Wolfpack 4.2.21 Server Release

We are happy to announce that Empire 4.2.21 is now available. You can
download it from

http://sourceforge.net/projects/empserver/

More information on Empire can be found on our home page

http://www.wolfpackempire.com


This release fixes security holes, crashes, hangs and abusable bugs.
Player visible changes include support for UTF-8 encoded Unicode in
human-human communications. Deity visible changes include renaming of
command hidden to peek.

Deities are urged to use this release for new games. Upgrading
mid-game is not supported and expected to result in total disaster.

Client writers, please check out doc/clients-howto and doc/unicode.


Change log:

Changes to Empire 4.2.21 - Sat Jul 16 17:51:01 UTC 2005
* Don't let threads block on output to another player thread's
socket. Such blocking violates basic design assumptions and can
cause all kinds of grief. In particular, it causes player session
hangs under Windows with 4.2.20. Broken since the introduction of
flash and asynchronous telegram notification many years ago.
* Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
Windows. This could cause double-updates.
* Fix fallout damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
* Fix show sector s (was broken in 4.2.19).
* Fix deliver not to deliver friendly civilians into occupied
sectors.
* Fix mil duplication in board (was broken in 4.2.14).
* Fix stack smash in lrange, shoot and execute. Remote holes, and
the last one doesn't even require authentication.
* Fix crash bug in emp_config parsing.
* Fix buffer overruns in turn and shutdown.
* Fix second argument of shutdown.
* tele and turn now abort on EOF.
* Fix display of MOTD and game down message of maximum size.
* Correctly support telnet line termination on input. Previously,
carriage returns could slip into ship names and such.
* Fix flash not to lie about recipients that are just logging in.
* Remove obscure login command list.
* Convert client from obsolete termcap to terminfo, and clean up
terminal handling.
* New fairland option -h to print usage information. Improved
command line syntax diagnostics. Exit unsuccessfully on unknown
options.
* fleet and army now copy retreat orders of the fleet's or army's
first member with group retreat orders in the same sector.
Previously, they used the retreat orders of the first fleet or army
member, which is less than useful, and failed to take ownership
into account, which is an abusable bug.
* New xdump nation.
* Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' losses.
* Fix exit status of files program when it can't create files.
* Support UTF-8 encoded Unicode in human-human communications. This
affects MOTD, game down message, telexes, announcements and flash
messages. See new doc/unicode for technical details.
* New login command `options' for client/server option negotiation.
See new doc/clients-howto for technical details. The only option
so far is UTF-8.
* emp_client -u now requests UTF-8. This requires a terminal that
understands UTF-8.
* Fix news for land unit defensive support.
* Properly mark sea mines hit by retreating ships. Unmark mines
cleared by bridges.
* Fix diagnostics for unknown selector names in conditionals (was
broken in 4.2.20).
* Fix selector name clashes: rename ship selector mobquota to mquota,
land selector for reaction range limit from rad to rmax.
* Fix Windows services for relative file names on command line or in
econfig (was broken in 4.2.20).
* econfig keys ship_grow_scale, plane_grow_scale and land_grow_scale
are now float. This gives deities finer control over maximum
efficiency gain.
* Fix production command for sectors with 60% efficiency.
* Improve syntax of read for deities.
* Code cleanups.
* Some info topic names differed only in case, which loses on
case-insensitive file systems, and is a bad user interface even
when it works. Change those names. Rename deity command hidden to
peek because its info topic clashed with that of option HIDDEN.
* Thanks to Doug Wescott sheep are finally covered properly in info.
* Documentation fixes.
* Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!


MD5 checksums:

b231597962a7a0ae043961fa559fe846 empire-4.2.21.tar.gz
87da962cff306c2d4433cf7dd2ef6ef6 empire-client-4.2.21.tar.gz
8421158ef8968a9bd391e3f615fbba1a empire-info-html-4.2.21.tar.gz
015b57ad78bb496c9d9d23797069bc40 empire-info-text-4.2.21.tar.gz
3c23a5202e1daf9575b69d10f3ee0339 empire-client-4.2.21-amd64-freebsd.gz
4cb3abd56b0649afccc3a6e3b5c0c1fe empire-client-4.2.21-i386-freebsd.gz
4b2ab117259163530d7c6d635df8d14f empire-client-4.2.21-i386-interix.zip
d458c7caa81200f0955d297c105adbed empire-client-4.2.21-i386-win.exe
b9e0c63ca4c47da41d754cd38833c19a empire-client-4.2.21-i386-win.zip
c1c25d7f24f457a7808f2341fcd2c480 empire-client-4.2.21-sparc-solaris9.Z
fe763acaee0dba83e1311de1788b42d3 empire-client-4.2.21-sparc64-solaris9.Z
09ad1c291349ad174b09a52a17197378 empire.4.2.21-i386-linux.gz


Wolfpack! Bringing you the latest and greatest in Empire development and
support, and, in our minds, the best multi-player game around.

Check out Empire at http://www.wolfpackempire.com wolfpack.DeleteThis@wolfpackempire.com

The Windows binaries for 4.2.21 are also available from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/empserver/ under the Empire Contribs.

This release does not any special info file name changes as the server
has been modified to resolved them.

I have included the manual pages for empire programs in HTML format in
the manual directory. There are two empire server manuals page, one
the for standard server and one for the WIN32 version of the server.
The WIN32 has the additional options related to using the server as a
service.

I have included in the script directory examples for pre-update-hook
file and blitz server setup.

As the binaries are not supported by directly by Wolfpack so if you
have any questions about the binaries, please contact me at
rkoenderink.TakeThisOut@yahoo.ca.

A patch available for emp_client WIN32 build to present the output a
page at a time. The patch file contains a precompiled binary as well.
This is available sourceforge under patches.

I am developing http proxy for emp_client that allows you to use the
emp_client from behind a corporate firewall. It is written in C# and
using .NET framework. If you are interesting in playing with it, you
can email me and I will send you a copy to play with.

Ron K.