will affect you, the player. These were coded as the Wolfpack project,
and bug-reports should be sent to <wolfpack@wolfpackempire.com>.
.NF
-Changes to Empire 4.3.19 - Sun Dec 7 01:08:20 UTC 2008
+Changes to Empire 4.3.30 - Tue May 22 18:34:52 UTC 2012
+ * Disable damage to base sector or ship when missile explodes on
+ launch for now, because damage done to other missiles there can be
+ wiped out in some cases. Broken in Empire 2.
+ * Fix navigate and march not to wipe out concurrent updates.
+ Abusable, but probably not worthwhile.
+ * Fix some buffer overruns in fairland. Has always been broken.
+ * Fix arm to require nuke and plane to be in the same sector. A
+ remote nuke got teleported to its plane when the plane moved.
+ Broken in 4.3.3.
+ * Change login command kill (used by client option -k) to kill less
+ ruthlessly: send a flash message and try to flush output, exactly
+ like a server shutdown does.
+ * Fix server shutdown to wait for player threads to reach a safe
+ state. Before, player threads raced with shutdown, and failed to
+ update the treasury, record play time, and write log entries when
+ they lost. Bug goes back to Empire 2. Patched partially or
+ unsuccessfully in 4.2.10, 4.2.12, 4.2.20, 4.3.6, 4.3.10 and 4.3.23.
+ The race was hard to lose in practice, until an unrelated
+ "simplification" in 4.3.23 could get player threads stuck sending
+ output after shutdown aborted a command.
+ * Idle timeout changes:
+ - The grace period for clients to complete login and logout is now
+ separate from the idle timeout. Configurable with new econfig
+ key login_grace_time, default is 120 seconds.
+ - The idle timeout for visitors is now separate from the one for
+ players. Configurable with new econfig key max_idle_visitor,
+ default is five minutes.
+ - Fix the idle timeout when the connection gets stuck sending
+ output. Broken in 4.3.20.
+ - Idle timeout during execute now terminates the connection, not
+ just the execute command.
+ * Fix stack smash in build. Remote hole! Broken when Empire 2 added
+ the confirmation prompt.
+ * Fix stack smash in scrap and scuttle. Remote hole! Broken when
+ Chainsaw added the confirmation prompt. Additionally, the
+ confirmation prompt is misleading when the player supplies
+ conditionals. Redesign the flawed prompt.
+ * Fix execute's echo of the command. Broken in 4.3.28.
+ * The mobility cost of retreating a defending land unit was
+ calculated for an uninitialized sector. This could charge
+ incorrect mobility, prevent retreat, or, if the stars align just
+ right, crash the server. Broken in 4.3.6.
+ * Commands cutoff, headlines, land, lstat, motd, neweff, payoff,
+ qorder, sorder, and wall now behave like the other information
+ query commands when the player's connection can't take more output:
+ they pause to let other code run.
+ * Revised command permissions:
+ - arm and disarm no longer require money, for consistency with the
+ other commands to move stuff around.
+ - satellite no longer requires money, for consistency with lookout,
+ radar, sonar and skywatch.
+ - qorder, sorder, survey and test no longer require a capital, for
+ consistency with the other commands that report on stuff the
+ player owns.
+ - start and stop no longer require a capital, for consistency with
+ the other commands to control production.
+ - fortify now requires a capital, for consistency with mission,
+ morale and range.
+ - Anybody may now use country, echo and financial.
+ - Visitors can no longer use census, commodity, map, nmap,
+ sinfrastructure (useless without sectors), read (visitors don't
+ get any telegrams), and change (always failed).
+ - Players can no longer use map and nmap before break. This is
+ consistent with all the other commands to examine the
+ environment. It also prevents people from trying multiple
+ unbroken countries in a blitz to find the one with the nicest
+ vicinity.
+ - Players can now use resource before break, just like census.
+ * read could swallow the first telegram header when showing the
+ telegrams that arrived while waiting for the player to confirm
+ deletion. Broken in 4.3.29.
+ * Fix 'm' in path argument of explore, move, transport:
+ - Don't moan about deprecated argument syntax ('m' without a space
+ before its argument) even when there's no argument.
+ - Recognize the flags argument again.
+ Broken in 4.3.27.
+ * Market fixes:
+ - Command market is no longer available to visitors, because it
+ triggers execution of trades that have become ready.
+ - Fix a race condition that could cause commodity trades to be
+ executed multiple times. Abusing this to duplicate commodities
+ seems tricky, but possible. Broken in Empire 3.
+ - Don't expropriate sellers of units. POGO got the the money, the
+ telegrams and made the news, the seller got nothing. Broken in
+ 4.3.17.
+ * Login command quit and server shutdown could lose player output.
+ 4.3.23 tried to fix the shutdown case, but the fix was incomplete.
+ * Fix login command quit to really quit. It sometimes just swallowed
+ buffered input, at least on some systems.
+ * 4.2.22's fairer command scheduling failed to cover the execute
+ command. Fix that.
+ * When a client shuts down input transmission to log out, output
+ could get lost. Our client never does that.
+ * Don't skip post command treasury update and status notification on
+ EOF from player, after quit command, and when command is aborted by
+ server shutdown. An unluckily timed EOF or shutdown can deprive a
+ player of money gained from scuttling tradeships or sacking a
+ capital. Can be abused to build bridges and infrastructure free of
+ charge. Can also be abused to designate sectors for free, but the
+ stock game's sector types are all free anyway. Has always been
+ broken.
