Empire Server Files

Release notes for Wolfpack Empire 4.3.24

This release fixes serious bugs.  Player visible changes include ships
and land units stopping on interdiction regardless of damage.  Deity
visible changes include restored support for much larger maps.

Deities are urged to use this release for new games.  Upgrading
mid-game is not supported, and expected to result in total disaster.
Fine print: you should be able to upgrade from 4.3.16 or later with
the empdump utility, if you know what you're doing.

This release was made from the Git repository at

    http://git.pond.sub.org/?p=empserver;a=summary


Released files:

Source code
 * empire-4.3.24.tar.gz             Everything
 * empire-client-4.3.24.tar.gz      Just the client

Pre-formatted documentation
 * empire-info-text-4.3.24.tar.gz   Text
 * empire-info-html-4.3.24.tar.gz   HTML

Binaries
 * empire-client-4.3.24-*           Clients for various systems

User contributed files:
 * contrib/empire-server-4.3.24-i386-win32.zip
                                    Server binaries for Windows
				    (Ron Koenderink)


Change log:

Changes to Empire 4.3.24 - Tue Jan 26 21:29:14 UTC 2010
 * The client sometimes hung under Windows when the server closed the
   connection.  Broken in 4.3.23.
 * Fix navigate and march not to crash the server when a path argument
   consists of a valid path plus whitespace.  Broken in 4.3.7.
 * When a client sent a blank line in the login phase, the server
   crashed on some systems.
 * Fix crash bug in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail.  Broken
   in 4.3.16.
 * Fix bogus internal error on escort, recon, and satellite launch.
   Mostly harmless, as error recovery worked fine.  Broken in 4.3.23.
 * Stop ship and land unit movement on interdiction even when it does
   no damage.
 * When an interdiction did no or only collateral damage, the planes
   that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no petrol, and
   interdicted land units were immune to collateral damage.
 * The limit for the number of sectors, ships, planes, land units,
   nukes, and so forth is now large enough not to matter.  It used to
   be 32768 on common machines.  The sector limit was introduced in
   4.3.12.  World x- and y-size are still limited to 65536 on common
   machines.
 * News use much less space, and thus I/O.  Space was wasted in
   4.3.12.  Side effects of the change:
   - Expiry of old news no longer updates news timestamps.  Updating
     timestamps was wrong, because it defeated incremental xdump news.
   - The empdump utility can no longer update timestamps of imported
     news.  Unfortunate, as it breaks incremental xdump news.
 * New news selector duration, the time span covered by this news item
   in seconds.
 * ABMs failed to charge supplies when their sector was the
   intercepted missile's target.  The stock game's ABMs use no
   supplies.
 * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
   the missile's target.
 * Code refactoring and cleanup.

Change log just for the client:

 * The client sometimes hung under Windows when the server closed the
   connection.  Broken in 4.3.23.