Frans wrote on Mar 10, 2021, 02:48:

RedEye9 wrote on Mar 8, 2021, 14:25:
"Return To Previous Page" does not appear after logging in on a news post that has zero comments.

That's because the browser already went through one redirect inside the scripts, so the Referer path of the original request is no longer available. Changing that would require something like passing that path in a &url= parameter throughout the login process, which looks fugly and is cumbersome in the code.

After posting this, I had a tiny spark of an idea I could look into only now, and I've made a small improvement:

From a thread page with 1+ comments (board.pl?action=viewthread), clicking the Post/Reply/Quote buttons when not logged in redirects to the log-in form, where that thread link is stored as Referer in a hidden field. That's why after logging in, it can be presented in the Return button below the user menu.

When a story has no comments, after clicking "Post a Comment" from the front-page and logging in, the Referer is the front-page. Thus the code doesn't enable the Return button: that's a little pointless as the site logo already provides that link back.

But from a Share / single-story link (/s/#####/...) clicking "Post a Comment" does contain a meaningful Referer, so I've now updated the log-in code to show a Return button in that case too.

As mentioned before, a Referer from the post form (board.pl?action=postmessage) is not available because that redirect happens internally in the script without a new browser request. That's why a direct return to the post form cannot be done hassle-free.

Sepharo wrote on Sep 29, 2011, 02:04:
It's the post I made right before reporting it here

Well, I skim (not even read) only the OotB and ItB comments nowadays, and those often not even daily, so please don't expect me to know everything else that goes on in the forums.

Sepharo wrote on Sep 29, 2011, 02:04:
Argh, just trying to report it to you here it's being a pain in the ass since I posted the wrong link and needed to edit... Haha.

edit2 test... trying to recreate it now isn't working

Uhh, you lost me... so is there still a reproducible problem with the url tag or not? Be specific, very specific.

Sepharo wrote on Sep 28, 2011, 19:26:
But I just experienced some weirdness where my URL wasn't too long on the original post but when I went back to edit to fix a few things (without touching the URL or tags) and then it was suddenly deemed too long.

Well, maybe I introduced a new problem, like I said it's really tricky. But I'm not going to find out if you don't include your link (and the error message).

Beamer wrote on Sep 27, 2011, 10:45:
I tried to URL tag that but it gave errors. The tag may be broken?

That was a bug which popped up only with a certain range in URL lengths in combination with the length of the first word inside the tagged URL. Yeah, it's complicated but it's fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up.

Cutter wrote on Sep 14, 2011, 16:25:
I'l lprobably pick this up at some point. Is there a demo for it?

At this point there are no plans for a demo. Don't know if that's in the cards later.

You could consider TM Nations Forever a "demo" for everything a contemporary TrackMania game offers (solo/multiplayer racing, track editor, replays, mediatracker, game modes, custom cars, skins and avatars, and more), just not the actual driving experience of TM2C. As with all previous seven environments, Canyon has its own distinct feel, so don't make the mistake others already made of expecting Stadium 2, but once you get used to it, it's cool in its own right. Still, tastes differ, so there's no telling whether or not it'll cater to yours. You could read up on the MP forums to get more informed about what's on offer.

Blue wrote on Sep 14, 2011, 16:53:
Frans has been very busy lately, so we haven't discussed it yet.

That's an understatement.

Blue wrote on Sep 14, 2011, 16:53:
However, since one of the things he's been busy with was the TrackMania 2 beta, it seems like a good bet.

Well, I might let you in on a little secret. There was a problem running the dedicated server on my own Linux server, so I ran it on the Blue's server for the past two months to test the dedicated and develop XAseco2.

So yeah, in a few weeks when I have a little more time, it will be easy to change it into a public Blue's News server.

ASeven wrote on Sep 14, 2011, 15:08:
Since it's MP I guess UbiDRM is completely irrelevant here even if this title has it.

The most amusing part of that topic is that in the past year hundreds of people got their panties in a bunch because of the DRM prospect, and now that the game has been released, the word "DRM" hasn't been posted once in the ManiaPlanet forums.

Hoop wrote on Aug 22, 2011, 03:48:
Hey Frans.
Hows life?

Okay. Busy. In real life and TrackMania-land. Thanks for asking.

Hoop wrote on Aug 22, 2011, 03:48:
Did you pick up portal 2?

Nope, no time to play games.

Cutter wrote on Aug 21, 2011, 21:53:
Hey Blue, can't you setup a filter to block this douchebag spammer?

Read replies to your question before repeating it, please.

Cutter wrote on Aug 20, 2011, 22:00:
I hope Blue can IP ban these assholes.

Unfeasible, there are way too many IP blocks in China to cut them off completely. Besides, there might be legitimate readers over there that would be affected.

Jensen wrote on Aug 14, 2011, 23:52:
I don't use other game clients besides Steam, but I'll occasionally download directly from the developer.

Nadeo isn't trying to make ManiaPlanet a Steam competitor. It just doesn't easily fit with Steam as it is now. They want a tight integration of their Mania games and a community platform. Trackmania relies on its creative community more than any other game I've played.

Exactly.

Besides, Nadeo hasn't ruled out that the game will appear on Steam later. If it happens, it'll probably like this: http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?p=44525#p44525

Crustacean Soup wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 03:15:
And speaking of XASECO, I really hope that server-side widgets are going to be avoidable (or non-existent) in this one. I don't like looking through a tiny little hole in the middle of the screen.

It has always been possible to configure XASECO's own panels (records, vote, donate), i.e. turn them off or move them to another spot. And with both main widgets plugins (Fufi's Widgets and Records Eyepiece) it has always been possible to disable most of the racing widgets via the F7 key or a toggle command.

Hope that provides some (visual) breathing space.

Ant wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 18:05:

Xymph wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 18:02:
Pah! It's 5500 miles away from me, and I am the admin.

Bah! Why isn't it not in your place or near by?

Because nowadays it doesn't matter where a server is hosted as long as it's hosted good enough. And that's all you need to know.

Ant wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 12:46:

Blue wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 11:16:

Ant wrote on Jul 31, 2011, 20:35:
Ah OK. I thought you did. Heh. Do you go to the data server place?

Nope, it's 3000 miles away from me.

Dang. SO far. You're not an admin.

Pah! It's 5500 miles away from me, and I am the admin.

rocketship wrote on Jun 8, 2011, 01:58:
What happened to ShootMania?

It's still very much in development, and not shown at E3.

Staunch wrote on Jun 2, 2011, 16:13:
It gets an internal server error on companies that have a "." in the name.

Well, I did warn Blue it was a bit of a quick hack. Fixed now, thanks for the heads-up.

Suddenly_Dead wrote on Apr 28, 2011, 14:42:
Would Starforce really help against that? You can just break it and continue on your merry way cheating. It doesn't provide cheat protection; they'd need something else entirely.

Maybe not anymore, but I'm sure it was a major factor for TMN ESWC, which was wrapped with StarForce, and not hacked as far as I know, nor were cheat tools developed to cause rampant cheating, as happened and is happening with TMF.

Suddenly_Dead wrote on Apr 28, 2011, 14:42:
The only way I can see copy protection helping with cheating is if TM2 doesn't have a free version. Then if a person is banned, they're banned until they shell out the money for another copy of the game. Considering that they've only got the one environment planned for release right now, that's probably how it's going to be at first anyways (unless I've missed something)

That would only work as a deterrent if players were completely banned from the game, which requires Nadeo's involvement.

For TMF that's not the case, I can only ban players from the community-built, online records system Dedimania, so cheaters can still keep racing online, it just prevents their records making it into that system. And they're added to a global blacklist, which prevents cheaters from entering servers that use that blacklist (but that's a minority of all servers out there).

And FYI, of the 2349 TMF logins currently banned from Dedimania, 268 or 11.4% used a United account. So there are a quite lot of paying players that cheat regardless or ignorant of the consequences.

Suddenly_Dead wrote on Apr 27, 2011, 21:31:
They dropped Starforce, and as far as I know any protection past a cd key in the installer, with Forever; I can't imagine it coming back.

The result was and is rampant cheating in Forever, which is costing me dozens of hours each month to clean up in Dedimania, so do I hope some kind of protection (at least against hacking) returns.

Shadowcat wrote on Apr 27, 2011, 19:43:
Blue: Surely "Canyon" is just the environment being shown, rather than a sub-title for the game? I am assuming that like all the previous TM games (save for the Nations freeware), this one will contain a variety of environments.

The games (TM2, ShootMania, QuestMania) will be released one environment at a time, so yes, Canyon is the initial TM2 env. Read up on the ManiaPlanet forums for how all this is planned.

shul wrote on Apr 1, 2011, 22:19:
How many years (or days) pink news existed so far ?

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/logos.pl