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Wolfpack 4.4.1 Server Release
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Wolfpack
Mar 6, 2021, 11:18:12 AM3/6/21
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We are happy to announce that Empire 4.4.1 is now available. You can
download it from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/empserver/files/
More information on Empire can be found on our home page
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/
This release fixes bugs, some of them critical. Player visible
changes include fairer worlds when the deity uses fairland, and
mountains having the same amount of gold per resource point as other
sectors. Deity visible changes include deletion of exotic fairland
options, and game customization improvements.
Deities are advised to use this release for new games. Upgrading
mid-game is not supported, and expected to result in total disaster.
Fine print: you should be able to upgrade with the empdump utility, if
you know what you're doing.
This release was made from the Git repository at
http://git.pond.sub.org/empserver/
Released files:
Source code
* empire-4.4.1.tar.gz Everything
* empire-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
* empire-client-4.4.1.tar.gz Just the client
* empire-client-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
Pre-formatted documentation
* empire-info-text-4.4.1.tar.gz Text
* empire-info-text-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
* empire-info-html-4.4.1.tar.gz HTML
* empire-info-html-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
Binaries
* empire-client-4.4.1-* Clients for various systems
User contributed files:
* contrib/empire-server-4.4.1-i386-win32.zip
Server binaries for Windows
(Ron Koenderink)
Change log:
Changes to Empire 4.4.1 - Sat Feb 21 2021
* Fix land unit casualties in guerrilla fighting. Broken in 4.4.0.
* Changes to edit:
- You can now edit bars on ships and land units, and missile
fortification.
- Fix to reject fortification of embarked land units.
- Fix to zap land unit and plane fortification on load.
- Fix to take satellite off its carrier when moving it to orbit.
* Changes to load, unload, lload, lunload, tend, and ltend:
- tend land with multiple target ships now tends each land unit
just once.
- tend land now reports "not on ship" only when the land unit was
explicitly selected by UID. Matches unload.
- Fix load, unload, lload, lunload to suppress messages and skip
foreign ships / land units when the second argument starts with a
digit.
- load and unload no longer prompt for land units to unload when a
carrier can't carry any.
- Fix load plane to reject satellites in orbit. The stock game
does not have loadable satellites.
* Fix launch to take satellites off their carrier when moving to
orbit.
* Shield embarked planes and land units from sector damage, like
their ships.
* Rewrite much of fairland to make it more robust and more fair:
- Show a more useful map.
- Fix error handling, fix and tidy up error and progress messages.
- Drop option -a. Deities can find continents with ?dterr<N, where
N is the number of continents.
- Drop option -o. Deities can unset resources with "edit l * i 0 g
0 f 0 c 0 u 0".
- Drop a useless warning about small world. It was downgraded from
error in 4.3.25.
- Check arguments more thoroughly, and don't silently "correct" bad
arguments.
- Fix checking of minimal distance arguments. Has always been
broken, but 4.3.15 made it worse.
- Ensure the continents' first two sectors obey minimal distance.
- Correct bias in placement of expansion islands. These were more
often placed to the right of existing land. Players could
exploit that to guide their search for land.
- Fix island growth and correct its bias. Growth could fail even
when there was space to grow. Islands tended to curve around
obstacles in a counterclockwise direction. Besides fixing that,
the new code also gives better results for high spike
percentages: it produces shorter spikes extending from a core
rather than long snakes that tend to curve into themselves, and
is less prone to put capitals on the coast.
- Size and place expansion islands fairly: ensure each start island
"owns" the exact same set of expansion islands, where "owns"
means it's closer than any other start island.
- To make that work, fairland now requires the number of expansion
islands to be a multiple of the number of continents, and fails
when it can't place all the islands the deity asks for. You
can't fill the world with islands anymore by asking for
impossibly many of them.
- Fix silent failure to place mountains. Fairness issue.
- Fix unfair mountain resources. Neglected when Empire 3 made
mountains produce gold dust.
- Drop undocumented, silent limit of 1000 mountains per island.
- Location of resources is more varied, in particular for islands
with few mountains, and for sea. Resource remain pretty much the
same overall.
- Performance improves for large minimal distances, especially for
crowded worlds. It can suffer for huge worlds and small minimal
distances.
- Manual page improvements.
- Code refactoring and cleanup.
* Test suite improvements:
- Fix empdump-test for "make check-accept". Has been broken since
its addition in 4.3.33.
- Improve give and edit coverage.
- Cover load and tend. There are known gaps.
- Improve fairland coverage.
* Game customization improvements:
- Configuration tables now have more extra space deities can use
for customizing their games: 31 product types, 63 sector types,
127 ship, plane and land unit types, and 63 nuke types.
- Work to produce stuff is now independently configurable, and
"show product" shows it. Before, it was a function of raw
materials and resource use.
* New product selector "bwork" is work to build one unit of the
product.
* Fix build with compilers that require the depcomp wrapper for
dependency tracking. Broken in 4.3.31.
* Fix LWP signal code. Messed up in 4.3.6, some more in 4.3.10.
* Improve POSIX conformance for portability. Observed to fix the
build on Solaris 10.
