AutoHost is a bot that I created whose sole purpose is to host games 24/7 for people to join. All games are intended to be All Welcome games so that anyone can join and be able to play without fear of being kicked due to rating or due to low game count. As part of this AutoHost games are Full Share, Optimal Balance mirrored, hosted on mapgen maps. the purpose of these settings is to try and create an environment where any player can get a game and not be punished or flamed for dying early or not knowing a map meta and additionally FullShare has seemed more conducive to games with larger rating disparities.

AutoHost Games will launch once all players slots are filled and every player is X'ed. It will notify players to X and will kick anyone who is AFK for greater than a minute when all the player slots are full.

Additionally if AutoHost does not have any players join the lobby for greater than 10 minutes then a new lobby with a new map will be created.

Feel free to join an AutoHost lobby and get playing.

Please note this is an alpha implementation which is running on my local machine and is not an official FAF bot so there may be times when AutoHost is down. Feel free to report any bugs or issues here and I can work on fixing them and implementing additional features.

The FAF Association General meeting for 2022 has concluded and a new board has been elected. I would like to thank the outgoing President Sheeo and Board Members Nostalgic Futurist, Dragun101, Fury, and Swkoll for the work they have done over the past year.

I am pleased to announce the elected board for the next year:

• Archsimkat
• Askaholic
• Brutus5000
• BlackYPS
• Giebmasse
• Jip
• Rezy-Noob
• Tagada
• Sheikah - Elected President

The board and I look forward to working to improve FAF throughout the year.

The Board of the FAF Association has decided to issue the following statement after the military action launched by Russia in Ukraine:

The Board expresses its grave concern about the military action started by Russia in Ukraine. Alongside the UN, we stand united against war as well as condemn any use of military means to resolve political conflicts.

Since the 24th of February the war between Ukraine and Russia has widely impacted us as a community. On one hand we've had people dropping out of tournaments, while on the other there have been discussions about the war that, at times, spread blatant misinformation regarding the military action. As a board, we've decided to take steps to provide a safe online environment for all of our community members.

All discussions about the war between Russia and Ukraine must happen within #politics on Discord and in the IRC client chat. Any discussions or statements that are a reference to the war outside of the designated channels can be reported to the moderation team, regardless of their nature. By doing this we create an opt-in environment for those who desire it, and preserve the regular FAF experience for those who do not.

Any claim or statement in the designated channels that is not supported by the United Nations may be subject to moderation. We understand that the first casualty of war is truth and especially in the information era today this is even more the case according to experts appointed by the Human Rights Council. We consider the United Nations as our ground truth, and we will use it as our standard for moderation.

We understand that the actions of a country do not necessarily reflect the views of its citizens—therefore, we will not ban or otherwise suppress Russian members of our community over the actions of their government. That being said, with tensions so high, we ask our members to refrain from engaging in excessive political discourse.

The Board notes that the FAF Association is based in Denmark, and as a direct consequence it is not possible to transfer FAF prize funds towards Russian players. We are bound to Danish laws as they are enacted with respect to this conflict.

TL;DR: We are only affliated with faforever.com. We are not affiliated with any other servers. We only endorse and support servers under the domain faforever.com. All threads about other servers will be removed.

faforever.com is an open source project. Accordingly, anyone is free to copy and adapt it for their own purposes. An example of this is the taforever.com community.

As a result of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, both the Steam and GoG portals have ceased distribution in Russia. As a result, Russian citizens are no longer able to purchase a license for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. This means that it is no longer possible for those affected to play on faforever.com. Our license check has been discussed time and time again, but as the people in charge we will not budge from this.

As a result, we were approached by Russian users to ask if we could help build an alternative platform. We requested not to use any name that could be associated with faforever, but an independent one, which we were assured of. After it became clear that this platform would disable license verification, we stopped supporting the team. However, the team continues to use faforever branding.

