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 4.3.13 - Sun Apr 6 19:56:59 UTC 2008
+Changes to Empire 4.3.16 - Sat Aug 9 15:56:52 UTC 2008
+ * Production command incorrectly limited the number of graduates,
+ happy strollers, technological breakthroughs and medical
+ discoveries produced by a sector to 999. Broken in 4.2.15.
+ * Fix a bug in improve that could let you spend more money than you
+ have.
+ * Fix work command not to spend more mobility than requested, and to
+ round mobility use randomly instead of down.
+ * Commands demobilize, convert and work no longer let you spend more
+ money than you have. Commands demobilize and convert no longer ask
+ for confirmation before spending more than half your money. Saving
+ that feature would have been more work than it's worth.
+ * Remove undocumented key 'd' at bomb ship, plane and land unit
+ target prompts.
+ * Fix land unit flak when pin-bombed to match flak when overflown:
+ proportional to efficiency, and randomly rounded. Was missed in
+ 4.3.6.
+ * Don't permit bombing of embarked planes and land units.
+ * Fix capital maintenance to charge at 60% efficiency.
+ * launch command now requires only 40% plane efficiency, for
+ consistency with other ways to launch missiles.
+ * Disable collateral damage when automatically launched missiles miss
+ their target. Collateral damage was done even when the launch
+ failed or the missile got intercepted. It's been disabled for
+ manually launched missiles since 4.0.18, for the same reason.
+ * Fix a bug that corrupted the lostitems file. Broken in 4.3.12.
+ * Show command changes:
+ - Move product information from "show sect c" into new "show
+ product", and reformat it to be easier to understand.
+ - New column navigability in "show sect s".
+ - "show sect s" now shows the packing bonus type instead of
+ selected packing bonuses. "show item" shows the actual bonuses
+ for each type.
+ - "show sect b" now shows the usual values in addition to unusual
+ ones.
+ * Fix interdiction to obey op-area for missiles.
+ * Fix a bug that caused a stale sources.mk to be distributed in the
+ 4.3.14 an 4.3.15 tarballs. The latter does not build out of the
+ box because of that.
+ * Don't strip tab characters from quoted command arguments. Broken
+ in 4.2.21.
+ * shutdown commands now always take effect immediately. Before, they
+ could be delayed by up to a minute.
+ * shutdown could start multiple shutdown threads when you initiated a
+ shutdown shortly after cancelling one. This screwed up the timing
+ of the shutdown.
+ * Deity syntax of zdone changed, and is now documented in info.
+ * The threshold command could be tricked into accepting negative
+ thresholds.
+ * Fix designate to always write updated bmap to disk.
+ * Fix bomb to fail on empty <pin|strat> argument instead of flying
+ without bombs.
+ * Fix a bug in distribute that screwed up the current sector's
+ distribution center when the command got aborted.
+ * Commands arm, bomb, deliver, drop, fire, fly, paradrop, recon,
+ lmine, order, power, range, sail, shutdown, sweep and tend did not
+ honor command abortion at some prompts.
+ * Fix a bug in handling of EOF from client that could bite in the
+ following ways:
+ - EOF at target prompts for bombing commodities, ships, planes and
+ land units sent the server into an infinite loop that ate all
+ memory.
+ - EOF at sail's path prompt crashed the server.
+ - EOF at some prompts in deliver, designate, fly, morale, zdone,
+ attack and assault didn't abort the command.
+ Broken in 4.3.11.
+ * Selector terr is now the same as terr0 for mortal players, and
+ dterr for deities. This matches how the territory command works.
+ Unfortunately, this required us to rename xdump sect field terr to
+ terr0. Sorry about that.
+ * Fix bomb not to let you bomb dead ships and land units.
+ * Make the retreat command a bit more helpful on retreat conditions,
+ and make it fail on bad conditions.
+ * Fix the mapper scripts. Broken in 4.2.0.
+ * Fix flying commands not to let planes do double duty as escorts.
+ Broken in 4.3.12.
+ * When a minesweeper hit a mine after sweeping, the mine wasn't used
+ up. If it sank the minesweeper, the code accessed freed memory,
+ which could clobber the ship file or worse. Broken in 4.0.17.
+ * Don't let non-light units board ships that can't carry them.
+ * Capitals can now employ up to 1000 civilians instead of 999.
+ * Spy command changes:
+ - Spy now requires sector military. Before, presence of land units
+ was sufficient, but spies shot were only deduced from sector
+ military. If you lost more spies than you had sector military,
+ the rest came back from the dead.
+ - Spy no longer ignores non-sea sectors without civilians, military
+ and land units.
+ - Remove columns lnd, pln from spy report. The values didn't match
+ the reported land units and planes, and could leak the presence
+ of spy units.
+ - Establish contact when spy succeeds even though the spy was
+ caught.
+ * Fix news reporting and damage when land units interdict ships in
+ sectors other than sea.
+ * Fix land unit return fire damage to ships to take accuracy into
+ account, like the fire command and interdiction does.
+ * Remove the inconsistent shelling damage reduction for range. Fire
+ command got damage reduced by 10-20% with a chance depending on
+ range ("Wind deflects shells"). Ships interdicting got it reduced
+ by half. Other ways to shell did not get damage reduced for range.
+ * Fix ground combat to report defending land units. Broken in 4.3.4.
+ * Info file and documentation fixes and improvements.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.15 - Sun May 18 08:59:30 UTC 2008
+ * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.10 are now gone.
+ * fairland now obeys game file locks.
