Empire Server Files

Release notes for Wolfpack Empire 4.3.27

This release fixes many bugs, some critical, some abusable.  Player
visible changes include bridge towers requiring fewer materials (to make
them buildable again in the default game configuration), and land units
no longer hitting allied landmines.  Deity visible changes include
optional logging of all player output.

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-4.3.27.tar.gz             Everything
 * empire-client-4.3.27.tar.gz      Just the client

Pre-formatted documentation
 * empire-info-text-4.3.27.tar.gz   Text
 * empire-info-html-4.3.27.tar.gz   HTML

Binaries
 * empire-client-4.3.27-*           Clients for various systems

User contributed files:
 * contrib/empire-server-4.3.27-i386-win32.zip 
                                    Server binaries for Windows
				    (Ron Koenderink)


Change log:

Changes to Empire 4.3.27 - Sun Apr 17 11:36:29 UTC 2011
 * License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later.
 * Fix buy not to wipe out concurrent updates.  Can be abused to
   duplicate commodities.
 * Don't let fighters, SAMs and ABMs intercept while on trading block.
 * Don't let missiles interdict ships or land units while on trading
   block.
 * Fix client to log long input lines untruncated
 * Fix client crash for long input lines
 * info subject pages now mark unusually long pages with a !.
 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.15, 4.3.17 and 4.3.20 are
   now gone.
 * Fix give, setsector and setres not to wipe out concurrent updates.
 * Fix explore, move, test, transport not to ignore spaces in path
   arguments.  Broken in 4.3.7.
 * Improvements to map drawing commands:
   - Don't fail silently when asked to draw a map around an invalid
     unit, explain the problem.
   - Deprecate bmap flag "r".  Use (a prefix of) "revert" instead.
   - bmap flags following "t" are no longer ignored.  However, info
     pages previously documented an argument "true" in addition to
     flag "t".  To keep that working, keep ignoring flags following
     "t" when they're bad.  But deprecate that usage.
   - Reverting the bmap no longer draws a map.
   - Bad conditionals could make the commands misinterpret their first
     argument.
   - The commands now fail when they reject their second argument.
 * The xdump syntax deprecated in 4.3.12 is now gone.
 * Fix satellite to fail on bad conditionals instead of ignoring them.
 * Journal improvements:
   - Optional logging of output.
   - Long lines are no longer truncated.
   - Login phase input is now logged, too.
   - Commands are now logged.  Allows making sense of input without
     context.
 * Option BRIDGETOWERS is now disabled by default.
 * Bridge towers now take 300 hcms to build, down from 400.
 * Fix stop orders to expire even when the country is broke.  Broken
   in 4.3.8.
 * Fix march and navigate not to advise on "legal directions" when
   path finding fails.
 * New path finder:
   - Much faster, especially for distribution, i.e. where it matters
     most.  Speedups in excess of 30x have been observed for updates
     taken from real games.
   - Old land path finder leaked memory occasionally.
   - Old land path finder overran buffers for very long paths.  A
     malicious player can arrange sufficiently long paths, but it
     takes a lot of land.  Distribution, the distribute command, land
     unit reaction, and automatic supply now handle arbitrary long
     paths.  Commands explore, move, test, transport, march, navigate
     and path now handle paths up to 1023 characters.  Command
     bestpath shows paths longer than 1023 characters with the tail
     replaced by "...".
   - Old sea and air path finder treated destinations as unreachable
     when the best path was longer than 99 characters.  Command sorder
     now handles arbitrary long paths.  Commands bomb, drop, fly,
     paradrop, recon, sweep and sail now handle paths up to 1023
     characters.  Autonav considers up to 1023 characters at the
     update.  Planes can fly missions up to 1023 sectors from their
     base.
 * Automatic supply charged mobility for the path back to the source
   instead forward to the sink.
 * Make bestpath work for deities in foreign land.
 * More robust savecore example script.
 * Fix buffer overruns in the lookout, spy, map and nmap commands when
   WORLD_X * WORLD_Y not a multiple of 16.
 * The path command's maps weren't always fitted to the path
   correctly.  Broken in 4.3.17.
 * Land units no longer hit allied mines.
 * Change sharebmap with yourself to do nothing instead of telling you
   you're not friendly to yourself.