Although we can understand the situation to some extent, we condemn
a) the use of faforever in any branding, as it refers to us without our consent
b) the disabling of the license check, because in the end: just because you can't buy it, doesn't allow you to steal it.
c) the resulting split in the community.

As a result, we will remove all topics related to any FAF clones, especially support requests.

With the release of MapGen 1.12.0 the options for the map generator have gotten overhauled.

It was often the experience that people would use the sliders to try and customize the map generation. However this would often not generate maps as expected for players.

To try and help this situation the options have been reworked so that players can create custom map styles by selecting the terrain, biome, resource, and prop generators. (Edit) This is what previous generators were doing under the hood based on the slider options.

The options are for now available in the 2024.6.2-alpha-1 client version. In the meantime the old sliders do not work with the new map generator.

This topic is meant to introduce the new features and updates that are being added to the client for version v2021.10.0. As the new PRs are merged they will be added here. Please note with this release we are switching to a calendar based release versioning. As well I will try to have the beta and release candidates out for a longer period of time prior to release. The pre-release is now available at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v2021.10.0-RC1

• Add Ability to play games offline from the login screen https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2353
  This allows launching games from login. Note that this option requires you to have launched an online game at least once in order to download and install the necessary files. It will use whatever default faf version you currently have installed.

• Fix bug that stops opening local replays https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2358

• Allow uploaded maps to be ranked https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2357

• Fix Bug stopping matchmaker's map lists from being displayed https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2356

• Allow searches by number of players in a map https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2364

• Allow game options to be set by matchmaker queue https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2339

• Use client language to auto join language channels https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2369

• Add ability to generate maps in 1.25km increments https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2375

• Increase timeout for dns resolution https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2377
  This aims to resolve the issue some people have with not being able to login.

• Bump ice adapter to 3.1.2 https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2378

• Log all exceptions thrown to enable better debugging capabilities https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2394

• Add retry for when api is temporarily down due to restart or reconfiguration https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2385

• Close match maker game when the game has been cancelled by the server and is stuck in setting up auto match https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2389

• Add names for 4v4 queues https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2376

• Add version labels to map cards and allow authors to see all versions https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2392

• Add more detailed error messages during map and mod upload https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2388

• Remove the downlord branding from the UI and installation in the client https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2379

New Map Generator UI!

With Downlord's Client 1.1.9 the map generator has gained a new UI for generating maps with user specified terrain options.
In order to GENERATE and PLAY maps which utilize the UI options you MUST HAVE Downlord's Client Version 1.1.9 or higher

The following options are available as inputs to map generation:

Number of Spawns: Number of spawn points the map is generated with. Supports 2 to 16 players. Currently only supports balanced team spawns.
Map Size: Size of the map to be generated. Only supports square maps (5km, 10km and 20km).
Water: The probability/amount of water appearing on the map
Plateaus: The probability/amount of plateaus appearing on the map
Mountains: The probability/amount of mountains appearing on the map
Ramps: The probability/amount of ramps appearing on the map (Note: Ramps are the connections between plateaus and ground level)

It is also now possible to regenerate a map by using the name of the form neroxis_map_generator_(version)(seed)(options)
This can also be utilized to specify the options directly. The format for parsing the options from the map name can be found in the source.

Client Version 1.1.9 also supports watching replays of generated map games

Notes:

• Generation time increases with map size. Optimizations are underway.
• Generating 16 player 5km maps may occasionally fail due to space constraints. If this occurs generate with new seed.
• Map Terrain Generation originally optimized for 10km maps. Optimization for 5km and 20km maps still underway.
• Terrain control options are not a guarantee that a certain amount of that feature will be present in the generated map. They are used for initial seeding only.
• Maps with mostly water will generate water mexes where possible rather than clumping mexes on small amounts of land
• Map Generation not supported on the python client
• Maps Generated Names of the form neroxis_map_generator_(version)_(seed) where seed is numeric will be compatible with older clients

