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Posted by: Christer on Oct20221010pm22, +02002022-10-10T22:00:51+02:00312022bEurope/StockholmMon, 10 Oct 2022 22:00:51 +0200 %10, %2022 - %22:%Oct
The Amazon roster has been updated to the new version from Spike 15. Actually, that was done a couple days ago, and I finally got around to writing this post after doing a couple of icon updates.
Either way, there are a couple of things that may not be obvious:
- The Hit and Run skill is not yet implemented, and will be added at a later date (no current ETA)
- The new star players are added, but again, the Primal Savagery special skill is not implemented yet. Baleful Hex and Look into my Eyes are there though.
In terms of the new positionals:
- The new Blocker position replaces old catchers
- The new Blitzer position replaces old blitzers
Both of these are new positionals and will not be updated in place of existing positions. Teams will have to hire them onto their teams. Old players count as their new counterparts. For example, a team can have a maximum of two blockers and old catchers combined at once.
Hopefully, there will be no significant bugs or issues with this transition but if you do run into one, don't hesitate to get in touch.
Either way, there are a couple of things that may not be obvious:
- The Hit and Run skill is not yet implemented, and will be added at a later date (no current ETA)
- The new star players are added, but again, the Primal Savagery special skill is not implemented yet. Baleful Hex and Look into my Eyes are there though.
In terms of the new positionals:
- The new Blocker position replaces old catchers
- The new Blitzer position replaces old blitzers
Both of these are new positionals and will not be updated in place of existing positions. Teams will have to hire them onto their teams. Old players count as their new counterparts. For example, a team can have a maximum of two blockers and old catchers combined at once.
Hopefully, there will be no significant bugs or issues with this transition but if you do run into one, don't hesitate to get in touch.
1310 Reads
2 Comments 
Posted by: Christer on CEST09000000Thu, 04 Aug 2022 21:31:34 +02003404pm22, PM00000090000003431 %04, %2022 - %21:%Aug
It has probably not escaped many of you that the Blackbox system has returned for the competitive division and the 2020 ruleset. The new system is slightly different than what it used to be, as it's running in the competitive division alongside the normal gamefinder system.
When selecting teams, you can choose a "mode" for your team, where the choices control which of the systems you want the team to participate in:
- Open: Restricts teams to the regular gamefinder and even if you activate for the blackbox, these teams will not be entered into the random scheduler
- Strict: These teams are only participating in the Blackbox system, and will not be matched against teams on the regular gamefinder.
- Mixed: These teams participate in both systems.
The scheduling method used tries to match by Current Team Value, with a minimum of 1 000 000 CTV.
While this has been available for a few days now, what is new is that the Blackbox Trophy has also been revived under this new environment with season 6 starting today, and running for the rest of the year. For those of you who have not heard about the blackbox trophy, it's a long meta event where coaches designate a squad of new teams and play a number of games over a longer period of times, scoring points as they go along and fighting for a spot in the top 10.
There are a couple of new things with season 6:
- Teams in squads are forced into strict mode, and will remain so until either the team completes the games for the season or the season ends, whichever happens first
- You can have multiple concurrent squads should you want to.
Beyond that, the settings for this season are:
- 4 teams per squad
- 15 games per team
- Running until the end of the year (December 31st)
Scoring and roster composition details can be found on the trophy page:
Blackbox Trophy
The costs for the rosters are very quickly based on the win rates of open play Competitive division, and it's quite possible that there are some rosters that should be costed differently. We'll see how it turns out!
As always, this is a new feature and is likely to have some issues and bugs. Please feel free to get in touch if you encounter problems (preferrably on the Discord server).
When selecting teams, you can choose a "mode" for your team, where the choices control which of the systems you want the team to participate in:
- Open: Restricts teams to the regular gamefinder and even if you activate for the blackbox, these teams will not be entered into the random scheduler
- Strict: These teams are only participating in the Blackbox system, and will not be matched against teams on the regular gamefinder.
- Mixed: These teams participate in both systems.
The scheduling method used tries to match by Current Team Value, with a minimum of 1 000 000 CTV.
While this has been available for a few days now, what is new is that the Blackbox Trophy has also been revived under this new environment with season 6 starting today, and running for the rest of the year. For those of you who have not heard about the blackbox trophy, it's a long meta event where coaches designate a squad of new teams and play a number of games over a longer period of times, scoring points as they go along and fighting for a spot in the top 10.
There are a couple of new things with season 6:
- Teams in squads are forced into strict mode, and will remain so until either the team completes the games for the season or the season ends, whichever happens first
- You can have multiple concurrent squads should you want to.
Beyond that, the settings for this season are:
- 4 teams per squad
- 15 games per team
- Running until the end of the year (December 31st)
Scoring and roster composition details can be found on the trophy page:
Blackbox Trophy
The costs for the rosters are very quickly based on the win rates of open play Competitive division, and it's quite possible that there are some rosters that should be costed differently. We'll see how it turns out!
