Recent changes

This describes the recent changes in some more detail than just the one-line-info on the main pages "News" section.

January 6, 2016: Public Build

Just one correction.


December 31, 2015: Public Build #2

New build just to get two small improvements into use

No, it wasn't the last one; this one here is.

December 31, 2015: Public Build

New build just to get two small improvements into use

This is probably the last build for this year...

December 15, 2015: Public Build

Beside the corrections/improvements listed below, also some "behind the scenes" changes related to the "no-battleboard-problem", reconnecting, suspend-and-resume, etc., including stuff that should help me to troubleshoot those issues better.

November 11, 2015: Public Build

Polished the Inactivity-Autoplay and Turn-xx-yellow functionality that were added earlier, and some new ones:

August 5, 2015: Public Build

Added several features, improved usability and in general some corrections.

Part of those were already in use since the Public Test Build from July 10.


September 17, 2013: Release 0.14.0 from r5331

Note: This new release probably still contains the bugs that some users reported, that game got stuck when they conceded twice in same battle turn, and that if some players use this new build, it may cause for other players using the previous release (0.13.2.1) a crash when the battle is about to start (BattleBoard is not coming up). One way around that is, that all start using this new release :-)

Some usability improvements, added /userinfo command, more stability improvements to spectator mode. The changes to BeelzeGods12 variant are not included yet!

The following are not so visible for end users (more for developers)

February 14, 2013: Release 0.13.2.1 from r5310

Very minor bugfix release to fix the problem that the carry dialog gets stuck after Java upgrading to 1.6.0_39 or Java 1.7.0_13.

April 8, 2012: Public Test Build from r5178

Some stability improvements/fixes to the spectator functionality:

March 30, 2012: Public Test Build from r5172

Making the spectator feature (still somewhat experimental) available for to first pilot usage

March 14, 2012: Release 0.13.2 from r5134

Quick new release because the Disconnect menu item causes more harm than good

March 11, 2012: Release 0.13.1 from r5121

Further work on reconnect functionality and other improvements.
(almost all of it was already in effect in the Public Test Builds)

February 5, 2012: Release 0.13.0 from r5073

Ability to reconnect after shortly interrupted network connections; two changes which hopefully prevent "client stuck" / "client does not respond to server" cases somewhat, plus some smaller fixes and addings.

The following were already part of previous Public Test Build(s):

March 4, 2011: Release 0.12.1 from r5003

Two bugfixes and other minor improvements.

February 15, 2011: Release 0.12.0 from r4995

A new variant, some new features, and the usual amount of fixes and changes which hopefully improve stability.

The changes below were already part of "Public Testing Release" 0.12.0-beta1:

August 5, 2010: Release 0.11.0 from r4905

Some new features (see detailed descriptions below):

... plus the usual usability & stability improvements:

Some explanations for the new features:

Player-colored Angels and captured legion markers
Prior to this release, all Angels were always blue and captured legion markers (when one player eliminates another, he "inherits" all the markers that player posessed) remained in their original color - as in the real board game.

Because this was asked so frequently, now this is finally changed: Angels are now displayed in the player's color (= same as his Titan), and the captured markers are re-colored to match that color as well (but they keep their original marker id, e.g. Gr01 - Gr12 for the markers of originally player Green, Rd01-Rd12 for the markers of the red player, etc.).

Right now this is not controllable via an option, but if there is demand it might be implemented to be optional.

Confirmation dialogs
It has regularly happened that a player forgot to handle one or more legions for split, move or recruit, especially on large maps which do not fit well as a whole to the screen.

The new release provides a protection against this type of "accidents": if you click Done and there is one or more legion(s) not handled, Colossus will prompt you whether you really want to end the phase. This is an optional behavior, but enabled by default. You can control all three of them in Preferences window, confirmations tab.

See also the next feature about marking legions as "Skip".

Mark legion as skipped
There are frequent situations where you do want to leave a legion without split, move or recruit. In that case, you should mark them as "Skip" so that they do not trigger the confirmation; i.e. the confirmation appears only if you really forgot some legion(s).

