[conquest] Conquest 8.4.1d (devel) released

[Jon Trulson]

         Source tarball:
         http://downloads.sourceforge.net/conq/conquest-8.4.1d.src.tar.gz

         Optional musicpak (unpack in ~/.conquest/):
         http://downloads.sourceforge.net/conq/conquest-musicpak-8.3.tar.gz

         SVN tagged release:
         http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/tags/conquest-8.4.1d

         SVN current (possibly unstable) development:
         http://conq.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/conq/trunk



  8.4.1d (devel) is now available.  This version includes new Orion
  ship textures, another rework of the icon-ship hud area, and some bug
  fixes (including a server bug), and a variety of other things.


  Below is the relevant HISTORY horkage:

8.4.1d (devel) 10/01/2009

   - a devel release, some highlights:

   - fix server bug that would cause vacant ships, when destroyed, to
     fail to explode properly, leaving some stationary torps behind.

   - Visible changes:

     - some changes to work better with wide-screen display formats

     - new orion ship textures (yay!)

     - rework (centering, shrinking, etc) all of the ship textures, and
       fixing a couple of issues with some of the planet textures.

     - new ship shield textures (both for the icon-ship display and the
       main viewer).

     - in conquestgl, torps are no longer colored according to their
       'danger' level.

     - rework of the icon-ship display:

       - now use a luminance variant of the main ship texture as the
         ico-ship rather than a seperate texture.

       - implement 'lamps' rather than the text (cloaking, repair,
         shields, etc)

       - make the ico-ship drawing area square to avoid stretching
         issues

       - use actual ship's torp texture for the torp-pips

       - use ship's phaser texture for the phaser recharge indicator

    - non-visible changes

      - rework of the texture represnetation and color representation
        in conquestgl

      - rework of the packet handling functions.

   ## Detailed changes (svn log, basically) since 8.4.1.  Read if you
      *really* want the details :):

   - prevent cores if NULL passed to ibufPut()

   - allow conquest to build if GL/glut is not available.  Of course,
     you only get the currses client...

   - cleanup packet handling API in packet.[hc]:

     - get rid of the need to specify the socket fd(s) to the pkt*()
       routines.

     - get rid of the 'direction' (TOSERVER/FROMSERVER/etc) arguments
       to the pkt*() functions - not needed anymore.

   - rework the packet handling to use the new ringbuffers in
     preparation for non-blocking socket io.

   - New textures for Orion Scouts, Destroyers, and Cruisers.

     The .blend files used to create these textures are in the src repo
     in img/src/blender/ .  See the README for more details.  These
     files will not be made a part of a Conquest src release since they
     are large, and it's unlikely a 'regular' user would want to mess
     with them.  They are available in the src tree via svn though.

     The new textures were created by using freely available meshes
     from ShareCG.com, and importing them (as best I could) into
     blender, painting/texturing/lighting them, then rendering the
     'scene' to create a texture for Conquest.

     I'd love to do this for all of the ships in Conquest, as it looks
     really nice.  Maybe someday if Conquest ever goes 3D then these
     models would be used as the ships themselves :)

   - While adding the new ship textures, decided to redo texture
     mapping so that it is consistant within Conquest without various
     hacks.  As a result, all textures have been modified:

        - Always force the TGA origin to be in the Lower left.
          Previously it was the upper right.  In gimp, if saving a
          texture, just make sure you specify 'Origin in lower left'
          when saving.  Texture mapping code in Conquest will always
          assume this from now on.

        - 0 degrees is 'east' in conquest, so now it is this way in the
          textures too.  All textures rotated 90 deg so that the
          'front' of an object always points east, rather than north
          like it used to.

   - Enemy ship box now draws the alert box at the ship's depth plane to
     avoid perspective issues.

   - CQI Textures can now be loaded as a luminance texture by
     specifying

                luminance "yes"

     in the texture definition.

     This allows a grey scale (luminance) image to be created based on
     an RGB[A] texture.  These greyscale images are now used to
     generate textures for all of the ico-ship displays in the hud.
     Therefore, the seperate ico-ship textures (12) have been removed.
     This looks alot nicer as well as not requiring the creation of
     extra textures when adding a new ship texture :)

   - drawLineBox now supports a Z component.

   - drawTexQuad now can properly support both perspective and
     orthographic projections with regard to proper texture coordinate
     mapping.

   - fix up the icon-ship area so that the icon ship is always drawn within
     a square to prevent 'stretching' issues.

   - do not color torps according to their 'danger' level (green,
     yellow, red) anymore, instead just use whatever the torp texure
     provides.  It's up to you, as the ships captain, to know whether
     an approaching torp is dangerous or not.  When in doubt, raise
     shields. :)

   - in line with above, add some 'purple-ness' to the orion torps
     (instead of pure white).  The Orions really dig purple.

   - make GLColor_t a union, containing both the individual color
     components and a vector pointing toward them, suitable for use
     with glColor*v() calls.

   - make getLocalhost() more informative during failures.

   - switch to using a new GLTexture_t definition in as many places as
     possible, rather than keeping copies of colors, texture id's, etc
     in various structs (GLShips, GLPlanets, etc).

     This simplifies a variety of things, in addition to being more
     readable and wasting less memory.

   - remove as many hardcoded glColor*() calls by always using the
     texture's color specification.  CQI will now warn when a texture
     is defined that is missing a color specification.  Since it will
     be black and transparent, it might be somewhat hard to see :)

   - to avoid potential NULL pointer dereferences, create a 'default'
     checkerboard texture to use in certain cases where a texture
     *must* be present, like ships.

   - use the new GLTEX_ID and GLTEX_COLOR helpers whereever possible.

   - GLShips, GLPlanets, and Doomsday now use GLTexture pointers rather
     than copies of texid's and colors.

   - color specifications added to all texture definitions in
     texturesrc that were missing them.

   - add new 'lamp' textures (for the ico-ship area) and relevant code.
     Think of the lamps as a 'check engine' light on your car :)

     Lamps are displayed for hull, shields, engine temp, weapon temp,
     and fuel - should they experience a condition you should know
     about (critical/failure).

   - clean up the CRIT defines and use them rather than hardcoding the
     relevant thresholds in the code.

   - remove cqsEffectPlayTracked() and move it's functionality into
     cqsEffectPlay - there's no point in having two play functions that
     are virtually identical.

   - modify drawTexQuad so that textures can be mapped rotated 90
     degrees from their normal mapping.

   - clean up the classd (mars), uranus, and luna textures (shrink if
     neccessary so as not to affect texture border, remove 'slutty'
     pixels :)

   - rewrite drawTexBoxCentered to use drawTexQuad

   - re-order drawTexQuad to use x, y, and z as the first 3 args.  Use
     GL_QUADS rather than GL_POLYGON

   - fix up some utLog error messages that could core if ever called :(

   - add a seperate blinkerQue for blinker animdefs and set them up in
     blinker.[hc]. Blinkers can be used in a variety of places in
     conquestgl, so no need to confine them to the CP and PlayB nodes
     via GL.c.  They are initted as part of graphicsInit(), after CQI
     has loaded all of the textures and animdefs, so they can now be
     used in any node without 'headaches' or special code - just
     include blinker.h and have fun.

   - get rid of TEX_HUD_ITORPIN, not used anywhere.



Enjoy!


-- 
"Nothing Unreal, Exists."            | Jon Trulson
     -  'First law of Metaphysics'    | mailto:jon at radscan.com
         Kira Kim                     | A828 C19D A087 F20B DFED
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