The final* update

[Person8880]

This branch is a culmination of lots of little side projects and ideas I've had over the years. Given the end of development of NS2 at the start of the year, there's no longer a big risk of any of this breaking with game updates, so rather than have it be lost to time, I've put together one final* update.

*final here meaning this is likely the last big update, and any further updates will just be maintenance if needed.

This branch adds the following:

General

• The standard webpage window now shows the URL and a security indicator (tied to the browser's notion of a "secure context") as well as back, forward and refresh buttons.
  
• Redesigned client config plugins tab, with a much more readable list, switches for enabled/disabled state, and the ability for plugins to define a translated name and description. Official plugins (i.e. those in the official mod) are highlighted with a blue tick.
  
• Removed the beta extensions concept. Plugins can now avoid being added to the base config by omitting the DefaultState key. This accomplishes the same goal as the beta system, but without needing extra config and complexity in the code.

Admin Menu

• Redesigned the plugins tab.
  • Instead of a list, it now shows cards for each plugin with controls to enable/disable, as well as seeing whether the current state has been saved.
  • Official plugins (i.e. those in the official mod) are marked with a blue tick.
  • A search box has been added to find plugins by name.
    
• Redesigned the maps tab.
  • The list now has a preview section on the right showing the map's loading page/workshop preview image (same as the map vote menu).
  • Human readable names are displayed in the map list if the map vote plugin is enabled.
  • If the map has mods assigned to it, they are listed and can be viewed in the workshop.
  • A search box has been added to search over maps by name.
    

Fun Commands

• Added the following new commands:
  • sh_goto_location - teleports to the given location name.
  • sh_sendto - sends the given player to another player's position.
  • sh_sendto_location - sends the given player to the given location name.

Improved Chat

• Shadows are now rendered on chat text when using the improved chat plugin (most noticeable when the background opacity is 0).
• Emoji support has been added to the chat, including rich text editing in the chatbox, auto-completion, and an emoji picker that remembers frequently used emoji.
  • The default emoji set covers the basic unicode emoji smilies, emotes and hand gestures.
  • Additional emoji can be added by server operators, just have to declare a simple JSON file describing where to find the texture file(s) for them.
  • Emoji can be restricted per group.
  • Each emoji is internally encoded in chat messages to have a fixed length, so the length of an emoji's name does not affect how many can be in a chat message.
  • Adverts and welcome messages can include emoji by specifying "ParseEmoji": true in the advert/welcome message definition.
    
    

Map Vote

• Added the GroupCycleMode config option (resolves FEATURE REQUEST Votemaps by group tweek #669):
  • SEQUENTIAL retains the current group cycle behaviour, advancing through groups at every map change, with the current group limiting the vote options.
  • WEIGHTED_CHOICE allows using groups as buckets to select maps from. Specify a select value on each group to control how many maps are selected from the group (if omitted, all maps from the group are included). For example:

{
    "groups": [
        {
            "name": "Classic Maps",
            "maps": [
                "ns2_docking",
                "ns2_tram",
                "ns2_summit",
                "ns2_veil"
            ],
            "select": 2
        },
        {
            "name": "Update Maps",
            "maps": [
                "ns2_descent",
                "ns2_kodiak",
                "ns2_eclipse",
                "ns2_biodome",
                "ns2_derelict",
                "ns2_metro",
                "ns2_origin",
                "ns2_ayumi",
                "ns2_tanith"
            ],
            "select": 6
        }
    ]
}

Name Filter

• Filters can now define a set of excluded NS2 IDs in addition to just a single NS2 ID by providing an array or object to the Excluded field.
• Improved config validation.

Pregame

• Fixed client-side prediction issues when the AllowAttackPreGame option is set to false (fixes [PreGame ] [Bug] [Low Priority] - Reloading guns in pregame #704).

Tweaks Plugin

• This is a new plugin that provides small tweaks on the client.
• Currently this consists of minimap location highlighting, which works on all maps by generating highlighted minimap segment textures dynamically using the location trigger bounds for each location.
  
