Server : Empire4 Changes
NAME
Empire4 - Changes from the Empire3 server to the Empire4 Server
Level: Expert
There have been several changes/fixes made to the Empire3 code in the new
Empire4 Server. This outlines the various changes and how they will affect
you, the player. These were coded as the Wolfpack project, and bug-reports
should be sent to .
Changes to Empire 4.3.10 - Thu Sep 6 17:59:53 UTC 2007
* Bridge spans now cost $1000 instead of $2000, and bridge towers
$3000 instead of $7500.
* The Windows port now supports IPv6, but it still needs to be
enabled manually at compile-time.
* 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.
* 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 reliably wake up threads sleeping for a time. Before,
players with a sufficiently fast connection could starve out 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, which are 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, possibly corrupting
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 are 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
towards the deity.
* Fix arm not to put the same nuke on multiple planes (broken in
4.3.3).
* New option AUTO_POWER.
* 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
as recoverable error.
* Fix automatic fortification of land units to use all excess
mobility even when mobility delta exceeds mobility maximum.
* Disable automatic fortification of land units when MOB_ACCESS is
on, because it is prohibitively slow then (broken in 4.2.13).
* Budget now shows level production (tech, education, research and
happiness) rounded instead of randomly rounded.
* Fix update not to randomly flush small level production to zero.
* Fix overly restrictive game file locking under Windows (broken in
4.3.8).
* Fix navigate to charge mobility for sweeping mines without moving
(broken in 4.3.6).
* Code cleanup.
Changes to Empire 4.3.8 - Fri Oct 20 18:30:28 UTC 2006
* Ships no longer produce stuff when the government is broke.
* Fix land unit casualties in revolts.
* Fix security units not to raid friendly che.
* Fix update sequence to ensure stopped sectors don't work on the
ships, planes and land units in the sector. Before 4.3.6, this bug
bit only when you fooled around with budget priorities.
* Fix canal loading (was broken in 4.3.0).
* Fix tend not to tend land units that could not be loaded.
* Make xdump command available before break, but deny access to game
state.
* Lock game files to prevent concurrent access by multiple programs.
fairland does not yet obey the lock.
* Fix production to consider sector item limit.
* Fix swapsector to update coastal flag correctly (broken in 4.3.0).
* Enhanced mapping sub-commands in move, test, explore and transport.
* Code cleanup.
* Info file fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.3.7 - Fri Jul 14 23:05:19 UTC 2006
* Sanctuaries are again fully populated with civilians (4.3.6 changed
the limit, but not the population). Food is now spread evenly
among them.
* Fix path finder to find shortest naval and aerial paths again
(broken in 4.3.4).
* transport's map sub-command now does the right thing for a unit
number argument.
* Fix bug in map sub-command of move, explore and transport that
passed junk to map command. Could theoretically crash.
* Food need reported by starvation was one short for sectors without
food.
* Change land unit ammunition use back to what it was before 4.2.3.
This lets deities customize ammunition use independent of damage.
It also substantially reduces ammunition consumption at high tech.
* navigation and march enhancements:
- Sub-command 'f' now takes an optional ship / land unit number.
- Mapping sub-commands now take an optional ship / land unit
number.
- New sub-command 'd' to drop mines.
* Let minesweepers retreat at their full speed (missed in 4.3.6).
* SUPER_BARS cannot be harmed, so don't interdict them.
* Don't let trains and non-trains march together for now, because the
march code isn't prepared for that.
* New mapping flag 'n' to show nukes.
* Mapping flag '*' now shows nukes as well.
* New command nbmap to bmap around a nuke. Overload command nmap to
map around a nuke when given a nuke argument.
* Fix an inconsistency that gave tactical bombers a small bonus
vs. flak when pin-bombing.
* Fix production to show the designation that actually produces, not
the designation as it is now (broken in 4.3.6).
* Fix accidental whitespace change in output of sdump, pdump and
ldump that crept into 4.3.5.
* Support user-defined sector types and products in custom tables,
not just customization of existing ones.
* Fix off-by-one bug in budget that used to be masked by budget
priorities until their demise in 4.3.6. The bug could crash the
game on certain systems.
* Code cleanup.
* Info file fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.3.6 - Tue Jun 20 18:46:18 UTC 2006
* The shutdown command now terminates the server process correctly
even with LinuxThreads pthreads under Linux 2.4 and earlier.
* Cope with old versions of groff (broken in 4.3.0).
* You can now arm allied planes with nukes.
* Taking a nuke off a plane gives it to the sector owner again.
Feature was accidentally dropped in 4.3.3. Recipient must be
allied.
* Naval path went bananas for impassable end sectors (broken in
4.3.1).
* New econfig key disabled_commands.
* New territory selector dterr, restricted to deities. The territory
command defaults to it for deities.
* Let land units attack as long as they have positive mobility,
except for high-mobility terrain (mountains), where the rules
remain as they were: land units need to have all the mobility
charged for the attack, not counting combat and moving in to
occupy. Rationale: Making sure your land units reach attack
positions with enough mobility left is a pain in the neck.
Requiring only positive mobility is friendlier, but allowed rushing
of mountains, so we make an exception there.
* Can typeset info pages as PostScript. Result isn't exactly pretty.
* Support disabling of infrastructure in infra custom table. Remove
redundant option DEFENSE_INFRA. show command now shows only enabled
infrastructure.
* Fix crash on empty argument in bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap,
pmap sbmap, smap (broken in 4.3.1).
* New, simpler sector mobility cost formula:
- The basic cost is still a linear function of sector efficiency,
with customizable cost at 0% and at 100%. The latter used to be
derived from the former. The show command shows both parameters
now.
- Mountains are no longer a special case.
- Tweak costs: mountains now range from 2.4 to 1.2 instead of 2.174
to 1.304, highway, bridge head, bridge span and bridge tower
range from 0.4 to 0.001 instead of 0.2 to 0.001, and wilderness
is 0.4 flat instead of 0.6 to 0.4. All sector types mortal
players can designate now cost the same at 0%. That's a feature.
- Road infrastructure now reduces cost up to 90%, linear in road
efficiency (used to be close to that, but non-linear). Same for
rail infrastructure, but 99%. Adapted from Ice World V.
- Double land unit minimum cost to 0.02, to slow them down on
highways.
- Change land unit cost penalty in newly taken land to an extra 0.2
instead of a minimum of 0.2, to reduce penetration depth.
* Reduce bridge head defense and collect value to match highway's.
* sinfrastructure displayed bogus rail mobility costs when there was
no rail.
* Retreating engineers took full landmine damage instead of half.
* Fix socket creation code not to print a null pointer.
* Fix login option code not to search beyond end of table (broken in
4.2.21).
* Spy planes and satellites can no longer spot landspies.
* Spy planes can now spot surface ships at sea. They can no longer
spot land units loaded on ships or land units.
* Fix train retreat mobility cost, and don't permit retreat off rail.
* Change maximum population to 100 for plains (was 49), mountains
(was 99), bridge spans and bridge towers (was 999), and to 1000 for
the other habitable sector types (was 999).
* Let minesweepers navigate at the speed their stats indicate by
letting them sweep on the move at no extra mobility charge.
* Reduce chance for planes to abort from 100-eff (if eff<80) to
80-eff. This should make it easier to punch through air defense,
flak in particular, and increase the risk of getting shot down.
* Ship and land unit flak intensity is now proportional to efficiency.
* Ship and land unit flak intensity is no longer scaled by the tech
of the owner of the last thing firing. It's still scaled by each
thing's tech.
* All ships and land units firing flak now spot the plane and are
spotted by the plane. Previously, spotting stopped as soon as flak
maxed out.
* Inefficient land units were overcharged mobility when reacting.
Broken when Empire3 changed land unit mobility use not to depend on
efficiency, except for supply units.
* New journal file to log complete player input plus selected
important events. Controlled by new econfig key keep_journal, off
by default.
* Fix unsafe shutdown on SIGINT and SIGTERM.
* Fix land unit path finding: paths weren't always cheapest (broken
in 4.0.2), and trains could be sent down paths without rail (never
worked). Also fixes unit reaction path cost.
* The custom table reader can now deal with sector, item, product and
infra tables more comfortably.
* Remove option BIG_CITY. Deities can customize the sect table to
get the same effect.
* Many more selectors can now be compared with names, not just
numbers. This includes nations, e.g. census ?old=Mirkwood. Does
not fully work for queer names like &&&.
* Let land units on missions support, just like ships.
* Don't let units loaded on a train react.
* Change update sequence to repair ships, planes and land units after
sectors produce. This makes repairs use new avail instead of old.
* Let players stop and start units.
* Remove budget priorities.
* Make plane report easier to understand.
* Change land report to show carriers in the same format as plane and
nuke report do.
* Code cleanup.
* Info file and manual page fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.3.5 - Sun May 28 07:49:54 UTC 2006
* In conditionals, ~ compared to a string selector now stands for an
empty string.