As always, this is a new feature and is likely to have some issues and bugs. Please feel free to get in touch if you encounter problems (preferrably on the Discord server).
2627 Reads
9 Comments
Posted by: Christer on CEST000000Europe/Stockholm4005pm22, J000000Tuesday22 %05, %2022 - %12:%Jul
At 09:26 this morning, FUMBBL went down unexpectedly due to a failure of the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply, a device that conditions power to the servers and allows the servers to run for a while if there is a power loss).
It took until roughly 12:15 for me to identify the problem, see if there was an easy solution and bypass the broken device, and we are up and running again.
However, I will need to replace the UPS with a new one at some point soon. I will need to do some research on what device I'm buying. If anyone in the community has experience with UPS:es, I'd happily take suggestions on which model to buy.
I have a couple of constraints on what I'm after:
- I'm looking at a budget of $500 to $1000 or so.
- Reputable brand (I've used APC for a very long time, and am happy with the ability to buy replacement batteries etc)
- Preferrably rack mounted (up to 4U), but will consider standalone devices too.
- The hardware runs typically at 550W or so total, and my other UPS was 1000VA which has been fine. There's not a lot of headroom here though, so I am looking for something along the lines of 1000-1500 VA.
- "Smart" functionality (ie, computer communication) is preferrable, but not required.
- Global availability (more specifically I need to be able to order it from Sweden without having to pay insane shipping costs), and needs to be in stock.
Again, if you have experience with these types of devices, I'd appreciate suggestions.
Either way, I apologize for the inconvenience for those of you whose matches this affected. I hope to have this UPS replaced within a couple of weeks (which will unfortunately cause another maintenance downtime).
Edit: The UPS has now been replaced and things should be back to normal again. Thank you kindly to those of you who donated to offset the cost of the replacement.
It took until roughly 12:15 for me to identify the problem, see if there was an easy solution and bypass the broken device, and we are up and running again.
However, I will need to replace the UPS with a new one at some point soon. I will need to do some research on what device I'm buying. If anyone in the community has experience with UPS:es, I'd happily take suggestions on which model to buy.
I have a couple of constraints on what I'm after:
- I'm looking at a budget of $500 to $1000 or so.
- Reputable brand (I've used APC for a very long time, and am happy with the ability to buy replacement batteries etc)
- Preferrably rack mounted (up to 4U), but will consider standalone devices too.
- The hardware runs typically at 550W or so total, and my other UPS was 1000VA which has been fine. There's not a lot of headroom here though, so I am looking for something along the lines of 1000-1500 VA.
- "Smart" functionality (ie, computer communication) is preferrable, but not required.
- Global availability (more specifically I need to be able to order it from Sweden without having to pay insane shipping costs), and needs to be in stock.
Again, if you have experience with these types of devices, I'd appreciate suggestions.
Either way, I apologize for the inconvenience for those of you whose matches this affected. I hope to have this UPS replaced within a couple of weeks (which will unfortunately cause another maintenance downtime).
Edit: The UPS has now been replaced and things should be back to normal again. Thank you kindly to those of you who donated to offset the cost of the replacement.
2469 Reads
7 Comments
Posted by: Christer on JuneFri, 03 Jun 2022 20:19:24 +02001903pm22, J0000006Europe/Stockholm %03, %2022 - %20:%Jun
After a much longer time than expected, and a seemingly endless series of work from HimalayaP1C7 and myself, Gamefinder 2.0 is at a point which we are happy to call beta.
This means that all the core functionality is in place, and should be usable by people to find and launch games through. There may still be issues and/or usability quirks, which is why I am asking for as many of you as possible to start using it to find games. The new system can be found here:
https://fumbbl.com/p/lfg2
In addition to finding issues and bugs, we are also looking for feedback on the user experience as a whole. It's clearly different from the old gamefinder, so try to remain a bit objective when you provide feedback. The intent of the redesign was to give more information to people, to allow for more flexibility in matchmaking but also to correct some problems with the old system.
Either way, please do take a peek and let us know what you think! There's a forum thread for feedback as it's easier to follow the forum than the comments to a news post.
This means that all the core functionality is in place, and should be usable by people to find and launch games through. There may still be issues and/or usability quirks, which is why I am asking for as many of you as possible to start using it to find games. The new system can be found here:
https://fumbbl.com/p/lfg2
In addition to finding issues and bugs, we are also looking for feedback on the user experience as a whole. It's clearly different from the old gamefinder, so try to remain a bit objective when you provide feedback. The intent of the redesign was to give more information to people, to allow for more flexibility in matchmaking but also to correct some problems with the old system.
Either way, please do take a peek and let us know what you think! There's a forum thread for feedback as it's easier to follow the forum than the comments to a news post.
3192 Reads
35 Comments
Posted by: Christer on 18Europe/Stockholm045Europe/Stockholm0604pm22, Maypm22 %04, %2022 - %14:%May
It's come to my attention that Windows Defender has started to trigger a warning of a malware on the FFB client. The specific malware in question is called "Trojan:Script/Wacatac.B!ml".
