[conquest] Conquest version 7.2c-cs-11 is now available
Jon Trulson
jon at radscan.com
Sat Oct 11 21:07:23 MDT 2003
Long time no post... Conquest version 7.2c-cs-11 is now available
on the conquest website:
http://radscan.com/conquest.html
The tarball can be found on:
http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-7.2c-cs-11.src.tar.gz
This is a development version, and will become Conquest v8.0 when
complete. A graphical (OpenGL) client will probably follow that.
The big change here is the split of conquest into a true
client/server multiplayer game. A new test server is now running at
conquest.radscan.com. To connect, download, compile, and install the
7.2c-cs-11 development version. Then:
conquest -s conquest.radscan.com
Here is the README-DEV-RELEASE.txt file present in the release.
The other documentation has not been updated yet. Please read it, there
are alot of changes.
10/11/2003
This is the first release of a development version of the
client/server conquest. There have been quite a few changes from v7.x!
The common block revision has changed, making this version
incompatible with previous versions. There may be more
changes on the way to a final release, but I will try to limit
them as much as possible.
To build it, I would use something like (I'll assume below
that you will install conquest in /opt/conqnet):
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/conqnet --enable-static=no
$ make
Then the usual 'make install' as root.
Run conqoper, init the universe and open the game.
Please feel free to contact me with any problems, patches,
etc.
Of course the major change in this release is that conquest
uses a network based client server model. There is now a
seperate conquestd program that listens to network requests
from clients (conquest). If you want to run a game on your
machine, you will need to start conquestd like so:
/opt/conqnet/bin/conquestd &
I would do this from a seperate non-privileged account of
course, if you intend to invite the unwashed internet
masses onto your server to play.
The final version of conquestd should allow you to specify the
uid to run under (like 'nobody') for internet servers.
Then if you just type 'conquest', it will try to attach to the
conquest daemon on your local host. To connect to a remote
host, use the '-s' switch.
This will take you to the login screen. Choose a username,
password etc, login, and kick some ass.
I have setup a public testing server here for this release
that you can connect to like so:
/opt/conqnet/bin/conquest -s conquest.radscan.com
Note, as this is a dev release, there may be changes made to
the version of the public server I have running at
conquest.radscan.com that might require you to download a new
src tree in order to connect (if the common block or protocol
revision changes), or the universe might get reset,
klingons and romulans might start dating each other, etc. I
will try to keep these changes to a minimum, but expect the
unexpected until the stable version is released.
Once an official 'stable' release is made, the old telnet
server there (v7.2) will probably go away.
There may eventually be multiple servers running (one for
experienced playas, for example, running on a different port.)
There is still much work to be done. The final release will
be called v8.0 and probably will not include a graphical
client. That will come later ;-)
Here is a (big) list of the most significant changes and other
information you may find useful. The conquest documentation
itself will be updated when final release approaches, for now
it's essentially untouched from the last stable release (7.2).
- conquest is now client/server. In the old days, the
conquest binary had to be run on the same machine as the
common block (universe). In order to run a 'server', a telnet
interface was used so remote players could connect.
Now, conquest is a client that can connect over the network
to any conquest server (conquestd). In the future, there
will be a graphical client, using OpenGL to render the main
battle screen. That will probably be my next big priority
when this version is fully released in stable form as
version 8.
The protocol is endian safe of course.
- The conquest login screen provides information about the
server you are attached to - number of active ships, server
name, enabled flags (see below), MOTD, etc.
- The daemon (conquestd) listens on TCP port 1701 by default.
You can change this by supplying '-p <port>' to the
conquestd command line.
If you want to run your own public internet server, you need
to allow tcp/1701 into your firewall (or whatever port you
configured your server to use). I would recomend running
the daemon as an unprivileged user. Oh, and please let me
know about it - I'll add it to the list on the Conquest
homepage. Also, I may drop in for a little ass-kicking
(mine or yours - you decide ;-)
- Client Updates. From the options menu, a player can set the
update interval anywhere from 1 to 10 updates per second.
The default is currently 5. There is no AllowFastUpdates
capability anymore. I would not recommend 10 per second on
a modem. Try different ones until you find one that works
best for your connection. In the old conquest, 1 and 2 were
the only options.
- Conquest operators are now defined as any user with the
OOPT_OPER option set in his or her user profile. They will
be listed in the (U)ser list with a '+' to the left of their
name.
Currently a user marked with OPER can only start and stop
server recordings from within the game using 'EXEC' messages
sent to GOD from within the game. Other than that, there is
no difference compared to a normal user.
Of course, only someone with shell access on the server
machine, and who is a member of the conquest group can run
the conqoper program. Root can always run conqoper.
In the future, more EXEC commands may be provided to
conquest operators so they can become the tin plated
dictators with delusions of godhood most of them secretly
want to be. :)
- Previous versions of conquest (v7.0+) used to distinguish
between 'local' and 'remote' users. Local users were users
who were playing conquest from a shell account on the
machine where conquest was installed. Remote users were
users playing from a generic conquest account, usually setup
by the system administrator, that had the conquest
executable as the shell. In this way a 'server' could be run
by providing telnet access to this special account from the
internet.
'Remote' users were denoted by a '@' next to their usernames
in conquest.
Since Conquest now uses a client server model, all users are
remote. The '@' tag is gone. Even playing on a local
machine is still accomplished by connecting to a local
conquest server via TCP, so there is no such thing as a
'local' user anymore.
Also for this reason, the conquest client is no longer
set-groupid conquest - no need, since no special privileges
or access is required. If you can connect to a server, you
can play.
- user and system configuration (conquestrc) have changed
significantly. Some options are gone now, others moved into
user config, etc.
Many of the Sysconf options have been moved into User
options (ETA stats, LR torpscan, etc)
Some user options like clear_old_msgs have been removed.
