FreeOrion v0.4.5 released

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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
Posts: 6090
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
Location: Sol III

FreeOrion v0.4.5 released

#1 Post by Vezzra »

Download:
Get FreeOrion here, for OSX and Windows.

Linux users can either try to get the new release from the respective package repositories of their distributions (if your distro maintains FO packages), or need to build FO with cmake/make per the instructions here and here.

FreeOrion v0.4.5 has been released.

This is the version of FreeOrion you should choose if just want to play, and don't care about participating in game development or getting the latest development version with new features but potentially more bugs.

We've made many improvements since the last release, and are confident that the game offers an even more enjoyable experience now. Many of the changes have been geared toward that goal (performance, responsiveness, AI, balance, etc.). But we've still a long way to go.

Follow FreeOrion on Twitter if you want to receive related news, especially announcements of releases.

Key Changes:
since v0.4.4 August 2014.
  • Replaced Ogre3D with SDL based windowing for human client
  • Improved mouse rendering and responsiveness and keyboard behaviour, particularly when switching between windows
  • Interface and turn processing time improvements, tech tree rendering speed especially improved
  • Extensive AI updates
  • New pedia content including introductory articles on game concepts and the interface
  • Revised colonization mechanics to allow producing a building that will convert an outpost to a colony; species added must have a supply connection from a already-populated planet with sufficient happiness; production time depends on distance from the production location to the already-species-populated planet
  • New graphical combat summary
  • Improvements to the object list window: additional object list column types and filter conditions; added right-click commands to object list to set planet focus (this works for multiple planets at once); made the objectlist update when a planet changes focus; fixed layout placement of buttons in object filter window; fixed object list column sorting of numbers (as numbers instead of as text)
Change Log

Graphics / GUI:
~ Added a pin toggle to most UI windows, which fixes them in place
~ Added a Pedia text search box and adjusted Pedia layout
~ Adjusted default window positioning
~~ Made some window positions be saved between sessions
~ Various new/updated icons, including building and sitrep icons
~ New graphics for several hulls of the asteroid and organic line
~ Increased default sitrep icon size to 24
~ Added an option to save games in an XML text format, which should be readable on any OS, although is a larger file than the binary serialization (default)
~ Adjusted the size of the planet focus droplist
~ Changed layout of sitreps to be multi-line
~ Tweaked ship design description part list to show multiple copies of a part with a number, instead of repeating the part name
~ Changed allowed hotkey bindings, so most printable character hotkeys need to have a modifier key (CTRL, SHIFT, ALT) held, to prevent hotkeys from firing while typing text.
~ Removed some unused sound options
~ Added popup menu command to save ship designs as a file, and list of saved designs that can be used when designing ships
~ Added monster designs tab to ship design screen
~ Tweaked layout in the generic file load/save dialog
~ Made mousewheel scrolling pan the tabs in a tabbed window widget
~ Made colonization suitability report always include Exobots
~ Added an option to toggle whether the pedia in the design screen will instantly update as a designs text is edited
~ Removed various unused properties from ship designs in the pedia (and internally)
~ Added some helper sitreps informing of a planet having sufficient population / happiness to be used for recolonization
~~ These helpers are easily customizable by players
~ Changed default player empire colour
~ Added combat assessment to ship designs' pedia pages
~ Made cycling through sitrep turns skip turns with no sitreps
~ Made display of moving fleet ETA controllable with a config option
~ Add "does not stack" information to building descriptions
~ Removed unimplemented statistics about empires from pedia
~ Added tooltips to auto/manual turn advance toggle
~ Made copy and paste functions in GUI work with OS clipboard
~ Added right-click command on icons to look up building types
~ Added an optional mapscale circle overlay to MapWnd, centered on the currently selected system
~ Added (yellow, 3-flanged) mouseover indicator for unexplored systems
~ Made some of the darkest empire colors slightly less dark
~ Made pressing return to map hotkey close the fleet window, if open, and if not, the sidepanel, if open, if no other subscreens were open
~ Ensured that if a planet has nonzero max defenses (or shields or troops) the SidePanel PlanetPanel will display the military panel regardless of whether the planet is populated or owned
~ Troop ships and fleets will now show their total troops value
~ Adjusted sitrep font size to be the greater of the client UI standard font size or 75% of the size for sitrep icons
~ Added several new hotkey commands
~ Made most interface windows be constrained to within their parent window, or the application window
~ Added support for an optional "persistent_config.xml" settings file which may contain a subset of settings from config.xml, which will override config.xml
~ Made double-clicking planets on the sidepanel open the production screen
~ Enabled "snoozing" (dismissing from display) of a sitrep by double-clicking or right-clicking
~ Removed max size from options window
~ Made the DesignWnd Redundancy check be applied to all part types, not just weapons
~ Enabled customization of the DesignWnd redundant part filtering criteria via common_user_customizations.txt
~ Removed (most of) the extra space in ListBoxes after the end of the content
~ Made sitrep panel remember which sitrep it was showing first, when it is resized
~ Cleaned up the massive list of sitreps on turn 1
~ Changed "Next Turn" meter growth tooltip label to "Predicted Next Turn"

