Phoenix on
www.americasarmy.com wrote: ›
AA:SF V2.8.3.1 RELEASED
Posted: 25 MAR 08, by Phoenix
AA:SF V2.8.3.1 RELEASED Based in part on your feedback, we've released a small patch to address some issues in America's Army. This patch focuses mainly on account, game play and server administration issues as well as taking care of a few annoying bugs. We think this update will improve your experience while playing America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch).
Head over to our Downloads section to get this latest release to patch your game up to America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch) v2.8.3.1.
http://www.americasarmy.com/downloads/patches.php
America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch)
Release Notes - Version 2.8.3.1
What's New
===============================================================================
This patch was created to address a few minor issues prior to the next release
of America's Army.
FORCE CLASS
We have enabled Global Forceclassing (FC) on honor bearing servers. Individual
FC can still be used but not on honor servers. Using a Global FC on everyone
levels the playing field for all. When using Global FC, honor is accrued at
less than normal rates due to the fact that old maps were created with specific
weapon loadouts in mind. Forceclassed Servers will show up in MBS with an (FC)
preceding their name for easy identification.
USERNAMES
Spaces in user account names are no longer permitted. If you have an old
account with a space it has been replaced with an underscore character (_) or
in the case of conflicts a number. You should have received an email to your
address of record indicating the change. All of your other account information
was retained.
BAN SYSTEM
Ban system again supports banning by IP, MAC, or Name/PBGUID (for PB servers
banning by NAME will result in a PBGUID ban instead of a name ban). Ban system
now supports console commands to list ban lists in sets of 20 (or so) to allow
"scrolling" through the list to locate banned players. The Admin Command Post
only supports showing the first 100 ban entries but now has a wider list to show
all the ban details. The Banning system was rewritten and includes the
preliminary ability to download a ban list from a web server on game server
startup.
The following INI section can be added to support this:
[Engine.BanManagement]
BanListMasterServer=www.somedomain.com
BanListWebPath=/AA2831BanList
This will cause the game server to try to retrieve the "BanList.status" file
from the web server using the URL:
www.somedomain.com/AA2831BanList/BanList.status (using the example above)
which will be compared to the local version to see if the ban list file
version matches.
The BanList.status file contains the following lines:
AABanListMasterServer<cr>
Version=<whatever><cr>
MD5=<MD5><cr>
If the version does not match (regardless as to whether it's newer or older)
the remote BanList.txt file is downloaded from the web server. It is not
recommended to use this for large ban lists. It is anticipated this ban list
management system will be expanded in future versions of America's Army.
PLAYER ADMINS
Player Admin support has been rewritten to require player administrators to
have passwords. The new AASM provides support for creating the appropriate
format PlayerAdmin entries. For those wishing to manually edit their INI file
the PlayerAdmin setting is now in the format "PlayerAdmin=<account>,
<some>" (e.g. "PlayerAdmin=Bob,mysecretpassword"). Player Admins
wanting to join the server must join the server using either the MBS browser
and right-clicking on the server name (with it selected) and choosing "Join As
Player Admin" or by joining via the console using this format
"open <IP>?PAPassword=<some>"
(e.g. "open 192.168.0.1?PAPassword=mysecretpassword").
You must have logged into your account in order to use this functionality on
any official or authorized server.
DEMOREC
The demorec system was modified to address issues encountered with certain sound cards and the recording of weapon firing noises and muzzle flashes. Users with specific sound cards would experience audio stuttering and degraded game performance when creating demo recordings. To address this for 2.8.3.1 the "DemoRecToggleSound" and "DemoRecToggleMuzzleFlash" console commands (and associated INI entries) were added. If you experience audio distortion while using demorec to record a play session disable the recording of the weapon firing sounds and muzzle flashes and performance should return to normal. You will still see muzzle flashes and hear weapon noises in game, but they won't be available when playing back the demo recording.
To disable recording of muzzle flashes and weapon firing sounds you may wish to edit the armyops.ini file and add in the following lines :
[Engine.Actor]
bDemoRecSounds=false
bDemoRecMuzzleFlash=false
AA LOADER
We added the ability to quickly update Punkbuster. From the
AA Loader you can update PB before entering the game. The game itself will also check for updates as before for those who do not wish to use this feature.
