainternal and it'll be possible to build a 100% open source app.
• Logging::Log() in the C++ layer now takes a LogLevel arg (kDebug, kWarning, kError, etc.) and simply calls the equivalent Python logging.XXX call. This unifies our C++ and Python logging to go through the same place.
• ba.log() is no more. Instead just use standard Python logging functions ( logging.info(), logging.error(), etc.).
• _ba.getlog() is now _ba.get_v1_cloud_log(). Note that this functionality will go away eventually so you should use ba.app.log_handler and/or standard Python logging functions to get at app logs.
• Along the same lines, _ba.get_log_file_path() is now _ba.get_v1_cloud_log_file_path().
• Added _ba.display_log() function which ships a log message to the in-game terminal and platform-specific places like the Android log. The engine wires up standard Python logging output to go through this.
• Added _ba.v1_cloud_log() which ships a message to the old v1-cloud-log (the log which is gathered and sent to the v1 master server to help me identify problems people are seeing). This is presently wired up to a subset of Python logging output to approximate how it used to work.
• Note: Previously in the C++ layer some code would mix Python print calls (such as PyErr_PrintEx()) with ballistica::Log() calls. Previously these all wound up going to the same place (Python's sys.stderr) so it worked, but now they no longer do and so this sort of mixing should be avoided. So if you see a weird combination of colored log output lines with non-colored lines that seem to go together, please holler as it means something needs to be fixed.
• Builds for Apple devices now explicitly set a thread stack size of 1MB. The default there is 512k and I was seeing some stack overflows for heavy physics sims or very recursive Python stuff.
• If you want to grab recent logs, you can now use ba.app.log_handler.get_cached(). This will give you everything that has gone through Python logging, Python stdout/stderr, and the C++ Log() call (up to the max cache size that is).
• LogHandler output now ALWAYS goes to stderr. Previously it only would if an interactive terminal was detected. This should make the binary easier to debug if run from scripts/etc. We can add a --quiet option if needed or whatnot.
• (build 20859) Fixed an error setting up asyncio loops under Windows related to the fact that Python is now inited in the main thread.
• (build 20864) Fatal-error message/traceback now properly prints to stderr again (I think the recent logging rejiggering caused it to stop).
• (build 20864) Fixed an issue where the app could crash when connected to the cloud console while in a network game.
• Added a simplified help() command which behaves reasonably under the in-game console or cloud-console.

1.7.6 (build 20687, api 7, 2022-08-11)

• Cleaned up the MetaSubsystem code.
• It is now possible to tell the meta system about arbitrary classes (ba_meta export foo.bar.Class) instead of just the preset types 'plugin', 'game', etc.
• Newly discovered plugins are now activated immediately instead of requiring a restart.

1.7.5 (build 20672, api 7, 2022-07-25)

• Android build now uses the ReLinker library to load the native main.so, which will (hopefully) avoid some random load failures on older Android versions.
• Android Google Play build now prints a message at launch if the billing library isn't available or needs to be updated (explaining why purchases won't work in that case).
• Various minor bug fixes (mostly cleaning up unnecessary error logging)
• Updated Android builds to use the new NDK 25 release
• Added a warning when trying to play a tournament with a workspace active
• Added api-version to changelog headers and pcommand version command.

1.7.4 (20646, 2022-07-12)

• Fixed the trophies list showing an incorrect total (Thanks itsre3!)
• ba.app.meta.metascan is now ba.app.meta.scanresults
• Cleaned up co-op ui code a bit
• Added a utility function to add custom co-op games in the practice section: ba.app.add_coop_practice_level. Also added new workspace template script which uses it to define a new co-op game type.
• Removed some spammy debug timing logging I added for tracking down a recent bug (can be reenabled by setting env var BA_DEBUG_TIMING=1)
• Updated the 'Show Mods Folder' to properly show the path to the mods folder. Before it would unhelpfully show something like <External Storage>/BombSquad but now it should be something more useful like Android/data/net.froemling.bombsquad/files/mods.
• Android user scripts dir is now called 'mods' instead of 'BombSquad'. The name 'BombSquad' made sense when it was located in a truly shared area of storage but now that it is in the app-specific area (something like Android/data/net.froemling.bombsquad/files) it makes sense to just use 'mods' like other platforms.
• Updated the Modding Guide button in advanced settings to point to the new ballistica wiki stuff instead of the old out-of-date 1.4 modding docs.
• Added ba.app.net.sslcontext which is a shared SSLContext we can recycle for our https requests. It turns out it can take upwards of 1 second on older Android devices to create a default SSLContext, so this can provide a nice speedup compared to the default behavior of creating a new default one for each request.
• Rewrote Google Play version purchasing code using Google's newest libraries ( Google Play Billing 5.0). This should make everything more reliable, but please holler if you try to purchase anything in the game and run into problems.
• It is now possible on the Google Play version to purchase things like Pro more than once for different accounts.