For Recruit, there is a "Nothing" button in the Select Recruit dialog. After that it is not highlighted any more. If you change your mind, just click legion again and the "Nothing" is cleared and legion is highlighted again. Using Undo ("U", or from Phase menu) will reset this as well.

For Split, there is a "Skip" button in the Split Legion dialog (where you click those creatures which you want to be in the split off legion). (Sorry, you still have to pick a marker first)-; If you change your mind, you can at any time still click and split it. If you really really want to get it highlighted again so that you remember it e.g. after a save and load few days later, you need to consecutively "Undo" all splits (or "mark as skip") which were done after this marking as skip.

For Move, I haven't found any nice way how to integrate that; there is no nice dialog at hand. To mark a legion as skip for Move, do the following: click on the legion as if you want to move it, so that the possible target hexes are highlighted. Now press either "S" on the keyboard, or in Phase menu there is a Skip action. If you change your mind, as with all moves, there is no other way than to undo all moves until you reach the point where you did the "mark as skip".

Mode/option "Need Lord for Battle Control"

See the description for it in Get Players / game startup dialog documentation.

Suspend button
The "Suspend" button is only meaningful in local games (e.g. you against several AIs). It would cause the server side thread to stop processing data - to give you time to inspect legions, because otherwise the AI's proceed quickly.

Since this button is meaningless if are only a "remote" client (like when playing on the Public Server), that button is now disabled in this case.

April 6, 2010: Release 0.10.3 from r4798

Usability and stability improvements:

February 6, 2010: Release 0.10.2 from r4699

Usability and stability improvements:

The following were already in 0.10.2beta2 from r4693 (February 1, 2010)

The following were already in 0.10.2beta from r4676 (January 23, 2010)

January 2, 2010: Release 0.10.1 from r4646

Some usability improvements:

December 25, 2009: Release 0.10.0 from r4635

Two bugfixes (plus some refactoring done, and fixes to bugs caused by that), and: the Public Game Server is going online now!

October 15, 2009: Release 0.9.3 from r4577

Again bugfixes and corrections:

October 7, 2009: Changes listed below were already in Public Testing Build / Release 0.9.3beta2 from r4563 October 2, 2009: Changes listed below were already in Public testing Build / Release 0.9.3beta from r4551

September 6, 2009: Release 0.9.2 from r4519

More bugfixes and corrections:

August 17, 2009: Release 0.9.1 / Public Build from r4489

Just a few bugfixes.

August 11, 2009: Release 0.9.0 / Public Build from r4482

Yeah, it's been a long time since last Public Build. It might look we have been in winter sleep, but in fact in last 8 months we have done more changes (1000+ new revisions committed) than in the 4.5 years before (for comparison: last Public Build (October 2008) was from r3456, and r2450 was in February 2004).

But most of those changes were internal cleanup, refactoring, rewriting some parts to make future changes easier and less error-prone, and so on; and not so much directly user-visible changes and bugfixes.

This new Build is incompatible (in all three aspects: "Save Game"-files, Server/Client communication and Variant files) with the previous Public Build!

This means you can't load old saved games from earlier version, and when playing over network one can't use previous' versions Network Client to connect to a game running with new version and vice versa.

Below the highlights since last Public Build (2008-10-29):

January 6, 2009: Changes listed below were already in Public Testing Build from r3541

November 21, 2008: Changes listed below were already in Public Testing Build from r3500

October 29, 2008: Public Build from r3455

Changes since last Public Build (2008-10-10):

October 10, 2008: Public Build from r3425

August 22, 2008, Public Build made from r3332

A lot of things were changed this time. Some of them you as end-user might notice, some not...

Colossus requires now at least Java 1.5!

This time the changes in "oldest first" order (earlier they were mostly most recent first, or unordered...)


yeah, a long time no changes visible to the public (=no public build). But as you see above, a lot of things happened...

December 28, 2007, build r2890

Just a rebuild of same codebase to get also a proper ZIP file.

December 24, 2007, build r2882

Changes so far (just most recent first, i.e. NOT sorted by importance... ;-)

September 6 2007, build r2711

Only minor changes:

July 24 2007, build r2706

Most relevant changes: