YANG v0.90 has been released today :
The most interesting change done for the Blood players, is the "Cryptic Passage" add-on support for the "Blood" game, which works with the original edition of the "Cryptic Passage" add-on installed on the "Registered" and "Plasma Pak" editions of "Blood", but also with the "Cryptic Passage" add-on bundled with the "One Unit Whole Blood" edition too : the new "Use the Cryptic Passage add-on" option in both the Single-Player and Multiplayer dialogs will be enabled/available if the "CRYPTIC.EXE" executable file is found in your "Blood" directory.
Note that when the new "Use the Cryptic Passage add-on" option is selected, the built-in "Original map" list is updated/replaced with the "Cryptic Passage" add-on's map names.
Also, both the Single-Player and Multiplayer dialogs have been rewritten : now, there will be a tab for each of the main games supported by YANG (a tab will only appear if you have selected at least one source port for this main game), allowing to only display the relevant options for each of the main games, and also, now each of the settings/options will be saved separately between each of the main games.
Another major change is the added support for any DOS game (by using DOSBox) : you can create custom DOS game profiles, in the new "Custom DOS games" tab, located in the menu "Settings -> Source ports" dialog.
This is just a summary of the main changes done for this new YANG version : for much more informations, be sure to also read the full changelog on the main YANG web site @
http://yang-online.com
Finally, here are a few notes about the new "Packet mode" selector added for the "Blood" game :
Well, if it's true that there's no network performance problem at 2 players, when playing with the Build Engine games on Internet, using DOSBox, it's however not the case anymore at 3 or more players, which usually results in much more latency.
The main reason is that these games are designed in a way where every players are sending and receiving packets directly from and to every other players, whereas DOSBox is designed to work in Server/Client mode, meaning that there's no direct link between the 'client players'.
As a result, when playing with the Build Engine games on Internet at 3 or more players, using DOSBox, since there's no direct link between the 'client players', this means that the packets sent and received between the 'client players' will have to take a longer path, going through the 'server player', which results in a higher network latency between these 'client players', leading to a higher network latency for every players then, since the other direct links between the 'server player' and the 'client players' which could be faster, will have to 'wait' to keep the game in sync.
However, with the "Blood" game, there's a special feature/option that no other Build Engine game has, being the ability to choose between a 'broadcast packet mode' or a 'master/slave packet mode'.
By default in "Blood", for <5 players, the 'broadcast packet mode' is automatically used, and for >4 players, the 'master/slave packet mode' is automatically used.
So, if this 'master/slave packet mode' in "Blood" results in the packets not being sent and received between every players, but only between the 'slave players' and the 'master player', then this would be exactly what's needed for playing "Blood" on Internet, using DOSBox, with the lowest latency possible when at 3 or more players.
Unfortunatelly, the problem is that there's no way to specify which player is the 'master player' (blue color player/first slot in the fragbar), which seems to have always been automatically determined in every Build Engine games, by the computer's speed, and maybe other factors too.
And with DOSBox, it's even worse for some reason, because the 'server player' (hosting player) is _never_ the 'master player' (blue color player/first slot in the fragbar), whatever the computer you use to host the game.
Now, despite this problem, I've still decided to implement in YANG, an option to allow forcing the 'broadcast packet mode' or the 'master/slave packet mode', so that you can experiment with it : what you'll notice when in 'master/slave packet mode', is that when the 'master player' (blue color player/first slot in the fragbar) exits the game, it results in the game automatically closing on every other players' side too.
So, what I'm asking, is some help to possibly find a way to make it so that when playing "Blood" with DOSBox, we can force the 'master player' (blue color player/first slot in the fragbar) to be the one hosting the game ('server player') : if you've got a solution, you can contact the YANG team or talk about it on this forum.