1.7.3 (20634, 2022-07-06)

• Fixed an issue with King of the Hill flag regions not working when players entered them (Thanks itsre3!)
• Fixed an issue in Chosen One where the flag resetting on top of a player would not cause them to become the chosen one (Thanks Dliwk!)
• Fixed an issue where triple-bomb powerup would not flash before wearing off ( Thanks Juleskie!).
• Fixed an issue where syncing workspaces containing large files could error.
• Net-testing window now requires you to be signed in instead of giving an error result in that case.
• The app now issues a gentle notice if plugins are removed instead of erroring and continuing to look for them on subsequent launches. This makes things much smoother when switching between workspaces or users.
• Added new translation entries for Workspace/Plugin stuff.
• tools/bacloud workspace get/put commands are now functional (wiki page with instructions coming soon).
• _ba.android_get_external_storage_path is now _ba.android_get_external_files_dir which maps to the actual call it makes under the hood these days.
• Android logging now breaks up long entries such as stack-traces into multiple log entries so they should not get truncated.
• The app now issues a warning if device time varies significantly from actual world time. This can lead to things like the app incorrectly treating SSL certificates as not yet valid and network functionality failing.
• The app now issues a warning if unable to establish secure connections to cloud servers (which can be due to aforementioned issue, but could also stem from other network problems).
• The Network Testing utility (Settings->Advanced->Network Testing) now tests for more potential issues including ones mentioned above.
• The Android version now stores files such as extracted assets and audio caches in the non-backed-up files dir (Android's Context.getNoBackupFilesDir()). These files can always be recreated by the app so they don't need backups, and this makes it more likely that Android will back up what's left in the regular files dir (the app config, etc).
• Fixed an issue causing hitches during background SSL network operations ( manifesting on the Android version but theoretically possibly anywhere).

1.7.2 (20620, 2022-06-25)

• Minor fixes in some minigames (Thanks Droopy!)
• Fixed a bug preventing 'clients' arg from working in _ba.chatmessage (Thanks imayushsaini!)
• Fixed a bug where ba.Player.getdelegate(doraise=True) could return None instead of raising a ba.DelegateNotFoundError (thanks Dliwk!)
• Lots of Romanian language improvements (Thanks Meryu!)
• Workspaces are now functional. They require signing in with a V2 account, which currently is limited to explicitly created email/password logins. See ballistica.net to create such an account or create/edit a workspace. This is bleeding edge stuff so please holler with any bugs you come across or if anything seems unintuitive.
• Newly detected Plugins are now enabled by default in all cases; not just headless builds. (Though a restart is still required before they run). Some builds (headless, iiRcade) can't easily access gui settings so this makes Plugins more usable there and keeps things consistent. The user still has the opportunity to deactivate newly detected plugins before restarting if they don't want to use them.
• Reworked app states for the new workspace system, with a new loading stage that comes after launching and before running. The loading stage consists of an initial account log-in (or lack thereof) and any workspace/asset downloading related to that. This allows the app to ensure that the latest workspace state is synced for the active account before running plugin loads and meta scans, allowing those bits to work as seamlessly in workspaces as they do for traditional local manual installs.
• Plugins now have an on_app_running call instead of on_app_launch, allowing them to work seamlessly with workspaces (see previous entry).
• Errors running/loading plugins now show up as screen-messages. This can be ugly but hopefully provides a bit of debugging capability for anyone testing code on a phone or somewhere with no access to full log output. Once we can add logging features to the workspaces web ui we can perhaps scale back on this.
• Api version increased from 6 to 7 due to the aforementioned plugin changes (on_app_launch becoming on_app_running, etc.)

1.7.1 (20597, 2022-06-04)

• V2 account logic fixes
• Polishing V2 web-based login flow

1.7.0 (20591, 2022-06-02)

• V2 accounts are now available (woohoo!). These are called 'BombSquad Accounts' in the account section. V2 accounts communicate with a completely new server and will be the foundation for lots of new functionality in the future. However they also function as a V1 account so existing functionality should still work. Note that the new 'workspaces' feature for V2-accounts is not yet enabled in this build, but it will be in the next few builds. Also note that account types such as GameCenter and Google-Play will be 'upgraded' to V2 accounts in the future so there is no need to try this out if you use one of those. But if you use device-accounts you might want to create yourself a V2 account, since device-accounts will remain V1-only (though you can link an old device-account to a v2-enabled account if you want to keep your progress). Getting a V2 account now also gives you a chance to reserve a nice account-tag before all the good ones are taken.
• Legacy account subsystem has been renamed from ba.app.accounts to ba.app.accounts_v1
• Added ba.app.accounts_v2 subsystem for working with V2 accounts.
• ba.SessionPlayer.get_account_id() is now ba.SessionPlayer.get_v1_account_id()
• ba.InputDevice.get_account_id() is now ba.InputDevice.get_v1_account_id()
• _ba.sign_in() is now _ba.sign_in_v1()
• _ba.sign_out() is now _ba.sign_out_v1()
• _ba.get_account_name() is now _ba.get_v1_account_name()
• _ba.get_account_type() is now _ba.get_v1_account_type()
• _ba.get_account_state() is now _ba.get_v1_account_state()
• _ba.get_account_state_num() is now _ba.get_v1_account_state_num()
• _ba.get_account_display_string() is now _ba.get_v1_account_display_string()
• _ba.get_account_misc_val() is now _ba.get_v1_account_misc_val()
• _ba.get_account_misc_read_val() is now _ba.get_v1_account_misc_read_val()
• _ba.get_account_misc_read_val_2() is now _ba.get_v1_account_misc_read_val_2()
• _ba.get_account_ticket_count() is now _ba.get_v1_account_ticket_count()
• Exposing more sources in the public repo; namely networking stuff. I realize this probably opens up some attack vectors for hackers but also opens up options for server-owners to add their own defenses without having to wait on me. Hopefully this won't prove to be a bad idea.
• V2 master server addr is now simply https://ballistica.net. If you had saved links to the previous address, https://tools.ballistica.net, please update them, as the old address may stop working at some point.
• Upgraded everything to Python 3.10. The upgrade process is pretty smooth at this point so we should be able to upgrade yearly now once each new Python version has had some time to mature.