+ * Fix client not to send an empty line on player interrupt (normally
+ ^C) before the first command. This was missed in 4.3.26.
+ * Code and info page cleanup.
+ * Documentation fixes.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.29 - Fri Jan 20 19:20:20 UTC 2012
+ * drop and fly from carrier could fail to load last civilian or
+ military.
+ * Telegram and announcement changes:
+ - wire no longer loops to show announcements that arrived while
+ waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
+ - At most five seconds worth of messages are now squashed together
+ into one. Before, only the time between adjacent telegrams was
+ limited, not the total time.
+ - When telegrams arrived while read was waiting for the player to
+ confirm deletion, and we then showed them, we nevertheless
+ claimed "you have new telegrams" before the next command prompt.
+ Only with toggle inform off. Known bug since Empire 2.
+ - Fix read not to clobber asynchronous notification of telegrams
+ arriving while waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
+ - Fix wire not to reset number of pending telegrams with toggle
+ inform on. Broken when Empire 2 introduced toggle inform.
+ - The number of pending announcements was off when announcements
+ were squashed together.
+ - More careful error handling and logging.
+ * Ensure all of an update's output goes into a single production
+ report:
+ - Avoid splitting it up when the update is slow. Empire 2 already
+ did that for the number of pending telegrams, but not for read.
+ - Don't turn parts of it into BULLETINs. Autonav and sail could do
+ that since Empire 2.
+ * files now creates POGO with user interface flags beep, coastwatch,
+ sonar and techlists set, for consistency with add.
+ * Change newcap back to not wiping the country (it wiped since
+ 4.3.12). Additionally, leave levels and telegrams alone.
+ * Changes to deity command add:
+ - Require confirmation for unadvisable actions.
+ - Refuse to touch a country while it's being played.
+ - Don't crash on negative country number.
+ - Create deities with money, just like files creates POGO.
+ - Always reset the country completely, not just when adding a
+ player or a visitor.
+ - Rename argument "new" to "player". Keep recognizing "new" for
+ now, but deprecate it.
+ - Drop argument "active". If you really want to create a player
+ country without a capital, add the player country normally, then
+ activate it with edit instead of newcap.
+ - Drop the obscure sector check and wipe option. If you really
+ need to wipe out a country, there's much more to wipe than just
+ sectors.
+ - Drop the undocumented land unit destruction feature.
+ * Permit no-op country name change again. Accidentally outlawed in
+ 4.3.20.
+ * Plug a few minor memory and file descriptor leaks.
+ * Fix use-after-free when plane gets shot down or aborted in
+ dogfight. Broken in 4.3.27.
+ * Code cleanup.
+ * Info page and manual page fixes.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.28 - Sat Jul 16 11:30:53 UTC 2011
+ * Don't let POGO (#0) navigate dead ships, and march dead land units.
+ The ghosts even got sighted and interdicted, and could hit mines.
+ Has always been that way.
+ * llook can't see land units and planes loaded on land units anymore.
+ * Fix board to ignore land units loaded on land units when testing
+ whether a sector can board. Broken in 4.0.17.
+ * Fix transport to reject planes loaded on land units. The plane
+ remained on its carrier. When the land unit moved, the plane was
+ teleported right back to it. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land
+ units.
+ * Fix lradar not to let land units loaded on land units use radar.
+ Broken since 4.0.0 added trains.
+ * Fix strength to ignore land units loaded on land units. Broken in
+ 4.2.0.
+ * Fix navigate and march to find paths longer than a few sectors
+ again (7 for 64 bit hosts, 3 for 32 bit hosts). Broken in 4.3.27.
+ * march sub-command 'i' now shows number of military and land units
+ loaded.
+ * New server option -F to force start even when state looks bad.
+ Risks crashes and further corruption, but gives deities a chance to
+ fix up a bad game state with edit commands and such.
+ * empdump -x no longer refuses to export game state that looks bad.
+ Gives deities another tool to fix up a bad game state.
+ * Land units loaded on land units fight che again, as they used to
+ before 4.3.26.
+ * When a land unit dies fighting che, land units loaded on it get
+ unloaded, and planes loaded on it die. Before, the update left
+ them stuck on their dead carrier. Impact like the next item.
+ Abusable. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land units.
+ * The update no longer destroys ships, planes and land units for lack
+ of maintenance. Before, it left any embarked planes, land units
+ and nukes on their dead carrier. In this state, units behaved as
+ if their carrier was still alive, with additional protection from
+ the fact that a dead carrier can't be damaged or boarded. If
+ another unit with the same number got built, it picked up the stuck
+ cargo. The cargo got teleported to its new carrier when the
+ carrier moved. Abusable, but it involves going broke, so it's
+ rarely practical. Slightly more practical before 4.3.6 removed
+ budget priorities. Broken for ships and land units when Empire 2
+ added their maintenance cost, and for planes when 4.3.3 replaced
+ nuclear stockpiles by nuke units.
+ * Fix bogus internal error triggered by navigate and march
+ sub-commands 'r', 'l' and 's'. Broken in 4.3.27.
+ * Fix client not to reject redirections and execute containing
+ non-ASCII characters with a bogus scary warning when using UTF-8.
+ * Fix execute not to mangle non-ASCII characters in the argument when
+ prompting for it while login option utf-8 is on.
+ * Fix handling of non-ASCII and control characters in batch files.
+ * Conversion from UTF-8 to ASCII ate the character following a
+ replaced non-ASCII character. Buffer overrun possible if the
+ terminating zero gets eaten. Could happen in players, read, flash,
+ wall, and execute.
