FreeOrion v0.4.6 released

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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
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FreeOrion v0.4.6 released

#1 Post by Vezzra »

FreeOrion v0.4.6 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.

It has taken us a bit longer than we thought, but we finally made it: a brand new stable release, 0.4.6 is now available. The extra time it took us hasn't been wasted, a big part of this release comprises a lot of fixes and improvements to all parts of the game, especially the GUI. Some game mechanics have undergone substantial revisions, and new content has been added.

All of which should amount to a noticeably smoother and more enjoyable game experience.

Special thanks shall go to LGM-Doyle and dbenage-cx, two particularly productive new contributors who joined the fun this year. But of course also to all the other, both old and new contributors whose efforts all have been very valuable in creating this new version of FreeOrion.

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 v0.4.5 September 2015)
  • Reworked supply mechanics (details below)
  • Reworked weapon part refinements
  • Reworked ship repair: Drydocks, Damage Control techs, Robotic hulls self repair (details below)
  • Many small additions/changes to GUI rendering, layout, functionality, customization options, and displayed information that collectively substantially improve usability, responsiveness, and system resource usage
  • Turn processing time improvements
  • AI improvements
  • New specials, hulls, ship parts, giving new strategic or fun gameplay options

Detailed Change Log

Graphics / GUI

- New default font Roboto ver. 2.001101 (2014) (with a few extra missing glyphs needed / used in the GUI)
- Fixed layout of production / research info panel
- Reworked rendering of various GUI windows to improve performance
- Improved functionality of pedia search box
-- Get a list of results instead of jumping to the first matching entry found
- Added mousewheel cycling through items in droplists
- Improved window layout in response to game window resizing
- Made queue and info windows resizable / movable
- Increased default tooltip delay
- Increased default sitrep icon size
- Added a tooltip for when the in-game save button is disabled.
- Added messages when game save is started.
- Improved blending between empires' visibility radii colours
- Added various hotkey commands, including mapping the map or tech view
- Suppressed rendering of ridiculously huge visibility circles, such as from super testers
- Added menu button to open freeorion.org
- Tweaked appearance of colour picker indicator in HS square to have a hole/outline where the lines meet
- Add the distance scale circle to the MapWnd right-click menu
- Added separate option for FPS limit when the game window doesn't have OS input focus
- Added 3D starfield effect on map
- Add an entry on the right-click menu to add to top of build queue
- When left-clicking production queue items, open the system and select the planet instead of just jumping to the system on the map.
- Made ctrl-left click remove an item from build queue.
- Made ctrl-double click add entries to the top of the build queue
- Pedia articles can now have images in them
- New icons for auto and manual turn cycling button
- Tweaked Sidepanel planet pole tilt angle
- Tweaked Sitrep layout
- Reworked rotating selection indicator rendering to be smoother
- Re-enabled sitreps for winning / losing the game
-- Add an icon to the PlayerListWnd when an empire wins/loses
- Made Pedia ship design detail page show troop stats reflecting racial bonus/malus
- Clicking a sitrep planet handle will select the planet for production
- Tweaks to rendering techs on tech screen when zooming
- Positioned cursor at end of historical input from pressing up/down in messages window
- Added current turn expected progress to research and production progress meters
- Added specialized tooltip for resource icons
- Made encyclopedia detail panel of production and research screens closable
- Switched a few objects list columns from showing object ids to object names
- Added nearest system column and number of specials column to objects list
- Production and research queue items show max spendable PP or RP per turn
- Added ship rally point tracking / setting to production queue. New fleets are grouped by rally point on the turn they are produced. Ship production items can be right clicked to set their rally point to the selected system.
- Added tooltips to production selector items explaining failed production location conditions
- Fixed issues navigating the directory structure in the save/load file dialog on Windows when accented / non-Latin characters were present in path names.
- Stripped selected Wnd text of tags before passing to clipboard
- Implemented selecting or moving cursor to next word edge when holding CTRL when a text GUI widget has input focus
- Hid map screen pedia when opening the production screen
- Tweaked tech tree layout
- Added icons to tech tree panels showing unlocked or affected other content
- Added button to show partially unlocked techs on tech tree, which are now shown by default, and are techs that have at least one prereq researched.
- Allowed wide/tall windows to spam multiple monitors
- Added option to disable effect accounting in client, which could speed up GUI responses to things that would normally cause an accounting update, such as focus changes
- Made spin controls on Options screen wider
- Improved layout of various UI windows / popups for variable font sizes
- Added "Update Design" and "Add New Design" commands to Design Screen
- Added drop position indicator for completed designs list
- Improved format and detail of combat log, including calculations for each attack and attackers being revealed by attacking
- Added right-click Cut-Copy-Paste popup menus to text entry boxes
- Made shift-delete cut and shift-insert paste in text entry boxes
- Expanded set of allowed hotkey combinations
- In SidePanel confine planet rename context menu item inside planet name
- Moved Infrastructure indicator to population panel.
- Moved supply meter from military to resources panel.
- Options screen widgets to set objects list column widths
- Tweaked how panels in fleets and planets lists resize with or without a scrollbar present
- Added right-click popup menu command to copy text in most GUI text
- Fixed issues where characters font textures weren't loaded even when using a suitable stringtable, making it impossible to use those characters in game
- Added a right-click command to dismiss sensor ghosts on the fleets window, which causes an empire to forget a fleet existed, removing it from the map.
- Disabled sound system init when sound and music are disabled
- Fix crash when OpenAL device does not initialize
- Added message box at startup informing player in case of audio system init failiure
- Added message box at startup informing player in case of insufficient OpenGL version
- Made pressing escape close more GUI windows
- Added tech turn and RP requirements to tech panels on tech tree
- Modified autogenerated fleet names to better reflect fleet contents
- Increase fleet drop target width and add an icon to it
- Modified how client and server communicate in a single player game to avoid firewall popups about network access
- Added scanlines over fleets when not currently visible
- Added nearly-accurate estimate of meter changes on the next turn to meter tooltips
- Made MultiMeterStatusBar rescale to show largest value
- In DesignWnd add ability to drag parts away from design
- Fixed confusing behaviour of main menu when displaying credits (main menu was dimmed, but still active, now requires pressing ESC or mouse click anywhere to stop displaying credits)