1.6.12 (20567, 2022-05-04)

• More internal work on V2 master-server communication

1.6.11 (20539, 2022-03-23)

• Documentation is now generated using pdoc https://pdoc.dev. Thanks Dliwk!! ( I'll get it wired up to auto-update to a webpage soon).
• Players who connect to authenticated servers impersonating someone else are now simply kicked; not banned. The old behavior was being intentionally exploited to ban people from their own servers/etc. I may revert to bans once I can do it in a way that is not exploitable.
• The game now establishes a V2 master-server connection (which will soon be used for lots of cool functionality). For this version it is mainly enabled for testing purposes; please holler if you see any odd warning messages or behavior.

1.6.10 (20511, 2022-03-20)

• Added _ba.get_client_public_device_uuid function which returns a semi-permanent device id for a connected client running 1.6.10 or newer. Can be useful to combat spam attacks or other mischief.
• Fixed an issue with make update not properly rewriting Visual Studio project files to account for new/deleted source files.
• Removed various bits of code associated with the (no-longer-functional) Google Play Games multiplayer connections.
• Added lots of foundation code for v2 master-server connections (not yet enabled).

1.6.9 (20486, 2022-02-22)

• Upgraded Android Python to 3.9.10
• Fixed an issue with SSL in Android builds that was preventing communication with the master-server in 1.6.8
• Added a new network-diagnostics tool at 'Settings->Advanced->Network Testing'. Can be used to diagnose issues talking to master-servers/etc. (especially useful now that SSL can factor in)
• Added clipboard support to Mac test build (thought pasting currently requires ctrl-v instead of cmd-v).
• Fixed an issue where non-ascii characters in device names could break network communication.

1.6.8 (20458, 2022-02-16)

• Added Filipino language (Thanks David!)
• Restored pre-v1.5 jump behaviour.
• All communication with the master-server should now be secure (https) using root certificates from the certifi project. Please holler if you run into any connection issues with this version.

1.6.7 (20436)

• Fixed a vulnerability which could expose device-account uuids.
• Now generating Linux Arm64 server and test builds (currently built against Ubuntu 20).
• Mac test builds are now Universal binaries (Arm64 & x86-64 versions bundled together).
• Mac test builds are now notarized and distributed via a snazzy .dmg instead of a zip file, so the OS should no longer try to prevent you from running them.
• Test builds can now be found at https://ballistica.net/builds - this page shows more info about the builds, including file checksums (stored on a separate server from the actual files for increased security).

1.6.6 (20394)

• Beginning work on moving to new asset system.
• Added Tamil language (Thanks Ryan!)
• Added methods for changing camera attributes to the _ba module.

1.6.5 (20394)

• Added co-op support to server builds (thanks Dliwk!)
• Updated everything from Python 3.8 to Python 3.9. The biggest immediate impact to our code is that basic types such as list, dict, and tuple can be used in annotations, eliminating the need to import typing.Dict, typing.List, etc. See python.org for more changes.
• Note: accessing mods on external storage on Android will not work in this release. This functionality has not been working in recent versions of Android due to increased security features anyway and I am in the process of replacing it with a cloud based system for installing mods. More on this soon.
• Python 3.9 no longer supports Windows 7 or earlier (according to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/) so if you are running such a version of Windows you will need to stick to older builds.

1.6.4 (20382)

• Some cleanups in the Favorites tab of the gather window.
• Reorganized prefab target names; some targets such as prefab-debug are now prefab-gui-debug (more consistent with the existing prefab-server-debug targets).
• Windows builds now go to build/windows instead of ballisticacore_windows/build.
• Lots of project reorganization to allow things such as documentation or the dummy _ba.py module to be rebuilt from the public repo.
• Added network flood attack mitigation.

1.6.3 (20366)

• Telnet access works again for gui builds without requiring a password (access must still be granted via the gui).

1.6.2 (20365)

• Declare opponent team as the winner if a player with their final turn leaves an elimination game.
• Fix for certain cases when trying to host a private game where no available nearby servers could be found.
• Enabling per-architecture apk splitting for smaller download sizes on Android.

1.6.1 (20362)

• Some clean-up on Android builds, including simplifying ad-networks. No longer should ever show rewarded ads in between game rounds (only when actual rewards are involved).

1.6.0 (20357)