  
  
• Colours can be configured in the config menu:
  

API

• Added a new BitSet object, which can be used to efficiently store and network numeric values in the 32-bit signed integer range.
• Added the Map:Filter( Predicate, Context ) method, which can be used to inline-filter map key-values in an efficient manner.
• Multimaps can now store a secondary value against a key-value pair using Multimap:AddPair( Key, Value1, Value2 ).
  • Retrieve pairs using Multimap:GetPairs( Key ), which returns a Map of pairs, or Multimap:GetPairValue( Key, Value ) to get the second value for a given key-value.
  • Values added with Multimap:Add( Key, Value ) store the given value as the secondary value.
• Plugins can now implement logic within the prediction VM, with the following limitations:
  • Network messages don't get received by the prediction VM despite it having a function to hook them. Thus only data table variables can be used for networking.
  • Only plugins that have a predict.lua file will be loaded in the prediction VM.
  • No Think hook exists in the prediction VM (as it has no update event), use OnProcessMove instead.
• Added the Colour client setting type, which expects configured values to be an array of 3 integers between 0 and 255, and presents a colour picker in the client config menu.
• Added the colour console command argument type, which parses a comma or space separated list of 3 integers between 0 and 255, and outputs them as an array.
• Shine.StackDump handles stack overflows more gracefully, avoiding repeating duplicate lines and handling errors extracting local variables at a given stack level.

SGUI

• Fixed windows rendering beneath the team info HUD (the counters at the top of the screen).
• Fixed script error printing destroyed controls that have no debug name assigned.
• Shadow rendering can now be applied to SGUI windows (used by the admin and client config menus). This is backed by a generic render pipeline system that can be used to construct arbitrary shader pipelines for many different use cases in a simple, declarative format.
• Improved tab panel layout, with much less wasted space and room for many more tabs before needing to scroll (used by the admin and client config menus).
  
• Alpha inheritance can now be propagated automatically without having to manually divide alpha values, this allows for seamless fading of windows by just applying a transition to the window itself using the new "AlphaMultiplier" easer.
• Added a rounded-rectangle shader with the ability to set a corner radius on each corner of an SGUI element's background (top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left). This is currently used to make radio checkboxes circular, and for the new switch control.
  
• Text entries can now be disabled to use them purely for display.
• Controls can now specify multiple style names by passing a table to SetStyleName(), which will be applied in the order they are added.
• The default light theme has had a few enhancements to try to improve contrast and legibility.

Layout Engine

• Cropping elements (panels and lists) now optimise their event calling on child elements, avoiding dispatching think events to elements out of view. This is especially noticeable on first load of large lists/panels with complex child layouts, as layout evaluation is deferred for elements that are not visible.
• Layouts can now apply transitions to elements automatically when their position or size is updated during the layout phase. This has been applied in a few places in the admin menu.
• Significantly optimised layout invalidation performance to stop unnecessary invalidations. Initial layouts that previously took 60+ms now take 10ms or less, and subsequent changes are now properly isolated to the branch in which they reside, rather than causing a cascade of layout invalidations.
• Improved word/text wrapping performance (SGUI.WordWrap) by ~50%.
• Scrollable panels now properly handle centre and max-aligned children when using a layout, aligning them based on the total content size, rather than the size of the panel.
• Added the following new layout units:
  • OppositeAxisPercentage - computes a percentage of the parent size on the opposite axis (e.g. a percentage of the parent's height if given as the value for width).
  • PercentageOfElement - computes a percentage of the size of another element in the tree, usually an ancestor, optionally specifying the axis to use.

Controls

• Added the following new controls:
  • Colour picker - provides a button that opens a colour picker (see the tweaks plugin config screenshot above).
  • Modal dialog - this darkens the host window and automatically closes when clicking away. This is now used everywhere that used to popup a dialog window (admin menu add-ban window, webpage open-in-Steam dialog).
    
  • Rich text entry - allows displaying rich text (images and text) as a user edits text, with behaviour otherwise matching the existing text entry control (see the emoji input screenshot above).
  • Switch control - an alternative to a checkbox for more prominent actions.
  • Vertical sliders - call Slider:SetVertical( true ) on the existing Slider control to make it vertically oriented, with the max value and label at the top of the slider.
  • Virtual scroll panel - provides a way to handle near-infinite vertical scrolling without performance issues (used by the chatbox emoji picker).
  • Web page controls - provides basic controls for a given Webpage control (see the MOTD screenshot above).