System Requirements
===============================================================================
The General System Requirements for America's Army are:
* Video card supporting Pixel Shader 2.0 or later with at least 128MB RAM.
* Any modern Intel or AMD processor.
This can include Intel Core2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 or Intel Pentium 4***
* English version of these Operating Systems:
Microsoft Windows(r) 2000 SP4
Microsoft Windows(r) XP SP2
Microsoft Windows(r) Vista SP1
* 512Mb RAM or more.
* 3.5Gb of uncompressed hard disk space for game files
* DVD-ROM (not required for downloaded installations)
* Mouse and keyboard
* DirectX(r)9.0c or later
* 100% Compatible DirectX 9.0 soundcard
* Internet connection
*** - Please note that the Clock Frequency required to player America's Army
has been omitted due to performance differences between processor vendors and
their processor families. Systems running Intel Core2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64
require lower CPU clock frequencies to run America's Army efficiently. Systems
using Intel Pentium 4 may require higher clock frequencies due to the nature
of the products design - as a guideline generally the higher the core frequency
the better the expected performance.
Technical Notes
===============================================================================
Important Note for Server Hosts/Admins
The cooperative missions will take significantly more CPU resources to run
during normal gameplay due to the additional AI processing load (shared between
the server & client). Server hosts planning to run Co-Op servers should plan
accordingly. In addition, players running a Co-Op server and client on the same
machine will experience heavy CPU demand.
It is recommended that server rotations switch only from Co-Op level to Co-Op
level, or MP to MP level for best performance.
Game Ports
===============================================================================
The internet ports currently required to be open for America's Army v2.8.3
are listed below:
UDP - 1716, 1717, 1718, 8777, 27900
TCP - 14200, 20025-45, 20046, 20047, 20048, 28910
UDP ports explained:
1716 for the Game,
1717 for the GameQuery,
1718 for the Master Server Query,
8777 for the Standard UT Query, and 27900 for GameSpy.
TCP ports explained:
28910 for GameSpy
20025-45 for MBS Game Server,
20046 for the Auth server,
20047 for MBS, 20048 for DCDS, and 14200 for LAN.
What's Fixed
===============================================================================
NOTE: This list only includes bugs present in v2.8.3 that have been fixed.
Certain security/exploit fixes have been purposely excluded from this list.
Mission Specific:
* SF Snakeplain: Were unable to use Javelin in the second 18Z slot until
weapon is dropped
* SF Snakeplain: A crash related to the Javelin destroying an enemy vehicle
has been fixed.
* SF Floodgate: Player pawns were spawning in with the wrong team
* SF Floodgate: Player pawn was able to get into unintended area
Admin Commands:
* Banning a player who has spaces in their name did not work properly
Mission Editor:
* The "Save As" menu function was not available.
General Issues:
* Round timer was very small in spectate mode and blocked by text
* Console was deleting messages randomly
* Weapon FOV was incorrect after weapon swap
* Fixed an issue where switching to a grenade while zoomed could result in
an unresponsive weapon.
Linux Server:
* Fixed an issue in the linux server related to the chat log pathing.
Exploits Fixed:
* Player was able to remove most recoil from a weapon by going scoped and
sprinting at the same time
Known Editor Issues
===============================================================================
White/missing viewports
When the Editor is launched, the viewports will appear to be missing or all
white. To resolve this issue simply go to "View > Viewports > Configure ...",
select one of the options and click OK.
Brightness/Gamma
When the Editor is launched the brightness/gamma will be increased.
Adjustments to the gamma can be made in "View > Gamma Options".
Unable to select any map objects (static meshes, brushes, etc) using right or
left mouse click
** This issue is specific to systems with ATI graphics cards ** and occurs
due to Anti-Aliasing and/or Anisotropic Filtering being enabled.
Disabling these settings has been shown to resolve the problem.
Dual Monitor Setup: Unable to move the Editor from one monitor to the other.
** This issue is specific to systems with ATI graphics cards **
To resolve this issue, click the View menu and uncheck "Automatically
reposition windows".
Calendar 
WCSG