Content:
~ Translation updates, most notably an (almost) complete French translation
~ Extensive pedia content reorganization and additions, including introductory articles
~ Transpatial drive part
~ Improved randomness of random empire species selection
~ Exobot colony origin building replaced by new-standard add-species-to-planet style building, but without a standard species requirement of having a source of that species supply connected to the production location
~ Made AIs occasionally respond to chat messages (not meaningfully)
~ Added three new specials: World Tree, Honeycomb and Fortress
~ Added two variants of Artificial Planets: Artificial Paradise World and Artificial Factory World
~ Made high tech natives special produce one or more buildings on planets
~~ "Primitive" natives can't get this special
~ Added a higher-capacity advance ground troops pod
~ More empire statistic tracking
~ Added sitreps, including nebula collapse, dyson forest birth
~ Expanded Nebula collapse to create random combinations of asteroid fields and planets
~ Added colony buildings for natives that can colonize but can't build ships
~ Added the Maintenance Ship as an alternative to the Sentry monster type
~ New native species: Happybirthday
~ Added Species Homeworlds page to Pedia
~ Improved slot positions of ship hulls
~ Changes to fields: Ion Storms and Molecular Clouds now start very small, but grow large before shrinking again
~ Improved species traits listing in game setup window
~ Adjusted/fixed ion storm effects and description
~ Reworked Spatial Distortion Generator to push ships back along their route by a fixed amount, and generate sitreps explaining what has happened
~ Renamed Garrison techs and adjusted their description accordingly
~ Added sitreps to Planetary Starlane Drive (upon arrival/destruction of the planet)
~ Made Neutronium Forge only be buildable at locations with a Basic Shipyard (like all other shipyard upgrade buildings)