Feel free to stop by the Map Generator Discord: https://discord.gg/XZW62UdYfm

Additionally new features have been added and are included below

Version 1.0.10

• Unit Wrecks now spawn as reclaim (T1-T3 Land, T2 Destroyers, T2 Navy Factories)
• New Symmetries Added (Symmetries: X, Y, XY, YX, QUAD, DIAG, POINT)
• Reclaim Generation Improved (Added cliff rocks and variation of placement)
• Mex Expansions Added (Expansions of 2-4 mexes randomly placed on map)
• Support Mexes Added (Each Base will have 1-3 support mexes nearby)
• Generate previews with better coloring and lighting
• Guarantee space for base building at spawn points
• Odd/Even Teams are guaranteed on all maps and represent mirror positions

As always if you have any suggestions for features of the map generator please comment in this thread.
If a generated map has issues please let me know by messaging me with the map name so that the cause can be investigated.

TL;DR The Council of Setons has been replaced with FAF teams of contributors who are responsible with maintaining the core aspects of FAF. Members of each team and their descriptions can be found on the wiki here FAF Teams.

During the previous General Meeting of the FAF Association, the members of the association decided to transition the maintenance of FAF away from the previously known Council of Setons into a more distributed set of teams that are each responsible for a distinct area of the FAF community. This was done to hopefully increase transparency of the inner workings of FAF as well as help to keep contributors and players engaged in the community.

Previously the Council of Setons was made up of 8 councilors: Administration, Balance, Game, DevOps, Promotions, Creative, Player, Moderation. The duties of the councilors has been split between the following 11 teams: Trainer, Community, Promotions, FAFLive, Tournament, Matchmaking, Balance, Game, Creative, Moderation, and DevOps. The members and elected leaders of each team can be found on the wiki. If you are interested to start contributing to FAF in any of the areas feel free to reach out to the members on the team for more info.

Additionally the Player Councillor position has been removed and its various responsibilities split up. The aspect of community engagement will be picked up by the newly introduced Community Manager who is elected by the general FAF player base in May.

We would like to thank all the past councilors who helped to make FAF what it is today and look forward to continuing to work with the board and new teams.

From a practical standpoint there should be no disruptions to FAF operations due to any of these changes.

Please note that due to changes to how content is retrieved from the server the minimum client version will be increased.

What's Changed

New Features

• Set process priority to high on Windows by @micheljung in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2761
• Remove mirrors and use header for hmac verification by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2771
• Download all matchmaker maps before joining queue by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2775

Bug Fixes

• Use case insensitive sorting for map names by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2772
• Update game before queue and add better game start error logging by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2773
• Use proper version for featured mod updates and use scenario file as primary source for map folder path by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2760
• Remove size from ReplayDetailController by @Sheikah45 in https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2779

My cat killed the computer I was using to run autohost

As some of you may have noticed there has been new missions and development of the SCFA and FAF Custom Campaigns.

FAF has been excited to see these continuing developments in Coop to support the PvE community at FAF. To help faciliate further development the board has approved the formation of the Campaign team who will be responsible for the developement of the Coop featured mod as well as the campaign maps.

The initial point of contact for the campaign team is @Rezy-Noob who helped coordinate the efforts to form this team. Feel free to reach out to him to see how you can get involved.

We look forward to future developments!

This topic is meant to introduce the new features and updates that are being added to the client for version v1.4.7. As the new PRs are merged they will be added here. The pre-release is now available at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v1.4.7-RC2

• Rework game and player server messages to not be processed on the UI thread https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2276 https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2280

• Add traditional chinese language https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2256

• Highlight games with friends in them https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2264

• Author text no longer intersects with version https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2277

• Fix mention for usernames with dash https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2271

• Remember set password on rehost https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2267

• Reset client after log out https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2265

• Use new recommended maps and mods list https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2260

• Add rating filter for replays https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2144

• Don't crash on invalid map file names https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2262

• Stop multiple ping sounds in a row https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2263

• Show rating on hover in rating graph https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2228

• Update mods before hosting https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2255

• Change invite UI to be button based https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2182

Old features in 1.4.5 that didn't have an announcment

• Number of teams option for map generator https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/2252

• Private User game status will properly update https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/2242

As a quick update. I just released version 1.4.0 and this includes a major overhaul to the backend code to introduce more variation to the generated maps. The main change is that the map generator can now work on the basis of map styles.

