+Changes to Empire 4.3.10 - Fri Aug 24 17:26:56 UTC 2007
+ * The custom table reader detects more errors.
+ * Do not leak world creation time in files and fairland, because
+ that facilitates attacks against the PRNG. This misfeature crept
+ into 4.3.0.
+ * Remove the ancient, crufty non-UCONTEXT system-dependent LWP code.
+ Using it required manual hackery since 4.3.0, and it hasn't been
+ missed.
+ * Plug file descriptor leak in add command.
+ * Don't kill player connections violently when their thread appears
+ to be hung. Threads being aborted by update or shutdown could be
+ misidentified as hung, and the violence could lead to resource
+ leaks, locked out updates, and corrupted game state.
+ * Fix LWP to wake up threads sleeping for a time reliably. Before,
+ players with a sufficiently fast connection could starve out
+ threads system threads, including the update.
+ * Fix a class of bugs that made commands behave differently while the
+ update is attempting to take control:
+ - No MOB_ACCESS mobility was gained.
+ - Telegrams were miscounted.
+ - Bulletins got misfiled as production reports.
+ - The navigate command ignored sail paths.
+ - The declare command was more quiet, and declarations of war
+ failed silently when SLOW_WAR was enabled.
+ - Many messages got misdirected to bulletins.
+ Some of these bugs go back all the way to Empire 2, ca 1995.
+ * New deity command reload, effect similar to SIGHUP.
+ * Not voting for a demand update no longer lets you veto further
+ demand updates. This feature was flawed (it encourages players to
+ vote late so that they can tactically vote no and thus build up
+ veto rights), virtually unused, and buggy.
+ * Fix zdone not to claim to have triggered an update when they're
+ disabled.
+ * New update scheduler and ETU clock:
+ - New schedule file. See doc/schedule for how to use it. Replaces
+ econfig keys update_policy, adj_update, update_times, hourslop,
+ blitz_time. A change of schedule does not require a server
+ restart.
+ - The force command can no longer force updates in the future.
+ Edit the schedule file for that.
+ - New command show updates to show the update schedule. Obsoletes
+ the update command.
+ - New xdump game and xdump updates.
+ - New utility program empsched to help test update schedules.
+ - Replace option DEMANDUPDATE and econfig key update_demandpolicy
+ by econfig key update_demand.
+ - econfig key update_demandtimes no longer applies to scheduled
+ demand updates.
+ - You now receive new BTUs at the update in addition to login.
+ - You now always gain the same BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility per
+ turn, even when the update schedule changes, updates get missed,
+ or unscheduled demand updates run.
+ - Remove the mobupdate command, because porting it to the new ETU
+ clock is not worth it.
+ * Redesign of synchronization between commands, update and shutdown,
+ and how updates are triggered:
+ - Simplify update to a single thread waiting for the trigger.
+ Before, three update threads had to perform a carefully
+ choreographed dance to make updates happen. The dance relied on
+ thread priorities for correctness, but they're only implemented
+ by LWP. With pthreads and under windows, demand updates were
+ prone to two update threads starting up concurrently. Even with
+ LWP, forced and demand updates could lead to double updates.
+ - Use a lock for synchronization: commands take it shared, update
+ and shutdown take it exclusive. This makes update and shutdown
+ block until all aborted commands terminated and gave up their
+ lock. Before, they proceeded blindly after waiting two or one
+ seconds respectively, which was cheesy and unsafe.
+ - New commands no longer fail while the update is pending, they are
+ delayed until after the update.
+ - New commands can no longer start during shutdown. Before, they
+ could, but risked getting killed violently, corrupting the game
+ state.
+ - Fix command execution so that commands blocked in writing
+ redirections are abortable. The bug allowed players to delay
+ update and shutdown indefinitely.
+ - Fix shutdown not to let player threads block on output. This
+ let players delay shutdown indefinitely.
+ - Fix reading of player input not to block again after update or
+ shutdown aborted it. The bug allowed players to delay update and
+ shutdown indefinitely.
+ * Thread priorities are only implemented by LWP and no longer used.
+ With LWP, they let players with a sufficiently fast connection
+ starve out the threads that clean the lost file and kill idle
+ connections. Drop them.
+ * Show nuke rounded required research incorrectly.
+ * Log unprintable characters as octal escapes rather than question
+ marks in the journal file.
+ * The files program no longer changes permissions of existing files.
+ * The files program now creates all files with permissions ug=rw and
+ all directories ug=rwx, modified by umask.