Content

- Translation updates: French, Russian
- Removed / updated various missing, unused, or incorrect stringtable entries
- Various adjustments to AI priorities
- Made AI more cautious of hidden threats after losing fleets in a system it can't detect into
- Updated pedia descriptions of various content and UI windows, including adding more links
- Reworked intro sitrep to be less immersion-breaking
- Moved start-of-game unlocking sitreps to before-the-first turn to avoid spamming the player
- Removed "Average X" descriptions of species, leaving these only for the all-average humans
- Made collapsing nebulae create various coloured stars
- Added a "Rough Military Strength Estimate" empire statistic
- Added Spinal Antimatter Cannon
- Improved cross-platform consistency of random results in universe generation and in-game effects
- Added Starlane Nexus and Starlane Bore buildings that can be used to create starlanes
- Reworked Spatial Distortion Generator to push ships back along their approach starlane
- Added Black Hole Collapser and Subspace Rift buildings
- Adjusted some star names
- Added sitreps to Planetary Starlane Drive effects
- Various new hull art and slot positions, tech icons, building icons
- Added the Accretion Disc special
- Fixed / updated bioweapon sitreps
- Added a random turn event that creates Space Krill in an empty system
- Added new galaxy shape "Disc"
- Added the feature to resurrect extinct species found in ancient ruins with the Xenoresurrection Lab (which can only be built on a planet)
- Added the new special Temporal Anomaly
- Reworked weapon part refinements, so that instead of multiple parts, techs increase the strength of parts (although getting the increase to take effect requires being in supply range)
- Added Energy Frigate hull, adjusted some other hulls' balance accordingly
- Updated premade / default ship designs, made naming consistent
- New bombardment weapons (feature in-progress)
- Added EMP and electric overcharge ship parts
- Added Solar Concentrators which increase laser weapon strength for Organic Line hulls depending on local star type
- Split up stealth part and planetary stealth techs
- Added more AI greeting messages, made random
- Added Scrying Sphere buildings, which can be produced and appear around the map randomly during galaxy generation, and share vision between planets on which they are located
- At start of game, the Honeycomb will now turn all planets without specials or inhabitants within 5 jumps into Asteroids instead of destroying them — without renaming them
- Removed the special Volcanic Activity
- Tweaked planet / asteroid naming
- All systems except deep space, black hole and neutron star systems now contain at least one planet or asteroid belt
- Added "Telepathic Detection" species trait (currently only assigned to Trith) which gives basic visibility of inhabitated planets nearby a colony of a species that has that trait.
- Fixed "no repair" sitreps caused by drydocks on outposts