* The client's password prompt now behaves the same on all POSIX
systems: read from standard input in canonical mode with echo
turned off. Before, it commonly read from /dev/tty in noncanonical
mode.
* The server crashed on some systems when bomb, launch and
interdiction missed the target. Fix that.
* Fix truncated "info Empire4.3" on systems with a losing nroff.
* Make client's fancy line editing and persistent history work on
more systems.
* Fix ground combat not to wipe out commodities supplied to defending
land units. Broken in 4.3.33.
* Don't permit SAMs on escort missions. They work, apart from a
recoverable internal error, but it makes no sense.
* Don't permit marine missiles on support missions. They can't
actually go.
* Drop support for ABM and a-sat missiles consuming shells. The
shell use is logistical busy-work, and economically irrelevant.
The stock game's abm type didn't consume any, but its asat type
did.
* Stricter plane configuration validation.
* Increase mountain process efficiency from 75% to 100%. Gold
resources in mountains are now worth the same as elsewhere, and a
third more than before.
* Fix crash when a deity runs neweff or production on a sea sector.
Broken in 4.4.0.
* Don't let embarked engineers work. Screwed up when the work
command was added in Empire 2.
* Fix buy to handle concurrent lot change more robustly. The flawed
handling goes back to 4.0.0 and 4.0.2.
* Fix MOB_ACCESS mobility update for ships owned by countries with
even country number. Broken in 4.4.0.
* Journal entries for output are no longer flushed to disk right
away.
* Code refactoring and cleanup.
* Info page, manual page and documentation fixes and clarifications.
Change log just for the client:
* The client's password prompt now behaves the same on all POSIX
systems: read from standard input in canonical mode with echo
turned off. Before, it commonly read from /dev/tty in noncanonical
mode.
* Make client's fancy line editing and persistent history work on
more systems.
SHA-512 checksums:
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Wolfpack! Bringing you the latest and greatest in Empire development and
support, and, in our minds, the best multi-player game around.
Check out Empire at http://www.wolfpackempire.com wolf...@wolfpackempire.com
download it from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/empserver/files/
More information on Empire can be found on our home page
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/
This release fixes bugs, some of them critical. Player visible
changes include fairer worlds when the deity uses fairland, and
mountains having the same amount of gold per resource point as other
sectors. Deity visible changes include deletion of exotic fairland
options, and game customization improvements.
Deities are advised to use this release for new games. Upgrading
mid-game is not supported, and expected to result in total disaster.
Fine print: you should be able to upgrade with the empdump utility, if
you know what you're doing.
This release was made from the Git repository at
http://git.pond.sub.org/empserver/
Released files:
Source code
* empire-4.4.1.tar.gz Everything
* empire-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
* empire-client-4.4.1.tar.gz Just the client
* empire-client-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
Pre-formatted documentation
* empire-info-text-4.4.1.tar.gz Text
* empire-info-text-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
* empire-info-html-4.4.1.tar.gz HTML
* empire-info-html-4.4.1.zip Same thing, different wrapper
Binaries
* empire-client-4.4.1-* Clients for various systems
User contributed files:
* contrib/empire-server-4.4.1-i386-win32.zip
Server binaries for Windows
(Ron Koenderink)
Change log:
Changes to Empire 4.4.1 - Sat Feb 21 2021
* Fix land unit casualties in guerrilla fighting. Broken in 4.4.0.
* Changes to edit:
- You can now edit bars on ships and land units, and missile
fortification.
- Fix to reject fortification of embarked land units.
- Fix to zap land unit and plane fortification on load.
- Fix to take satellite off its carrier when moving it to orbit.
* Changes to load, unload, lload, lunload, tend, and ltend:
- tend land with multiple target ships now tends each land unit
just once.
- tend land now reports "not on ship" only when the land unit was
explicitly selected by UID. Matches unload.
- Fix load, unload, lload, lunload to suppress messages and skip
foreign ships / land units when the second argument starts with a
digit.
- load and unload no longer prompt for land units to unload when a
carrier can't carry any.
- Fix load plane to reject satellites in orbit. The stock game
does not have loadable satellites.
* Fix launch to take satellites off their carrier when moving to
orbit.
* Shield embarked planes and land units from sector damage, like
their ships.
* Rewrite much of fairland to make it more robust and more fair:
- Show a more useful map.
- Fix error handling, fix and tidy up error and progress messages.
- Drop option -a. Deities can find continents with ?dterr<N, where
N is the number of continents.
- Drop option -o. Deities can unset resources with "edit l * i 0 g
0 f 0 c 0 u 0".
- Drop a useless warning about small world. It was downgraded from
error in 4.3.25.
- Check arguments more thoroughly, and don't silently "correct" bad
arguments.
- Fix checking of minimal distance arguments. Has always been
broken, but 4.3.15 made it worse.
- Ensure the continents' first two sectors obey minimal distance.
- Correct bias in placement of expansion islands. These were more
often placed to the right of existing land. Players could
exploit that to guide their search for land.