Balance:
~ Tweaked galaxy special distributions to lessen frequency of multiple specials on one object
~ Concentration camps require a population of at least 3 to be produced, and set planet happiness to 0
~ Hull production and research cost rebalancing
~ Adjusted artificial planet cost
~ Adjusted cost of tech victory
~ Reworked troop level calculations from various techs and buildings, including being more population-dependent
~ Adjusted timing and results of Experimentors doing things, tweaked their shields and defense
~ Made mines work on monsters
~ Made the requirement for attacking during combat be having partial visibility of the target, to be consistent with the criteria for starting a battle
~ Added requirements for a minimum number of planets and systems near home system locations
~ Reduced shield part strengths and costs
~ Tweaked monster maturation to depend on the game turn
~ Added shields to the Bloated Juggernaut and reduced its damage value
~ Adjusted the Krill Spawner part (from Ancient Ruins) so that when in an unarmed ship it provides a stealth bonus
~ Removed biospores from level 1 Kraken and Juggernauts. For level 3 of same, changed biospores to bioterminators
~ Phototrophic natives can now be found in systems with bright or dim stars (not only orange/yellow ones)
~ Changed time to build Phinnert colonies to 75%
~ Removed Large Planet trait from Scylior and Hhhoh (natives) and added it to the Etty (playable)
~ Self Sustaining Xenophobes (ie Trith) should have more stable population problems as it's based on explored systems not visible systems
~ Adjusted monster nest special monster spawn rate to be sensitive to GalaxyMonsterFrequency; left the domesticated spawn rates alone
~ Ancient Ruins will have a location condition of at least 3 jumps from empire homes
~ Dyson Forests will have a location condition of at least 3 jumps from empire homes
~ Dyson Forest's regeneration effect will receive a no-combat-last-turn-here condition.
~ Homeworlds and capitals get +5 happiness
~ Rebalanced planetary stealth and detection modifiers
~~ Standardised modifiers as multiples of 20
~~ Each stealth special can be penetrated by the same level detection
~~ All planets given base stealth 5
~ Made the megalith producible only on planets with an imperial palace, and provide a troop bonus to nearby systems
~ Added ProductionQueue support for frontloading and/or topping-up, controlled by default/global_settings.txt
~ Planetary Ecology will now grant a flat + 1 bonus to Good and Adequate that expires with Symbiotic Biology
~ Empire homeworlds have max happiness at game start

Bugs:
~ Fixed multiplayer lobby player list scroll position resetting when receiving updates from the server
~ Fixed rare bug where Floaters could spawn Forests in almost every system
~ Removed design deletion right-click popup for moderators to avoid crash
~ Fixed issue where setting the default save filename in a FileDlg would be overwritten when the working directory was set
~ Fixed checks of slot type when automatically adding parts to a design
~ Fixed in-progress building icon tooltips on sidepanel
~ Tweaks to child/parent windows to prevent possible memory leaks
~ Fixed potential hang when single player galaxy setup was cancelled
~ Fixed rendering issue with detection rangle circles on map
~ Fixed bug where a ship that is destroyed during a combat round when it it attacked multiple would be counted multiple times in the ships-destroyed statistic tracking
~ Excluded empty (destroyed) fleets from empire pedia listing of owned fleets
~ Fixed issue where after pasting text into an edit control, the cursor would always be at the end of the text
~ Prevented natives from spawning in player home systems
~ Fixed glitch with blockades
~ Made rounding precision "epsilon" value of production and research larger (0.01), so being a tiny fraction of a point away from complete is considered being complete
~ Fixed bug where a planet could have its combat round squandered due to having another planet selected as target (invalid)
~ Fixed a bug where a combat sitrep would not be sent to an empire whose outpost had been in combat, if the empire had no non-outpost combatants
~ Changed combat attacker order shuffle algorithm to standard Fisher–Yates shuffle to avoid a bias
~ Fixed issue where centred button text labels weren't repositioning properly when resizing
~ Fixed a bug where outposts could be prematurely excused from combat, allowing them to wrongly get shield regen the next turn
~ Fixed multicolored system names on the MapWnd for systems with more than one empire owning planets
~ Fixed names in multiplayer lobby, which were showing the local player's name for all players
~ Fixed combat 'reveal' of stealthed attackers to be after all the attacks of a given round have been completed
~ Fixed bug with fleet movement path deterimation, where it treated a fleet as refueling when in supply even if it did not stop at a system
~ Fixed MapWnd cycle to next/prev fleet so that it skips over destroyed fleets
~ Fixed Pedia Species Homeworlds bug that had caused entries with more than 5 occupied planets to be left out of the display
~ Fixed planet names on sidepanel losing formatting tags when the planet is renamed
~ Fixed multiline text display bug when rendering colored highlighted text
~ Fixed Exobots not having Bad Ground Troops as described
~ Removed the (useless and faulty) ability to drag sitrep entries
~ Fixed the multiplayer galaxy setup dropdowns having unneeded and blocking scrollbars
~ Only partially fixed: same seed and game settings do not reliably produce the same map independent of platform

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