[conquest] Conquest 8.3a (devel) is available

[Jon Trulson <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Source tarball:
        http://downloads.sourceforge.net/conq/conquest-8.3a.src.tar.gz

        SVN tagged release:
        http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/tags/conquest-8.3a

        SVN current (possibly unstable) development:
        http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/trunk


  This version corrects a couple of serious off-by-one errors in the
  server. A new star texture is used, texture mipmapping is supported,
  a variety of compiler warnings minor bugs fixed, CQI fixes and
  enhancements, and alot of code cleanup just freaking
  happened.

  Solaris should build and compile now (even OpenGL and sound support,
  provided all the normal Conquest requirements are there).

  Due to the server fixes, I would strongly urge server operators to
  upgrade to this release.

  Here's the spew from the HISTORY file:

8.3a (devel) 05/10/2008

  - correct some nasty off-by-one's (NUMPLANETS) in
    serverpkt.c:spktPlanetLoc() and spktPlanetLoc2().  Depending on
    your environment (OS, compiler, etc) your results could vary.  The
    typical symptoms would be reports of invalid packet types or sizes
    in the logs (client and/or server), and usually a rapid ship death
    with a killed-by of "Nothing in particular".

    This is a server-only bug, and all servers should be upgraded,
    whether or not your clients have seen this problem, since it's
    pretty certain that something important in memory will get
    corrupted :).

  - bombing graphics and phasers are now displayed in LR scan.

  - enable alpha testing in glfRender so that font glyph backgrounds
    aren't rendered (obvious in the text overlay nodes like ship
    list, planet list, etc).

  - nCP.c (cockpit): Fix case where when bombing or beaming, and a
    mouse macro is used, the relevant sound effects might not stop and
    proper state restored.

  - new star texture, based on prodding from Michael Derek Barnett who
    pointed me toward NASA's SOHO site
    http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/gif/ .

    One of the images of the sun from this site was used, and with
    alot of GIMP majik, a new star texture was born :) I think it
    looks a lot nicer.  Note, stars will appear larger now, as a
    proper star should.

  - Per Derek Barnett, set Sirius to be a blue star, and Betelguese to
    be a red star, just like in real life :)

  - Add texture definitions (and appropriate colors) for the stars to
    the 00_plantex.trc file.  Remove all planet/star color
    specifications from conqinitrc as they don't really belong there -
    color is a texture property, not a planetary one...

  - Massive code cleanup, mainly related to the confusing use of
    Unsgn8 and char.  gcc 4.1.2 complains bitterly about these with
    '-Wall', so they have all been fixed up to use char where
    appropriate (strcpy, el .al) and Unsgn8 (packet data).

  - CQI parser:

    - fixup parsing routines to be 'flat' according to the current
      section, and only care about (nested) subsections when really
      neccessary.

    - fixup the CQI parser so that sections can be nested up to a
      depth of 15.  Get rid of the subsection crap^Wstuff - no longer
      needed.

    - add ability to inline animdefs directly into an animation.

    - add ability to derive inlined animdefs from previously defined
      global (non-inlined) animdefs.

    - remove the rmDQuote() function.  Now use checkString(), which
      ensures all strings specified to CQI are properly 'cleaned' at
      parse time :)

    - fix a reduce conflict in 'stmt' grammer

    - use a 'CQI' prefix to error/warning messages generated when a
      section is finished parsing.

    - remove multiple copies of 'check for banned substances' code
      since all strings are now sanitized as soon as they are parsed.

    - improve error handling/recovery during parsing of certain
      sections.

    - add ability to disable anim types within an animdef, by setting
      'stages' to 0, or in the case of toganims, delayms to 0.  Useful
      for derived animdefs.

    - remove the ability to specify a color specification within a
      planet definition.  Colors should only be specified with the
      planet's texture definition.

      This means you will need to update your
      <install_prefix>/etc/conqinitrc file maunally - if you have
      previously installed conquest, as color values can no longer be
      specified for a planet.  If you don't, then you will just get
      warnings since the conqinitrc file is not overwritten on
      an install...

  - texturesrc - inline most animdefs, and re-arange for the new
    world order.

    Derive the inlined 'bombing' animdef from the 'explosion'
    animdef.  Neat. :)

  - add support for mipmapping of textures.  Textures can specify the
    boolean 'mipmap' in their texture definition to specify that mipmaps
    should be generated for the texture.  This is now done for stars,
    planets, ships, and the doomsday machine.

    This improves the quality of these textures significantly when
    viewed at different sizes (scaling and magfactor).

    For now, the GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER is set to
    GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR (highest quality).  The min-filter is
    currently not configurable, nor can mipmaps be completely disabled
    (without editing the texture config files) though they should be.

  - use iBufFlush to flush the input buffer when entering the CP, so
    that previously queued commands aren't issued when you re-enter a
    ship after you've died in glorious battle.

  - fix configure.ac to SUBST YFLAGS.  No idea why this is now needed
    (perhaps the switch to AC_PROG_YACC in a previous release?).

  - sparc/solaris porting.

    - Sparc (and probably everything else) does not really like
      unaligned accesses to the common block.  On sparc, a bus error
      occurs when certain CB accesses are made.

      Now, on non-x86 hardware, always align the CB structures on a 16
      byte boundary.  This should be done on all architectures, but I
      do not want to break x86 CB compatibility yet.  Soon though,
      very soon :)

    - prefer OS native curses libraries and header files to ncurses
      when available.

    - include termio before term in c_defs.h to avoid SGTTY compile
      issue.

    - include -lsocket and -lnsl libraries during linking.

    - fixed longstanding problem with the lexer on Solaris and other
      systems.  Apparently, 'WS' is already pre-defined somewhere, so
      rename 'WS' to 'whtspc' in the lex (*.l) files.  Got rid of the
      'OWS' tokens since we aren't using them anyway.

  - fix some stupidness in sem.c.

  - move metaserver query into the nMeta node, where it belongs
    (conquestgl).

  - makesrcpkg: make sure install-sh and ylwrap are executable.

  - add a '-v' verbose option to the clients.  More '-v's increase
    verbosity.

  - implement a generic ringbuffer mechanism (rb.h, rb.c). Currently,
    only ibuf (keyboard/macro handling) uses it, but in the future it
    will also be used for network buffers when that code is reworked
    to use non-blocking sockets.

  - tcpwrap.c: only log successful connections if verbose/debug is
    specified.  Only 'access denied' events are always logged.

  - correct/update some of the documentation for CONQINIT.TXT (CQI).

  - New SourceForge project page (Conq):

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/conq/

    - migrated svn source repo to sourceforge.

    - svn URL's

      - current (possibly unstable) development

        https://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/trunk

      - tagged (official) releases

        https://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/tags/




--
Happy cheese in fear                 | Jon Trulson
against oppressor, rebel!            | mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxx
Brocolli, hostage.       -Unknown    | #include <std/disclaimer.h>