+ * Fix handling of empty commands:
+ - Time used was not updated.
+ - Mortal player wasn't logged off for game hours, game down, and
+ time limit.
+ - Notifications were delayed: going broke, becoming solvent, new
+ telegrams (toggle inform off only), new announcements, capital
+ lost.
+ * Minor tweaks to nightly build.
+ * Server's and empdump's sanity checking of configuration and game
+ state is now more rigorous.
+ * Deity xdump no longer dumps unused countries' realms.
+ * Remove option LANDSPIES. Deities can customize the land table to
+ disable spy units.
+ * Remove option TRADESHIPS. Deities can customize the ship table to
+ enable trade ships.
+ * Configuration table changes (builtin and custom):
+ - Rows must be in ascending uid order.
+ - Omitting rows in tables item, sect-chr and infrastructure is no
+ longer permitted.
+ - Custom tables now replace the builtin table completely. Before,
+ omitted rows defaulted to the builtin version, except at the end
+ of a table. Commenting out unwanted stuff just works now.
+ - Permit custom table product having fewer than 14 entries.
+ - Reject custom tables where customization has no effect (updates,
+ table, meta, all symbol tables) or where it's unsafe (news-chr).
+ - Input is checked more rigorously.
+ * empdump -i fixes:
+ - Don't touch plane file when import fails.
+ - Refuse import of incorrectly sized table instead of silently
+ creating one the server will reject.
+ - Replace old state completely. Before, omitted rows in the dump
+ defaulted to the old state, except at the end of a table.
+ - Input is checked more rigorously.
+ * Fix xdump updates not to dump bogus extra updates.
+ * Fix use-after-free when a plane got shot down or aborted by flak.
+ Broken in 4.3.27.
+ * Friendlier diagnostics in the build command.
+ * Fix build to set nuke's tech exactly like for ships, planes and
+ land units. It's not currently used for anything.
+ * Research required for nukes was slightly off sometimes due to
+ incorrect rounding.
+ * Bridge building required 0.005 tech less than advertised, fix.
+ * "show nuke" now obeys toggle techlists.
+ * Fix "show land s" to show columns xpl and lnd again. Broken in
+ 4.3.15.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+ * Documentation on custom tables and xdump updated.
+ * Info file fixes.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.27 - Sun Apr 17 11:36:29 UTC 2011
+ * License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later.
+ * Fix buy not to wipe out concurrent updates. Can be abused to
+ duplicate commodities.
+ * Don't let fighters, SAMs and ABMs intercept while on trading block.
+ * Don't let missiles interdict ships or land units while on trading
+ block.
+ * Fix client to log long input lines untruncated.
+ * Fix client crash for long input lines.
+ * info subject pages now mark unusually long pages with a !.
+ * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.15, 4.3.17 and 4.3.20 are
+ now gone.
+ * Fix give, setsector and setres not to wipe out concurrent updates.
+ * Fix explore, move, test, transport not to ignore spaces in path
+ arguments. Broken in 4.3.7. Deprecate use of 'm' without space
+ before its argument.
+ * Improvements to map drawing commands:
+ - Don't fail silently when asked to draw a map around an invalid
+ unit, explain the problem.
+ - Deprecate bmap flag "r". Use (a prefix of) "revert" instead.
+ - bmap flags following "t" are no longer ignored. However, info
+ pages previously documented an argument "true" in addition to
+ flag "t". To keep that working, keep ignoring flags following
+ "t" when they're bad. But deprecate that usage.
+ - Reverting the bmap no longer draws a map.
+ - Bad conditionals could make the commands misinterpret their first
+ argument.
+ - The commands now fail when they reject their second argument.
+ * The xdump syntax deprecated in 4.3.12 is now gone.
+ * Fix satellite to fail on bad conditionals instead of ignoring them.
+ * Journal improvements:
+ - Optional logging of output.
+ - Long lines are no longer truncated.
+ - Login phase input is now logged, too.
+ - Commands are now logged. Allows making sense of input without
+ context.
+ * Option BRIDGETOWERS is now disabled by default.
+ * Bridge towers now take 300 hcms to build, down from 400.
+ * Fix stop orders to expire even when the country is broke. Broken
+ in 4.3.8.
+ * Fix march and navigate not to advise on "legal directions" when
+ path finding fails.
+ * New path finder:
+ - Much faster, especially for distribution, i.e. where it matters
+ most. Speedups in excess of 30x have been observed for updates
+ taken from real games.
+ - Old land path finder leaked memory occasionally.
+ - Old land path finder overran buffers for very long paths. A
+ malicious player can arrange sufficiently long paths, but it
+ takes a lot of land. Distribution, the distribute command, land
+ unit reaction, and automatic supply now handle arbitrary long
+ paths. Commands explore, move, test, transport, march, navigate
+ and path now handle paths up to 1023 characters. Command
+ bestpath shows paths longer than 1023 characters with the tail
+ replaced by "...".
+ - Old sea and air path finder treated destinations as unreachable
+ when the best path was longer than 99 characters. Command sorder
+ now handles arbitrary long paths. Commands bomb, drop, fly,
+ paradrop, recon, sweep and sail now handle paths up to 1023
+ characters. Autonav considers up to 1023 characters at the
+ update. Planes can fly missions up to 1023 sectors from their
+ base.
+ * Automatic supply charged mobility for the path back to the source
+ instead forward to the sink.
+ * Make bestpath work for deities in foreign land.