* Change encoding of `not in any group' from " " to "". This makes
fleet=~ work. It also affects xdump.
* Fix plane capture code to clear wing.
* People now eat and starve exactly the same in sectors, ships and
land units. There used to be small differences, and civilians and
uw loaded on land units didn't eat at all. The starvation command
has been updated accordingly.
* Fix bug that makes it impossible to assault or board with land
units (broken in 4.3.4).
* Code cleanup.
Changes to Empire 4.3.4 - Thu May 25 05:46:10 UTC 2006
* Don't use non-portable groff features (broken in 4.3.0).
* Work around potential crash bugs in command argument access.
* Plug major information leak through nation selectors (broken in
4.2.21). The fix unfortunately exchanges the meaning of xdump
nation and xdump country. Sorry about that.
* Minimize redundancy between (mortal's) xdump nation and xdump
country.
* New nation selector rejects.
* xdump nation now shows foreign relations and no longer discloses
hidden relations.
* Fix crash bug in edit.
* Fix number of planes building in budget command (broken in 4.3.3).
* Selectors group, fleet, wing and army are now strings, and obvious
syntax like fleet#a works. xdump also shows the strings now.
Units not assigned to a group currently have group string " ", but
that may still change.
* Don't fold conditionals to lower case, because it breaks valid
conditionals like fleet#A.
* Mobility cost of a plane sortie is no longer limited to current
mobility + 32.
* Various formulas no longer truncate or round intermediate results.
* Interdiction mission charged twice the normal mobility cost for
torpedoes.
* Fix sail not to interpret negative x-coordinates as unsail
argument.
* Improved configure script.
* Code cleanup.
Changes to Empire 4.3.3 - Tue May 16 21:35:47 UTC 2006
* power c can now show powerless countries. power c * works.
* Fortresses now require 5% efficiency to return fire and interdict.
* Range of ship return fire and support fire no longer depends on
efficiency.
* Fix heap smash in login command client. Remote hole!
* Properly destroy nukes on collapsing bridges. Before, you could
rescue them by building a new bridge or arming them on naval
planes.
* Nukes are now numbered like other units:
- New selector type replaces selectors number and types.
- New selector plane points to plane armed with this nuke.
- New selectors effic, mobil, tech, group, opx, opy, mission,
radius. Provided because all units have them; values are
currently not interesting.
- nuke command output redesigned.
- ndump output changed subtly: nukes are no longer sorted by
location, nukes in the same location no longer share id, and
nukes on planes are shown.
- transport nuke now works like transport plane.
* arm and disarm now accept the common plane syntax, not just plane
numbers.
* Fix arm to let you change an armed plane's air-burst/ground-burst
(broken in 4.2.6).
* territory no longer re-prompts when supplied with a bad argument,
it just fails.
* edit lets you edit stuff that is actually computed from other
state, like sector's coastal flag. This makes no sense and is now
deprecated. Stuff deprecated since 4.2.15 is now gone.
* Code cleanup.
Changes to Empire 4.3.2 - Thu Apr 27 17:59:58 UTC 2006
* Fix security units' raid at the update (broken in 4.0.0, fixed only
for 100% units in 4.2.7). Back out 4.2.7's 2.5x deadliness
increase. Make sure empty units don't kill anyone.
* Fix bug in player_init(), which was most likely fatal on 64 bit
hosts. Broken in 4.3.0.
* Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' realms (new in 4.3.0).
* The order in which sectors were visited for `*' arguments disclosed
the real origin, fix. Mapping commands used to work around this
bug, until 4.3.1 exposed it there as well.
* Code didn't compile on some systems.
* Fix edit plane not to truncate large values for keys 'a' and 'd'.
Changes to Empire 4.3.1 - Sat Apr 15 11:40:47 UTC 2006
* Fix check of game state on server startup (new in 4.3.0).
* sail now accepts a destination sector.
* Tend could send bogus bulletins (broken in 4.3.0).
* Plug memory leaks in mission command.
* Close loophole in navigate that allowed players to find all sectors
that are unfriendly or inefficient harbors or bridges.
* Server didn't start when default econfig was missing and user
didn't supply one with -e (broken in 4.3.0).
* Retreat condition 'h' (helpless) never worked, fix.
* Fix retreating mine sweepers to use mobility for sweeping.
* Fix retreating land units to hit mines with the same probability
and to take the same damage as in normal movement. Before,
hit probability was higher, and damage was lower.
* Ships could retreat into sectors owned by whoever made them
retreat, but not in their owner's sectors.
* Fix 'm' at the movement prompt of transport and test.
* Fix march and test not to apply conditionals to sectors mapped,
which led to spurious error messages.
* Fix break not to respect conditionals. The bug let players keep
sanctuaries.
* Fix retreat code not to respect conditionals. Attackers could
abuse this to suppress fleet and army retreat orders.
* Fix retreat and edit to zero-terminate retreat paths.
Theoretically abusable for gaining information.
* Fix format string crash bugs in load, spy and bomb.
* Fix the telegram editor: empty telegrams were broken in 4.2.21, and
~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.
* 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.
* Fix canal navigation (was broken in 4.3.0).
* Info file fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.3.0 - Sun Mar 19 08:13:10 UTC 2006
* version no longer pretends option SHIPNAMES still exists.
* Remove files auth and ban. They could be used to restrict client
address and user. Restricting user is useless, because players can
send whatever they want. Banning IPs is better done with a packet
filter. That leaves restricting deity IPs. Provide new econfig
key privip for that. Apply it to session kill as well as login.
* xdump escapes GUINEA_PIGS status:
- xdump is now enabled unconditionally.
- xdump sect now dumps selector coastal, because it can't be
reliably computed from other xdump information.
- New xdump realm and country. Realm information is now stored in
a separate file, with appropriate selectors.
- Reviewed for completeness and information leaks. See info xdump
for remaining issues. New treaty selector uid, nat selectors
relations, contacts. Removed useless selectors: news and lost
uid, nat dayno.
- Command syntax changed.
- xdump opt is no more, option information is now in xdump ver.
- xdump can now dump meta-data.
- Header and footer changed to be more compact. You now need
meta-data to identify fields.
- Bug fixes.
- Documentation in doc/xdump.
* New econfig key builtindir.
* New econfig key custom_tables lets you customize configuration
tables without recompiling. Customizing tables other than unit
tables is not recommended for now. See doc/econfig for
instructions.
* Check configuration and game state are sane on server startup.
* Remove option NONUKES and NEUTRON. Deities can load a suitable
nuke table to get the same effect.
* Remove option DRNUKE. Use econfig key drnuke_const to control
whether nukes need research.
* Disqualify land units from performing missions while loaded on
ships or trains.
* Fix dump for strings without terminating zero.
* Fix login command option not to send an extra prompt.
* zdone now displays information about demand update vetoing.
* The Windows port now requires Winsock version 2.
* Remove econfig key powe_cost.
* version report now shows all the configurable settings of interest
to players.
* carg and lcarg now display people as well.
* ldump now dumps civ and uw as well.
* Fix dangling pointer dereference in dogfighting code.
* Tell sector owner when partisans take over. But don't disclose che
casualties then.
* emp_server, files, fairland now support options -h and -v.
* Simplify baroque version numbering to a single version number.
This affects output of version.
* New show item and show news.
* New build process:
- Follow the usual steps: configure; make; make install. The
latter is optional. The only file deities still have to edit is
econfig.
- Use GNU Autoconf for system configuration.
- Use GNU Make for portability and features.
- Support separate build trees.
- Remake out-of-date dependencies automatically.
- Remake out-of-date info files automatically.
- Flatten info directory.
- Formatted info files are no longer distributed in source tarball.
- Use LWP only with UCONTEXT. Autoconfiguring the other LWP
low-level options doesn't seem to be worth the effort, as
UCONTEXT should be pretty portable.
* Fix use of freed memory in sail.
* sail could let large ships enter big cities.
* Fix reject and accept not to require contact.
* Fix sharebmap and telegram to prompt for a missing first argument.
* Fix report to align column research correctly for deities.
* When the optional newspaper argument doesn't work because HIDDEN is
enabled, complain instead of ignoring it silently.
* When BLITZ is enabled, fairland no longer permutes country numbers
in newcap_script so that start islands are ordered from top left to
bottom right.
* Minimize output format differences between options:
- census shows column fall regardless of FALLOUT.
- show nuke now shows column res regardless of DRNUKE.
- report no longer suppress column status when HIDDEN is enabled.
HIDDEN limits status information like for the country command.
- relations column width differed depending on option SLOW_WAR.
Always use the wider format.
* Fix a bug in edit that suppressed the player notification telex on
military reserve change.
* Fix command dispatch not to let deities use commands that are
declared not to be available to them. The only command affected is
break.
* Fix the list command for visitor.
* econfig key m_m_p_d no longer applies to deities.
* Fix the origin command for country #0. Allow moving origin to
another country's origin. Allow deities to reset origin to
absolute 0,0. This turns origin into a superset of the offset
command. Remove offset command.
