HoverRace 1.23.3 released...

The last version released in December 2010 was released to process a proper URL for the roomlist, however it was not realised at the time that there was a new problem in the code that had only become a problem since migrating to Visual Studio 2010. Attempting to join a multiplayer game would crash the client.

After fixing this, I realised that HoverRace ran poorly on my computer, with the menu's becoming unresponsive as I tried to use them, and pressing shortcut keys like F2 not responding properly.

I came up with a fix, and Igglybob has added an option in the preferences called "Main Loop Sleep Length". This fix will not be needed by everyone, but some of you might benefit from using it.

I have set the fix to a default value of 12, which seems to be the optimum, but you will notice slight performance increases the lower the number is. You can try adjusting this until you can get it as low as possible, whilst the game is still running normally.

To test if your game is working correctly, start a practice game, once the race is underway, try to click on the menu bar to start another practice game. If the menu bar responds, and you can do this, then you might benefit from lowering the value. If however the game freezes up and becomes unresponsive, you will need to increase this value.

Goto Setting and then Options, and look for the "Main Loop Sleep Length" slider. Try changing the value as required, and then trying another practice session. Once you find the lowest number at which it does not freeze up, you are all done.

Also, I have modified HoverCad to no longer require players to open the old reg file to allow you to compile tracks, which is besides the fact that the reg file had stopped working anyway, so now we can finally make some more tracks when we want.

Finally, the score server code was not working properly, and I was fortunate to realise this before releasing 1.23.3, and have since fixed the problem :).

Download here!

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HoverRace 1.23.2 released...

Download here!

A minor change to have the roomlist resolve from a web address and not an ip address.

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Update your server roomlist URL's!

In order to access the IMR, you need to update your roomlist URL. We will be uploading a new installer soon enough.

The new server roomlist URL is: 174.122.149.6/~sirbrock/imr/rl.php

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1.24 Progress

Development of the source code is going well, and HoverRace 1.24 should be a big step in the right direction. Zoogie and Igglybob have been working hard as usual and the tickets towards 1.24 are closing gradually.

You can follow the progress on 1.24 by clicking here.

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�ber HoverRace

We need translations!

Want to help in making HoverRace a multi-language game? Well if you can help, visit this forum post by Igglybob:

http://www.hoverrace.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=791

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So what's going on?!

Well it's been a while since any post was made here, so I guess I should get you all up to date.

Essentially, work is still in progress for HoverRace 1.24, but there is a lot to do. Igglybob and Zoogie have been working very hard on this, and you can check their progress here:

HoverRace Trac Roadmap and Timeline

As far as HoverRace itself goes, we are still playing our weekly tournaments, so you are more than welcome to join us. We're playing on version 1.23.1 (naturally), and you can find out more at:

The Professional HoverRace Association website.

On the tournaments page, you can see the present time in the servers timezone, and the time of the tournaments we are playing on the approaching Saturday.

Using the 'current time' you can calculate how far ahead or behind that timezone you are, and calculate when the tournament is. (I am 5 hours ahead in England, so the Grand Prix is at 8pm for me on Saturday).

We look forward to seeing you there .

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Can you see my game?

Today after using CanYouSeeMe.org's website to see if my port was open for HoverRace, I decided to implement the feature into the Unable To Connect page.

After showing Zooz, I realised that this could be used in the IMR too!

So now, when you host a game in the IMR, your connection is checked to see if your Global IP and hosting port are available for joining.

If it is, the game name receives a + (positive) sign infront of it.

If not, the game informs you via PM how to remedy the situation, and also tells the rest of the IMR you might have connectivity issues. Plus it marks your game with a - (negative) sign.

Hopefully this feature will help out all our newer players :).

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HoverRace 1.23.1 Released

After initial testing and release of the 1.23 client, the developers have released a bugfix version: HoverRace 1.23.1.

1.23.1 changes:
-Crashes due to lack of a modified date on a track fixed.
-Can set your host port in the Preferences. This will allow you to run HoverRace off of more than one computer whilst hosting.
-The Availability box now displays a message that incidates if you join a game, an attempt will be made to download the track from HoverRace.com/Tracks/

All in all not very amazing, but this is as far as could be gone without causing backward compatibility issues with 1.23 :).

Click here to head over to the download page to get the new install.

---EDIT---
Thanks to the quick eye of Zooz, I was informed that the installer was acting perculiar, it has been fixed and reuploaded.

If you had already installed, delete the files in your "HoverRace" folder, but not the folders "bin", "help", "share", "track_source" or "tracks". Then, run the new installer, and everything should be updated.

Sorry about that!

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All Tracks Categorized

When HoverRace.com received the Tracks section from Mydan, I set about making it easier to determine what a track was for by adding categories of Race, War, Sport and Special.

Myself And Zooz had made efforts to give all of the older tracks their own class to be in, and tonight I played through the last 205 tracks, and it is finally complete !

Enjoy !

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Port Forwarding Guide

The Unable To Connect page on the left side has been updated to reflect the new changes in HoverRace 1.23 that has made HoverRace easier to play online.