+ * Fix a bug that could make arm, disarm and nuke detonation work with
+ a used-up nuke instead of the armed one. This could be abused to
+ detonate nukes multiple times. Broken in 4.3.3.
+ * Fix nuke detonation output for zero blast radius.
+ * Plug memory leaks in thread code.
+ * Fix a bug that made LWP I/O wakeup unreliable.
+ * New march sub-command v for view.
+ * Journal was initialized before threads were, which was wrong.
+ * Fix server not to create a journal on SIGHUP when it is disabled.
+ * shutdown 0 now requests immediate shutdown instead of cancellation
+ of a pending shutdown. shutdown -1 now cancels.
+ * flash and wall no longer split long message lines.
+ * Fix a bug in collect that screwed up a fully collected loan instead
+ of deleting it. The screwed up loan could not be sharked or
+ collected, but it could be repaid.
+ * Remove the wait command, it's been broken and restricted to deity
+ since Empire 2, ca. 1995.
+ * Budget failed to take sector production into account for predicting
+ unit repairs. Before 4.3.6, this bug bit only when you fooled
+ around with budget priorities.
+ * When unit repairs is limited by materials, the efficiency gain is
+ now rounded down.
+ * Ship repairs outside harbors and plane repairs by carriers used to
+ consume commodities when and as far as available. Now, they
+ consume the same fraction of the real cost of each commodity,
+ i.e. commodity use is limited by the most scarce commodity.
+ Neither old nor new behavior make much sense, but the new code is
+ simpler.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup, in particular to make the Windows
+ port less ugly.
+ * Portability fixes.
+ * Info file and manual page updates. All manual pages are now
+ installed in section 6.
+
Changes to Empire 4.3.9 - Sat Jan 6 12:42:19 UTC 2007
* Fix declare to prevent the deity from changing relations for a
player to self. Allow the deity to set the relations of a player
* Fix arm not to put the same nuke on multiple planes (broken in
4.3.3).
* New option AUTO_POWER.
- * Repair allied land units.
- * Only repair owned and allied planes.
+ * Sectors now repair allied land units.
+ * Sectors now repair only own and allied planes.
* Fix repair of planes on foreign carriers: repair allied planes,
ignore the others. Before 4.3.3, carriers destroyed rather than
repaired foreign planes. Since 4.3.3, foreign planes were treated
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 4.3.10 - Fri Aug 24 17:26:56 UTC 2007
+ * The custom table reader detects more errors.
+ * Do not leak world creation time in files and fairland, because
+ that facilitates attacks against the PRNG. This misfeature crept
+ into 4.3.0.
+ * Remove the ancient, crufty non-UCONTEXT system-dependent LWP code.
+ Using it required manual hackery since 4.3.0, and it hasn't been
+ missed.
+ * Plug file descriptor leak in add command.
+ * Don't kill player connections violently when their thread appears
+ to be hung. Threads being aborted by update or shutdown could be
+ misidentified as hung, and the violence could lead to resource
+ leaks, locked out updates, and corrupted game state.
+ * Fix LWP to wake up threads sleeping for a time reliably. Before,
+ players with a sufficiently fast connection could starve out
+ threads system threads, including the update.
+ * Fix a class of bugs that made commands behave differently while the
+ update is attempting to take control:
+ - No MOB_ACCESS mobility was gained.
+ - Telegrams were miscounted.
+ - Bulletins got misfiled as production reports.
+ - The navigate command ignored sail paths.
+ - The declare command was more quiet, and declarations of war
+ failed silently when SLOW_WAR was enabled.
+ - Many messages got misdirected to bulletins.
+ Some of these bugs go back all the way to Empire 2, ca 1995.
+ * New deity command reload, effect similar to SIGHUP.
+ * Not voting for a demand update no longer lets you veto further
+ demand updates. This feature was flawed (it encourages players to
+ vote late so that they can tactically vote no and thus build up
+ veto rights), virtually unused, and buggy.
+ * Fix zdone not to claim to have triggered an update when they're
+ disabled.
+ * New update scheduler and ETU clock:
+ - New schedule file. See doc/schedule for how to use it. Replaces
+ econfig keys update_policy, adj_update, update_times, hourslop,
+ blitz_time. A change of schedule does not require a server
+ restart.
+ - The force command can no longer force updates in the future.
+ Edit the schedule file for that.
+ - New command show updates to show the update schedule. Obsoletes
+ the update command.
+ - New xdump game and xdump updates.
+ - New utility program empsched to help test update schedules.
+ - Replace option DEMANDUPDATE and econfig key update_demandpolicy
+ by econfig key update_demand.
