Split the updating in a "static" version that only needs to be called when a new map is loaded or some settings are changed, and a "dynamic" version that updates everything that changes regularly such as the current game date or the number of spectators.
The original idea was that people could find a server they could
talk in their native language on. This isn't really used in that
way. There are several reasons for removing this:
- the client also sends his "language" to the server, but nothing
is doing anything with this.
- flags are a bad way to represent languages, and over the years
we had several (rightfully) complaints about this.
- most servers have their language set to "All", and prefix the
servername with the language it is about. This is a much more
efficient way to do the same.
All in all, this feature should go back to the drawing board.
Maybe it could work in another form, but this form is not it.
This opens up the true power of the TGP terrain generator, as it
is no longer constrainted by an arbitrary low map height limit,
especially for extreme terrain types.
In other words: on a 1kx1k map with "Alpinist" terrain type, the
map is now really hilly with default settings.
People can still manually limit the map height if they so wish,
and after the terrain generation the limit is stored in the
savegame as if the user set it.
Cheats still allow you to change this value.
This better reflects what it is, and hopefully removes a bit of
the confusion people are having what this setting actually does.
Additionally, update the text on the setting to better inform
users what it is doing exactly, so they can make an educated
decision on how to change it.
Next commit will introduce an "auto" value, which should be the
new default. The rename has as added benefit that everyone will
start out on the "auto" value.
This is an indication value; the game tries to get as close as it
can, but due to the complex tropic rules, that is unlikely to be
exact.
In the end, it picks a height-level to base the desert/tropic
line on. This is strictly seen not needed, as we can convert any
tile to either. But it is the simplest way to get started with
this without redoing all related functions.
Setting the snow coverage (in % of the map) makes a lot more sense
to the human, while still allowing the niche player to set (by
finding the correct %) a snow line height they like. This makes for
easier defaults, as it decoupled terrain height from amount of snow.
Maps can never be 100% snow, as we do not have sprites for coastal
tiles.
Internally, this calculates the best snow line height to approach
this coverage as close as possible.
Most modern games run on 60 fps, and for good reason. This gives
a much smoother experiences.
As some people have monitors that can do 144Hz or even 240Hz, allow
people to configure the refresh rate. Of course, the higher you
set the value, the more time the game spends on drawing pixels
instead of simulating the game, which has an effect on simulation
speed.
The simulation will still always run at 33.33 fps, and is not
influences by this setting.
Many of the member variables that are used in save/load are inside types
that are not standard layout types. Using pointer arithmetics to determine
addresses of members inside types that are not standard layout is generally
undefined behaviour. If we'd use C++17, it is conditionally supported, which means
each compiler may or may not support it. And even then using it for individual
array elements is syntactically not supported the the standard offsetof function.
Unfortunately, the trickery employed for saving linkgraph settings causes quite some
clutter in the settings ini files.
Despite what it looked like, you could never really change the
ending-year (it was always reset to 2050 on start-up). See commit
683b65ee1 for details. As a side-effect, the variable that was
suppose to store the ending-year was just zero, never containing
a real ending-year.
MAX_YEAR is set to 5000000, but having an ending-year set to the
same meant you could bypass this, and play till the uint32 wrapped.
The game can either show highscore or wrap year, not both. When
you would do both, every year you get the highscore dialog.
By changing the maximum value of ending-year to 4999999 we prevent
this issue.
