[conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng3 development snapshot is available

[Jon Trulson]

         .. at http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng3.src.tar.gz

         It's not linked to from the website so you won't find it
         there.

         I think the only 2 things holding up an official dev release
         now is animations and the 'language' issue.

         And of course, suitable combat testing with qualified
         professionals. :)

         In this release, there was a server change to work around
         another firewall issue that could cause the UDP link to be
         terminated.  I saw this on cyberbilly's server.  Also new
         shield graphics are present, and the IconHud is now the only
         HUD available in conquestgl.  So who wants to play a game?
         When?

         Here are the release notes:


8.1.2ng3 (snapshot release)  2/05/2006

          - Got rid of the old HUD.  The new Icon HUD is now the only
            hud in conquestgl and is a huge improvement over the old
            one.  Thanks Cat!  The DoIconHud and related options are
            now gone.

          - added new shield graphics.  It's basically an edited
            version of the original 'layer' texture, but with the
            insides 'partially' hollowed out and color coded according
            to strength.  It think it gives a nice 'bubble effect'... I
            much prefer it - hope you do too!

            The shield layer options are gone, and only do_shields
            remains - indicating whether you want to see a shield
            graphic or not.

            do_shields is now on by default.

          - re-arranged the 'alert' indicator text, armies text and
            towing text around the ship icon.  The alert text was too
            hard to read in certain cases.

          - changed the doomsday AP beam rendering to be less cpu
            intensive.  The beam simply uses an on/off duty-cycle of
            600ms now.

          - correct problem where clients might exit incorrectly when
            an unexpected packet arrives during the welcome phase.

          - While playing on CyberBilly's server, I noticed that when
            no ships are moving (and hence no UDP traffic is occuring),
            his firewall would terminate the UDP connection after 60
            seconds, and the client would exit.

            It's basically the reverse of the problem that required
            implementing a client UDP keepalive mechanism in v8.1.1.

            So the server has been modified to always emit at least one
            ship update for your ship every 5 seconds if UDP is active,
            and no other UDP data has been sent in that time.  This
            should work around the issue by keeping the connection
            'live'.

          - add more debugging to readPacket() so problems might be
            known.

          - texturesrc - remove layer shield textures, added new shield
            textures.  Updated to load the correct one for each ship.
            There are only 3 new textures that all the ships use
            depending on their shape :)

          - add a little explanation for the mysteryies in
            updateIconHudGeo().

          - Removed the colorconv and team icon color stuff.

-- 
Jon Trulson    mailto:jon at radscan.com
ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962
PGP keys at http://radscan.com/~jon/PGPKeys.txt
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