• Revamped netcode significantly. We still don't have client-prediction, but things should (hopefully) feel much lower latency now.
• Added network debug graphs accessible by hitting F8.
• Added private parties functionality (cloud hosted parties with associated codes making it easier to play with friends)
• The meta subsystem now enables new plugins by default in headless builds.
• Added option to save party in Manual tab
• Slight tidying on the tourney entry popup
• Env var to override UI scale is now BA_UI_SCALE instead of BA_FORCE_UI_SCALE.
• Fixed an issue where ba.storagename() could prevent objects on the stack from getting released cleanly
• Improvements to documentation generation such as link to some external base types.
• Added ba.clipboard_* functions for copying and pasting text on supported platforms.
• Implemented clipboard functionality on SDL based builds (such as prefab).
• Fixed an issue where click locations on scaled text fields could be incorrectly calculated.
• Server-wrapper improvements allowing config path and ba_root path to be passed explicitly.
• Binary -cfgdir option now properly allows any path, not just ./ba_root.
• Additional server-wrapper options such as disabling auto-restart and automatic restarts on config file changes.
• Running a _ba.connect_to_party command via the -exec arg should now do the right thing.
• Fixed possible crash due to buffer under/overruns in Utils::precalc_rands_*.
• Fixed a potential crash-on-exit due to statically allocated colliders/caches in ode_collision_trimesh.cpp getting torn down while in use
• Better randomization for player free-for-all starting locations
• Plugins can now register to be called for pause, resume, and shutdown events in addition to launch
• Added ba.app.state holding the overall state of the app (running, paused, etc.)
• renamed the efro.dataclasses module to efro.dataclassio and added significant functionality
• command-line input no longer errors on commands longer than 4k bytes.
• added show-tutorial option to the server wrapper config
• added custom-team-names option to the server wrapper config
• added custom-team-colors option to the server wrapper config
• added inline-playlist option to the server wrapper config

1.5.29 (20246)

• Exposed ba method/class initing in public C++ layer.
• The 'restart' and 'shutdown' commands in the server script now default to immediate=True
• Wired up clean_exit_minutes, unclean_exit_minutes, and idle_exit_minutes options in the server config
• Removed remains of the google-real-time-multiplayer stuff from the android/java layer.

1.5.28 (20239)

• Simplified ba.enum_by_value()
• Updated Google Play version to hopefully show friend high scores again on score screens (at least for levels that have an associated Google Play leaderboard).
• Public-party-list now properly shows an error instead of 'loading...' when not signed in.
• Heavily reworked public party list display code to be more efficient and avoid hitches even with large numbers of servers.

1.5.27 (20238)

• Language functionality has been consolidated into a LanguageSubsystem object at ba.app.lang
• ba.get_valid_languages() is now an attr: ba.app.lang.available_languages
• Achievement functionality has been consolidated into an AchievementSubsystem object at ba.app.ach
• Plugin functionality has been consolidated into a PluginSubsystem obj at ba.app.plugins
• Ditto with AccountV1Subsystem and ba.app.accounts
• Ditto with MetadataSubsystem and ba.app.meta
• Ditto with AdsSubsystem and ba.app.ads
• Revamped tab-button functionality into a cleaner type-safe class ( bastd.ui.tabs.TabRow)
• Split Gather-Window tabs out into individual classes for future improvements ( bastd.ui.gather.*)
• Added the ability to disable ticket-purchasing UIs for builds (ba.app.allow_ticket_purchases)
• Reworked the public party gather section to perform better; it should no longer have to rebuild the list from scratch each time the UI is visited.
• Added a filter option to the public party list (sorry it has taken so long).

1.5.26 (20217)

• Simplified licensing header on python scripts.
• General project refactoring in order to open source most of the C++ layer.

1.5.25 (20176)

• Added Venetian language (thanks Federico!)
• Fixed an issue where chosen-one flashes would remain if the player leaves the game
• Added android input-device detection log messages for debugging
• Android asset-sync phase (completing install...) now emits log output for debugging.

1.5.24 (20163)

• Upgraded Python from version 3.7 to 3.8. This is a substantial change (though nothing like the previous update from 2.7 to 3.7) so please holler if anything is broken. These updates will happen once every year or two now...
• Windows debug builds now use Python debug libraries. This should hopefully catch more errors that would otherwise go undetected and potentially cause crashes.
• Switched windows builds to use 'fast' mode math instead of 'strict'. This should make the game run more efficiently (similar modes are already in use on other platforms) but holler if any odd breakage happens such as things falling through floors (more often than the occasional random fluke-y case that happens now).
• Added _ba.can_display_full_unicode() for any code that wants to avoid printing things that won't show up locally.
• Now pulling some classes such as Literal and Protocol from typing instead of typing_extensions (they were officially added to Python in 3.8)
• Double taps/clicks now work properly on widgets nested under a scroll-widget on mobile (so, for example, replays can now be double-clicked to view them)

1.5.23 (20146)

• Fixed the shebang line in bombsquad_server file by using -S flag for /usr/bin/env.
• Fixed a bug with hardware keyboards emitting extra characters in the in-game console (~ or F2)
• Added support for 'plugin' mods and user controls to configure them in settings->advanced->plugins.
• Renamed selection_loop_to_parent to selection_loops_to_parent in widget calls.
• Added selection_loops_to_parent, border, margin, claims_left_right, and claims_tab args to ba.columnwidget().
• Column-widget now has a default border of 0 (explicitly pass 2 to get the old look).
• Column-widget now has a default margin of 10 (explicitly pass 0 to get the old look).
• Added selection_loops_to_parent, claims_left_right, and claims_tab args to ba.scrollwidget.
• Added selection_loops_to_parent, claims_left_right, and claims_tab args to ba.rowwidget.
• Added claims_left_right and claims_tab to ba.hscrollwidget().
• Default widget show_buffer is now 20 instead of 0 (causes scrolling to stay slightly ahead of widget selection). This can be overridden with the ba.widget() call if anything breaks.
• Relocated ba.app.uiscale to ba.app.ui.uiscale.
• Top level settings window now properly saves/restores its state again.
• Added Emojis to the Internal Game Keyboard.
• Added continuous CAPITAL letters typing feature in the Internal Game Keyboard.