Balance

- Reworked supply propagation mechanics
-- In any system, at most one empire can supply ships and exchange production between planets.
-- Empires' supply ranges push against eachother in neutral systems, with higher range supply sources blocking lower range (where range decays with distance from the source)
-- Armed ships prevent enemy supply from propagating in/out of a system
-- In the absence of armed ships, supply won't propagate into an enemy system where a supply source planet is located
- Substantially reworked ship repair
-- Drydocks require a ship to be stationary and only repair a proportion of ship structure of the bigger hulls
-- No damage control effects work on the turn a combat has taken place except for the Logistic Facilitator flagship, which is substantially reduced
-- Balance pass on Robotic hull line and Damage Control techs repair rates
- Various building / tech cost adjustments
- Split Ground Troops species trait into Defensive Ground Troops and Offensive Ground Troops.
- Made Neutronium Forge only be buildable at locations with a Basic Shipyard (like all other shipyard upgrade buildings)
- Tweaked monster detection and stealth stats
- Artificial Moons can no longer be built when a Resonant Moon special is present
- Reworked various modifiers to planet population
- Tweaked Honeycomb and World Tree special locations
- Re-Added the Tidally Locked Rotation special with a population penalty and changed the penalty of the Eccentric Orbit special to a Supply minus
- Space Monster weapon balance tweaks
-- Adjusted Experimentor monster weapons
- Planetary Starlane Drive modified so it can't be built on gas giants
- Death Spores and Bio-Terminators now only affect organic species
- Monsters now only bombard one planet at a time
- Reworked how derelict visibility effect works - grants visibility directly instead of temporarily increasing ship detection range
- Added preferred focus for most species
- Made producing troop pods require a production location with troops
-- Species with no offensive Ground Troops will no longer be able to build ships with Ground Troop pods
- Balanced research and production bonuses
- Reprioritised mine effects to always occur before repair effects
- Balanced BioAdaptive hull to work same as Nanorobotic
- Tweaked numbers for Logistics Facilitator
- Enable queue additions of energy shipyards in systems with pending artificial blackhole
- Prevent Experimentor spawn location from sundering the galaxy
- Balance Hyperspatial Dam
- Made planets in systems which contain a Gateway to the Void building not provide any supply


Bugs

- Prevented dragging sitrep entries
- Fixed depopulation of planets to work when planet has a negative population
- Fixed rendering of object window items selected with right click
- Fixed multiplayer galaxy setup droplists problematic scrollbars
- Fixed protection focus effect on max troops
- Fixed AI building neutronium extractors
- Fixed AI problem with ship design with id 0
- Fixed experimentor spawn location being blocked by natives
- Fixed a segfault when resigning a game with no empire
- Fixed Fortress special mines effects not properly working together with System Defense Mines techs
- Prevented unowned planet mines from affecting unowned guard ships
- Fixed unowned fortress mines damaging unowned monsters and made mines able to destroy monsters, not just damage them
- Fixed ion storm stealth effect to not affect fields (and thereby itself)
- Fixed issue with stealth effect of Transpatial Drive
- Reduced credits scroll flicker
- Fixed quirks with list scrollbars and row positioning
- Fixed crash when manipulating fleets in Fleets window
- Fixed issue where saves would record an extra nonexistant player, causing problems when loading the save
- Fixed issue with dragging parts over another part in a design
- Prevent a bug with high CPU load and low FPS. A font is now cached even if a requested glyph is not part of the font, but a 'replacement character' is provided
- Fixed crash when setting hotkeys
- Fixed a bug where calling the suitability report from the production window would toggle the production window pedia panel visibility. Now shows suitability report in production window pedia.
- Fixed alphabetical sorting of object list columns when accented letters or other non-latin characters are present
- Fixed a bug where pedia closed instead of showing an entry
- Fixed deleting production items by pressing delete
- Fixed crashes when clicking links in pedia
- Fixed calculation of FPS
- Fixed resource panel not showing expansion
- Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes think it can't build parts at a planet despite it actually being able to
- Fixed fleet destination text being "holding at ..." when moving along a path that returns to the start location.
- Fixed xenophobic self-sustaining pop malus and xenophobic frenzy happiness malus


Technical / Internal

- Made it possible to read binary or compressed XML saves regardless of current save output format setting
- Made communication between clients / servers on different operating systems more flexible / robust
- Reworked XML save format to have an uncompressed somewhat readable-as-text header with basic info about the saved game
- Added --version parameter to freeorion{,d} executables which outputs the version string to the console
- (*nix) Moved user config and data files to conform with XDG Base Directory Specification
- Reorganized content definitions into multiple files

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