FreeOrion v0.4.7 released

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Vezzra
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FreeOrion v0.4.7 released

#1 Post by Vezzra »

FreeOrion v0.4.7 has been released.

This is the version of FreeOrion recommended for those who just want to play and enjoy the game. So unless you want to participate in game development or play the latest development version with all the new features (but potentially more bugs), this stable release is for you.

This is the "Fighters and Carriers" release. As the name suggests, the primary focus of this release has been the introduction of a brand new feature, Fighters and Carriers. Of course that hasn't been the only thing we've been working on: a very basic form of alliances has been introduced (no AI support yet, but useful for multiplayer games), there have been substantial improvements to the AI and the UI, the Pedia has been updated, revised and extended, and of course a lot of bugfixing has been done.

Big kudos to the team and all the old and new contributors, who again put a lot of time, effort and love into improving and extending this game. Also to all the playtesters who have provided us with invaluable feedback. Special thanks to a group of very dedicated players who have been playing countless of multiplayer games, and giving us a lot of feedback in that area we didn't have before.

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


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 FreeOrion packages), or need to build FreeOrion with cmake/make per the instructions here and here.


Key Changes:

(since v0.4.6 September 2016)
  • Fighters
    • Launch during combat and attack on subsequent rounds
    • Ignore shields when attacking
    • Cannot attack planets and are not attacked by planets
    • Destroyed by any attack by other fighters or ships
    • Flak weapon shoots multiple times per round and can destroy fighters, but does minimal damage to ships
  • Alliance Supply
    • Empires may propose and agree to an alliance with each other
    • Allied empires connect their supply networks through each others' supply connections
    • Allied empires resupply ships within each others' supplied systems
    • Allied empires share visibility information
  • Fractional Production Progress
    • Production item progress is now stored as a fraction of completion, rather than amount of PP accumulated.
    • Changes in the production cost now can't instantly complete something that has had its production cost reduced.
  • Beginner Bonus
    • When the max AI aggression is set to Beginner Mode, the human player gets bonuses to ship shields, planet troop garrisons, and resource output.
  • Many new pedia articles, categorization, and improved search
  • Production items on the queue may be paused and resumed
  • Ancient Guardians may appear as a defensive ground force on planets with specials, instead of Sentries that attack any ship in the system
Detailed Change Log

Graphics / GUI
  • General
    • Reworked window layout updates and rendering timing to improve GUI responsiveness.
    • Made some options window GUI widgets resize with window.
    • Enable screensaver when minimizing the game and disable when maximizing.
    • Made some tooltips use the set browse time option value, rather than a default other time
    • Made tooltip rendering more consistent in style.
    • Added turn sound option.
    • Made droplists close when Esc is pressed and respond better to mouse actions.
    • Added right-click context menus for various icons in the GUI, such as meters in the planet panels.
    • Made mousewheel not scroll drop lists when the pointer is outside the list.
    • Made droplists scroll to keep the selected row visible when navigating with the keyboard.
    • Made numpad keys work with droplist navigation.
    • Made current item visible when drop down list opens.
    • Fixed formatting and layout in the save file dialog.
    • Changed default extended tooltip delay to 3.5 s.
    • Added a tooltip to fleet summary icon at top of screen.
    • Added option to show IDs after object names in GUI.
    • Made mousewheel manipulate credits scrolling.
    • Fixed droplists falling outside the application window.
    • Made some scrollable GUI widgets respond to keypresses to scroll their contents.
    • Made ListBox header show for empty list boxes.
    • Paused music when the application loses focus.
    • Closed credits if the app is resized.
    • Update FPS immediately when the option changes.
    • Stopped save file dialog from reloading saves after window focus changes.
    • Added dialog to ask user about waiting for savegame to complete before quitting.
  • Pedia
    • Added access to pedia from intro screen.
    • Included more pedia articles in search results
    • Displayed identical parts as one entry in ship browse windows.
    • Made Enter/Return KeyPress events on EncyclopediaDetailPanel set the focus to the search edit.
    • Adjusted planet suitability report for tech-gated species.
  • Map Window
    • Changed Fleets window quick close option from right click to left click
    • Made ordering of systems in cycling commands alphabetical.
    • Changed colours used to render some scanlines (indicating a not-visible object).
    • Changed display of map scale distance to integers.
    • Added an inner system circle on the galaxy map, which is drawn for systems with colonies.
  • Sidepanel
    • Added automatic selection of ships for bombarding.
    • Added ability to rename systems in SidePanel. System sorting considers the system's id to disambiguate if necessary.
    • Displayed source planet in growth special accounting labels.
    • Added indication of defending troops to invade button.
    • In sidepanel, displayed tooltip not only for the selected focus, but also for available focus settings in the focus dropdown list.
  • Fleet Window
    • Added greater variety and more flexible indicator icons to fleet and ship panels.
    • Labeled fleets window as "Near System X" for fleets in transit.
    • Showed empire name in fleets window for fleets in transit.
    • Added right-click menu command to split from a fleet ships that have less than full fighter complement.
  • SitRep Window / Combat Log
    • Allowed SitRep right-click menu from majority of sitrep area.
    • Added Copy to sitrep right-click context menu.
    • Added link to help article on sitrep entry right click menu.
    • Added right click context to hide/show types of SitReps.
    • Changed combat log to use empire color to designate destroyed objects.
    • Added SitRep navigation for meter type pedia links.
    • Fixed combat log window layout issues.
  • Objects Window
    • Added numerous new column options in the Objects window, and reorganized the options.
    • Reapportioned horizontal space in filter dialog parameter dropdown to improve legibility.
  • Design Window
    • Made ctrl + left click in the design window obsolete designs.
    • Fixed hull list display issue.
  • Research Window
    • Added right-click pause and resume commands to research queue in GUI.
    • Added pause and resume research functions to Empire, and getters to check if a tech / queue id is paused to research queue.
    • Made tech list columns sortable.
    • Display preferences for complete, researchable, unresearchable and partially unlocked techs will now persist between games
  • Production Window
    • Fixed double click on production queue item so that it completes the map window system selection.
    • Fixed planet selection when the production window is open so that the production window info panel gets updated when another planet is selected.
  • Game setup / Multiplayer Lobby
    • Reworked layout in multiplayer lobby window.
    • Multiplayer game starts when all human players are ready.
    • Used human player's name as default empire's name in multiplayer.
    • Added option for random species selection during game setup.
    • Prevented multiple players from having the same name in a multiplayer game by adding numeric postfixes.
    • Added new galaxy type images.
Content
  • Translation updates: French
  • Various AI tweaks: colonization, fighters, fleet movement
  • Various stringtable tweaks, corrections, and updates.
  • New encyclopedia articles about gameplay mechanics, the interface.
  • Many encyclopedia articles have been categorized into lists of similar articles with a category summary article.
  • New or updated icons / graphics for various content.
  • Added Kraken in the Ice special.
  • Added the Automated History Analyser building.
  • Added Ancient Guardians as alternative to Sentries for Specials.
  • Added the native species Lembala'Lam.
  • Added mention of star type restriction to energy shipyard descriptions.
Balance
  • Added stealth effects to Spatial Flux hull and increased build cost.
  • Reset to 0 a planet's detection upon conquering.
  • Adjusted supply propagation by adding tie-breaking conditions related to (unobstructed) distance to the nearest supply source.
  • Removed build cost increase mechanic from Stargate.
  • Massively increased cost of the Transformer building.
  • Reduced other buildings' production times to equal the Transformer's production time.
  • Prevented Ancient Guardians on native homeworlds.
  • Restricted growth focus to be available on homeworlds of species that are on the planet, not any species' homeworld.
  • Removed frontloading of production (due to changing to fractional production progress mechanic).