+ - econfig key update_demandtimes no longer applies to scheduled
+ demand updates.
+ - You now receive new BTUs at the update in addition to login.
+ - You now always gain the same BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility per
+ turn, even when the update schedule changes, updates get missed,
+ or unscheduled demand updates run.
+ - Remove the mobupdate command, because porting it to the new ETU
+ clock is not worth it.
+ * Redesign of synchronization between commands, update and shutdown,
+ and how updates are triggered:
+ - Simplify update to a single thread waiting for the trigger.
+ Before, three update threads had to perform a carefully
+ choreographed dance to make updates happen. The dance relied on
+ thread priorities for correctness, but they're only implemented
+ by LWP. With pthreads and under windows, demand updates were
+ prone to two update threads starting up concurrently. Even with
+ LWP, forced and demand updates could lead to double updates.
+ - Use a lock for synchronization: commands take it shared, update
+ and shutdown take it exclusive. This makes update and shutdown
+ block until all aborted commands terminated and gave up their
+ lock. Before, they proceeded blindly after waiting two or one
+ seconds respectively, which was cheesy and unsafe.
+ - New commands no longer fail while the update is pending, they are
+ delayed until after the update.
+ - New commands can no longer start during shutdown. Before, they
+ could, but risked getting killed violently, corrupting the game
+ state.
+ - Fix command execution so that commands blocked in writing
+ redirections are abortable. The bug allowed players to delay
+ update and shutdown indefinitely.
+ - Fix shutdown not to let player threads block on output. This
+ let players delay shutdown indefinitely.
+ - Fix reading of player input not to block again after update or
+ shutdown aborted it. The bug allowed players to delay update and
+ shutdown indefinitely.
+ * Thread priorities are only implemented by LWP and no longer used.
+ With LWP, they let players with a sufficiently fast connection
+ starve out the threads that clean the lost file and kill idle
+ connections. Drop them.
+ * Show nuke rounded required research incorrectly.
+ * Log unprintable characters as octal escapes rather than question
+ marks in the journal file.
+ * The files program no longer changes permissions of existing files.
+ * The files program now creates all files with permissions ug=rw and
+ all directories ug=rwx, modified by umask.
+ * Fix a bug that could make arm, disarm and nuke detonation work with
+ a used-up nuke instead of the armed one. This could be abused to
+ detonate nukes multiple times. Broken in 4.3.3.
+ * Fix nuke detonation output for zero blast radius.
+ * Plug memory leaks in thread code.
+ * Fix a bug that made LWP I/O wakeup unreliable.
+ * New march sub-command v for view.
+ * Journal was initialized before threads were, which was wrong.
+ * Fix server not to create a journal on SIGHUP when it is disabled.
+ * shutdown 0 now requests immediate shutdown instead of cancellation
+ of a pending shutdown. shutdown -1 now cancels.
+ * flash and wall no longer split long message lines.
+ * Fix a bug in collect that screwed up a fully collected loan instead
+ of deleting it. The screwed up loan could not be sharked or
+ collected, but it could be repaid.
+ * Remove the wait command, it's been broken and restricted to deity
+ since Empire 2, ca. 1995.
+ * Budget failed to take sector production into account for predicting
+ unit repairs. Before 4.3.6, this bug bit only when you fooled
+ around with budget priorities.
+ * When unit repairs is limited by materials, the efficiency gain is
+ now rounded down.
+ * Ship repairs outside harbors and plane repairs by carriers used to
+ consume commodities when and as far as available. Now, they
+ consume the same fraction of the real cost of each commodity,
+ i.e. commodity use is limited by the most scarce commodity.
+ Neither old nor new behavior make much sense, but the new code is
+ simpler.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup, in particular to make the Windows
+ port less ugly.
+ * Portability fixes.
+ * Info file and manual page updates. All manual pages are now
+ installed in section 6.
+
Changes to Empire 4.3.9 - Sat Jan 6 12:42:19 UTC 2007
* Fix declare to prevent the deity from changing relations for a
player to self. Allow the deity to set the relations of a player
* Fix arm not to put the same nuke on multiple planes (broken in
4.3.3).
* New option AUTO_POWER.
- * Repair allied land units.
- * Only repair owned and allied planes.
+ * Sectors now repair allied land units.
+ * Sectors now repair only own and allied planes.
* Fix repair of planes on foreign carriers: repair allied planes,
ignore the others. Before 4.3.3, carriers destroyed rather than
repaired foreign planes. Since 4.3.3, foreign planes were treated
projects / empserver / commitdiff