If somebody is having connectivity issues in the IMR, just paste them this link...

http://www.hoverrace.com/?page=unabletoconnect

Good luck!

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HoverRace 1.23 Released

It's official folks! HoverRace 1.23 is being released today thanks to the awesome efforts of Igglybob and Zoogie, and the small input from myself too ;).

We would like to thank all the beta testers and bug reporters for making this possible.

Essentially what 1.23 is, is a lot about the progression of making HoverRace easier to enjoy. The need for Hamachi has been abolished and the "Unable To Connect?" page will be updated with port forwarding instructions once I have finished with this post.

You can download the HoverRace 1.23 from our Downloads page !

The biggest fix implement is the improvement of online connectivity; we used to rely on setting our routers to DMZ mode, which would only allow you to join last, or host the race without having connection issues to everyone else. We then use a 3rd party program Hamachi to emulate a Virtual Network, and although these were golden times, the biggest problem was explaining to someone why they had downloaded a game and now needed a 3rd party application to play it.

We now only need to forward ports 9530 and 9531 via TCP and UDP for online gameplay to work.

The "Join Game" port of 9531 can be adjusted to something else if you wish, this will be essential for allowing more than one person to play on a router.

If you wish to see more of the bug fixes and enhancements, you should visit the HoverRace Trac hosted at Igglybob.com, for now I'll link you into the achievements of 1.23:

HoverRace 1.23 Milestones

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HoverRace 1.23 coming soon!!

Thanks to the great work of Igglybob and Zoogie, we are almost ready to release HoverRace 1.23.

Although this is not a great deal different from other versions as far as features goes, what has been done is to fix a lot of issues in the underlying code.

This is going to lay down the foundations for future versions !

Some of the best bits include single port connectivity, an auto track downloader and my current favourite, the window flashes to grab your attention if the race starts while you're not looking .

For more information, visit the SVN Roadmap...

http://svn.igglybob.com/hoverrace/roadmap

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SVN Repository Online!

Thanks to the awesome work of Igglybob, we now have a working SVN Repository. What this will mean is that further development can be made.

I wouldn't expect it at any great rate as the people who can work on this all have other life responsibilities as well.

At any rate, this is great news for HoverRace.

You can find the forum topic about it here, or learn how to access the SVN Repository and download the latest source code on our development site under SVN !.

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Source Code Wikipedia now available.

After playing HoverRace today for the first time in a long time, I decided to try and press on with helping our developers exploit the source code to its fullest, and also to help novices in programming to understand what the each file does.

Although no entries have been made to the Wiki as of yet, it is set up and ready to work, so at least that is something.

I am looking to set up a CVS Repository so that development can be done; for those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, a CVS Repository is a code storage for open source work to be shared. Anyone can download the latest source, but only select accounts can update the Repository.

This will allow the developers to all be on the same page and have the same code at all times; whilst allowing anybody to see and access the ongoing work.

http://wiki.hoverrace.com

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PHP Room IMR Occupant display fixed...

Hey guys,

Didn't realise this was not working, but it turns out an extra forward slash was causing the page not to work .

The display up top will now show who is in the PHP IMR.

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A new beta patch released - 1.22b.2

Due to issues with the 1.22b.1 beta, we have released a new 1.22b.2 beta which should fix some minor issues that were stopping multiplayer play (what this game is all about! )

You can check out the post on the forum about it here, it contains the download link...

http://www.hoverrace.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=674

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Current Issues

Hi all, just a quick note to let you know that HoverRace is currently having some big issues in the sense that, at present, the IMR roomlist on the download on the downloads page does not work. This means you will not be able to get online.

Secondly, with the beta release; due to some code being left in, it is impossible for people to race against each other. HoverRace will realise you are using the same registration key (as we use 0-0 for everyone) and kick you all out of the race.

The only current way to play against anyone online would be to play on the current release (not the beta!) via the network mode having somebody host a game, and have your friends join it.

Here is a tutorial demonstrating how to install Hamachi (downloadable from here):


Here is how to host a network game:


Here is how to join a network game:

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We invite YOU to beta test!

http://www.hoverrace.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=670

Hope it works for you :), post to us to show your findings .

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It's finally all coming home.

Hi all,

I'm back from my holiday in England and I had a very nice time, thanks for asking .

HaP informs me that his forwarding address which is used for the HoverRace roomlist has been taken away from him, and he is unlikely to get it back. As a result HoverRace players cannot currently access the roomlist, and therefore cannot play online!

This game has been a mix of split sites thrown together to offer a way to play HoverRace over the past 3 years, and has slowly come back together, with the tracks and records returning to HoverRace.com; so this is the last piece in the puzzle, with the roomlist returning here.

I realised that even though HoverRace.com resolves to an IP shared by many websites hosted by my host, making it not possible to put the roomlist on here, I can use my username to access it when it resolves.

What this means, is that with a combination of www.hoverrace.com's IP address and /~sirbrock/imr/rl.txt on the end of it, it will load the IP dynamically each time you open the game.