1.5.22 (20139)

• Button and key names now display correctly again on Android (and are cleaned up on other platforms too).

1.5.21 (20138)

• Added a UI subsystem at ba.app.ui (containing globals/functionality that was previously directly under ba.app). And hopefully added a fix for rare state of two main menus appearing on-screen at once.
• Added options in the 'Advanced' section to disable camera shake and camera gyroscope motion.

1.5.20 (20126)

• The ba.Session.teams and ba.Session.players lists are now ba.Session.sessionteams and ba.Session.sessionplayers. This is to help keep it clear that a Team/Player and a SessionTeam/SessionPlayer are different things now.
• Disconnecting an input-device now immediately removes the player instead of doing so in the next cycle; this prevents possible issues where code would try to access player.inputdevice before the removal happens which would lead to errors.
• Updated mac prefab builds to point at homebrew's python@3.7 package now that 3.8 has been made the default.
• Fixed an issue where adding/deleting UI widgets within certain callbacks could cause a crash.
• Fixed a case where an early fatal error could lead to a hung app and no error dialog.
• Added environment variables which can override UI scale for testing. Set BA_FORCE_UI_SCALE to small, medium or large.
• Added a ba.UIScale enum. The value at ba.app.uiscale replaces the old ba.app.interface_type, ba.app.small_ui, and ba.app.med_ui values.
• Emoji no longer display in-game with a washed-out appearance. If there are any places in-game where bright-colored emoji become distracting, please holler.
• _ba.get_game_roster() now includes account_id which is the validated account id of all clients (will be None until completes). Also, a few keys are renamed: specString->spec_string and displayString->display_string.

1.5.19 (20123)

• Cleaned up some bomb logic to avoid weird corner-cases such as land-mine explosions behaving like punches when set off by punches or bombs potentially resulting in multiple explosions when triggered by multiple other bombs simultaneously. Holler if anything explosion-related seems off now.
• Reactivated and cleaned up fatal-error message dialogs; they should now show up more consistently and on more platforms when something catastrophic happens instead of getting a silent crash.
• Certain hardware buttons on Android which stopped working in 1.5 should now be working again...

1.5.18 (20108)

• A bit of project cleanup; tools/snippets is now tools/pcommand, etc.
• More minor bug fixes and crash/bug-logging improvements.

1.5.17 (20102)

• More cleanup to logging and crash reporting system.
• Various other minor bug fixes...

1.5.16 (20099)

• Hopefully finally fixed that pesky crash bug on score submissions.

1.5.14 (20096)

• Fixed Android VR version failing to launch.
• More bug fixing and crash reporting improvements.

1.5.13 (20095)

• Hopefully fixed an elusive random crash on android that popped up recently.
• Misc bug fixes.

1.5.12 (20087)

• Improved exception handling and crash reporting.
• Misc bug fixes.

1.5.11 (20083)

• Fixed a freeze in the local network browser.

1.5.10 (20083)

• Streamlined C++ layer bootstrapping process a bit.
• Creating sys scripts via ba.modutils now works properly.
• Custom soundtracks should now work again under Android 10.
• Misc other bug fixes.

1.5.9 (20082)

• Reduced some hitches when clicking on certain buttons in the UI
• Fixed an issue where very early keyboard/controller connects/disconnects could get lost on android.
• ba._modutils is now ba.modutils since it is intended to be publicly accessible.
• drop-down console is now properly accessible again via android hardware keyboards (` key)
• Other minor bug fixes..

1.5.8 (20079)

• Fixed an issue where touch controls or sound settings values could look like 0.8999999999. Please holler if you see this anywhere else.
• Fixed a potential crash when tapping the screen before the game is fully inited.
• Restored the correct error message in the 'Google Play' connection tab from 1.4 (I am actively working on a replacement)
• Other minor bug fixes.

1.5.7 (20077)

• Fixed an issue where co-op score screen rating could look like ' 3.9999999999999'
• Other minor bug fixes.

1.5.6 (20075)

• Lots of internal event-handling cleanup/reorganization in preparation for Android 1.5 update.
• Lots of low level input handling cleanup, also related to Android 1.5 version. Please holler if keyboard/game-controllers/etc. are behaving odd on any platforms.
• Now including Android test builds for the first time since 1.5. These have not been thoroughly tested yet so please holler with anything that is obviously broken.
• Mouse wheel now works in manual camera mode on more platforms.
• Server scripts now run in opt mode in release builds, so they can use bundled .opt-1.pyc files.
• Fixes a potential crash in the local network browser.
• Fixes an issue where Hockey Pucks would not show up in network games.
• More misc bug fixes and tidying.

1.5.5 (20069)

• Cleaned up Windows version packaging.
• More misc bug fixes.

1.5.4 (20067)

• Should now work properly with non-ascii paths on Windows (for real this time).
• Note that Windows game data is now stored under 'Local' appdata instead of ' Roaming'; if you have an old installation with data you want to preserve, you may want to move it over manually.
• Misc cleanup and minor bug fixes.

1.5.3 (20065)

• Improved handling of non-ascii characters in file paths on Windows.

1.5.2 (20063)

• Fixes an issue with controls not working correctly in net-play between 1.4.x and 1.5.x.
• Tidied up onslaught code a bit.
• Fixes various other minor bugs.

1.5.1 (20062)

• Windows server now properly displays color when run by double-clicking the .bat file.
• Misc bug fixes.