+ * More robust savecore example script.
+ * Fix buffer overruns in the lookout, spy, map and nmap commands when
+ WORLD_X * WORLD_Y is not a multiple of 16.
+ * The path command's maps weren't always fitted to the path
+ correctly. Broken in 4.3.17.
+ * Land units no longer hit allied mines.
+ * Change sharebmap with yourself to do nothing instead of telling you
+ you're not friendly to yourself.
+ * You can now flash yourself. Enjoy!
+ * A race condition could make the flash command claim an ally was not
+ logged on when he was. Hard to trigger outside the lab.
+ * The flash command no longer prints "Flash sent" for deities. It's
+ annoying. It never did that for mortals.
+ * Plug memory leaks in mission code on a number of conditions:
+ - Submarines moving where own planes would interdict hostile
+ submarines
+ - Ground combat where countries hostile to one of the parties would
+ support if relations were right (allied to one party, at war with
+ the other)
+ - Ships or land units moving within hostile missile mission op
+ areas
+ - Any player action within marine missile mission op areas that
+ could trigger the missile owners' missions.
+ * Attack fixes:
+ - When you ordered a sector to attack with military, but lost the
+ sector before the attack was executed, and the new owner was
+ allied to you, the server got confused: it let the military
+ attack even though they were already dead, but not occupy.
+ - When you ordered a land unit to attack from an allied sector, and
+ the sector got lost before the attack was executed, the server
+ reported things as if you had owned the sector yourself. The
+ land unit still attacked when the new owner was also allied to
+ you. No more.
+ - When a land unit attacked out of an allied sector, its mobility
+ cost was computed as if the ally owned the land unit. Attacking
+ sectors old-owned by that ally was too cheap, and taking back
+ one's own was too expensive.
+ * Fix trade ships to pay off in own harbor. Broken in 4.3.17.
+ * Remove option SLOW_WAR. It hasn't been enabled in a public game
+ for years, and the code implementing it was buggy.
+ * Fix a bug in sail that limited the sail path to 27 instead of the
+ intended 28 characters.
+ * Fix race condition in transmission of flash and telegram
+ information messages that could double output and possibly crash
+ the server.
+ * Planes get to sweep and sonar only after flak and interception.
+ * Don't limit the radar command's range to fit its output into a
+ world map without clipping. The limiting goes back to Chainsaw 2.
+ * Make flak vs. pinpoint bombing consistent with ordinary flak:
+ - 4.3.6 reduced the plane abort chance on damage, but missed the
+ additional flak vs. pinpoint bombing. Fix that.
+ - Fix to charge mobility appropriate for damage.
+ * Prettier flak damage reporting.
+ * Fix bugs that could cause bmap updates from recon and satellite to
+ be lost.
+ * Fix lookout to properly report sector ownership to deities.
+ * Suppress bogus messages deities with non-zero country number got
+ when attempting to navigate foreign ships or march foreign land
+ units. Such deity use hasn't worked since Empire 2.
+ * Deities can no longer fly foreign planes. It didn't fully work
+ since Chainsaw 3, and can trigger internal errors since 4.3.11.
+ * Don't split lines over several bulletins. The read command
+ normally merges these bulletins, but if they are more than five
+ seconds apart (clock jumped somehow), we get a bulletin header in
+ the middle of a line. Broken since Empire 2.
+ * Don't beep when plane, land unit or nuke die on a collapsing
+ bridge. Not nice, because it could beep many times, and could put
+ beeps in bulletins. Beeping was added in 4.0.18.
+ * Minor improvements to nuclear damage reporting.
+ * When a deity dropped a foreign nuke, parts of the output went to
+ the owner of the nuke instead of the deity.
+ * When a player triggered a foreign missile launch (mission or
+ interception), and the missile exploded on launch, part of the
+ report went to the player instead of the missile owner. This
+ disclosed the missile owner's origin. Broken in Empire 2.
+ * When autonav reported to a ship owner that it can't load or unload
+ foreign civilians, it used the sector owner's coordinate system.
+ This disclosed the sector owner's origin. Abusable.
+ * When nuclear damage bounced off a sanctuary, the bulletin to the
+ sanctuary owner used the attacker's coordinate system. This
+ disclosed the attacker's origin.
+ * When a deity used sweep, lmine, sail or sabotage with a foreign
+ plane, land unit or ship, its location was reported in the foreign
+ coordinate system.
+ * When a deity asked for a foreign nation report, the capital
+ location was reported in the foreign coordinate system.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+ * Info file improvements.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.26 - Mon May 24 16:37:40 UTC 2010
+ * Land units loaded on ships or land units can no longer fight che.
+ * When foreign land units were present, a che revolt could damage
+ them instead of the defending land units. This could let defenders
+ survive the revolt. They were captured or blown up if che took
+ over the sector.
+ * Fix che revolt to damage only land units that actually fight
+ * Fix loading x-light missiles on ships without capability plane.
+ These ships could only use their x-light slots for x-light planes,
+ not their plane slots. Broken in 4.3.17.
+ * Update bmap when nuclear detonation makes wasteland.
+ * Fix fly and drop to report discarded cargo items correctly.
+ * New client option -s to specify server host and port.
+ * Hitting landmines could crash the server. When not, the damage
+ reduction for capability engineer was applied unpredictably.
+ Broken in 4.3.24.
+ * Fix retreat and lretreat condition 'c'. Broken in 4.3.16.
+ * coastwatch and skywatch could see too far. Up to one sector for
+ practical radar ranges.