HoverRace's roomlist address is written into the game itself, and can be adjusted using hex editing. The only issue is that this is not a practice everyone will be able to perform, so instead, a new install and patch will be made available for all players to download instead.

There is also potential for my PHP IMR to be used, which would mean I could let my computer rest at night (the HR.com Normal and Hamachi room run off of my PC).

I would like to thank HaP for a great service he offered to HoverRace for 3 years; without it, we'd of been buggered .

Watch this space !

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Vacation!

Hey all,

Just to let you know, I am visiting England for 2 weeks, I'll be flying in the next 11 hours :).

I'll keep looking at the forum of course as I'll have internet access, but the room will not be up due to my computer being turned off in Canada.

HaP's room will hopefully be online for the duration, he did a great job of it last time according to Zooz.

Happy racing!

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Scoreserver is back up and running!

Thanks to my host, we have fixed the scoreserver. It turns out the HoverRace client was being filtered as a 'bot', so I had to turn it off in the .htaccess for that folder.

The banners are still being work on and hopefully we will have them fixed soon.

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DeVeL site download links fixed.

Thanks to Zooz for noticing these links were broken, they are now fixed .

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Update

I've fixed a small problem with the track site that was causing the images not to display when mouse-over'ing the track names.

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Still some minor issues.

We're not entirely sure why, but at the moment the banners are not showing in the IMR, and the times are not reporting to the scoreserver.

One potential reason is that it is due to the new server rejecting unknown agents (only accepting the likes of IE/Firefox etc).

HaP is going to look into this for me .

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IMR Banners fixed!

HaP got this working by uploading a .htaccess telling the folder that gif's should be executed as php code.

Works a charm .

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IMR Notifier fixed up.

The IMR notifier has had its code adjusted to make it operate better. Previously it had some minor issues with when it was the appropriate time to say someone had joined/left the IMR.

This has all been rectified and the notifier is working well :).

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IMR Display working once more! v2!

Haha, well its up and running again, El has confirmed he has opened the port this time .

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Still having some technical difficulties

Well after a few hours of the IMR display working, it appears it's not working again, d'oh.

The scoreserver isn't recording times, and I'm stumped as to why not, investigations are still ongoing.

The banners in the IMR still aren't working, but I know why and I'm waiting for my host to sort this.

We'll see how things go.

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Scoreserver Issues

We are currently having some unknown issues with our scoreserver and IMR banner rotation.

I know why there is an issue with the banner rotation and will be asking my host for help soon, but as far as the scoreserver goes, I'm not quite sure what is up. I'll investigate.

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IMR Display working once more!

Great news, the IMR display is now working properly as it should.

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All up and running :)

The webring, IMR display and tracks site are now working fine.

Any further problems, please let me know.

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Site is restored!

After one week of waiting, my host has managed to successfully upload our website.

All but some minor database issues, we are all set to continue where we left off.

Welcome back everyone! !

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Alternate Hamachi Network from 1st to 15th of August 2007

I am away on vacation in Italy during this time.

Only HaP's IMR's will be available with the Hamachi network:

phra3

Password as usual is hrdotcom

Thanks

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PHRA Golf #2!

The second PHRA Golf will be hosted this Sunday!

To sign up, goto http://www.hoverrace.com/phra/ and join the tournament. You can choose a time which is suitable for you.

We had 13 people show last time, hopefully this weekend prooves the same.

Good luck and have fun!

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PHRA Golf!

On May 6th, the Professional HoverRace Association will be hosting it's first ever HoverRace Golf tournament.

If you are a member of PHRA, you can choose a time to play (remember the timezone is CST, and you can see the current CST time at the top left of the PHRA site)

http://www.hoverrace.com/phra/index.php?page=tournament&tid=267

The rules for this tournament can be found at...

http://www.hoverrace.com/phra/index.php?page=rules&rules=hrg

We hope to see you there, and good luck!

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Tracks site updates..

There have been some big additions to the HoverRace.com tracksite over the past month, including the ability to download track backgrounds from every track available, so that you can use this in your own track. Plus the ability to be logged in automatically to make it easier to add comments to tracks after testing them.

Enjoy!

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HoverRace v1.22b.1 Released!

I've been working with a number of people on a new version of HoverRace (because face it - the game is old and needs many fixes). A couple weeks ago I released a testing version on the forums... but forgot to post it here. From my forum post:

Following the logical progression of numbers, the next real release should be called HoverRace 1.22. This is an early test version of it.

It implements:
- Lookback key (end)
- Framerate <=> lap time fix
- Many spelling and grammatical errors fixed
- New screen resolutions, going up to 1600x1200

It does NOT implement:
- Router fix
- 256 color fix

And when running in higher resolutions it may get slow.

This may crash on your system. You have been warned. It is by no means a complete, final release version, and if you want a version of HoverRace that you know will ALWAYS work, don't download this.

A link:
a zipped /bin folder that you can just unzip
the complete zipped source
The Devel Site

Please report any bugs you find. Thanks!