* Fix a bug that caused unpredictable flak damage when it should have
been maximum damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
* Don't store initial capital location, remove the associated nat
selectors xstart, ystart.
* Fix production command to consider resource depletion.
* Fix justification of coordinate output in cutoff and mission.
* Option UPDATESCHED is no longer optional. Disabling it didn't
work anyway.
* Support IPv6.
* Turn options into ordinary econfig keys.
* New econfig key start_cash.
* BTU regeneration now depends on the capital's work percentage.
* nation now supports an optional argument that lets deities ask for
somebody else's nation report.
* Fix nation to display SANCTUARY instead of VISITOR for countries in
sanctuary.
* Fix capital to let you use a regained sacked capital without
activating another one in between.
* Don't move capital when it is sacked.
* New ship capability canal, replacing obscure formula based on build
materials.
* You now need a capital to request a demand update.
* power now ignores landspies.
* Fix LWP stack checking.
* Clean up LWP, drop dead machine-specific code, fix portability bugs
in UCONTEXT code.
* census now shows the old owner instead of `*'. dump is unchanged
to avoid breaking clients.
* peek no longer prints the old owner.
* When a bombed land unit retreated, collateral damage was applied to
the wrong sector.
* paradrop, drop and fly can no longer abandon the base sector.
* Tending foreign ships now sends a bulletin to the owner.
* Fix bug that permitted login for inactive countries, including ""
* Fix tend for spies.
* Change launch to fire all missiles selected at the same target.
Previously, it prompted for a new target after each missile.
* add, consider, build, launch and fire no longer re-prompt when
supplied with a bad argument, they just fail. Consequently, the
build command no longer lets you list types you can build. It
points to the show command instead.
* Fix add not to truncate country number.
* Fix selector coastal to be accurate at all times.
* Fix obscure bug in fairland: the sector added last to an island
wasn't considered coastal. Affected resource computation.
* Fix sector wiping in add command.
* Remove options NO_LCMS, NO_HCMS, NO_OIL. They were broken in many
ways. Custom configuration tables should become a serviceable
replacement eventually.
* Client no longer freezes on long lines of server output.
* Fix uninitialized signal mask bugs.
* Fix Windows service code's treatment of -e.
* Sub interdiction disclosed sub owner through news' actor selector.
* country reports on all countries, but carefully limits information
disclosed to mortals. Output format changed.
* Market no longer forces sellers to grant loans.
* Fix potential crash bug in set command. Friendlier prompt and
diagnostics.
* Substantial code cleanup and portability fixes.
* Extend empfile abstraction to cover game configuration.
* Overhaul of game state storage.
* The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
thanks!
Changes to Empire 4.2.23 - Sun Oct 23 09:28:26 UTC 2005
* Make version pretend option SHIPNAMES still exists, for the benefit
of clients that still depend on it.
* The change to conv in 4.2.22 could crash or compute incorrect
maximum population.
* Info updates missing in 4.2.22.
* A few code cleanups.
Changes to Empire 4.2.22 - Tue Oct 11 20:23:51 UTC 2005
* Log player login, logout and session kill.
* Close loophole in assembly point rules that allowed players to find
all unowned sectors. The assembly point must now be owned by you
or an ally, or you or an ally must have a ship there.
* Don't let embarked land units fire flak.
* Fix display of the last connection's host when the host name was
not resolved.
* Fix change command to accept full length representative (password),
currently 19 characters. It used to chop off after eight
characters.
* Non-recon missions no longer establish contact to owners of
overflown sectors, because those missions do not identify the
owner. This matches info Hidden.
* The following events now establish contact:
- Catching a spy
- Sighting a ship when toggle coastwatch is off
- Spotting overflying planes
- satellite spotting land units
- lookout and llookout spotting ships, planes and land units
- Any relations change
* 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.
* 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.
Remote hole!
* bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail now deal with EOF
correctly.
* Fix fly to let the player abort the command at the last prompt.
* Client no longer reads execute scripts in binary mode under
Windows.
* New econfig key listen_address.
* econfig key port can now be a service name. Service empire no
longer takes precedence over econfig.
* Client falls back to compiled-in host only if environment doesn't
supply one, not if it can't be resolved. Same for port.
* Oil derrick could extract slightly more oil than was in the ground.
* test command checked start sector for space and some other things
instead of end sector.
* 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.
* 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
abort now fail.
* The force command no longer waits for the specified time. It
starts a scheduling thread instead, just like shutdown.
* Correct grammar and punctuation in output of version.
* Option SHIPNAMES is no longer optional.
* Fix output of qorder and sorder for ships with sail path.
* Don't change capital to agribusiness on retake. From Pat Loney.
* bdes prompt for new designation was messed up for empty bmaps.
* Client now supports pipes under Windows.
* Care for subtle Windows socket incompatibilities.
* Fix strength command not to lie about units reacting into
mountains.
* strength now yields the processor periodically, to keep the game
responsive.
* Schedule commands more fairly. Previously, a sufficiently fast
player could starve out the others.
* launch assumed plane maximum mobility 127 for calculating when
satellites will be ready to use.
* Drop support for for DCE threads.
* Drop support for pthread implementations lacking pthread_kill().
This includes ancient versions of OS X.
* Code cleanups.
* Minor info file fixes.
* The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
thanks!
Changes to Empire 4.2.21 - Sat Jul 16 17:51:01 UTC 2005
* Don't let threads block on output to another player thread's
socket. Such blocking violates basic design assumptions and can
cause all kinds of grief. In particular, it causes player session
hangs under Windows with 4.2.20. Broken since the introduction of
flash and asynchronous telegram notification many years ago.
* Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
Windows. This could cause double-updates.
* Fix fallout damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
* Fix show sector s (was broken in 4.2.19).
* Fix deliver not to deliver friendly civilians into occupied
sectors.
* Fix mil duplication in board (was broken in 4.2.14).
* Fix stack smash in lrange, shoot and execute. Remote holes, and
the last one doesn't even require authentication.
* 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.
* 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.
* Fix flash not to lie about recipients that are just logging in.
* Remove obscure login command list.
* Convert client from obsolete termcap to terminfo, and clean up
terminal handling.
* New fairland option -h to print usage information. Improved
command line syntax diagnostics. Exit unsuccessfully on unknown
options.
* fleet and army now copy retreat orders of the fleet's or army's
first member with group retreat orders in the same sector.
Previously, they used the retreat orders of the first fleet or army
member, which is less than useful, and failed to take ownership
into account, which is an abusable bug.
* New xdump nation.
* Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' losses.
* Fix exit status of files program when it can't create files.
* Support UTF-8 encoded Unicode in human-human communications. This
affects MOTD, game down message, telexes, announcements and flash
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.
* emp_client -u now requests UTF-8. This requires a terminal that
understands UTF-8.
* Fix news for land unit defensive support.
* Properly mark sea mines hit by retreating ships. Unmark mines
cleared by bridges.
* Fix diagnostics for unknown selector names in conditionals (was
broken in 4.2.20).
* Fix selector name clashes: rename ship selector mobquota to mquota,
land selector for reaction range limit from rad to rmax.
* Fix Windows services for relative file names on command line or in
econfig (was broken in 4.2.20).
* econfig keys ship_grow_scale, plane_grow_scale and land_grow_scale
are now float. This gives deities finer control over maximum
efficiency gain.
* Fix production command for sectors with 60% efficiency.
* Improve syntax of read for deities.
* Code cleanups.
* Some info topic names differed only in case, which loses on
case-insensitive file systems, and is a bad user interface even
when it works. Change those names. Rename deity command hidden to
peek because its info topic clashed with that of option HIDDEN.
* Thanks to Doug Wescott sheep are finally covered properly in info.
* Documentation fixes.
* Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
Changes to Empire 4.2.20 - Tue Mar 22 21:07:18 UTC 2005
* When units in different sectors marched, only units in the sector
with the highest-numbered unit were interdicted. A marching
non-spy made all marching spies visible to interdiction regardless
of location.
* Fix crash when interdiction sinks second ship in a sector. Broken
in 4.0.10.
* Fix an ancient bug in simulation of level production that clobbered
stack and could lead to low predictions, typically zero, which
screwed up budget. The bug had no effect until 4.2.19.
* When a sector revolts, and there wasn't enough space to liberate
all uw, the number of remaining uw got the wrong sign. Broken in
4.2.14.
* Log and abort when LWP stack check detects stack smash. Server
option -s no longer implies -p.
* The native Windows build now supports -p and -s.
* The native Windows build now properly deals with ^C when running in
the foreground. It no longer prompts for a quit command on the
terminal.
* The meaning of server option -D in presence of -e is unclear.
Other programs only support -e. Remove option -D. Use -e
DIR/econfig instead of -D DIR.
* New server option -v shows version information.
* Fix the server's exit status with -h. Broken in 4.2.19.
* The linux-pthreads build failed to shut down on signals.