The current map styles are DEFAULT, ONE_ISLAND, BIG_ISLANDS, SMALL_ISLANDS, CENTER_LAKE, VALLEY, DROP_PLATEAU, LITTLE_MOUNTAIN, MOUNTAIN_RANGE at the moment there is no UI element in the client to generate use these styles specifically so this is more informational. But hopefully this enables greater variety and allows it to be easier to add other styles in the future as well.

If you have ideas for styles of maps feel free to reach out to me and we can see about bringing it in to the map gen.

@Deribus I went ahead and implemented it in the mod called Decapitation that I just uploaded. So if you want to see how it would play out feel free try it out.

Now Released can be downloaded from https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v1.2.3

This topic is meant to introduce the new features and updates that are being added to the client for version v1.2.3. As the new PRs are merged they will be added here and when the release client is created for testing.

• Chat User list CPU usage optimizations https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2007
  The chat user list was determined to be a large source of the lag that many users experience when running the client, especially as the number of players online has grown. Up to now the main solution has been to close the aeolus chat tab to decrease the lag. This update aimed to optimize how the chat user list is updated and displayed in order to reduce cpu usage.

• Remove ability for foes to ping you in aeolus https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/2017
  This update makes it so that users will not be pinged when mentioned by a foed player

• Add Date Format Option https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2014
  Adds choice of date format to the client

• Add button to join channels https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2013
  This will add a UI tab/button that can be used to join IRC channels in addition to the /join command in chat

• Add generation type options to map generator UI https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2005
  This will add generation type options to the map generator. Specifically the options Casual, Tournament, and Blind.
  Causal generates maps as they are done in v1.2.2.
  Tournament forces all random options and will not display the preview in the client lobby to the generator as well as time stamps the map with the original time of generation and places it in the map description to prevent the use of pre-generated maps in tournaments
  Blind generates maps without any preview in the client or in the game lobby.

• Restart on Default Theme Selection https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2003
  This will ensure proper application of the default theme by alerting the user that a restart of the client will be needed.

• Game Information on Chat Hover https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2010
  This allows for seeing the players in a particular game when hovering over the map image

• Sync Cache
  API calls are now synchronized so that multiple function calls will not happen if the cache is empty

• Add copy action to labels https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2031
  Map Name, Mod Name, Descriptions, Authors, and other labels can now be copied and pasted elsewhere using a context menu accessible via a right mouse click

• Correct number of more mods in game tile view https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2025
  Number of mods now displayed correctly in game tile view

• Paginate Local Replays https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/1820
  Adds pagination to the local replays tab in the vault

• Fix bug where removing players from friends list removes them from chat list https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2022

• Add experimental option to watch replays while waiting in lobby https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/1926
  This add an option to allow watching of replays from the game lobby. This requires patching the game.prefs file which you can do from the settings in the client. This only allows for starting replays from the replay vault once the game is open it does not allow you to start a game while watching a replay. Please note that watching replays which are of conflicting patch version to the game you have open is not supported and will result in an error.

Unfortunately over the last year I have seen my available time to work on the client has dwindled and has not picked up like I thought it would. This isn't entirely fair to the community as there are some bugs that have stuck around that I haven't been able to put in the effort to fix.

Due to this I am putting out a call for anyone who is interested in picking up maintenance of the client. I am willing to walk anyone through the architecture and general structure of FAF. There are a few low hanging fruit that can be resolved as good introductions to working with the code base. The client is written in Java and utilizes Spring Boot. The UI is done in JavaFx with a rough Model-View-Controller architecture with FXML.

