Speaking the classic servers’ extensions

Shoot and Destroy keeps joining the classic 0.75 and 0.76 servers, and the classic servers have grown. The community wrote down a set of protocol extensions, the aosprotocol specification, and ZeroSpades speaks them. This week our client learned them all, written from ZeroSpades’ code and the specification (credited in the source), so a server made for ZeroSpades works with ours.

What a server can now ask of the client

• ExtInfo: the server lists what it speaks, and the client agrees only to what both sides know
• Player Properties, 256 players, message types and kick reasons: you are told why you were kicked, and notices arrive as what they are
• Damage Markers: the hit marker and a number rising over the player you hit
• Teamplay: teammates’ names through walls, pings with the server’s own colours and labels, marks on enemies, and the compass bar, each only when the server allows it
• Pie Menu: the server sends its own quick chat rings, picked by what you aim at, and they replace ours on that server
• Daytime and Weather: the server can call the night, and the world goes dark
• Flashlight: press F (or tap Back on a gamepad) and your lamp lights the world for everyone, with real shadows
• UTF-8 chat: accents and Cyrillic both ways, when the server reads them
• the extended version request, and the draft Player Outfit extension: a server can dress a player as a zombie or as a team of its choice

And a few habits of the other clients

• the server owns the reload, as in ZeroSpades: the client plays it and waits for the server, so your ammo always agrees with it
• a team named “Zombies” is drawn as zombies, as ZeroSpades does
• a match can be recorded as a demo and played back, on any server, as ZeroSpades and KyroSpades do (the format is our own)

Our own server speaks them too: its classic profile (for 0.75 clients) offers the extensions and can call the night, so you can host a classic server with flashlights.