* Fix threading bugs in the native Windows build that made shutdown
unsafe and screwed up update aborting commands.
* New econfig key pre_update_hook to allow automatic, safe backup
right before the update. See scripts/backup for an example.
* The server now prints log messages to stderr as well when running
in the foreground.
* Fix potential buffer overflows in logerror() and lwpStatus().
* Server now requires POSIX signals. It no longer catches SIGUSR1.
* Remove support for ancient versions of HP-UX.
* Fix seeding of PRNG broken in 4.2.19.
* Don't reseed the PRNG in commands, it hurts randomness and could be
abused by crafty players.
* The server now makes the data directory its working directory.
This also gets rid of a bug that changed the file name of the
sector, power, nation and lostitems file unless econfig could not
be read.
* The server now writes a pid file. Thanks to Daniel O'Connor.
* More user friendly server startup: more errors are detected while
the server still runs in the foreground, which makes it possible to
complain to stderr and to exit unsuccessfully.
* Early log messages went to the log file in the default data
directory, even though econfig specifies another data directory.
* Specifying an econfig file on the command line that can't be read
is now fatal.
* Errors in econfig are now fatal.
* The server now refuses to start when it can't open data files.
* News are now sorted and expire sanely.
* Conditionals can now compare strings as well.
* Corrupted down and motd files could cause buffer overflows.
* Fix recon to let player abort at the flight path prompt.
* power no longer rounds worldwide numbers for deities.
* power command failed to recognize deities with non-zero country
number.
* Change output of production command so that columns are aligned
even for large values. Replace column wkfc by more useful column
avail.
* neweff and production miscalculated work when mil exceeded
population limit.
* neweff miscalculated work when the population limit exceeded 999.
* Fix capping of avail when a big city is torn down.
* Fix a bug in fire that allowed players to find all submarine uids.
* Maximum sector population is no longer hardcoded, and now covered
by xdump. Option RES_POP now affects mountains and plains as
well. From Ray Hyatt.
* Fix fina and news not to ignore errors in conditions.
* The native Windows build now requires Windows Sockets 2.
* The native Windows build now supports multiple instances of the
service. The ability to supply additional startup parameters to
the service has been removed.
* Implement fairland command line parsing under Windows.
* Improved fairland and emp_server usage message.
* Code cleanups.
* Minor info file and documentation fixes.
* Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
Changes to Empire 4.2.19 - Thu Dec 23 20:24:24 UTC 2004
* Fix order not to unload into full sectors.
* Fix scrap not to dump stuff into full sectors. Excess stuff is now
destroyed.
* Fix distribute not to conjure up a civilian when importing
civilians from a dist center that doesn't have any.
* Fix flak to resupply no more shells than actually needed.
* Fix rounding error in shoot that could result in more people shot
than actually there.
* Fix info and apro error handling. In particular, do not leak
potentially sensitive information on the server to players.
* info no longer shows a random matching page when the topic argument
is ambiguous. Instead, it lists all matching topics.
* Embarked land units and overflying planes no longer spot each
other.
* Fix show command to show only sectors that players can designate
(was broken in 4.2.18).
* Fix a rounding error in production command column `max'.
* Fix production command for overpopulated mountains and plains.
* Fix tradeship ally cut to match documentation.
* Fix plague, which was was broken in 4.2.14: it got stuck in stage I.
* Fix a bug in aerial sonar where ships could mask submarines with
the same number modulo 256.
* Don't allow bombing of subs that were not detected.
* MOTD and the game down message are now entirely separate: use `turn
motd' for the MOTD, and `turn on' and `turn off' for the game down
message. `turn on' no longer lets you edit the MOTD.
* Remove option NUKEFAILDETONATE.
* Option ORBIT is no longer optional.
* New option GUINEA_PIGS to control experimental stuff not ready for
prime time. If your deity enables this in a serious game, run!
* Many xdump fixes. xdump is now enabled by option GUINEA_PIGS.
* New ship and land selectors rflags, rpath.
* New ship selectors for order: xstart. xend, ystart, yend,
cargostart, cargend, amtstart, amtend
* New ship selectors for sail: mobquota, path, follow.
* New news selector uid.
* Implement command line parsing under Windows where it was missing.
* emp_server and and files print a usage message on command line
syntax errors.
* Fix how emp_server exits after being panicked by a signal. It can
now dump core when this happens.
* Fix bug in client that could crash it when a line of input starts
with '?'.
* Client now gets user name from environment variable LOGNAME if set,
else from system.
* The native Windows build can now run as a service.
* Redirecting client input now works under Windows.
* Code cleanups.
* Don't confuse work with loyalty in info Citizens.
* Minor info file and manual page fixes.
* Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink and Marc
Olzheim. Many thanks!
Changes to Empire 4.2.18 - Tue Sep 7 14:08:59 UTC 2004
* Fix info to accept abbreviated arguments under Windows. From Ron
Koenderink.
* Buying planes or land units loaded on something didn't work when
that something moved.
* Fix a bug that could produce update cascades with update policy
UDP_TIMES.
* Fix delivery and distribution to grant packing bonus only to
efficient sectors, just like move. Previously, delivery ignored
efficiency, and distribution behaved as if it were an efficient
sector without special bonuses.
* New sector selectors loyal, access; ship selectors radius, access,
xbuilt, ybuilt, builder, name; plane selectors radius, access,
theta; land unit selectors radius, react, nland, access; lost
selector id.
* Fix sector selectors che, che_target; plane selectors att, def;
nuke selector types; treaty selector exp; news selector time;
commodity selectors type, xbuy, ybuy.
* Option PLANENAMES is no longer optional.
* Ensure config parameter variables and their description in
configkeys[] are consistent. Inconsistencies there caused bugs in
the past. From Marc Olzheim.
* Complain if econfig file can't be read.
* Better messages for errors in econfig file.
* Remove unused econfig keys hard_tech and last_demand_update.
* New econfig key news_keep_days to configure news expiry.
* New econfig key anno_keep_days to configure announcement expiry.
* Fix announcement expiry. It leaked file descriptors and memory,
and could corrupt the anno file. From Ron Koenderink.
* New command xdump: experimental extended dump. Disabled for now.
* Bankers no longer round down debts, and they collect interest for
the time debtors are idling at sub-prompts.
* Loan interest calculation was broken at the due date and after a
last payment made at the due date. With luck, debtors could abuse
this to repay loans cheap (they couldn't gain cash, though), sharks
to purchase loans cheap, and creditors to collect excessively.
* Fix major bug in transport that allowed two cooperating countries
to duplicate items.
* Don't report interdiction damage twice when transporting planes.
* Fix message for attempting to transport a plane in a sector not
owned by the player.
* Fix confusing diagnostics when refusing to improve defense because
option DEFENSE_INFRA is off.
* Simplify confusing code in budget.
* Fix spacing in output of budget and show.
* Change one-way plane sorties to match ordinary sorties: offer
carriers regardless of the sector they're in, require carriers to
be efficient.
* Allow `realm #'.
* Don't print owner of incoming missile twice when intercepting it.
* Simplify constituent storage in product characteristics.
* Replace remaining `variables' leftovers; mainly in unit
characteristics.
* Remove leading spaces in deity unit dumps.
* Replace inappropriate uses of compile time constant ETUS by 60.
Deities don't change ETUS, they change etu_per_update by editing
econfig. This nonsense dates back at least to chainsaw 3.31.
* Change ship production (fishing and drilling for oil) to match
sector production. Ship efficiency and tech are now relevant, and
all people on board work. From Ron Koenderink.
* Code cleanups.
* Minor info file fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.2.17 - Mon Aug 16 16:21:53 UTC 2004
* Fix seeding of PRNG under Windows. The bug made updates occur at
a predictable time in the update window. From Ron Koenderink.
* Close major loophole in drop that allowed players to determine
whether an arbitrary sector is sea, allied land, or other land.
* fly could fly civilians into occupied sectors. For consistency
with other means to move around stuff, this is no longer possible.
* Don't allow flying to a carrier that doesn't have space for the
planes. Previously, planes that did this were teleported home,
which could be abused.
* Close loophole in bomb that allowed players to find all
sanctuaries.
* Fix move and explore not to crash when moving civilians to a sector
without civilians, and interdiction destroys them all. Found and
debugged by Jeff Cotter.
* Fix printing of messages entered with turn command. '%' characters
could cause havoc, even crashes.
* Use sector's actual maximum population to compute chance of plague
outbreak. Previously, code used 9999 for big cities and 999 for
other sectors, and info Plague said 999. This makes all crowded
sectors equally vulnerable, even mountains, plains, and inefficient
big cities.
* Oil derricks no longer drill and deplete more oil than they can
hold. From Ron Koenderink.
* Version 4.2.15's coordinate and list parsing fixes reject trailing
junk. That's too strict. Silently ignore trailing junk as long as
it starts with whitespace.