The 'compile options' are no longer viewable, since they
don't matter much from the player perspective, and are of
no use to a client anyway.
The server (conquestd) advertises certain game flags enabled
by the conquest operator (using conqoper) to the client.
These flags are displayed on the client login screen, as well
as from within the client's (O)ptions Menu. The flags are
configured by the operator using conqoper.
The current flags are:
Refit - refits are allowed. You can refit to
one of the 3 types of conquest ships
when you have at least one kill, and
are orbiting a team owned planet.
Vacant - vacant ships are allowed. A ship goes
vacant when a client exits the game
without self destructing first, while
flying a ship.
When vacant ships are disabled by the
oper, such ships are immediately killed
by a 'lightning bolt'.
NOTE: In previous versions of conquest,
oper's would always go vacant in this
case, regardless of the vacant option
setting. In this version, every user
is subject to this option.
SlingShot - the SlingShot bug is enabled. This is
a towing bug that existed in the
original VMS/RatFor version of
conquest. It's a fun bug, and I
recieved several emails about it when I
inadvertantly fixed it in a later
version without understanding it's
significance.
If you don't know what it does,
well... figure it out! You'll need a
buddy to make it work though ;-)
NoDoomsday - when set, the doomsday machine is
prevented from randomly starting up and
trashing the universe.
Killbots - when this option is enabled, robots are
created with a random kill point
value. The kill points a ship has
affects the efficiency of it's engines,
the strength of it's weapons, etc.
Normally when a robot is created (by
attacking an unguarded homeplanet, etc),
it is initialized to 0 kills. When
this option is enabled, a kills value
is randomly selected. This means that
a new robot might prove to be much more
deadly than the default 0 kill robot.
This may not be a good option to enable
on a public server where newcomers play.
Fighting a 25 kill robot takes some
skill ;-)
SwitchTeam - when enabled, users can switch teams at
the conquest main menu.
- the 'I' command is no longer provided. All of those options
have been added to the User options menu.
- Users can no longer have multiple ships. If you have a
vacant ship, you will be automatically attached to it. The
game still has most of this code present, so this feature could
be added back in the future if enough people whine.
- When using the (U)sers command in the client, only those
users attached to currently active ships, or attached to
entries in the History ring will be listed. There is no
point in checking 500 user slots on each client update ;-)
For this reason, only the conqoper program will be able to
list *all* users.
- the client creates it's logfile in your home directory
(~/.conquest.log). The conquest server, driver, etc, will
still use the system log. Check these for any errors or
other oddities.
- When you die, you now get to see your ship explode first
before being taken to the 'dead' screen.
- There are still some debugging messages printed out logged.
These will be removed in a released version.
- added new 'Friend' target for messages. You can send a
message to all friendly ships by specifying 'fr' as the
destination for a message.
- new AltHUD user option. This is like the regular HUD, but
adds some of the information returned from infoship and
infoplanet calls to the lower alert line on the main
display. This can be useful in battle when messages or
other commands remove the info after requesting it.
Current info presented is:
FA: (Firing Angle). This lets you know the direction that
any further firing requests will use, unless a
direction is explicitly specified to the 'p' or 'f'
commands.
TA/D: (Target Angle / Distance). This item displays the
Target name, Target Angle and Target Distance
obtained in the last infoship/infoplanet request,
and is updated whenever you do an info command on
any ship or planet.
It is disabled by default.
- Recording.
- Recording has been completely reworked. Unfortunately,
any previous CQR files are incompatible with this release.
- you can now select the long range or short range view of a
ship you are watching in conqreplay.
- The new format uses the same packet protocol that the
clients use. This means recording files (cqr's) are
*much* smaller and much more efficient (cpu-wise) during the
recording process.
Another benefit is endian safety. With the old format,
recordings could only be played back on the same machine
architecture the cqr was created on. Since the recording
data is now based on the packet protocol, recordings are
now completely endian safe (network byte order is used).
So now, some poor slob on his Sun SPARC can play back a
recording I make on a lintel machine.
- There are two types of recordings: client and server.
- A client recording is made in the usual way - by calling
conquest with the '-r <recfile>' option.
Client recordings do not contain full information on
other ships (fuel, etc) since, in order to limit the
ability to cheat by hacking up the client, only pertinet
data about another ship is ever sent to the client.
For this reason, client recordings are identified by the
ship that made the recording. Although you can still
try to watch other ships in conqreplay than the one that
made the recording, the experience will probably not be
too rewarding, since much data about the ship will never
have been sent to the client to be recorded in the first
place.
For client recordings, conqreplay will always use the
recorder's ship number as the default to the (w)atch
command, though you can certainly select other ones,
keeping the caveat's above in mind.
Of course, full information is always recorded for the
ship that made the recording.
- Server recordings are complete (like the old recordings
made in previous versions of conquest), since the server
has full access to the common block (unlike clients).
All active ship/planet/etc data is stored in server
recordings. You can watch any ship in conqreply with a
server recording and get all info on the ship (heading,
fuel, temps, etc).
Server recordings are created in
PREFIX/var/conquest/conquest-rec-<timestamp>.cqr on the
server machine.
Server recordings are made when an oper (anyone who
has the ooption OOPT_OPER set in their user record)
sends a specially crafted message to GOD from within the
game.
Currently understood messages are:
exec recon
- turns recording on.
exec recoff
- turns recording off
Other oper options will probably be added in the future.
- Thanks to Clint Adams, the autoconf stuff has been
significantly updated.
- there are a whole buttload of other changes, most of them
internal. Let me know if I forgot to mention any important
ones.
- I looked upon my creation, and saw that it was good. :)
--
Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com
ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962
PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt
#include <std/disclaimer.h>
You talk like a Ferengi.
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