Without going into too much detail about what this malware is, and what it does, the warning is very likely a false positive. Basically, the FFB client is a ZIP archive with java code. The malware isn't Java based, and wouldn't execute in the context of a Java application, but would instead (if executed) start a process on your machine called "biddulphia9" (and it would show up in the task manager).
I will see if I can reproduce this warning when I get home, and will do a new build of the FFB client to see if the false positive is supressed.
Steps you can do if you're uncertain:
Check for the process in taskmanager (as explained above)
Download the FFB Client .jar file(s) from:
https://fumbbl.com/FFBClient/live
Rename each .jar file to .zip, and extract the files (all of this is perfectly safe, even if it had contained said malware). You can then look through all the files to see if there are any windows executables, and if you're being particularly nervous use tools to decompile the .class files to java code to see what they do. Obviously, this last step is complicated and takes a fair amount of development skill to do.
Delete detection history as suggested here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/all/what-to-do-about-trojanwin32wacatacbml-false/d884df80-2dba-46c9-bd8b-4e2f93c9dd3f
Unsure if this works, but could be worth testing.
Google-search for information on this. There could be a bit of a "wave" of false positives with this one going on. If this is the case, there will eventually be a antivirus definition update from Microsoft that will make this go away. Regardless, it never hurts to keep yourself informed about what malware is out there and how they function.
I will update this post once I'm home again and able to take steps to reproduce the problem and see if a rebuild resolves it.
Update 1:
I've reviewed the binary form of the files that trigger this malware warning. It turns out that javaws does a small modification to the archive (it adjusts a small piece of data in the ZIP header). The pre-javaws file does not trigger this issue, but the extra few bytes of header information does. The actual content of the archive (the java bytecode) is unchanged.
This leads me to the conclusion that the Windows Defender definitions have been changed to produce this false positive (which is frustrating to say the least). As a workaround, you can go to Settings->Virus & Threat protection->Protection history. Here you will see one or more "Threat blocked" which will point to the Java "Deployment Cache", and manually allow these to be processed.
Note that you should typically only do this if you are sure that the file in question is safe. Comparing the files from this cache with the files I linked above will allow you to verify my claims that the differences are absolutely minimal and double-check my conclusions. I will still try to build new versions of these files and hope that this removes the warnings.
Update 2:
I've resigned the library files that were causing the issue, and they appear to no longer be flagged as malware. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Without going into too much detail about what this malware is, and what it does, the warning is very likely a false positive. Basically, the FFB client is a ZIP archive with java code. The malware isn't Java based, and wouldn't execute in the context of a Java application, but would instead (if executed) start a process on your machine called "biddulphia9" (and it would show up in the task manager).
I will see if I can reproduce this warning when I get home, and will do a new build of the FFB client to see if the false positive is supressed.
Steps you can do if you're uncertain:
Check for the process in taskmanager (as explained above)
Download the FFB Client .jar file(s) from:
https://fumbbl.com/FFBClient/live
Rename each .jar file to .zip, and extract the files (all of this is perfectly safe, even if it had contained said malware). You can then look through all the files to see if there are any windows executables, and if you're being particularly nervous use tools to decompile the .class files to java code to see what they do. Obviously, this last step is complicated and takes a fair amount of development skill to do.
Delete detection history as suggested here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/all/what-to-do-about-trojanwin32wacatacbml-false/d884df80-2dba-46c9-bd8b-4e2f93c9dd3f
Unsure if this works, but could be worth testing.
Google-search for information on this. There could be a bit of a "wave" of false positives with this one going on. If this is the case, there will eventually be a antivirus definition update from Microsoft that will make this go away. Regardless, it never hurts to keep yourself informed about what malware is out there and how they function.
I will update this post once I'm home again and able to take steps to reproduce the problem and see if a rebuild resolves it.
Update 1:
I've reviewed the binary form of the files that trigger this malware warning. It turns out that javaws does a small modification to the archive (it adjusts a small piece of data in the ZIP header). The pre-javaws file does not trigger this issue, but the extra few bytes of header information does. The actual content of the archive (the java bytecode) is unchanged.
This leads me to the conclusion that the Windows Defender definitions have been changed to produce this false positive (which is frustrating to say the least). As a workaround, you can go to Settings->Virus & Threat protection->Protection history. Here you will see one or more "Threat blocked" which will point to the Java "Deployment Cache", and manually allow these to be processed.
Note that you should typically only do this if you are sure that the file in question is safe. Comparing the files from this cache with the files I linked above will allow you to verify my claims that the differences are absolutely minimal and double-check my conclusions. I will still try to build new versions of these files and hope that this removes the warnings.
Update 2:
I've resigned the library files that were causing the issue, and they appear to no longer be flagged as malware. Apologies for the inconvenience.
2659 Reads
3 Comments