+ * skywatch now reports satellite uids. The uid is required for
+ launching a-sats since 4.3.23.
+ * Fix client not to send an empty line of input before aborting the
+ command on player interrupt (normally ^C).
+ * Fix sabotage not to kill the spy every time. Broken in 4.3.17.
+ * Code cleanup.
+ * Info page fixes, manual page improvements.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.25 - Sun Mar 21 08:27:37 UTC 2010
+ * Hitting seamines could crash the server. When not, the damage
+ reduction for capability sweep was applied unpredictably. Broken
+ in 4.3.24.
+ * When an interdiction did damage other than collateral damage, the
+ planes that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no
+ petrol. 4.3.24 fixed only the "no damage" case.
+ * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
+ interdicted. The fix in 4.3.24 covered only launch.
+ * Fix a bug in navigate and march that let players lay mines free of
+ charge. Also fix them not to prompt for the number of mines.
+ * Missile exploding on launch could not damage its base if it was
+ armed with a nuke. Broken in 4.3.23.
+ * When a torpedo attack triggered a return torpedo, the news reported
+ it to be fired by the attacker instead of the defender.
+ * Interdiction attacked submarines with surface-only weapons. Broken
+ in 4.3.24.
+ * Fix a bug in lradar, path, radar, route, satellite, sect and survey
+ that could leak maps to other players. Broken in 4.2.0. Fixed in
+ 4.2.8 for bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap, pmap, sbmap and smap
+ only.
+ * files could clobber the game when reading confirmation fails.
+ * fairland no longer rejects small worlds without trying.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.24 - Tue Jan 26 21:29:14 UTC 2010
+ * The client sometimes hung under Windows when the server closed the
+ connection. Broken in 4.3.23.
+ * Fix navigate and march not to crash the server when a path argument
+ consists of a valid path plus whitespace. Broken in 4.3.7.
+ * When a client sent a blank line in the login phase, the server
+ crashed on some systems.
+ * Fix crash bug in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail. Broken
+ in 4.3.16.
+ * Fix bogus internal error on escort, recon, and satellite launch.
+ Mostly harmless, as error recovery worked fine. Broken in 4.3.23.
+ * Stop ship and land unit movement on interdiction even when it does
+ no damage.
+ * When an interdiction did no or only collateral damage, the planes
+ that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no petrol, and
+ interdicted land units were immune to collateral damage.
+ * The limit for the number of sectors, ships, planes, land units,
+ nukes, and so forth is now large enough not to matter. It used to
+ be 32768 on common machines. The sector limit was introduced in
+ 4.3.12. World x- and y-size are still limited to 65536 on common
+ machines.
+ * News use much less space, and thus I/O. Space was wasted in
+ 4.3.12. Side effects of the change:
+ - Expiry of old news no longer updates news timestamps. Updating
+ timestamps was wrong, because it defeated incremental xdump news.
+ - The empdump utility can no longer update timestamps of imported
+ news. Unfortunate, as it breaks incremental xdump news.
+ * New news selector duration, the time span covered by this news item
+ in seconds.
+ * ABMs failed to charge supplies when their sector was the
+ intercepted missile's target. The stock game's ABMs use no
+ supplies.
+ * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
+ the missile's target.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.23 - Sun Dec 13 16:34:49 UTC 2009
+ * Fix missile interception not to intercept tactical and marine
+ missiles attacking missiles or satellites. No such missiles exist
+ in the stock game. Interception of tactical ABMs could crash the
+ server. Broken in Empire 2.
+ * Missiles missing their target do collateral damage again. Was
+ disabled because of bugs in 4.0.18 for manual launch and in 4.3.16
+ for automatic launch.
+ * News reported victim as actor for sub-launched anti-sat and ABM.
+ * Defense value of missiles vs. ABMs and satellites vs. anti-sats
+ failed to improve with tech.
+ * Fix a bug that let missiles interdict ships outside their op area.
+ This could happen when a group navigating together was partly
+ inside the op area.
+ * Only bomb strategic and launch at sector can use nukes. Before,
+ they could also be used by missions, bomb pinpoint, and launch at
+ ships, but there were several bugs and inconsistencies, and the
+ code was messy. The arm command now rejects marine missiles in
+ addition to satellites, ABMs and SAMs, and clears the mission. The
+ mission command now rejects planes armed with nukes.
+ * Missiles exploding on launch pad no longer set off their nukes.
+ * The launch command now more accurately reports why a missile can't
+ be equipped. It no longer draws supplies automatically.
+ * Manually launched anti-sat now always kills when it hits, for
+ consistency with automatically launched ones.
+ * Don't permit nukes on satellites, ABMs and SAMs. Nukes on
+ satellites could be armed and disarmed even in orbit. Nukes on
+ ABMs and SAMs were lost without effect when their missile
+ intercepted. The stock game is not affected, because its
+ satellites, ABMs and SAMs all have zero load.
+ * Remove obsolete plane capabilities stealth and half-stealth. Not
+ used by the stock game.
+ * Penalize fighter combat value for any load, not just bombs. The
+ stock game's fighters can't carry anything but bombs.
+ * Make bomb work for non-tactical cargo bomber. No such planes exist
+ in the stock game.
+ * Revised cargo plane rules: a cargo flight can be either an airlift
+ or an airdrop now. Airlifts carry more cargo than airdrops. A
+ cargo drop or paradrop with a non-VTOL plane is an airdrop.