* Version 4.2.15's selector rewrite broke some type literals,
e.g. `?des=n' was interpreted as `?des=newdes'. Change to prefer
type literals to selectors.
* Nightly build patches game to get repeatable PRNG results. From
Marc Olzheim.
Changes to Empire 4.2.16 - Wed Jun 16 18:56:16 UTC 2004
* Previous version broke sector production when part of the work is
used for sector construction. Fix courtesy Jeff Cotter.
* Add rudimentary tests to nightly build. From Marc Olzheim.
Changes to Empire 4.2.15 - Wed May 26 17:55:58 UTC 2004
* test command no longer asks whether to abandon the sector.
* explore command could generate a bogus `lost' record when it
regains an abandoned start sector.
* edit command now properly updates stats when editing tech level of
ships, planes or land units. A few of these stats can be edited
separately, which doesn't make much sense, and is now deprecated.
* edit command no longer accepts efficiency values that would destroy
the edited unit. Deities can still delete units by setting the
owner to zero.
* upgrade command used to charge an amount of avail that didn't match
info upgrade. Neither the implemented nor the documented amount
made much sense. Change it to 15% of the full build cost. Rewrite
info upgrade.
* Commands upgrade and build could be off by one when reporting
required avail.
* upgrade command reported rounded cost but charged unrounded
cost. Round cost of upgrade down to match behavior of build.
* Upgrading planes now preserves range when it is less than the
maximum range. It used to set it to the new maximum range.
* show bridge and show tower no longer claim bridge building requires
`workers' (whatever that is), since it doesn't.
* Replace option ROLLOVER_AVAIL by econfig parameter
rollover_avail_max, which is the maximum amount of avail that rolls
over. Previously, avail was limited after rollover, and even when
ROLLOVER_AVAIL was off. Fix that.
* Ships weren't always charged mobility for firing with option
NOMOBCOST off.
* Fix shell use of return torpedoes.
* designate no longer complains twice about deity only designations.
* Ensure designate zaps efficiency only when sector type really
changes.
* Fix strength to always report mines to deities.
* Remove option SHIP_DECAY.
* Fix bug in sonar that could crash or yield unpredictable results
near the true origin.
* Fix buffer overflow in flash and wall.
* Fix wall not to strip out first word of message.
* Change market and order to use item types instead of mnemo
characters internally.
* Market now reports sales with full item names instead of single
letter codes.
* buy now requires first argument to be an item name, as documented.
* production command handled production backlog incorrectly, failed
to limit production for production efficiency greater than one,
e.g. agribusiness, and incorrectly limited raw material
consumption. Also fix a rounding error. With help from Ron
Koenderink.
* Sector work was accidentally truncated to even.
* Fix coordinate parsing for large numbers when WORLD_X or WORLD_Y
don't divide SHRT_MAX+1.
* Properly diagnose over-long unit lists.
* 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.
* 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
than items and resources.
* Rewrite info build, since it was inaccurate and poorly structured.
* Fix info fire on required military. From Marc Olzheim.
* New fairland argument -R to set the PRNG seed. Print the seed.
This allows you to recreate the same world again.
* New facilities to deal with internal errors. These crash when the
server is started with -d, which is appropriate for debugging, and
potentially disastrous for running a real game.
* Automated nightly builds.
* Code cleanups.
Changes to Empire 4.2.14 - Mon Mar 22 09:04:12 UTC 2004
* Options NEWPOWER, NEW_STARVE and NEW_WORK are no longer optional.
* Gripe about unknown options in econfig.
* Remove option GRAB_THINGS.
* Utility program files takes new option -f.
* Remove utility programs land, ore and perfect, which don't compile
since 4.2.0 (Oct '98).
* fairland no longer warns when it added resources, but when it
didn't.
* Fallout code could claim destruction of more items than actually
existed.
* Fix recursive resupply (resupply from supply land unit triggering a
resupply of the land unit) when just testing for how much can be
resupplied. The bug could have led to insufficient resupply.
* Fix recursive resupply not to consume all fuel in supply units. No
supply units consuming fuel exist in the stock game.
* Limit delivery and distribution thresholds to ITEM_MAX (9999).
Distribution threshold were previously limited to 10000, and
delivery thresholds to 65528.
* Limit items in sectors to ITEM_MAX (9999). Commands give and buy
used to limit to 9990. Market transactions and commands explore,
move, drop and fly to 32767. Limiting in autonav code (order
command) didn't work. Item delivery used to stop at 9990,
distribution at 9999. Food growing and sector production used to
stop at 9999. Grind, assault lunchboxes, demobilization, mine
sweeping and che liberating uw could theoretically attempt to
increase items beyond 65535, which would have been ignored
(destroying the increase).
* Properly saturate fallout at FALLOUT_MAX (9999). Previously,
fallout increases behaved inconsistently. Increases beyond 65535
could get ignored, or fallout could saturate at 9999, or it could
overflow at 65536 (that would take quite some nuking, though).
* Properly saturate mines at MINES_MAX (65535). Previously, a mining
operation that would have gone beyond 65535 was ignored.
* Fix `are we loading or unloading' tests for load, unload, lload and
lunload.
* Fix editing of land unit attack and defense values. Implement
editing of ship defense values. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
* edit now edits che number and target separately.
* Fix edit to properly extend unit files. Contributed by Ron
Koenderink.
* Major internal reorganisation: Sectors need space for items,
deliveries and distribution thresholds. To save space, the
ancients invented `variables': a collection of key-value pairs,
missing means zero value, space for `enough' keys. This
complicates the code, as assigning to a `variable' can fail for
lack of space. Over time, `enough' increased, and for quite some
time now `variables' have been *wasting* space. Replace them,
except in unit characteristics, where they are read-only, and will
be replaced later. This also removes misfeatures like plague
outbreaks silently deleting deliveries.
* Remove disabled commands dissolve and mult. Remove configuration
parameters minmult and maxmult.
* trade command indexed an array out of bounds when attempting to
display the plague as commodity. Fix.
* New make goal interix. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
* The type selector now prefers an exact match to a partial match.
?type=sb now selects sb, not sbc, even when sbc happens to be found
first.
* Value of selector sell was always zero, remove it.
* Clean up selector code.
* satellite now displays all sectors owned by other players, and none
else. It used to display all but sea, mountains, sanctuaries,
wasteland and wilderness.
* map commands now display wilderness and plains owned by other
players as '?'. Radar commands now display all wilderness and
plains as '?'.
* Fix power timestamp for Windows. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
* Make client abort the current command on ^C under Windows, as
everywhere else. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
* Command line parser interpreted trailing whitespace as an another
(empty) argument. Ignore it instead.
* Properly declare stuff in headers, include proper system headers.
Remove all nested external declarations. Source code is now fully
prototyped. Enable appropriate gcc warnings.
* Fix several type errors. Some may have been show-stoppers on big
endian machines where sizeof(long) != sizeof(int).
* Remove pre-ISO C compatibility cruft (hey, it's been only fifteen
years).
* Various portability fixes. Some bugs may have been show-stoppers
when sizeof(long) != sizeof(int). With help from Marc Olzheim and
Ron Koenderink.
* Move some code to more logical places. Remove some unused code,
some of which was hard to port.
* The files program could print error messages to a log file in some
circumstances. Make it print to stderr.
* deliver can now change direction without changing the threshold.
* deliver now provides appropriate context when prompting for
thresholds.
* Login command play no longer ignores up to two arguments if there
isn't a third one.
* Fix payoff (was broken in 4.2.13).
* Capability fish didn't work together with capability oil.
* Fix and clarify plague outbreak chance in info Plague.
* Fix RES_POP maximum population in info Research.
* Fix info telegram and info announce on ~ escapes.
* Update info Selector to match code.
* Document all undocumented unit capabilities and stats.
* Document submarines' ability to carry landspies.
* Fix info shoot on security units.
* Various small info file fixes.
* Many fixes in the troff macro package for info files.
* Many fixes for translating info files to HTML.
* Many info file markup fixes.
Changes to Empire 4.2.13 - Fri Feb 13 22:12:36 UTC 2004
* Source code reindented and cleaned up somewhat.
* Various small info file fixes.
* Fixed change requiring 254 BTUs even when not charging any
(BLITZ).
* Fixed tactical non-marine missile crash.
* Fixed spy unit detection chance for eff<100.
* Fixed output of sorder.
* `edit' can now work non-interactively. Contributed by Ron
Koenderink.
* Fixed and extended edit for sectors.
* Fixed use of errno.
* Minor security fix: doconfig now writes example auth entry as
comment.
* Fixed reading of country name and password in client for Windows.
* Replace use of some obsolete non-portable library functions by
portable equivalents.
* designate now warns about redesignated capital only when it
succeeds in redesignating the capital.
* attack could be off by one when reporting required unit mobility.
* Fixed command matching. Unique prefixes were not always
recognized, and junk suffixes were ignored.
* Removed bestdistpath. bestpath yields the same results.
* Renamed lstats to lstat for consistency and to match info page.