1.5.0 (20001)

• This build contains about 2 years worth of MAJOR internal refactoring to prepare for the future of BombSquad. As a player this should not (yet) look different from 1.4, but for modders there is a lot new. See the rest of these change entries or visit ballistica.net for more info.
• Ported the entire scripting layer from Python 2 to Python 3 (currently at 3.7, and I intend to keep this updated to the latest widely-available release). There's some significant changes going from python 2 to 3 (new print statement, string behavior, etc.), but these are well documented online, so please read up as needed. This should provide us some nice benefits and future-proofs everything. (my janky 2.7 custom Python builds were getting a little long in the tooth).
• Refactored all script code to be PEP8 compliant (Python coding standards). Basically, this means that stuff that was camel-case (fooBar) is now a single word or underscores (foobar / foo_bar). There are a few minor exceptions such as existing resource and media filenames, but in general old code can be ported by taking a pass through and killing the camel-case. I know this is a bit of a pain in the ass, but it'll let us use things like Pylint and just be more consistent with the rest of the Python world.
• On a related note, I'm now using 'yapf' to keep my Python code formatted nicely (using pep8 style); I'd recommend checking it out if you're doing a lot of scripting as it's a great time-saver.
• On another related note, I'm trying to confirm to Google's recommendations for Python code (search 'Google Python Style Guide'). There are some good bits of wisdom in there, so I recommend at least skimming through it.
• And as one last related note, I'm now running Pylint on all my own Python code. Highly recommended if you are doing serious scripting, as it can make Python almost feel as type-safe as C++.
• The minimum required android version will now be 5.0 (a requirement of the Python 3 builds I'm using)
• Minimum required macOS version is now 10.13 (for similar reasons)
• 'bsInternal' module is now _ba (better lines up with standard Python practices)
• bs.writeConfig() and bs.applySettings() are no more. There is now ba.app.config which is basically a fancy dict class with some methods added such as commit() and apply()
• bs.getEnvironment() is no more; the values there are now available through ba.app (see notes down further)
• Fixed the mac build so command line input works again when launched from a terminal
• Renamed 'exceptionOnNone' arg to 'doraise' in various calls.
• bs.emitBGDynamics() is now ba.emitfx()
• bs.shakeCamera() is now ba.camerashake()
• Various other minor name changes (bs.getUIBounds() -> ba.app.ui_bounds, etc.). I'm keeping old and new Python API docs around for now, so you can compare as needed.
• Renamed bot classes based on their actions instead of their appearances (ie: PirateBot -> ExplodeyBot)
• bs.getSharedObject() is now ba.stdobj()
• Removed bs.uni(), bs.utf8(), bs.uni_to_ints(), and bs.uni_from_ints() which are no longer needed due to Python 3's better string handling.
• Removed bs.SecureInt since it didn't do much to slow down hackers and hurts code readability.
• Renamed 'finalize' to 'expire' for actors and activities. 'Finalize' sounds too much like a destructor, which is not really what that is.
• bs.getMapsSupportingPlayType() is now simply ba.getmaps(). I might want to add more filter options to it besides just play-type, hence the renaming.
• Changed the concept of 'game', 'net', and 'real' times to 'sim', 'base', and ' real'. See time function docs for specifics. Also cleared up a few ambiguities over what can be used where.
• I'm converting all scripting functions to operate on floating-point seconds by default instead of integer milliseconds. This will let us support more accurate simulations later and is just cleaner I feel. To keep existing calls working you should be able to add timeformat='ms' and you'll get the old behavior (or multiply your time values by 0.001). Specific notes listed below.
• ba.Timer now takes its 'time' arg as seconds instead of milliseconds. To port old calls, add: timeformat='ms' to each call (or multiply your input by 0.001)
• ba.animate() now takes times in seconds and its 'driver' arg is now 'timetype' for consistency with other time functions. To port existing code you can pass timeformat='ms' to keep the old milliseconds based behavior.
• ditto for ba.animate_array()
• ba.Activity.end() now takes seconds instead of milliseconds as its delay arg.
• TNTSpawner now also takes seconds instead of milliseconds for respawn_time.
• There is a new ba.timer() function which is used for all one-off timer creation. It has the same args as the ba.Timer() class constructor.
• bs.gameTimer() is no more. Pass timeformat='ms' to ba.timer() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• bs.netTimer() is no more. Pass timetype='base' and timeformat='ms' to ba.timer() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• bs.realTimer() is no more. Pass timetype='real' and timeformat='ms' to ba.timer() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• There is a new ba.time() function for getting time values; it has consistent args with the new ba.timer() and ba.Timer() calls.
• bs.getGameTime() is no more. Pass timeformat='ms' to ba.time() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• bs.getNetTime() is no more. Pass timetype='base' and timeformat='ms' to ba.time() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• bs.getRealTime() is no more. Pass timetype='real' and timeformat='ms' to ba.time() if you need to recreate its behavior.
• bs.getTimeString() is now just ba.timestring(), and accepts seconds by default (pass timeformat='ms' to keep old calls working).
• bs.callInGameThread() has been replaced by an optional from_other_thread arg for ba.pushcall()
• There is now a special ba.UNHANDLED value that handlemessage() calls should return any time they don't handle a passed message. This will allow fallback message types and other nice things in the future.
• Wired the boolean operator up to ba.Actor's exists() method, so now a simple " if mynode" will do the right thing for both Actors and None values instead of having to explicitly check for both.
• Ditto for ba.Node; you can now just do 'if mynode' which will do the right thing for both a dead Node or None.
• Ditto for ba.InputDevice, ba.Widget, ba.Player
• Added a bs.App class accessible via ba.app; will be migrating global app values there instead of littering python modules with globals. The only remaining module globals should be all-caps public 'constants'
• 'Internal' methods and classes living in _ba and elsewhere no longer start with underscores. They are now simply marked with '(internal)' in their docstrings. 'Internal' bits are likely to have janky interfaces and can change without warning, so be wary of using them. If you find yourself depending on some internal thing often, please let me know, and I can try to clean it up and make it 'public'.
• bs.getLanguage() is no more; that value is now accessible via ba.app.language
• bs.Actor now accepts an optional 'node' arg which it will store as self.node if passed. Its default DieMessage() and exists() handlers will use self.node if it exists. This removes the need for a separate NodeActor() for simple cases.
• bs.NodeActor is no more (it can simply be replaced with ba.Actor())
• bs.playMusic() is now ba.setmusic() which better fits its functionality (it sometimes just continues playing or stops playing).
• The bs.Vector class is no more; in its place is a shiny new ba.Vec3 which is implemented internally in C++ so its nice and speedy. Will probably update certain things like vector node attrs to support this class in the future since it makes vector math nice and convenient.
• Ok you get the point... see ballistica.net for more info on these changes.