- Fix island growth and correct its bias. Growth could fail even
when there was space to grow. Islands tended to curve around
obstacles in a counterclockwise direction. Besides fixing that,
the new code also gives better results for high spike
percentages: it produces shorter spikes extending from a core
rather than long snakes that tend to curve into themselves, and
is less prone to put capitals on the coast.
- Size and place expansion islands fairly: ensure each start island
"owns" the exact same set of expansion islands, where "owns"
means it's closer than any other start island.
- To make that work, fairland now requires the number of expansion
islands to be a multiple of the number of continents, and fails
when it can't place all the islands the deity asks for. You
can't fill the world with islands anymore by asking for
impossibly many of them.
- Fix silent failure to place mountains. Fairness issue.
- Fix unfair mountain resources. Neglected when Empire 3 made
mountains produce gold dust.
- Drop undocumented, silent limit of 1000 mountains per island.
- Location of resources is more varied, in particular for islands
with few mountains, and for sea. Resource remain pretty much the
same overall.
- Performance improves for large minimal distances, especially for
crowded worlds. It can suffer for huge worlds and small minimal
distances.
- Manual page improvements.
- Code refactoring and cleanup.
* Test suite improvements:
- Fix empdump-test for "make check-accept". Has been broken since
its addition in 4.3.33.
- Improve give and edit coverage.
- Cover load and tend. There are known gaps.
- Improve fairland coverage.
* Game customization improvements:
- Configuration tables now have more extra space deities can use
for customizing their games: 31 product types, 63 sector types,
127 ship, plane and land unit types, and 63 nuke types.
- Work to produce stuff is now independently configurable, and
"show product" shows it. Before, it was a function of raw
materials and resource use.
* New product selector "bwork" is work to build one unit of the
product.
* Fix build with compilers that require the depcomp wrapper for
dependency tracking. Broken in 4.3.31.
* Fix LWP signal code. Messed up in 4.3.6, some more in 4.3.10.
* Improve POSIX conformance for portability. Observed to fix the
build on Solaris 10.
* The client's password prompt now behaves the same on all POSIX
systems: read from standard input in canonical mode with echo
turned off. Before, it commonly read from /dev/tty in noncanonical
mode.
* The server crashed on some systems when bomb, launch and
interdiction missed the target. Fix that.
* Fix truncated "info Empire4.3" on systems with a losing nroff.
* Make client's fancy line editing and persistent history work on
more systems.
* Fix ground combat not to wipe out commodities supplied to defending
land units. Broken in 4.3.33.
* Don't permit SAMs on escort missions. They work, apart from a
recoverable internal error, but it makes no sense.
* Don't permit marine missiles on support missions. They can't
actually go.
* Drop support for ABM and a-sat missiles consuming shells. The
shell use is logistical busy-work, and economically irrelevant.
The stock game's abm type didn't consume any, but its asat type
did.
* Stricter plane configuration validation.
* Increase mountain process efficiency from 75% to 100%. Gold
resources in mountains are now worth the same as elsewhere, and a
third more than before.
* Fix crash when a deity runs neweff or production on a sea sector.
Broken in 4.4.0.
* Don't let embarked engineers work. Screwed up when the work
command was added in Empire 2.
* Fix buy to handle concurrent lot change more robustly. The flawed
handling goes back to 4.0.0 and 4.0.2.
* Fix MOB_ACCESS mobility update for ships owned by countries with
even country number. Broken in 4.4.0.
* Journal entries for output are no longer flushed to disk right
away.
* Code refactoring and cleanup.
* Info page, manual page and documentation fixes and clarifications.
Change log just for the client:
* The client's password prompt now behaves the same on all POSIX
systems: read from standard input in canonical mode with echo
turned off. Before, it commonly read from /dev/tty in noncanonical
mode.
* Make client's fancy line editing and persistent history work on
more systems.
SHA-512 checksums:
a29d5233821cd9ba178072d502925915da96b603f77e3a118a959e046e1e03a55aa9c93c18f3bf566f4b11886175b669df5c2e0a17faffa5a0f3126290993367 empire-4.4.1.tar.gz
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Wolfpack! Bringing you the latest and greatest in Empire development and
support, and, in our minds, the best multi-player game around.
Check out Empire at http://www.wolfpackempire.com wolf...@wolfpackempire.com
Marisag
Mar 8, 2021, 6:26:10 AM3/8/21
to Wolfpack
To: Wolfpack
Re: Wolfpack 4.4.1 Server Release
By: Wolfpack to rec.games.empire on Sat Mar 06 2021 17:18:10
This is a great update, thx!
Marisa
--- https://SynchronetBBS.org/HostSplash - SBBS hosting for $14/month
--- Synchronet 3.18a-Linux NewsLink 1.113
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Re: Wolfpack 4.4.1 Server Release
By: Wolfpack to rec.games.empire on Sat Mar 06 2021 17:18:10
This is a great update, thx!
Marisa
--- https://SynchronetBBS.org/HostSplash - SBBS hosting for $14/month
--- Synchronet 3.18a-Linux NewsLink 1.113
Message from the AmigaCity BBS. Join us at: telnet://amigacity.xyz
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