If you are interested feel free to respond to this post, on the client github, or find me on discord. A general description of the responsibilities can be found below.

As a maintainer your contributions are more subtle than just fixing bugs and implementing new features. You guide the project as a whole and help streamline contributions. This can be as simple as performing a code review to as complicated as ironing out entire new features that you then slice into small, digestible pieces for contributors to pick up.

This can consist of guiding the UI design of the client, gathering feedback from the playerbase, integrating with and extending the lobby server protocol and api, performance improvements, performing dependency updates, and creating alpha and production releases for the community.

Below is the client tech stack:

• Java 21
• JavaFX
• Spring Boot
• Project Reactor
• JsonAPI

Additionally, I am also the maintainer for the map generator so if anyone has interest in that feel free to reach out as well.

This topic is meant to introduce the new features and updates that are being added to the client for version v1.4.3. As the new PRs are merged they will be added here. Pre-release for testing can be found here https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v1.4.3-RC5

• Client no longer tries to open port 8080 https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2170

• Live Replays can be sorted by Start Time https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2163

• Use Replay Available flag in database https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2195

• Use forceGPU flag to alleviate client lag https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2199

• Support displaying generated maps in map pools and use new endpoint https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2190
  This will just show generated maps if they are in the pool when using the map list button as will be supported by the upcoming server update.

• Allow selection of map style for map generation https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2185

• Sort map pool maps by size and name https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2179

• Show list of names in leaderboard search https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2159

• Keep password column visible in coop table https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2172

• Fix dutch language bug when displaying play tab https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/commit/e69b8d72d6123552b6750b751dd414b76c6734e7

For those who weren't able to join the recording can be found here https://youtu.be/j2LNWBdEiHU?feature=shared

This topic is meant to introduce the new features and updates that are being added to the client for version v1.6.0. As the new PRs are merged they will be added here. The pre-release is now available at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v1.6.0-RC1

• Remove Server Status Link https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2331
  The Server Status page has now been removed and is no longer updated so it has been removed from the front page of the client.

• Use UTF-8 connection to the lobby server https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2317
  Use a utf-8 encoded connection to the server over the older utf-16 connection. This should cut network traffic by half

• Use Reactive based web client for api calls https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2329
  This will use a non-blocking call to retrieve data from the api. This should result in fewer threads and thus less resource usage by the client.

• Add ability to communicate with stat ping service https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2334
  Once launched this will enable the client to connect and detect when services are down automatically.

• Use exact search for player name in replay vault https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/commit/b9f19a330f2618492f069d14e153098456d8bedb
  This will mitigate the slow search some players have been experiencing in the vault since the recent server update. However player based searches need to have the full and exact name of the player

• Cache files on download and keep downloaded version https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/commit/18a5bf56c96734aed911f800224c194b3c752575
  This will fix the issue where the fafdevelop exe needs to be downloaded on each game start

• Rework Client backend to be non-blocking and remove unnecessary boilerplate https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/pull/2332
  This is a rework of the client backend so that it is entirely non-blocking and removes redundant classes which should result in less resources being used and easier to maintain code base. This is a big change so hopefully no bugs were introduced.

The next server update has been scheduled for the 2022-05-03 betwen 1:00 - 2:00 UTC.

What is Planned:

• Update lobby server to 1.12.1
  This server update notably introduces a penalty for failed connections during matchmaking. Players who fail to connect will have a penalty applied where they cannot match for a period of time depending on the failure number. This is to hopefully incentivize people to not leave during setup of the game and increase the number of launched games. More details can be found at https://github.com/FAForever/server/releases
• Deploy the new rust based replay server
• Update the nixos configuration
• Update the user service
• Update ory hydra
• Update rabbitmq
• Update the database to properly record update times for maps and mods
• Fix logging for the core services
• Update the nginx content server