1.4.155 (14377)

• Added protection against a repeated-input attack in lobbies.

1.4.151 (14371)

• Added Chinese-Traditional language and improved translations for others.

1.4.150 (14369)

• Telnet port can now be specified in the config
• Telnet socket no longer opens on headless build when telnet access is off ( reduces DoS attack potential)
• Added a filter_chat_message() call which can be used by servers to intercept/modify/block all chat messages.
• bsInternal._disconnectClient() now takes an optional banTime arg (in seconds, defaults to old value of 300).

1.4.148 (14365)

• Added a password option for telnet access on server builds

1.4.147 (14364)

• Fixes an issue where a client rejoining a server after being kicked could get stuck in limbo
• Language updates
• Increased security on games that list themselves as public. All joining players must now be validated by the master server, or they will be kicked. This will let me globally ban accounts or ip addresses from joining games to avoid things like ad spam-bots (which has been a problem this week).
• Added a max chat message length of 100
• Clients sending abnormal amounts of data to the server will now be auto-kicked

1.4.145 (14351)

• Mostly a maintenance release (real work is happening in the 1.5/2.0 branch) - minor bug fixes and a few language updates.
• Google deprecated some older SDKs, so the minimum Android supported by this build is now 4.4

1.4.144 (14350)

• Added Greek translation

1.4.143 (14347)

• Fixed an issue where server names starting and ending with curly brackets would display incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where an android back-button press very soon after launch could lead to a crash
• Fixed a potential crash if a remove-player call is made for a player that has already left

1.4.142 (14346)

• Fixed an issue in my rigid body simulation code which could lead to crashes when large numbers of bodies are present

1.4.141 (14344)

• Fixed a longstanding bug in my huffman compression code that could cause an extra byte of unallocated memory to be read, leading to occasional crashes

1.4.140 (14343)

• Fixed a few minor outstanding bugs from the 1.4.139 update

1.4.139 (14340)

• Added an option to the server builds to point to a server-stats webpage that will show up as an extra link in the server browser (in client 1.4.139+)
• Removed the language column from the server browser. This was more relevant back when all clients saw the game in the server's language, and is nowadays largely just hijacked for silly purposes. Holler if you miss it.
• Server list now re-pings servers less often and averages ping results to reduce the amount of jumping around in the list. Please holler if this feels off.
• Added some slick new client-verification tech. Going forward it should be pretty much impossible to fool a server into thinking you are using a different account than you really are.
• Added a get_account_id() method to the bs.Player class. This will return a player's signed-in account-id (when it can be verified for certain)

1.4.138 (14336)

• Removed SDL library from the server builds, so that's one less dependency that needs to be installed when setting up a linux server

1.4.137 (14331)

• Lots of internal code cleanup and reorganization before I dig into networking rework (hopefully didn't break too much)
• Slowly cleaning up Python files (hoping to move closer to PEP 8 standards and eventually Python 3)
• Added Hindi language
• Cleared out some old build types (farewell OUYA; thanks for the memories)
• Added support for meshes with > 65535 verts (though turns out OpenGL ES2 doesn't support this so moot at the moment)

1.4.136 (14327)

• Updated 'kiosk mode' functionality (used for simple demo versions of the game)
• Lots of work getting VR builds up to date
• Fixed an issue where 'report this player' window would show up behind the window that spawned it

1.4.135 (14324)

• Updated various SDKs for the android build (now building against api 27, removed inmobi ads, etc.)