+ Anything else is an airlift. This makes paradrop loads consistent
+ with drop loads. Paradrop with VTOL transports now carries twice
+ the punch, and drop with non-VTOL transports hauls less than fly.
+ In particular, the stock game's tr can't drop guns anymore.
+ * Enforce plane selection rules more tightly:
+ - bomb command can select only planes with capability bomber or
+ tactical. Before, other planes with non-zero load flew along,
+ but their bombs were silently lost.
+ - sweep command can select only planes with capability sweep.
+ Before, other planes performed ordinary reconnaissance instead.
+ - drop command can select only planes with capability cargo.
+ Before, other planes flew along but dropped nothing.
+ * Fix paradrop to fail without destroying the paratroopers when the
+ player owns the target sector.
+ * Launching an anti-sat now takes the target plane as argument.
+ Before, it took a sector argument, and targeted the lowest-numbered
+ satellite there. Rather inconvenient when your own satellite masks
+ one of the enemy's.
+ * Remove option PINPOINTMISSILE. Deities can customize the plane
+ table to disable marine missiles.
+ * Ridiculously impotent nukes could do unpredictable interdiction
+ damage. No such nukes exist in the stock game.
+ * The production command could mispredict resource-depleting level
+ production. No such products exist in the stock game. In fact,
+ they'd be highly unusual.
+ * The update could crash or corrupt the game when a (misconfigured)
+ product depleted resource "none".
+ * Revamp the Windows port based on ideas stolen from Gnulib. Share
+ the code between server and client.
+ * Don't log out player when update aborts a command under Windows.
+ Broken in 4.3.20, and not fully fixed in 4.3.21.
+ * Fix accepting connections from hosts with "long" IPv6 address. The
+ internal buffer had insufficient space.
+ * Delay shutdown up to 3s to let player output buffers drain.
+ * Fix a race between main thread and player threads, which could
+ theoretically make the server crash on start.
+ * Clean up synchronization between commands, update and shutdown, and
+ when player threads sleep on I/O.
+ * Clean up the cruft that has accumulated in and behind the empio
+ interface, and, to a lesser degree, the empthread interface.
+ * Fix time difference underflows in pthread and Windows code. They
+ could potentially cause hangs, although none have been observed.
+ * Make budget's "Sector building" line look better.
+ * Make sector maintenance cost configurable. New sect-chr selector
+ maint. Capitals now pay maintenance regardless of efficiency.
+ * Overhaul show sect b.
+ * Fix mine production resource limit for sector peffic != 100. This
+ affects mountains in the stock game, but only with an impractically
+ large number of ETUs per update.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+ * Info file fixes and improvements.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.22 - Sat Apr 25 11:56:29 UTC 2009
+ * Fix a Windows client bug that could lead to hangs, at least with
+ some versions of the C run-time. Broken in 4.3.11.
+ * Allow building without curses terminfo. Highlighting in the client
+ doesn't work then.
+ * Really fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked
+ for pinpoint targets. The fix in 4.3.21 didn't cover escorts.
+ * Fix tend land not to wipe out concurrent updates.
+ * Automatic supply fixes:
+ - Ships with just two shells could fire a torpedo to return fire or
+ interdict.
+ - Ships with just one shell could use their anti-missile defense.
+ - Land units were considered in supply even when they had not quite
+ enough supplies. Such land units could defend without penalty,
+ attack and react.
+ Broken in 4.3.20.
+ * Fix update to take dead units off carriers.
+ * Standalone client distribution built empire instead of empire.exe
+ for Windows. Broken in 4.3.0.
+ * Fix client to abort script execution on SIGINT.
+ * Fix Windows client not to hang on EOF on standard input when that
+ is a tty.
+ * Fix a client bug that could make it hang when EOF on standard input
+ follows an execute command closely.
+ * Seamines under bridge spans were disabled a long time ago, in
+ Empire 2. The drop command refuses to mine there. Change mine
+ command to do so as well.
+ * Seamines under bridge spans were mistaken for landmines by ground
+ combat, land units retreating from bombs, and non-land unit ground
+ movement.
+ * When a bridge tower collapsed, its landmines magically became
+ seamines.
+ * Don't log out player when he interrupts a command. Broken in
+ 4.3.19.
+ * Code cleanup and portability improvements.
+ * Info file and documentation fixes.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.21 - Mon Mar 9 21:34:52 UTC 2009
+ * Fix swapsector not to wipe out concurrent changes to the swapped
+ sectors.
+ * Fix a bug in crash dumping that could mess up the journal and, at
+ least in theory, mess up commands info, read, turn, and wire;
+ announcement expiry, and reading of econfig and schedule.
+ * Fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked for
+ pinpoint targets.
+ * When bombing ships with a force containing both planes with and
+ without capability ASW, the bomb command could fail to report
+ presence of submarines, and could refuse to bomb ships when there
+ were only submarines.
+ * Leaving land units behind after a victorious attack could in some
+ cases wipe out changes made to them since the victory.
+ * The timestamp selectors added to commodity, load and trade in
+ 4.3.12 could lead to spurious command failures. None have been
+ observed in the wild.
+ * Don't log out player when update aborts a command. Broken in
+ 4.3.20.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.20 - Fri Feb 20 18:14:20 UTC 2009
+ * Option LOANS is now disabled by default.
+ * Option RAILWAYS is now enabled by default.
+ * Many fixes to automatic supply:
+ - Planes flying interception or support missions, abms intercepting
+ ballistic missiles, and the launch command for missiles and
+ anti-sats could all supply more shells than necessary, lose
+ shells, or conjure them up.
