From jon at radscan.com Sat May 8 19:02:38 2004 From: jon at radscan.com (Jon Trulson) Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 19:02:38 -0600 (MDT) Subject: [conquest] Conquest 8.0.1a (devel) is now available Message-ID: at the usual place: http://radscan.com/conquest.html This is a development release. The big thing in this release is the addition of a GLUT/OpenGL client, conquestgl. There are a couple of screenshots on http://radscan.com/conquest.html Some fixes and enhancments to the conquest server and driver are also present in this release. Here is the snippet from the HISTORY file: Version 8.0.1a 5/08/2004 (devel) - Adds a GLUT/OpenGL client, conquestgl. Yay! - See http://radscan.com/conquest/index.html for a couple of screen shots. - The gl client is called 'conquestgl' - use this to run the OpenGL version of the client. The curses client 'conquest' is still present of course, for those who really dig the retro experience. - if you do not have OpenGL and GLUT libraries/headers on your system, supply the '--disable-gl' command line argument to the 'configure' script, as in: ./configure --disable-gl This will prevent the GL related clients and libraries from being compiled, and you will be stuck with the curses only client :) - Note, the GL client does not provide a 6 DOF (flight simulator-type) playing experience. Sorry - that would be an entirely new game. OpenGL and GLUT are used to basically present the same game experience as the current curses client, however, the use of a graphical client provides a much nicer experience visually. To be honest, I never use the curses client to play anymore :) - phaser shots from other ships are rendered in the GL client. - new user option: do_enemyshipbox when set to 'true', will draw a 1 pixel red square around enemy ships in the LR/SR views in the GL client. - currently the maximum Frames Per Second (FPS) is capped around 100. A 10ms delay will be inserted between frames if the FPS exceeds 75, which is really more than sufficient for conquestgl's rendering requirements. - there are no specific GL extensions required or used. OpenGL 1.1 and greater should be sufficient for building/running conquestgl. I have not tried running conquestgl on a software GL implementation like Mesa. With a fast enough processor, it could be playable though, since we are not talking about Quake 3 rendering requirements here :) - the mouse is not used in conquestgl - everything still runs by keyboard :) - up to 36 macros can be handled in conquestgl: F1 - F12 SHIFT F1 - F12 CTL F1 - F12 - conquestgl can also play conquest recording (.cqr) files. Use the -P 'cqr filename' option. conquestgl -P dethfun.cqr It's much nicer to watch recordings in the OpenGL version than using the curses-only 'conqreplay' program. Other than this, the options are the same for conquestgl as the curses client 'conquest'. - there are many enhancements that could be made to the various displays still: - a star/galaxy texture in the background of the viewer (partially implemented but not yet enabled). - spiffing up the text only screens in Conquest (user list, planet list, etc) - a better conquest logo display - non-destructive (alpha blended) information viewing (ship list, etc ) while in the middle of a fight. - phasers should probably be drawn using an alpha blended texture rather than a blended line. - need a better way to display explosions - need to increase line length and number of lines for the display of incoming messages. - the list goes on. Sigh. - conquestd/conqdriv changes - on entry to the game, the server will send a complete user list to the client. Previously, only users currently playing in the game or present in the history list were sent to the client. This means the '(U)ser list' option in the clients will list all of the users now. - conqdriv now updates planet positions every 10th/sec. Previously these were only updated every 5 seconds. This provides much smoother planet movement, especially in the GL client. Of course this increases the required bandwith some. If this is too much for your internet connection, reduce your 'updates_per_sec' option. - conqdriv now updates a ship's orbital position every 10th/sec rather than 1/sec. This makes orbiting planets much smoother - this is more noticable in the GL client. - missing doomsday protocol added. Believe it or not, with the 8.0.1 release version. I forgot to added the protocol for the doomsday. Using an older client (pre 8.0.1a) will results in an 'invisible' doomsday machine. Upgrade to a 8.0.1a or better client. The GL client uses a texture made from the original Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" :) - conqmeta changes - meta server now sorts output server list by the number of currently active players, rather than the server registration order. - fixed a bug where the meta server could not distinguish between multiple servers that were running on the same host, but listening on different ports. - alot of restructuring of the code and the creation of new libraries. - No UI specific code is present in libconquest anymore. - new generic libUi - all curses functions and the functions that depend on them are now in libUiCU - GL related functions and their dependants are located in libUiGL. - curses related functions removed from libconqclnt and libconqserv - new color implemetation, (colors.h) - UI agnostic. - much cleanup up of c_defs.h. - conqnews.doc renamed to HISTORY. - added CREDITS file to give credit where credit is due (netrek for the original pixmaps that formed the basis of the ship textures in conquestgl, etc) -- Jon Trulson mailto:jon at radscan.com ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962 PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt #include "I am Nomad." -Nomad