1.4.134 (14322)

• Fixed an issue where the internal keyboard would sometimes show up behind game windows
• Fixed an issue where UI widget selection would sometimes loop incorrectly at window edges
• Fixed an issue where overlay windows such as the quit dialog would allow clicks to pass through to regular windows under them
• Work on 2.0 UI (not yet enabled)

1.4.133 (14318)

• Pro upgrade now unlocks custom team names and colors in teams mode
• Added a 'Mute Chat' option for completely ignoring incoming chat messages
• Fixed a longstanding issue where player-selectors could get 'stuck'
• Pro upgrade now unlocks a new exact color picker option for character colors/highlights/etc.
• Added new flag icons to the store: Iran, Poland, Argentina, Philippines, and Chile
• Added an option for translators to be notified by the game whenever there are new phrases to translate (under settings->advanced)
• Increased quality on some models, textures and audio
• Assault no longer counts dead bodies hitting the flag as scores
• Replay speed can now be controlled with -/= keys (on devices with keyboards)
• Added Serbian language
• Remote app connections are now disabled by default on server builds
• Server wrapper script now supports python 3 in addition to python 2. (Python 3 support in the actual game will still be awhile)
• Added better crash reporting on Android, so I can hopefully fix bugs more quickly.
• bs.Lstr() can now take a 'fallbackResource' or 'fallbackValue' argument; the old 'fallback' argument is deprecated
• Removed the long-since-deprecated bs.translate() and bs.getResource() calls ( bs.Lstr() should be used for all that stuff now)
• Removed some deprecated functions from GameActivity: getInstanceScoreBoardNameLocalized(), getInstanceNameLocalized(), getConfigDescriptionLocalized()

1.4.132 (14316)

• Fixed an issue where the game could get stuck in a black screen after resuming on Android

1.4.131 (14315)

• Replay playback speed can now be adjusted in the menu
• Fixed an issue with touch controls showing up while in party chat
• Fixed issues with the new anti-turbo logic when hosting

1.4.130 (14313)

• New character: Grumbledorf the Wizard
• Improved public party browsing performance
• Added protections against turbo exploits when hosting
• Fixed issues with some Android controllers not being recognized

1.4.126 (14307)

• Improved keyboard and mouse support on Android

1.4.125 (14306)

• Added support for keyboards on Android
• Added support for desktop-like environments such as Samsung DeX and Chromebooks on Android
• Optimized game UI for wide-screen layouts such as the Galaxy Note 8

1.4.121 (14302)

• Added support for account unlinking

1.4.118 (14298)

• Added 64-bit arm binary to Android builds

1.4.111 (14286)

• BombSquad Pro now unlocks 2 additional characters
• multi-line chat messages are now clamped down to 1 line; should prevent annoying multi-line fullscreen message spam

1.4.106 (14280)

• the game will now only print 'game full' player-rejection messages to the client attempting to join; should reduce annoying message spam.

1.4.101 (14268)

• the game will now attempt to load connecting players' profiles and info from my master-server instead of trusting the player; should reduce cheating

1.4.100 (14264)

• added a 'playlistCode' option in the server config which corresponds with playlist codes added in BombSquad 1.4.100 (used for sharing playlists with friends). Now you can create a custom playlist, grab a code for it, and easily use it in a dedicated server.

1.4.99 (14252)

• there is now a forced 10-second delay between a player leaving the game and another player from that same client joining the game. This should fix the exploit where players were leaving and re-joining to avoid spawn times.
• most in-game text is now set as bs.Lstr() values so that they show up in the client's own language instead of the server's There are currently a few exceptions such as time values which I need to address.

1.4.98 (14248)

• added kick-votes that can be started by any client. Currently, a client must type '0' or '1' in chat to vote, but I'll add buttons for them soon.
• modified text nodes so that they can display in each client's own language. ( most text nodes don't do this yet but the capability is there). However, this means older clients can't connect to 1.4.98 servers, so you may want to stick with an older server for a bit until the userbase gets more updated.

1.4.97 (14247)

• back to displaying long names in more places; mainly just the in-game ones are clamped... trying to find a good balance...

1.4.97 (14246)

• public party names will now show up for clients as the title of their party windows instead of "My Party" and also during connect/disconnect (requires client 14246+)
• server now ignores 'locked' states on maps/game-types, so meteor-shower, target-practice, etc. should work now

1.4.97 (14244)

• kicked players are now unable to rejoin for a several minutes

1.4.96 (14242)

• chat messages and the party window now show player names instead of account names when possible
• server now clamps in-game names to 8 characters so there's some hope of reading them in-game. Can loosen this or add controls for how clamping happens if need be.

1.4.96 (14241)

• added an automatic chat-block to combat chat spammers. Block durations start at 10 seconds and double with each repeat offense

1.4.95 (14240)

• fixed an issue where a single account could not be used to host multiple parties at once

1.4.95 (14236)

• added a port option to the config, so it's now possible to host multiple parties on one machine (note that bombsquad 1.4.95+ is required to connect ports aside from 43210)

1.4.95 (14234)

• fixed a bug that could cause the Windows version to freeze randomly after a while

1.4.95 (14233)

• bombsquad (both bs_headless and regular) now reads commands from standard input, making it easier to run commands via scripts or the terminal
• server now runs using a 'server' account-type instead of the local 'device' account. (avoids daily-ticket-reward messages and other stuff that's not relevant to servers)
• the server script now passes args to the game as a json file instead of individual args; this should keep things cleaner and more expandable
• the bombsquad_server script also now reads commands from stdin, allowing reconfiguring server settings on the fly
• added more options such as the ability to set game series lengths and to host a non-public party

1.4.94

• now have mac, windows, and both 32 and 64-bit linux server builds
• added an optional config.py file that can be used instead of modifying the server script itself
• added an autoBalanceTeams option for teams games
• people joining and leaving the party are no longer announced (too much noise)

1.4.93

• should now properly allow clients to use their unlocked characters
• added an option to enable telnet access