+ - Ships shooting down marine missiles could supply more shells than
+ necessary, or lose shells.
+ - Supply ships could conjure up shells when firing guns using
+ multiple shells, or launching torpedoes, or dropping depth
+ charges, or shooting down marine missiles. No supply ships
+ capable of doing that exist in the stock game.
+ - Supply engineers could conjure up shells when laying mines. They
+ don't exist in the stock game.
+ - load, lload and supply could supply land units with enough food
+ from the sector containing them to starve the sector.
+ - Sectors were charged too much mobility for moving supplies
+ sometimes.
+ - Land units serving as supply source no longer draw supplies
+ recursively, because the bugs there are too hard to fix to be
+ worth it.
+ - Defending and reacting units only checked whether they could draw
+ supplies, but didn't actually draw them.
+ - load, lload, supply, assault and board no longer supply land
+ units from ships carrying them. This feature, added in 4.0.14,
+ was inconsistent with other ways to supply.
+ - Don't use automatic supply to avoid starvation at the update. It
+ adds complexity to the update. How much good it does to players
+ is highly doubtful; certainly nobody can rely on it. It isn't
+ covered by the starvation command. Ships or land units could
+ steal enough food from their sector to make it starve.
+ - lmine could only fetch shells for engineers that use ammo. The
+ stock game's engineers all do.
+ The changes listed for load and lload are actually lies, because
+ supply has been disabled there since 4.3.17.
+ * Don't let an engineer lay mines while it is on a ship or land unit,
+ or in a foreign sector.
+ * Sectors and ships no longer need shells to fire flak.
+ * Use IPv4 and v6 only when suitable interfaces are configured.
+ * Fix turn off not to fail when the message is empty. Broken in
+ 4.2.20.
+ * Don't nag the deity about game hours restriction in force all the
+ time.
+ * Tell deity when the game is down, just like players. Also make the
+ information available in xdump, as game selector down.
+ * Corrupt mailboxes could crash the server.
+ * Fix reject accept. Broken in 4.3.4.
+ * If a player was at a prompt when the deity turned the game down, he
+ was allowed to enter one more command.
+ * Air defense is no longer separate from interception. Putting a
+ plane on air defense now merely changes where it intercepts.
+ Separate air defense added too much pointless complexity. Its
+ implementation violated design assumptions of the intercept code.
+ Because of that, the same plane could intercept both an air defense
+ mission and the planes that triggered it, and the damage it
+ received in the first interception was wiped out.
+ * Intercept the same all along the flight path. In each sector, any
+ country owning the sector, a surface ship or a land unit there gets
+ to intercept. Before, only the sector owner got to intercept,
+ except for the assembly point and the target sector. In the target
+ sector, any country owning surface ships or land units got to
+ intercept in addition to the sector owner. Thus, a sector owner
+ with surface ships or land units there got to intercept twice. The
+ sector owner did not get to intercept at the assembly point,
+ even when it was the target sector.
+ * Spotting rule changes:
+ - Ships and land units now spot overflying planes along all of the
+ flight path instead of just the target sector, and no longer
+ report allied planes.
+ - Planes now spot ships and land units only when flying recon or
+ sweep, and along all of their flight path instead of just the
+ target sector. It still takes a spy plane to identify ships and
+ land units.
+ - Planes now spot ships and land units in a sector even when all
+ planes abort there.
+ - Planes now spot all foreign ships and land units, not just
+ hostile ones.
+ * Fix SAM interception for intercepts other than the first.
+ * Fix air defense and flak over sectors allied to the planes. Air
+ defense was broken in Empire 2. Flak was broken in 4.2.8.
+ * Establishing contact by spotting planes from sectors didn't work.
+ * Fix reconnaissance patrols to use sonar when any capable plane is
+ present. Before, all planes had to be capable.
+ * Fix recon and sweep not to spy after all spy planes are gone.
+ * Fix a bug that made multiple clients running on the same Windows
+ machine interfere with each other. Broken in 4.3.11.
+ * Fix enforcing game hours for players already logged in. Broken in
+ 4.3.19.
+ * Fix distribution not to abandon a distribution center by exporting
+ the last military.
+ * Many fixes to load, unload, lload and lunload:
+ - Now usable for deities.
+ - Plug loopholes that let you steal foreign commodities by making
+ load/lload unload and unload/lunload load through use of negative
+ amount arguments.
+ - Fix not to let you give away civilians.
+ - You can't use lload in foreign sectors or lunload with foreign
+ land units anymore. Loading stuff in foreign sectors was
+ prohibited already for ships.
+ - lload and lunload now work on foreign land units only when
+ they're explicitly named by uid. This matches behavior of load
+ and unload.
+ - Fix to test relations of foreign object's owner to player instead
+ of the other way round.
+ * Make sure land units with maximum mobility can attack mountains.
+ * Fix land unit attack mobility cost. Broken in 4.3.6.
+ * Conditions comparing string-valued selectors like wing to unquoted
+ values are now interpreted more smartly. Before, unquoted strings
+ were prone to be interpreted as selector names even when that made
+ no sense. You still have to disambiguate truly ambiguous cases
+ like w=w for planes, e.g. as wing=w or w='w'.
+ * Fix reporting of shot spies in news. Broken in 4.3.16.
+ * Remove econfig key mission_mob_cost. Questionable feature, and
+ hasn't been used in a long time.
+ * Reserve and escort missions now have an op-area, like all the other
+ missions.
