HaxBall News

Typing ‘@’ in the chat will now open a list of all players. You can then select a player with the arrow keys and press TAB to autocomplete. Continuing to type will also filter the list, making it easier to quickly find the player you are looking for.

If someone mentions your nick using this system you will get a highlighted text and a different chat sound (Which can be disabled in the settings). This feature will probably be useful when trying to call the attention of players that are perhaps distracted browsing a on a different tab.

Also, pressing # will do a similar thing but the TAB key will autocomplete using the player’s id number. This should be helpful for referring players when issuing commands to headless room scripts since the id will be unambiguous and easy to parse by the headless room’s script.

Game changes:

• Implemented an indicator that shows when a player is typing in the chat.
• The /extrapolation command is now saved as a setting and persists between games.
• Added a new zoom option called Dynamic, which dynamically changes the zoom according to the window height. This is now the default zoom option that users see if they load haxball for the first time.
• Improved error reporting when loading a stadium file fails. If there’s a syntax error it will tell the line and column where the problem is. It will also say in which vertex, segment, plane or disc an error happened if the data is invalid.
• Added goal markers to HaxBall replay files. They appear as vertical lines in the replay time bar.
• A few miscellaneous optimizations and bugfixes.

Headless Host API changes:

The full list is here but there’s two notable changes:

1 - Added headless room opening token for solving recaptcha in a different machine, it will help when trying to start a room using a headless browser.

2 - Implemented player auth functionality that lets players identify themselves when joining a room. The id is validated by using cryptographic signing.

The game will now automatically generate a unique Public ID and a Private Key for every player. You can see your own public id and private key here.

This id and key are stored in local storage and reused every time you join a room.

You can use this auth id to make sure that a player is who he says he is, as long as he keeps his private key safe there’s no way to impersonate someone elses id.

Stadium File changes (.hbs)

• Added a Background color property.
• Added a cameraFollow property that now lets you make stadiums where the camera will center on the player and ignore the ball. Probably useful for obstacle courses or racing maps.
• Added a bias property to segments that lets you make one-way walls with configurable thickness. Useful for making bounds of maps with small and fast moving balls that would usually go through normal thin segments.

Stadium File documentation can be found here.

Changes:

• Expanded headless host api, changelog is here.
• Implemented configurable key bindings, accessible from the Input tab in the settings menu.
• Added higher zoom level options accessible through the Video tab in the settings menu.
• When you are kicked or banned from a room the game will now tell you who did it.
• New /extrapolation command which could be useful for players with input lag.
• And a few miscellaneous bugfixes.

As mentioned in the last update, netcode bugs have now been fixed and the game will now be more robust in the face of packet loss.

You might also notice red bars appearing in the ping graph, these red bars signify a ping packet being lost. Packet loss is bad mkay, but not so bad now thanks to the netcode improvements.

The Headless Host API has been expanded, check the full changelog here.

Also a few small changes to the haxball client:

Changes:

• Fixed bugged /handicap feature. (This was only working correctly if you were the room host, now it should work for clients too.)
• Added chat log notifications for when a player is given admin rights.
• Very minor improvements to netcode.

What I’ll be working on next:

I’ve spotted a small bug in the netcode which is basically disabling a fairly significant optimization I had made. Unfortunately fixing this bug seemed to cause new bugs to pop up elsewhere that actually break the game and not just make it less optimal.

So until next update, I’ll be focusing on getting these bugs fixed.

HTML5 version of HaxBall is now default HaxBall and drops the alpha tag.

Flash version is now in http://www.haxball.com/flash/, it will probably remain up until chrome no longer supports flash.

The html5 version of haxball does a lot of things that are unnecesary when trying to host on a VPS (rendering, audio, GUI / menus).

To improve this situation I’ve implemented a “headless” version which does no rendering audio or GUI and is controllable through a javascript API.

Read the documentation here.

Also, starting today creating a room will require passing a recaptcha test.

Enjoy!

Changes:

• Replay recording and playing.
• Some bugfixes.

Because these new replay files are incompatible with the ones created with the flash version the extension has changed to “.hbr2”.

There’s currently no way to link directly to a replay file, I’ll implement that feature soon. For now the only way to load a replay is from the room list “Replays” button.

I wish you all a happy new year!

Changes:

• Implemented custom team colors.
• Implemented setting to locally disable custom team colors.
• Implemented /colors /set_password /clear_password /checksum and /handicap commands
• Made custom stadiums names appear as yellow text in the room menu.
• Non player chat messages in the chat log are now a different color.
• Added log messages for most admin actions. They all say which admin produced the action.
• Fixed bug were some custom stadiums had their background broken.
• Fixed bug where transparent discs would only work for the player that loads the custom stadium.

Changes

• Implemented a new “maxViewWidth” custom stadium property, this property allows custom stadium authors to specify the maximum width players should be able to see regardless of their viewport size. This should be useful for stadiums where having a bigger viewport than other players provides you with too much advantage.
• Implemented crowd cheers sounds.
• Implemented Settings menu.
• Implemented settings to mute all game sounds, chat sounds and crowd cheer sounds.
• Implemented country selection setting.
• Implemented FPS limit setting.
• Renderer optimizations
• Fixed bug where players would desynchronize when they join a room.
• Fixed player discs rendering on top of other stadium discs, this was breaking some maps that relied on on players being able to hide behind other discs.
• Fixed a bunch of smaller bugs and memory leaks.