I have grown miserably tired of the toxic players infesting this community. I would much rather work on something new instead of risking my mental health further for something that is essentially thankless volunteer work. Other then an obligation to fix major crash or launch issues, I really don't want to go near this game at this time. I don't know why everything got so bad across both versions of the game, but I think I should no longer be releasing F2P games, much less remaking them.

Giggle all you want but if you played this regularly then my failure is yours. When the community teaches itself how to eject toxic players on its own instead of sheltering them, then I will consider returning. Otherwise I'd prefer the game to be dead and to stay dead until a new population of players appear that overwhelm the old, which will probably never happen at this rate. I don't really care. Do you?

If your response to this is telling me to grow a spine or something, then I'll humbly tell you that I can't. If you were ever a true supporter of my work, you would have adjusted your personality around me as I had constantly adjusted my personality around all of you. It's called pretending to be civil in a public space. Key word pretending. It's one-half of holding down a paying job, you should learn this trait sooner then later.

The final takeaway is this: I am not your friend. I am your developer for Boring Man, a total stranger. All I wanted to do was fix bugs, add cool suggestions and improve the game with very little nonsense in between. But it feels like some were becoming far too entitled for my attention and it caused them to become passive aggressive, manipulative, or just outright cruel towards me. No thanks. In hindsight, at least the outright cruel ones were being honest.

Full source code for either version will never be released by me. I will continue to run a few dedicated servers indefinitely. They are not expensive nor high effort for me at all due to all the unthanked headless server and scripting work I put in v2.0.0 to keep the game running online forever. Good job me. Bye.




This thread will offer some advice for some common technical problems in the rewrite. Try using CTRL+F to search for your issue here before making a thread. Also doing the 'fix trifecta' can possibly fix a lot of issues, even ones not mentioned in this thread.

1. Verify file integrity
2. Allow the game past all firewalls, including your router's firewall
3. Restart Steam

If you're still having trouble with something, you might find some clues in the output log. You can generate a log by putting this text into the game's Steam launch options:
Then, launch the game and close it once you experience the problem. This should have generated a 'debug.txt' file in the game's Steam installation folder. If your problem is the game not launching, and no debug.txt file was created, then that usually means its an issue with Steam or your game installation on Steam.

Continue reading below for the solutions to problems I have encountered across development.

This login screen specifically.[i.imgur.com] Try restarting your Steam application or your PC. The Steam version of the game should be using your Steam account to log in automatically, but if your login is broken then it will default to the GameJolt login screen.

If the login window is stuck on "Connecting" then you're probably having a hard time connecting to spasmangames.com which is where the login server is. Try pinging and tracing it with the commands below in Command Prompt:


If you're not getting a response, then your network or ISP isn't able to reach my login server for some reason. Make sure your firewall settings are allowing the game, and that you have a stable internet connection.

When the game can't log in, then after a while it will automatically attempt to connect to my 'failover server' which is hosted elsewhere. So if you're not connecting at all and other players are fine then it's an issue on your end you'll have to work out.

If you are trying to launch from Linux/Proton and get this error:
Or maybe you get this error when trying to run from terminal:
You may be able to fix this by installing the old libssl1.0.0 package by inputting these 4 commands:
You may have to change http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main to a repository that your system works with.

If lowering the video settings isn't helping or you have a pretty good PC, then make sure Sleep Margin in Video Settings is set to 20ms. If 20ms doesn't help, then the other options might be worth trying.

If you're trying to play with an FPS Limit set higher then 60 in video settings, make sure your monitor actually supports it, or that its refresh rate wasn't set to something else by mistake in Windows.

If you have a low-end PC, you can try the 'Surfaces' option as well, 'Multiple' surfaces setting might benefit PCs with better CPU, but have a slow or on-board GPU.

If you're on Windows 10, I found that the FPS can get throttled due to the variable refresh rate feature being enabled. Right-click anywhere on your desktop, then click "Display settings", and then scroll down a bit and click "Graphics settings". You can then turn off "Optimize games for variable refresh rate" here.

This is usually an indication of an external file error, which can range from either writing text files, adding/deleting custom sprites (map tiles, mods, player profile pics) or a file in your installation being corrupted and unreadable. In most cases, verifying file integrity usually fixes this crash.

Additionally, in the past this has happened to players while running certain programs in the background, and Steam will stop the launch if it thinks the game's exe has been modified/hooked by an outside program. This can range from anti-virus programs, to VPN programs, and to game performance monitors/optimizers such as MSI Afterburner. Try closing these programs, and launching again.

You can force running as 32-bit by opening the 'options.ini' file in the game's exe folder with a text editor and setting 'Usex64' from 'True' to 'False'

You can also try going into B-Man's exe properties in Windows and setting the compatibility mode to 'Windows 7'

This is usually related in staying in contact with the login server, it's a strange issue that happens on specific PCs, the game will stutter everytime it tries to ping and I'm not sure why. Players in the past have reported fixing this by turning off VPNs installed on their PC, so this may be similar to the issue above this one, where background programs (AVs, optimizers, etc) could be causing the problem.

In the Video options menu, try turning off Character Outlines. This usually fixes this issue, its a weird bug with the outline shader that only occurs on certain GPUs, usually low-end or onboard.

In the Video options menu, try the "Multiple" setting for Surfaces. This will chop up big textures into little textures, as this issue is usually because you don't have enough GPU. This is a similar issue with GPU memory as above.

Rendering multiple surfaces will use more CPU but require far less GPU memory which can resolve crashes or FPS problems when your computer doesn't have enough. If you don't have any issues with GPU memory, then this setting should remain on "Single" for maximum performance.

Related to the two GPU memory issues above, you might also get a performance boost by not using any sprite mods. For each sprite modded by a sprite mod, it creates an entirely new texture page, so big mods can use up a lot of GPU memory really fast, even more so if a large sprite is modded.

Click the game window so it's active and press F4 a few times, the default key for switching from fullscreen to windowed.

I will never take action against players who are just playing the damn game. Disciplinary action is only taken against players who use cheats or say hate speech in the chat window.

You can report cheating or hateful players by clicking their name in the chat window and selecting "Report Player". This will include the chat line you clicked on in the report. You can also report them from the in-game scoreboard.

Try restarting Steam, that usually kickstarts updates on games.

Even if you already selected your clan, you may need to select it again to activate your admin permissions. Click "My Clan" in the Clans menu and then select the steam group you're the owner of. That should attempt to tell the game you're the admin again and unlock the menu options

Remember this is only available to the Steam group owner. The game is only able to tell who the owner is, and not any additional admins added by the owner in Steam. If the owner of the group was last online 238 years ago, then make a new group.

A strict NAT is due to security settings on your network or home router 'hiding' your network information from other players. If you have access to your network or home router's configuration, you can try fixing this by disabling certain security settings or creating port forward rules for the game (42069 UDP).

Portforwarding would not only fix this issue, but it would also allow other strict NAT players to join your server, which would be helpful. Every different model of router has different security settings and it's impossible to list every single one in this thread and provide a solution for it.

Similar to the low FPS section at the top of this post, this might relate to sleep margin, but dedicated servers have their own sleep margin setting. In your server's config file, open it in a text editor and try to find the 'DedicatedSleepMargin' option, which by default is set to 1. If you need full FPS on your server, set it to 20 like suggested for normal play. If the server is using too much CPU, then 20 is probably too much. Basically, the higher this value is (from 1-20), the more CPU it will use to stabilize your FPS.