+ * Do not leak world creation time in files utility, because that
+ facilitates attacks against fairland's PRNG. Broken in 4.3.12.
+ * Fix starvation not to starve one more than it should. The last man
+ on a boat or land unit now can't starve anymore.
+ * Fix a crash bug in satellite. Broken in 4.2.7 and not fixed
+ correctly in 4.2.12.
+ * Fix a coordinate normalization bug that could theoretically lead to
+ buffer overruns and other unpleasantness. None have been
+ reproduced, though. Broken in 4.3.12.
+ * Remove option FUEL. The abstract idea of tying ships and land
+ units to a logistical tether is sound, the concrete implementation
+ as option FUEL is flawed. It adds too much busy-work to the game
+ to be enjoyable. It hasn't been enabled in a public game for
+ years. The code implementing it is ugly, repetitive, and a burden
+ to maintain. The edit command still accepts and ignores the fuel
+ keys for compatibility, but they are deprecated.
+ * Fix pin-bomb not to report subs when there are none.
+ * You now have to take a capital to capture the victim's money, loans
+ or market lots. Merely obliterating the capital doesn't cut it.
+ It still makes the victim lose money, though.
+ * Fix a bug that could theoretically allow sacking of non-existant
+ capitals of visitors, deities and such.
+ * You now gain BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility before the first update
+ again. You didn't since 4.3.10 introduced the ETU clock.
+ * Fix edit to detect when the edited object changes while it's being
+ edited.
+ * Fix xdump nat for relations: it got HIDDEN backwards. Broken in
+ 4.3.12.
+ * Fix origin command not to prompt twice for its argument. Broken in
+ 4.3.0.
+ * Info file improvements.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.14 - Mon May 5 04:57:03 UTC 2008
+ * Another round of fixes to the fire command:
+ - Don't disclose where the target retreated to.
+ - Charge the target shells for returning fire.
+ - Always use guns when the target is out of range, even if it's a
+ submarine. Before, the difference in shell use disclosed whether
+ the target is a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
+ - Make depth charges again work with just one shell. Failing the
+ 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.
+ * 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
+ interruption and EOF.
+ * Fix oversights in 4.3.12's change to keep track of flying planes:
+ planes could be erroneously reported damaged by their own ground
+ strikes. Happened with missions and the launch command.
+ * Fix load not load hardened missiles.
+ * Fix harden not to harden missiles loaded on land units.
+ * New server option -E to choose what to do on recoverable internal
+ error. You can now make the server dump core and keep going (not
+ implemented for Windows). New econfig key post_crash_dump_hook to
+ run a program after crash-dumping. See scripts/savecore for an
+ example.
+ * Journal entries are now flushed to disk right away even when the
+ server is not running in debug mode.
+ * Don't let land units load trains.
+ * Allow deity to display power report for all types of countries,
+ with power c.
+ * Fix designate's check for disallowed sector types. Broken in
+ 4.3.12.
+ * Documentation fixes.
+
+Changes to Empire 4.3.13 - Tue Apr 15 19:03:11 UTC 2008
+ * Work around strptime() lossage on some systems. Fixes the parsing
+ of the schedule file there.
* New selector maxnoc for xdump version.
* Fix initialization of realms in newcap. Broken in 4.3.12.
* Fix add for status arguments active, god, delete. Broken in
4.3.12.
+ * Info file, manual page and documentation fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.3.12 - Wed Apr 2 05:35:06 UTC 2008
* Fix rounding error in update that could result in more babies than
* Deity command newcap now requires its second argument (sanctuary
coordinates). Before, it tried to pick a suitable location when
none was given. The code implementing this feature had problems,
- and it's not worth fixing: it is obscure, and rarely (if ever)
- used: no conscientious deity would use it for a real game, and for
- blitzes fairland does a better job.
+ and it's not worth fixing, because it is obscure, and rarely (if
+ ever) used: no conscientious deity would use it for a real game,
+ and for blitzes fairland does a better job.
* Keep track of flying planes properly. This fixes a number of bugs:
- While the bomb command awaited pin-bombing target input from the
player, other players could interact with the pin-bombers and
- Fix ammunition use when returning fire: resupply could lose
shells when returning fire to multiple targets, and land units
were charged per target instead of just once.
+ - Interdicting land units now resupply shells automatically, for
+ consistency with other ways to fire.
- torpedo and fire no longer resupply shells automatically. The
latter used to resupply land units only.
- Land units no longer have to be in supply to fire actively, for
created by fairland.
* The client now copes with ids greater than 15. The Empire
protocol currently uses 14 ids.
- * Rewrite the client's code to read server output during login. The
- old code could write one byte beyond the end of the buffer
+ * Rewrite the client's code for reading server output during login.
+ The old code could write one byte beyond the end of the buffer
(theoretically a remote hole), got confused by long lines, and
lines that didn't arrive in one piece.
* Long country name, password or user name crashed the client.
doc/clients-howto for an explanation.
* Rewrite much of the client's code for sending commands and
receiving server output:
- - No longer blocks on sending commands. which could deadlock the
+ - No longer blocks on sending commands, which could deadlock the
session.
- Fix race condition that could cause server output to be discarded
on EOF on standard input.
* convert now silently limits conversions to avoid exceeding maximum
population.
* shoot no longer limits you to 999 victims.
- * 4.2.19 broke pin bombing commodities on some platforms.
+ * 4.2.19 broke pin-bombing commodities on some platforms.
* Don't block on output while update is pending. This is required to
ensure the update can abort commands.
* Commands submitted while the update is waiting for commands to
projects / empserver / blobdiff