* Fixed non-portable fd_set * arguments of select().
* New `map' flag `h' to highlight own sectors. Contributed by Marc
Olzheim.
* Fixed `sabo' reporting damage to player in deity coordinates.
* New option ROLLOVER_AVAIL. Contributed by Drake Diedrich.
* Fix Windows server shutdown on reading "quit" from stdin.
* Land units now fortify automatically when mobility plus growth
exceeds the maximum. With code from Marc Olzheim.
* Wandering che are less predictable.
* Land units no longer regenerate mobility faster while it is
negative.
* Fixed emp_client -k.
* No longer allow pirates to ferret out where a ship was built.
* Fixed map commands to reject bmap flags `t' and `r' instead of
turning into bmap.
* Fixed lmine shell resupply.
* News no longer call all sub-launched missiles nuclear.
* Incoming missiles are now reported with coordinates.
* Removed some code that served no purpose except crashing on
Windows.
* Fixed Mac OSX and AIX build problems.
* Don't resolve player IP addresses for now, because it can crash
with certain versions of GNU libc.
* Fixed recording of lost nukes.
Changes to Empire 4.2.12 - Mon Aug 18 16:54:21 MDT 2003
* Corrected contact information for Wolfpack.
* Sector isn't abandoned until move or explore is complete.
* Fixed multiple cases where return value of getstarg() was
used without being checked which crashed the server.
* Used stdarg.h instead of varargs.h.
* Call only_subs and save result before mission frees attacker
list. Call with free list could cause server crash.
* Fixed spy sat map for units on opposite side of world wrap.
* Don't sleep in main thread when called from signal handler.
* Fixed error checking in pthreads.
* Properly detach pthreads.
* Pass unlocked mutex to pthread_mutex_unlock.
* Cope with interrupted sleep in pthread empth_sleep to prevent
double update.
* Added server configurable update window.
* Initialized variables passed to setsockopt in accept.c.
* Fixed bug where sharing bmap with uncontacted country crashes
server.
Changes to Empire 4.2.11 - Sun Sep 1 09:54:59 MDT 2002
* Added compile option for the Mac OSX architecture.
* Fixed bug in cargo where unit array was indexed by shp_maxno
instead of lnd_maxno.
* Fixed bug in reject where aborting the command crashes the
server.
* Can't buy land units into enemy headquarters.
* Added sabotage command and commando unit.
* Spies moving by themselves will not trigger interdiction.
* Fixed error in map distance calculation that caused errant
interdiction.
* Ships going under -127 mobility will be set to -127 mob and
not roll over to positive mobility.
* Corrected plane cost in info Maintenance.
* Changed error message for loans rejected for being too big.
* Land units will take casualty damage proportional to their
ability to carry mil.
* Fixed bug where "route i *" crashes server.
* Cannot upgrade planes in orbit.
* Fixed bug in declare with deity aborting command at last
prompt crashes the server.
* Coastwatch notify works with NO_FORT_FIRE option.
* Thread that kills idle connection will charge player for
minutes the player was logged on.
* Removed separate sendeof at end of execute from emp_client
that logged players off on certain platforms.
* Updated player idle counter during read prompt so players
wouldn't be kicked off during long flashes or writing telegrams.
* LOSE_CONTACT will work as advertised.
* Allied units marching through 0 mobility conquered sectors
are charged at least LND_MINMOBCOST.
Changes to Empire 4.2.10 - Mon Aug 13 14:34:39 MDT 2001
* Assault can reinforce own sector when SLOW_WAR is enabled.
* emp_client no longer converts lines into tags but still verifies executes,
pipes, and file redirect match players input.
* Added pboard command to capture enemy planes in your territory.
* Declaring war when at Sitzkrieg won't return relations to Mobilizing.
* Declaring war won't charge money if you're already Mobilizing.
* Added multiple territory fields.
* "show nuke build" displays the proper avail.
* retreating land units will only retreat to sectors owned by the player
that owns the unit.
* added hard cap of "250 + easy" to limit_level.
* education p.e. calculation divides edu constant by etu per update.
* Added patch for Linux for the PowerPC.
Changes to Empire 4.2.9 - Sun Jan 7 15:49:13 PST 2001
* Fixed data corruption when bogus target gets fired upon.
* Increased size of ancillary stacks to prevent stack overflow.
* Changed all references to empire.cx.
* Ships, planes, and land units lost to lack of maintenance will now be
lost.
* No longer allowed to sack deity's capital.
* Accuracy calculation in land unit support was backwards.
* Corrected formula for likelihood of plague in info Plague.
* Fixed files to correctly size map and bmap files from econfig file.
* No longer allowed to add country 0. It corrupts deity country.
Changes to Empire 4.2.8 - Mon Oct 9 17:35:35 MDT 2000
* Fixed range in radar.t and Sector-types.t. Maximum range at infinite
tech is 16.
* Changed so that player can't drop civilians into occupied sectors.
* Fixed bug that crashes update if etus/update is less than 8.
* Fixed sometimes not reporting overflights
* Fixing flak for units/ships to be in all sectors as they should be
* Updated order of firing flak in Flak.t.
* Fixed 80% efficient planes on ships must be maintained.
* Fixed initial MOB_ACCESS check thread sleep time was set by an uninitialized
variable.
* Removed "TEMPORARILY DISABLED" message from mission command for escort
missions. Escort missions have been re-enabled since 4.0.15.
* Using sonar from the navigate command will print the sonar map.
* Eliminated annoying error messages when using navigate with conditionals.
* Fixed Technology.t to correctly add 1 before taking the logarithm.
* Fixed bug that allowed players to steal opponents maps.
* Put time limit for bidding on market and trade in econfig file.
* Moved hours file information into econfig file.
* Added comments on setting update policy in econfig file.
* Added logging of cases where write extends data file by more than one id.
* Option MARKET is turned off by default.
Changes to Empire 4.2.7 - Fri Mar 10 18:41:04 PST 2000
* Added new NF_SACKED flag to indicate when a country has had it's
capital sacked. This flag is only cleared when the country actively
redesignates it's capital using the "capital" command, and changed
capital.t to reflect this (no more re-sacking after an update if the
country doesn't reset and repeating until they are out of cash.)
* Added land unit to edit command for planes.
* Added nuketype to edit command for planes.
* Changed so that if the leader of a group of units is a train, the
railways are used for bestpath instead of roadways.
* Changed mission command to also print reaction radius of reserve
missions when set for land units.
* Changed Flak.t to reflect guns having to be loaded onto a land unit
for flak to fire.
* Changed so that visitor countries cannot change their name or password.
* Changed so that you cannot upgrade deity planes, ships or units.
* Changed so that you know where missions are flown from.
* Changed so that the airport owner you fly a mission from is informed.
* Changed so that preperations for takeoff are reported to the owner of
the sector, ship or unit a plane is taking off from if it is not owned
by the owner of the plane.
* Changed so that when a sector reverts during a guerrilla revolt, the
mobility is not reset. When MOB_ACCESS is not enabled, this used to mean
you would always get at least an updates worth of mobility. With
MOB_ACCESS, sectors that reverted during the update were useless, since you
got no mobility for a long time. This fixes that problem, and makes che
more useful as well.
* Changed so that air defense missions don't always send up every plane in the
area, but instead always send up at most two times the number of incoming
planes (for each interdicting country.) This helps to stop 1 plane from
stripping the mobility from 25 air defense planes all at once, but doesn't
limit it to n+1 as there is for regular interception.
* Clarified deity reversion of sectors in Sector-ownership.t
* Clarified production efficiency and added pointer to "show sector cap"
in Product.t
* Clarified nuketype selector for planes in Selector.t
* Clarified that fortifying units does not affect mission status in info
pages for mission and fortify.
* Clarified fuel syntax upon error in fuel command in empmod.c.
* Cleaned up comments causing minor complaints in some builds.
* Fixed bug in loans where you could collect on proposed loans.
* Fixed production command to be more accurate (though it *still* has some
rounding errors, it's better.)
* Fixed potential memory leak in air defense missions.
* Fixed bug where you couldn't pinbomb some commodities if other commodities
didn't already exist in the sector.
* Fixed bug where you couldn't build 0 crew planes without military in the
sector. (This is different from needing at least 1 military to build all
planes that need a crew which introduced another related bug earlier.)
* Fixed bug where scrapping land unit 0 could cause erroneous transfer
messages to be displayed for deity owned planes.
* Fixed bug where land units on ships in a sector taken over were blown
up or captured.
* Fixed bug where planes on ships in a sector taken over were blown up
or captured.
* Fixed bug in sdump printing origx and origy in deity coordinates.
* Fixed bug in satellites showing wrong sectors (sometimes) when using the
optional arguments.
* Fixed bug in launch showing wrong satellite target (showed asat instead
of the target satellite.)
* Fixed bug where you could gain information not normally available using
the "fire" command to determine sector type information.
* Fixed bug in market/trade creating extra money when loans are taken out.
