[conquest] Conquest 8.4.1i (devel) is now available

[Jon Trulson]

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

         Windows XP conquestgl binary zipfile:
         http://downloads.sourceforge.net/conq/conquest-8_4_1i.zip

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

         Mercurial (hg) tag for this release: conquest-8.4.1i

         Mercurial (hg) (current) development:
         http://conq.hg.sourceforge.net/hgroot/conq/conq


Conquest 8.4.1i (devel) is now available.  This version fixes a
variety of minor server and client bugs, and adds preliminary support
for MAC OS X (Darwin) and native Windows XP support for the OpenGL
client, conquestgl, via the MinGW cross-compiler suite.

This will probably be close to a stable release soon.

A Windows XP .zip file is also now available on sourceforge (link
above) containing a precompiled conquestgl binary, and relevant
configuration and data files.  See the INSTALL.TXT file in the .zip
package for installation instructions.  This package supports hardware
accelerated OpenGL (providing your card/windows driver supports it) and
full sound support.

Without further ado - here is the HISTORY chunkage for this release:

8.4.1i (devel) 03/27/2010

   - unless there is a big problem, a 'stable' official release will be
     up next.

   - Switch to using Mercurial (hg) for source code control.  I totally
     love it compared to svn.

   - MAC OS X (Darwin) support.  Note this support is still a little
     fuzzy, in regards to counquest group creation, etc.  I do not have
     direct access to a Darwin system, so this port was accomplished by
     back-and-forth with a friend who does.  Once you can get it built,
     OpenGL and sound is fully functional.

   - Windows (XP) native support via MinGW cross-compiler toolchain :)
     See README.Windows for installation instructions (or INSTALL.TXT
     if you download the .zip package).  Full HW acceleration and
     sound.  Oh yes.

     I will build a binary .zip package for Windows XP systems and make
     it available on sourceforge.  Only the conquestgl executable and
     required config/data files will be provided.

     I do not have access to Windows 7, so I have no idea if it would
     work on those systems.

     The zip file will contain an INSTALL.TXT file for instructions on
     installation.

   - Allow various GL functions to be able to detect when geometry is
     changed so they can compensate.

   - Fix problem where using undefined mouse macros could inadvertantly
     cancel beaming or bombing.

   - Fix problem wereby the doomsday AP beam was being drawn with
     length PHASER_DIST rather than DOOMSDAY_DIST.

   - add missing contrib/ dir to src dist.

   - remove 'telnet' support.  None of these servers have been in
     operation for years, so there's no need for 'telnet' server hacks.
     Remove conquestsh, and conquestsh.man.  Update SERVER.TXT and
     conquest.man

   - change Conquest licensing from Artistic v1 to Artistic v2.  Based
     on stumbling across:

     http://www.linux-archive.org/fedora-games/140611-good-candidate-packaging-conquest.html

     Really - if any dist has issues with Conquest's license, I can't
     do squat about it if I don't know about it.

   - correct a server problem with UDP keepalive packets.  UDP
     keepalive packets are sent to the server by the client on a
     periodic basis to convince some firewalls that the UDP link is
     still active.

     During certain operations (like beaming, bombing, self destruct,
     etc) these packets could improperly terminate these activities on
     the server, leaving the client to believe these activities were
     still in progress.

     Now, the lower level packet handling routines filter out these
     packets, preventing them from accidentally affecting the game's
     state.

   - since nWelcome can be called multiple times, init the state in the
     Init routine.

   - add server name and version to (O)ptions display.

   - add '%option noyywrap' to the yacc parser.  Do not need it, and this
     is required for macosx, apparently.

   - Remove Unixware specific privilege support.

     In the old days, when I was running Conquest on i386/i486 hardware
     under Unixware, being able to escalate the drivers process
     priority and lock the commonblock into memory was a good win for
     performance.

     These days, the hardware is so fast, and memory so expansive, it
     makes no sense to do this anymore :) Also, I haven't run unixware
     in over 10 years, so....

   - Remove terminfo src files (ti/*) from the source distribution.

     While these files will still be available in the source code repo,
     they will no longer be supplied in the src distribution tarballs.

   - get rid of portable snprintf implementation - used as a fallback
     if the target OS does not support it.  All target OS's do support
     it, and the fallback implementation could not handle floats
     without crapping on itself anyway.

   - Get rid of localhost data and checks.  Totally uneccessary.  Buh
     bye.

   - Fix a memory leak when dealing with cInfo.remotehost

   - Under windows, default to -m if no server (-s) explicitly
     specified.

   - Fix up the 'CLIENTID' (client type) stuff.  Differentiate between
     'Unix' and 'Windows' systems.

   - Add check for gzipped .cqr files and no LIBZ support.  Emit a more
     useful error if you attempt to replay a compressed game recording
     (.cqr) but your client was not built with libz support.

   - Add sdl.m4 and libtool.m4 autoconf files in m4/, in case the
     target build system does not have it

   - Update several of the autoconf scripts (ltmain.sh, yylwrap, etc)
     to more current versions.

   - Use CONQUEST_NAME for the Window title (GL client)

   - On Windows(MINGW), use $APPDATA/Conquest to store per-user
     settings and config.

   - Provide a mechanism when running under windows to locate the
     various files conquesgl needs to run (etc/, img/, sound/)

     Under Windows, CONQETC/CONQSHARE don't really mean much.  So, we
     add a new funtion, utGetPATH() that will attempt to locate the
     various directories conquestgl needs at runtime.  These are: etc/
     (for global configuration), img/ (for textures) and sound/ (for
     the sound files).

     First, if there is an env variable CONQUEST_ROOT set to some path,
     this will be used to find the other directories.

     If this env var is not present, then the 'standard' Windows
     %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%/Conquest/ will be used to locate these
     directories.

     Otherwise we will default to /Conquest.

     For example, if you download a conquestgl .zip file, and unpack it
     under C:\ , you will want to set CONQUEST_ROOT equal to
     "C:\Conquest", and add "C:\Conquest\bin" to your Path, and all
     will be well.

   - Add a makewinzippkg script for building the windows binary zip
     package, add the DLL's neccessary for packaging under windows
     (windlls/).

   - a variety of other misc stuff.  See 'hg log' (if you have the hg
     repo cloned) for any missing details.


Happy hunting :)


-- 
Jon Trulson                      | A828 C19D A087 F20B DFED
mailto:jon at radscan.com           | 67C9 6F32 31AB E647 B345

"... It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his
waist and knees â?? dress does not hide him; ... "
        -- "I Sing the Body Electric", Walt Whitman (1819â??1892)