  • Salted the PRNG seed with galaxy setup seed to hopefully avoid often getting the same random effect results due to using just the turn number as the seed.
  • Added option to control whether to re-seed the PRNG repeatedly on the server.
  • Tweaked Concentration Camps to set Happiness to zero after all other effects.
  • AI invasion priority tweaks.
  • Made AI handle species with fixed max population when assigning Colonization values
  • Reduced initial number of scouts produced by AIs.
  • Enabled AI use of XenoResurrection Lab and resurrected species.
  • Adjusted AI to further prioritize automation, exobots, and some growth techs.
  • In sparse galaxies, moderated the reduction in AI colonization activity that occurs after spotting enemies.
  • Adjusted AI value for asteriods during first 40 turns.
  • Made neutronium and asteroid armor parts available only to supply connected shipyards.
  • Stopped monsters maturing during combat.
  • Made Cultural Archives required for research bonus of Auto History Analyser.
  • Added allied diplomatic status between empires. Allies share visibility and supply networks.
  • Tweaked AI ship designer logic.
  • Adjusted build costs and stats of the Solar hull, raised build costs of Titanic and Scattered Asteroid hulls.
  • Lowered Protoplasmic and Symbiotic hull base stealth.
  • Have the AI combat planning deem planetary defenses to be more significant when they are bolstered by fleet forces.
Bugs
  • Fixed Windows installer continuing install before uninstall completes.
  • Fixed issues with non-ascii characters in Windows usernames / filenames.
  • Made the map distance scale circle track the selected system when the production window is open.
  • Fixed some meter change estimates not considering some contributions, such as ship fuel regeneration.
  • Fixed clipping of long hull names in design window.
  • Fixed issues with the fleets window and the fleets in it moving between turns while the window stays open.
  • Fixed some effects which trigger on negative planet target population.
  • Fixed direction agreement of mousewheel scrolling in drop down list when dropped or not dropped.
  • Fixed issue with production window not tracking non-production window selected system changes.
  • Fixed drop down list not tracking main application window resizes, which made them seemingly unclickable.
  • Fixed production window queue and list state preservation when updated.
  • Fixed issue where a drag-drop on a list could start autoscrolling and never stop if the drop happened while the autoscroll was in progress.
  • Fixed issue where rapidly pressing left and right keys while in a listbox could cause a crash.
  • Use drydock from highest happiness system planet.
  • Made planet stealth techs effect only owned planet not all planets in system.
  • Fixed issue with Head on a spike special
  • Hopefully prevented some potential crashes when generating random numbers.
  • Fixed Hyperspatial Dam supply glitch.
  • Fixed issues with unpopulated planets' (outposts') research and industry bonuses.
  • Fixed issue where production and research times and costs were incorrect.
  • Fixed crash due to multi-meter status bar attempting to render a zero valued meter.
  • Fixed monsters blockading and being blockaded not working correctly.
  • Fixed some issues when exiting game or closing the client window, such as dangling AI client or server processes which preventing subsequent games from starting properly.
  • Fixed players that canceled out of multiplayer games not actually disconnecting from the server.
  • Improved handling of AIs taking over empires for human players in loaded multiplayer games.
  • Fixed issue with AIs not storing their aggression correctly in save games.
  • Fixed AI trying to enqueue unresearchable techs.
  • Fix for client crash / access violation upon receiving fatal error message from server.
  • Fixed bug which prevented construction of colony buildings for tech gated species when a player doesn't have the required tech, but owns a colony of the species.
  • Fixed unowned mines not destroying ships after reducing their structure to 0.
  • Fixed numbers in planet suitability report being wrong on the turn right after a planet has been depopulated.
  • Fixed issue with the Starlane Nexus building where lanes created together can be closer in angle than allowed, causing problems with later lane creations.
  • Fixed bug causing AIs to be crippled by eventually switching an excessively high amount of colonies to research focus.
  • Fixed issue in network code which could cause AI client processes to hang.
  • Fixed issues with AI troop ship design and production.
Technical / Internal
  • C++11 is now supported and required to compile.
  • Implemented continuous integration / automated builds
  • Fixed inconsistent computation of build number.
  • Optimized Font layout code.
  • Dropped support for MSVC compilers before 2015 version.
  • Added separate description strings for binary and xml save files. Previously, the XML text was appearing in readable form in the binary save files.
  • Hopefully made binary saving an automatic fallback for when xml serialization fails.
  • Implemented sup and sub text formatting tags.
  • Optimizations of effect evaluation.
  • Optimized universe generation, substantially reducing time for bigger galaxies and many empires setups.
  • Made universe generation more robust to platform / operating system differences.
  • Added ipv6 support.
  • Various network connection monitoring and shutdown tweaks.
  • Increased client connection timeout and delays, which should help connectivity on some OSX machines.
  • Allow build of program with unknown git commit.

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

Re: FreeOrion v0.4.7 released

#2 Post by Vezzra »

FreeOrion v0.4.7.1 has been released.

This is a bugfix release for 0.4.7, which addresses a couple of more serious issues that have turned up.

Download instructions and links see 0.4.7 release post above.

Bug Fixes (since v0.4.7.1 May 2017):
  • Production queue: reverted behavior when increasing batch size of a build item back to a proportional reduction of the progress already made, instead of resetting progress to 0.
  • Fixed bug in production queue projections.
  • Several fixes to AI calculations regarding population/colonization.
  • Fixed potential issues for phototrophic species.
  • Fixed issues with visibility after combat resolution.
  • Fixed bug which caused starlanes not to be rendered on certain systems/setups.

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