+ * Land units now react only when on a reserve mission. The lrange
+ command is gone. The edit command still accepts and ignores the
+ land unit key 'P' for compatibility, but it is deprecated.
+ * Fix a bug that could mess up mission op-area when the range of
+ ship, plane or land unit on the mission decreases, e.g. through the
+ range command.
+ * Reserve missions no longer give a bonus to reaction range.
+ * Info file fixes.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.19 - Sun Dec 7 23:15:34 UTC 2008
+ * LWP doesn't work with Darwin due to OS bugs, avoid it for now.
+ * Don't let ships double-retreat first on 'i' (injured) and then on
+ 'h' (helpless) when shelled.
* Fix a bug that suppressed the "sunk!" message. Broken in 4.3.17.
* Log out player when maximum time per day is exceeded. Before, he
could remain logged in with visitor privileges only, but once
* New option RAILWAYS.
* Che ages just like military reserves (1% per 24 ETUs).
* Permit ships to assault the sector they're in.
+ * Sectors eating less than one unit of food don't make one unit of
+ food for free anymore. They still can't starve.
* New concept sector terrain. Deities can use it to make sectors
other than wilderness redesignatable. See sect.config for more
info.
Changes to Empire 4.3.17 - Sat Sep 20 16:07:44 UTC 2008
* Fix standalone client build for Windows. Broken in 4.3.11.
- * Disable automatic supply of land units on load for now, it's broken
- in a highly abusable way.
- * Make trade show exactly what's on sale, remove option SHOW_PLANE.
+ * Disable automatic supply of land units on load for now, it's
+ broken, and can be abused to duplicate supplies.
+ * Make trade show exactly what's on sale, remove option SHOWPLANE.
* Stop ships, planes, land units and nukes on violent takeover, just
like sectors.
* Wipe orders when ships, planes, land units and nukes are taken over
violently or given away peacefully. Fleet, wing, army and mission
were already cleared in many, but not all cases. Other orders were
- never cleared: mission op areas (visible in xdump), ship autonav
+ never cleared: mission op-areas (visible in xdump), ship autonav
orders, ship sail path (including ship to follow and mobility
quota), land unit retreat orders, plane range limit, and land unit
retreat percentage.
state, because they duplicate information already there. Same for
the type of nuke loaded on a plane. Remove field nuketype from
xdump plane. Clients can simply find the plane's nuke instead.
+ The edit command still accepts and ignores the plane key 'n' for
+ compatibility, but it is deprecated.
* Ship and land unit load counts as displayed by ship, sdump, land,
ldump, ship selectors nplane, nxlight, nchoppers, nland, and land
selectors nxlight, nland are now reliable. They used to get out of
command in that case lets players find out whether the target is
a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
- Detect when the firing sector, ship or land unit changes across
- the target prompt. Abusable.
+ the target prompt. Can be abused to duplicate commodities, and
+ more.
* Fix parsing of anchor-relative time in update schedule. Broken in
4.3.13.
* Fix logging of player input in the journal to include command
~p before the first line of text never worked.
* Fix ancient bridge building race condition that could break the
test whether the player can afford the bridge.
- * Fix trade lot change detection in set command. Probably abusable.
+ * Fix trade lot change detection in set command. Can probably be
+ abused to defraud sellers.
* The pthread code now compiles under Solaris.
* navigate and march now permit any whitespace between route and
optional argument for radar, lookout, sonar, not just spaces.
* The country command's `temporary' state of disorder ended after
ten years.
* Telegram notifications could get lost in exotic circumstances,
- e.g. while a second client attempted to connect. Abusable.
+ e.g. while a second client attempted to connect. Can be abused for
+ stealthy attacks.
* Remove option SNEAK_ATTACK.
* Fix lboard not to let you board dead land units.
* Fix stack smash in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail.
* Fix crash bug in emp_config parsing.
* Fix buffer overruns in turn and shutdown.
* Fix second argument of shutdown.
- * tele and turn now abort on EOF.
+ * announce, pray, telegram and turn now abort on EOF.
* Fix display of MOTD and game down message of maximum size.
* Correctly support telnet line termination on input. Previously,
carriage returns could slip into ship names and such.
messages. See new doc/unicode for technical details.
* New login command `options' for client/server option negotiation.
See new doc/clients-howto for technical details. The only option
- so far is UTF-8.
+ so far is utf-8.
* emp_client -u now requests UTF-8. This requires a terminal that
understands UTF-8.
* Fix news for land unit defensive support.
* Rewrite selector code. Old code let players smash the stack by
supplying too many conditions. New code properly rejects ambiguous
abbreviations and prefers exact matches. Selectors with names that
- collide with types, like land units' rad and spy, now work. Selectors with
- non-integral values, like land units' att, now work.
+ collide with types, like land units' rad and spy, now work.
+ Selectors with non-integral values, like land units' att, now work.
* survey used to display hundreds for everything but variables. Now
it displays hundreds only for values that can be large.
* Rewrite info survey. Document ability to survey properties other
* Fixed missing -ltermcap in HP/UX build.
* Fixed setsector to limit mobility to 127 not 255 (255 was being caught
later and being reset to 0 anyway)
- * Fixed Sector-types.t to show a '\' instead of a '/' for wasteland,
+ * Fixed Sector-types.t to show a '\e' instead of a '/' for wasteland,
since that is what it really is.
* Fixed retreat.t documentation to reflect the "retreat upon failed
boarding" flag.
projects / empserver / blobdiff