* Fixed problem with land units not being reported sunk after being sunk
on a ship that was nuked or wastelanded in a sector.
* Fixed problem with Spies.t using "llook" instead of "llookout".
* Fixed problem in lwp/arch.c including jmp_buf.h instead of setjmp.h
on some Linux boxes.
* Fixed problem with plague infection being way too high in cities when
the BIG_CITY option is enabled.
* Fixed bug in edit command getting confused with arguments.
* Fixed bug in ask_move_in_off asking you to move in a negative number of
troops (hey, it could happen. :) )
* Fixed bug in add command not keeping flags or relations initially correct.
* Fixed bug in torpedo command sometimes telling victim about torpedo
sightings even when way out of range.
* Fixed bug in spy command not reporting planes in adjacent sectors, as well
as not formatting them properly when reporting them.
* Fixed bug in satellite with noisy transmission causing a potential
crash of the server with non-100% efficient satellites.
* Fixed potential crashing of the server during satellite display when not
calculating distances to ships and units correctly.
* Fixed bug where planes in non-allied sectors, ships and units could be
used on missions.
* Fixed bug where planes on the trading block could be used on missions.
* Fixed bug where planes and units that get traded don't have mobility set
correctly when using MOB_ACCESS option.
* Fixed bug which made security units virtually useless.
* Fixed access times and mobility not being set right when building planes,
ships, units, bridges and bridge towers when MOB_ACCESS is enabled.
* Fixed minor formatting problem with launch of satellites.
* Fixed minor formatting problem with planes with greater than 999 tech.
* Fixed minor formatting problem with ships with greater than 999 tech.
* Fixed problem with "llook" showing up in TOP info file.
* Fixed problem with lwp Makefile choking on NT builds with clean target.
* General cleanup of potentially ambiguous statements.
Changes to Empire 4.2.6 - Fri Jun 4 05:55:20 PDT 1999
* Added "TECH_POP" as an option where technology costs more to make
as your population grows past 50K civilians. It is disabled by
default.
* Changed "produce" command to accurately print what the true p.e. is.
* Changed "update" command to display if mobility updating is enabled for
MOB_ACCESS option.
* Fixed bug where toggling off the coastwatch flag also turned off
forts firing on hostile ships coming into range.
* Fixed bug where assaulting your own land would violate any treaties
you have where assaults are a violation.
* Fixed bug where all planes (even those without need for a crew, such
as missiles) needed at least 1 military to build.
* Fixed bug where when a ship sinks during the update due to lack of maint,
land units and planes on it were left stranded.
* Fixed bug where when a land unit dies during the update due to lack of
maint, land units and planes on it were left stranded on it.
* Fixed bug where nukes could be lost due to MOB_ACCESS updating mobility
while arming.
* Fixed bug in "show sector capabilities" not showing products correctly.
* Fixed bug in "show tower build" printing "bridges" instead of "bridge
towers".
* Fixed bug in sectors that don't revolt not showing up as lost items.
* Fixed bug where maps with an X of exactly 200 is not drawing third line.
* Fixed bug where MOB_ACCESS was not updating the mobility just before
the update.
* Fixed bug in the way treaties are examined and sometimes produce
wrong results.
* Fixed edit to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
* Fixed setsector to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
* Fixed bug where when writing out the value of a sector that had
negative mobility and was damaged in combat, mobility was being
set back to 0.
* Fixed Taxes.t info page to reflect that captured civvies only pay
1/4 taxes.
* Fixed Technology.t info page to reflect TECH_POP option.
* Fixed navigate.t info page to reflect that only ships in the fleet
in the same sector that are fired upon have damage divided up.
* Made techlists toggle on by default (so things are shown in order of
technological advances.)
Changes to Empire 4.2.5 - Mon Mar 1 06:42:24 PST 1999
* Added optimization to increasing mobility to check if an object is
already at max mob, just return since it can't be increased.
* Added "-ltermcap" for client libs for hp build (it was already in
hpux build.)
* Added clearing of telegram flags after the update so that the next
telegram is flagged as new and not part of the update.
* Fixed Update-sequence.t to reflect MOB_ACCESS.
* Fixed bug where fortification amount was not being limited to
maximum mobility for land units (land_mob_max).
* Fixed bug where land unit fortification strength was being calculated
by using 127 instead of land_mob_max.
* Fixed bug where scrapping land units was creating military.
* Fixed description of sect_mob_neg_factor in econfig file.
* Increased speed of PT boats.
Changes to Empire 4.2.4 - Tue Feb 2 05:47:44 PST 1999
* Added check to make military values match up correctly for land
units.
* Fixed bug in doconfig not putting ipglob.c in the right place.
* Fixed bug where attacking deity sectors will violate a treaty.
* Fixed newspaper.t information file.
* Fixed potential bug in fixing up timestamp information when restarting a
game with MOB_ACCESS turned on.
* Fixed bug in explore command not setting mobility to correct
value when MOB_ACCESS was enabled.
* Fixed bug in enlist setting mobility incorrectly sometimes.
* Added doc/backup file for deities which recommends how backups and
restores of the data directory should be done.
Changes to Empire 4.2.3 - Wed Jan 13 06:02:35 PST 1999
* Added linux-pthreads target and build for using pthreads under Linux.
* Added NO_FORT_FIRE option which disables the ability of forts to
fire when enabled.
* Added more error checking and recovery for corrupt data files.
* Changed alphapos target to alpha-pthreads for better clarity.
* Changed fairland to allow 0 sector distance to other islands and
continents (James Risner)
* Changed "frg" and "dam" land unit stats to "rng" and "fir" so they
match the way ships are described (since this is how they really work.)
* Changed Unit-types.t to now describe "rng" as firing range of a unit,
and "fir" as the number of guns that a land unit fires.
* Cleaned up misc. build warnings.
* Changed artillery damage to be 5 + d6 per gun firing from just d6
per gun firing and updated Damage.t to reflect this change.
* Changed artillery firing ranges to be like ships ranges - divided
by two, and modified them to make more sense.
* Changed artillery units to be "slightly" :) more powerful.
* Changed "cavalry" unit to tech 30 and lowered mil content to 20.
* Changed "artillery" unit to tech 35.
* Changed so that guns are no longer required to build units, and
that guns must be loaded onto artillery units for them to fire.
Client developers note: the show command has not changed yet to
remove the 'guns' column (since guns are no longer required) but
will in a future revision (possibly 4.2.4) so "be prepared" for
"show land build" to change. :)
* Fixed landunitgun to handle all the damage calculations like it should.
* Fixed bug sinking planes when the ship they are on sinks.
* Fixed bug destroying planes when the land unit they are on is destroyed.
* Fixed bug where land units could fire support without enough military.
* Fixed bug in abandoning sectors by marching out a land unit where it
would not let you sometimes (uninitialized variable problem.)
* Fixed gets problem in files.c (James Risner)
* Fixed bug in determinig operations range of a ship.
* Fixed bug in building planes where you could manufacture military.
* Fixed warnings in threading package(s).
* Fixed fire.t to reflect new firing changes.
* Fixed lstat.t to reflect new firing changes.
* Fixed sstat.t to reflect the way things really work.
* Fixed Ship-types.t to reflect the way things really work.
* Fixed the way shutdowns work to hopefully better protect data files.
* Fixed bug in attacking when sector mobility is less than 0 and it would
prompt for attacking with a negative amount of military.
* Fixed typo in fire.t stating wrong parameters for firing from a sector.
* Fixed bug in client when it prompts for country name it was putting
an extraneous end of line on the end that needed to be stripped off.
* Fixed problems running on Linux running on an Alpha machine. Thanks
to Rocky Mountain Internet and Jeremy A. Cunningham for giving us time
on a machine to work out the bugs. (Note that the only build that
works on Linux/Alpha is the linux-pthreads)
Changes to Empire 4.2.2 - Sun Dec 27 12:46:34 PST 1998
* Added some code optimizations into the update code when building paths.
* Added some new cacheing for building paths to help speed up updates.
* Added so that you can use "name" and "password" with the change command
as well as "country" and "representative".
* Added flag to power command so that if you are a deity and enter
a negative number of countries you want to see, you see the power chart
for that many countries without power numbers on the next line. Only
useful for deities that want to see the chart un-broken up by that line.
* Added new functionality to fortify command. You can now use a negative
fortification value to cause the unit to be fortified and leave at
least that much mobility on the unit. I.E. "fort * -67" will fortify
all units and make sure the mobility of each unit doesn't go below
67. If the mobility is already below that level (or equal) the unit
is left unchanged.
* Added that the realm command prints "Realm #n is x:x,y:y" after
you set a new realm.
* Added TREATIES option and enabled it by default.
* Added "no depth-charging subs" and "no new land units" treaty
clauses.
* Added Trannie Carter's basic client fix to use fgets instead of gets.
* Changed market and command to only print the lowest priced lot of
each given commodity by default. If you specify "all" it shows
all lots on the market, and if you specify a specific item, it shows
all lots of that item type.