 * You can now flash yourself.  Enjoy!
 * A race condition could make the flash command claim an ally was not
   logged on when he was.  Hard to trigger outside the lab.
 * The flash command no longer prints "Flash sent" for deities.  It's
   annoying.  It never did that for mortals.
 * Plug memory leaks in mission code on a number of conditions:
   - Submarines moving where own planes would interdict hostile
     submarines
   - Ground combat where countries hostile to one of the parties would
     support if relations were right (allied to one party, at war with
     the other)
   - Ships or land units moving within hostile missile mission op
     areas
   - Any player action within marine missile mission op areas that
     could trigger the missile owners' missions.
 * Attack fixes:
   - When you ordered a sector to attack with military, but lost the
     sector before the attack was executed, and the new owner was
     allied to you, the server got confused: it let the military
     attack even though they were already dead, but not occupy.
   - When you ordered a land unit to attack from an allied sector, and
     the sector got lost before the attack was executed, the server
     reported things as if you had owned the sector yourself.  The
     land unit still attacked when the new owner was also allied to
     you.  No more.
   - When a land unit attacked out of an allied sector, its mobility
     cost was computed as if the ally owned the land unit.  Attacking
     sectors old-owned by that ally was too cheap, and taking back
     one's own was too expensive.
 * Fix trade ships to pay off in own harbor.  Broken in 4.3.17.
 * Remove option SLOW_WAR.  It hasn't been enabled in a public game
   for years, and the code implementing it was buggy.
 * Fix a bug in sail that limited the sail path to 27 instead of the
   intended 28 characters.
 * Fix race condition in transmission of flash and telegram
   information messages that could double output and possibly crash
   the server.
 * Planes get to sweep and sonar only after flak and interception.
 * Don't limit the radar command's range to fit its output into a
   world map without clipping.  The limiting goes back to Chainsaw 2.
 * Make flak vs. pinpoint bombing consistent with ordinary flak:
   - 4.3.6 reduced the plane abort chance on damage, but missed the
     additional flak vs. pinpoint bombing.  Fix that.
   - Fix to charge mobility appropriate for damage.
 * Prettier flak damage reporting.
 * Fix bugs that could cause bmap updates from recon and satellite to
   be lost.
 * Fix lookout to properly report sector ownership to deities.
 * Suppress bogus messages deities with non-zero country number got
   when attempting to navigate foreign ships or march foreign land
   units.  Such deity use hasn't worked since Empire 2.
 * Deities can no longer fly foreign planes.  It didn't fully work
   since Chainsaw 3, and can trigger internal errors since 4.3.11.
 * Don't split lines over several bulletins.  The read command
   normally merges these bulletins, but if they are more than five
   seconds apart (clock jumped somehow), we get a bulletin header in
   the middle of a line.  Broken since Empire 2.
 * Don't beep when plane, land unit or nuke die on a collapsing
   bridge.  Not nice, because it could beep many times, and could put
   beeps in bulletins.  Beeping was added in 4.0.18.
 * Minor improvements to nuclear damage reporting.
 * When a deity dropped a foreign nuke, parts of the output went to
   the owner of the nuke instead of the deity.
 * When a player triggered a foreign missile launch (mission or
   interception), and the missile exploded on launch, part of the
   report went to the player instead of the missile owner.  This
   disclosed the missile owner's origin.  Broken in Empire 2.
 * When autonav reported to a ship owner that it can't load or unload
   foreign civilians, it used the sector owner's coordinate system.
   This disclosed the sector owner's origin.  Abusable.
 * When nuclear damage bounced off a sanctuary, the bulletin to the
   sanctuary owner used the attacker's coordinate system.  This
   disclosed the attacker's origin.
 * When a deity used sweep, lmine, sail or sabotage with a foreign
   plane, land unit or ship, its location was reported in the foreign
   coordinate system.
 * When a deity asked for a foreign nation report, the capital
   location was reported in the foreign coordinate system.
 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
 * Info file improvements.

Change log just for the client:

 * Fix client to log long input lines untruncated
 * Fix client crash for long input lines