* Changed start command to only write out sector if it changed.
* Changed stop command to only write out sector if it changed.
* Changed how plane names were changed on server startup if the
PLANENAMES option was enabled.
* Changed move command to use standard askyn function for abandoning
sector prompt.
* Changed plane overlight sightings to take stealth into account,
and if the planes managed to evade all flak and interceptors, they
are not marked as "spotted" over enemy sectors.
* Changed all units with the supply flag to have their marching speeds
based on efficiency since that is their purpose. What this means is
that supply units and trains are more effective at 100% than at 10%
(just as fighting units are more effective at 100% than at 10%, but
their effectiveness is determined by how well they fight, not how well
they "run away, run away!" :) )
* Changed so that flash toggle is on by default for POGO at setup
time.
* Changed so that when a sector is taken, all land units owned by the
current owner are treated as planes are during takeovers (i.e. there
is a pretty good chance they are blown up, and if not, they change owner
to the attacker and are beat up pretty good.)
* Fixed treaties to work again.
* Fixed bug in taking over land units not using correct pointer (can
cause a crash or data corruption.)
* Fixed collect command to wipe deliver and distribution information
correctly.
* Fixed potential bug in bmap not working when destination bmap has
blank spaces in it.
* Fixed bug in shark command not getting right nation structure.
* Fixed bug in server where empty commands (for example, all spaces
or tabs) were being reported as bogus commands. They are now just
ignored.
* Fixed bug in scrap not dropping land units off of scrapped units carrying
them.
* Fixed bug in news where boarding of land units was reported backwards.
* Fixed bug in calculating new people when growing them during an update.
* 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,
since that is what it really is.
* Fixed retreat.t documentation to reflect the "retreat upon failed
boarding" flag.
* Fixed bug where satellites were not orbiting the world during the
update.
* Fixed bug in torpedos being too smart. They knew how to jump over
land! :) Now the "line_of_sight" routine is used to determine if a
torpedo has a straight path to the destination. If it doesn't, the
torpedo no longer jumps over land, but instead slams into it. This was
an interesting bug because you could torp ships on the other side of
a very skinny island as long as they were in range, even if there was
no sea route possible.
* Fixed bug when pinbombing and you run out of an object to pinbomb (land
units for example) but you still have to pick something to bomb. For
ships it worked ok (just aborted that it couldn't find any more ships)
and this was fixed for land units and planes.
* Fixed server crashing bug when flying a plane and not carrying
any cargo.
* Fixed bug in move losing commodities when it runs out of room in the
destination sector. Goods are now attempted to be returned to the
start sector, and apporpriate steps taken if the start sector is no
longer available.
* Fixed march to prompt you before you abandon a sector you own by
marching out the last land unit.
* Fixed check functions to only check the relevant portions of the structure
and not the timestamp info that doesn't affect how the object functions.
* Fixed bug in spy command that always told you if a spy unit was in a
non-owned sector.
* Fixed bug in displaying of land unit missions not showing correct land
unit range.
* Fixed bug in wire command where new announcements that you read at
the last second don't get wiped out properly.
* Fixed bug where announcement file could be corrupted by very long lines.
* Fixed bug where bmap was not set when player was told what kind of
sector they were attacking (this was an old abusable bug that was
removed long ago to fix the abuse, and it's been fixed in a non-abusable
way finally.)
* Fixed bug where change command would warn you about monetary and
BTU costs, but not prompt you to break out if you didn't want to really
change your country name.
* Fixed bug in sub-launched nukes that are intercepted being reported in
the news incorrectly.
* Fixed bug in load where you could abandon a sector and not know it by
loading your last civilians or military onto a ship.
* Fixed potential memory leak in autonav code.
* Fixed potential bug where you could possibly determine if a sector is
owned or not using one way plane missions.
* Fixed Damage.t info page to properly show damages for planes and
land unit shelling.
* Fixed deliver.t to include syntax for command.
* Fixed country.t to include syntax for command.
* Fixed bug where ships on orders were not adding radar information to
the bmap during an update.
* Fixed bug where ships on sail were not adding radar information to
the bmap during an update.
* Fixed bestownedpath code to use the bmap properly. Note this is a very
important bug fix. When navigating a ship, players are no longer given
free information that they would not normally know. For example, if you
try sailing your ship off into uncharted areas of your bmap, the bestpath
code will only use as much information as you have on-hand (i.e. your
bmap) to plan out your path for you. If you have no information on an
area, it just keeps forging on, until bumping into something. Of course,
after the initial exploration through an area, the bmap will be set and
used for all future sailings through that area. Harbors and bridges
are still checked for construction worthiness if you know where they
are (i.e. they are on your bmap.) (Overall, what happened before
was that the bestpath code would route your ship around islands that
you didn't even know were there, and you could use various commands
to see how that ship was going to sail during the update and thus you
gained information that you wouldn't normally know.)
* Merged bestpath and bestownedpath and wrote new wrappers, "BestShipPath"
and "BestAirPath" to use it properly. It is also good to note that
bestownedpath is used to determine paths for ships and for planes,
and that best_path (which uses the A* algorithm) is used for all land
based paths, and that the two are never interchanged.
* Removed "jet recon" plane (it slipped in during the PLANENAMES conversion,
and RECON was never used before.)
* Removed extraneous "resnoise" and "resbenefit" functions and combined
the two for setresource and setsector commands.
Changes to Empire 4.2.1 - Tue Nov 3 12:56:20 PST 1998
* Fixed problem with global/plane.c not defining last structure element
properly, and thus causing crashes when accessing certain plane
routines. This happened during the move to make the PLANENAMES option
run-time configurable.
Changes to Empire 4.2.0 - Thu Oct 29 06:27:15 PST 1998
* Bumped rev to 4.2.0 since this is a major release (the server is now
run-time configurable for just about everything and is released under
the GNU GPL.)
* Put in official licensing information.
* Re-arranged and commented the econfig (Empire Configuration) file. The
auto-generated "data/econfig" file is now pumped out chock full of
comments (which may or may not be useful.) Since the server is
pretty much fully run-time configurable (MAXNOC is not, but it gets
a default of 99 anyway) deities will probably be spending more time
in the config file.
* Added server support for building under NT, including mods from
Doug Hay and Steve McClure to get the server building and running
under NT. (This was built using MSVC++ 5.0 on NT 4.0 and command
line "nmake nt")
* Added Doug Hay's ntthread.c implementation for NT threading.
* Added max pop column to "show sector stats" output.
* Added lboard command for boarding land units from sectors. Only raw
mil can board land units, and only mil and land units aboard the unit
being boarded fight back.
* Added GODNEWS option. When enabled, the deity giving people stuff
is shown in the news.
* Added bridge tower sector ('@')
* Added BRIDGETOWERS option. When enabled you can build bridge towers
from a bridge span. You can then build bridge spans from the tower.
If the tower is destroyed ( <20% eff) bridges connected fall unless
supported on the other side. You can only build bridge towers in open
water not adjacent to land and other towers. Expensive.
* Added plains sector ('~') - Max pop is 1/40th regular sectors, and
it is deity creatable only (can't redesignate unless you wasteland it
with a nuke :) )
* Changed "info all" to no longer use printdir, instead it just uses the "all"
info page which contains this information.
* Changed so you can now load up to 2 spy units onto non-land unit carrying
submarines if the LANDSPIES option is enabled. Useful for sneaking up
to shore and spying on your neighbors.
* Changed so spies unloaded from ships are not given as gifts, they are just
unloaded quietly.
* Changed build command to handle building towers ("build t")
* Changed show command to show tower stats ("show t b")
* Changed reject so you can now reject things from any country except
deity countries (this now includes sanctuary countries and visitor
countries you don't want to deal with)
* Changed ndump to dump nuclear stockpile ID as well.
* Changed flash so that if someone allied to you is either not logged on or
not accepting flashes, you are notified. This is info you could gain
otherwise since you can see other countries that are allied to you via
players.
* Fixed bug in news command when HIDDEN mods are enabled.
* Fixed distribute command to only write out to the database if we
actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really moved the dist
center, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
* Fixed threshold command to only write out to the database if
we actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really changed the
threshold, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
* Fixed - population growth and truncation in "Update-sequence.t" info
file is now clearer
* Fixed the way fortify takes mobility away from a land unit if
engineers are present.
* Fixed bug in buying commodities at the last minute not resetting the
time correctly in all situations.
* Fixed bug in building nukes where it would always ask if you tried
building more than one at a time.
* Fixed bug where if you put (either by building or by transporting)
more than 127 of one type of nuke in a sector, they all got lost. A
negative wrapover sort of thing.
* Fixed ndump to print # of stockpiles dumped.
* Fixed ndump.t to reflect changes
* Fixed bug in build command that didn't account for EOL characters.
* Fixed bug where you could use planes to drop conquered populace
* Fixed bug in distribute command in how it checked for current distribution
sector.