Recent changes

January 6, 2016: Public Build

Just one correction.

• Fixed: "Illegal split / marker not available" bug

December 31, 2015: Public Build #2

New build just to get two small improvements into use

• Fixed bug reported by Dantitan, that one could not propose own new game, as long as a game in which was earlier playing was still ongoing

December 31, 2015: Public Build

New build just to get two small improvements into use

• Visual feedback when splitting und unsplitting legions (so that in case response from server takes long, people do not right away try to do it 'once again'
• An option to have locally 'Only own legions' mode

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.

• Autosave begin of each phase, also after mulligan and extra-roll, and between engagements
• Suspend now with and without saving possible
• When resuming a game fails, it is now properly put back to list of suspended games, instead of being lost
• Fixed: after drift damage creatures that can strike were not highlighted
• Fixed: now it shows really the total creature points, not same as creature count line; changed label of 'Points' to 'Creature-Points'
• Masterboard window title now shows as first thing the owning player

November 11, 2015: Public Build

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

• Inactivity timeout and "turn-xx-yellow" should now work more reliably/consistently
  Both can be disabled in Preferences. The yellow is now also reset to normal when game is over
• Possibility to suspend games and resume later. Main purpose for that is that one could hopefully recover from crashed/stuck (no BattleBoard) situations, by restarting/resuming game from last auto-save point (at the moment that means begin of each turn; begin of each phase and perhaps between engagements is almost working)
• Requested/suggested by Scotty: Having easier access to players creature points and player type:
  
  • added player type and creature points to game status window,
  • allow multiple PlayerDetails dialogs to be open and kept open at same time,
  • and a refresh button added there
• For dice rolls, using random data from random.org instead of Java's built-in PRNG (actually, this has been in effect since November 2nd).
• A "Contact Admin" feature
• Reverted/dropped the requirement Java 7.

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.

• Inactivity-timeout (or rather "inactivity-autoplay"") added: if a user does really nothing for some time (while it is on him to do something, including responding to flee/concede dialog when being attacked), the Client's autoplay will kick in and finish his turn
• When the own turn starts, one is now also notified by that, that the bottom bar of the MasterBoard and the chat background turn yellow (that they both can be disabled has been added in the following release)
• Probability-based battle hits
• Extra-roll requests
• Added that /ping now sends feedback to sender that one really did send this via ping
• History-functionality in chat window (Cursor up-down)
• Several small improvements to AI (mostly about protecting Titan) provided by BrentNZ. Thanks!
• Display marker count in split phase (also by BrentNZ)
• Writes battle dice rolls statistics to a text file (idea is that players can access it via a web browser but that's not done yet)
• Layout changes to WebClient propose games tab (window was too tall for some wide-screens)
• Added tool-tip text for some more columns in proposed game table
• Provide the various game options (that were so far only available in local games) also in web games
• Improved error handling for illegal recruiting
• Visual feedback for Done on BattleBoard to prevent "illegally called ..." cases
• Removed display of hostname in GetPlayers dialog (could lead to a long delay during application start if one has 2 network interfaces)

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!

• New feature #222: Proposed Games table remembers column widths and has tooltips for long fields
• New feature #223: Confirm before conceding with Titan legion
• In Game status window, added at bottom a hint to click a player name for more information
• Stability improvements to spectator mode
• Added possibility to cancel WebClient's login/connect, for example when it's stuck/blocked by a firewall; now timeout after 10 seconds
• When user attempts to load a saved game but it fails (for example, too old format/version of file), display a Error message dialog telling so
• Add a toggle to make web client password displayable (show real PW instead of *****)
• Implemented "/userinfo" (only about oneself, so far) command in chat
• Notify web Client user when he logged in with case-mismatched user name.
• Fixed #3590291: Remote client might or might not use xml files from server.
• Fixed: the calling of disposePickCarryDialog should be done inside EDT
• Fixed #898: Can't unenroll from game
• Fixed #899: End of redisplaying messages is displayed somewhere between
• Fixed #900: Second click of Join Game as Spectator needs to be disabled

• Added in some documents the note that they are really out of date! ;-)
• Cleaned up home page files and images, synchronized files to subversion repo
• For now, do not create the internal spectator client
• Much more informative log message when move failed
• Made the cmdline webclient working
• Make "ant jars" also build the CmdlineClient Jar

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:

• Skip the "OtherOneHasTrouble" and "TroubleIsOver" messages if the one in trouble is spectator
• If WebClients server is already null, do not try server.logout() again (could in some cases cause NPE when watching a game)
• Some internal fix to keep proper track of whether loggedin/watching states in webclient

March 30, 2012: Public Test Build from r5172

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

• Spectator feature (= watch other games)
• In two variants Apolo renamed/corrected to Apollo

March 14, 2012: Release 0.13.2 from r5134

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

• Removed the non-working 'Disconnect' menu item
• Legion fly-out keys (Shift and Ctrl) should now "always" work
• Update strike damage in remote clients immediately, not only when strike turn is completed
• It identifies itself as release, not at some places as "public test build" ;-)

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)

• Fixed 3497085: Undo battle move errors
• Implemented FR 3494746: Show board for AI-only games also (when GUI-started)
• When user clicked Start Game, give visual feedback and disable cancel+unenroll to everybody
• As soon as game is activated, disable Enroll button for other players
• In StartGame, ignore case if passed-with user name has case difference compared to "official" user's name.
• In remote client, if game is already over, do not ask the "do you really want to concede" when one attempts to close the battle window
• Prevent/Handle accidental duplicate battle moves better (or: the delay between click and actual server feedback, added visual feedback)
• Finetuning with the "delayed withdraw": if client did not reconnect within approx. 3 minutes withdraw him. Inform other clients (if they are new enough to handle such information) about situation
• If updatePlayerInfo would re-send identical info as last time, skip it (reduces network traffic)
• Prevent the registration of user names guest* and anonym*
• Implemented FR 3494746: Show board for AI-only games also (when GUI-started)
• ConnectionLogWindow now show & hide to work as expected and keep checkbox in sync
• Skip withdraw / "withdraw if didn't reconnect in time" processing if player already dead (or client not a player anyway, e.g. in future spectator clients)
• By default, now stop accepting clients again after game start is completed/all clients have connected. If configured in Colossus-server.cfg, keep accepting (and WebServer starting games sets this to true); (intermediately, to allow reconnect, server socket kept accepting always, which can cause trouble when playing locally several games after each other, and previous one keeps hogging the socket)

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.

• If client gets nak for done with strikes, after dialog highlight critters with targets.

• If game client encounters connection closed (short network instabilities), it will try to reconnect after a second, and will catch up/synchronize to get messages/events that happened while being disconnected.
  BUT, if client crashes/hangs, one can NOT restart a client from scratch and rejoin.
• Fixed: 3473842 No Warlock on first turn option not sync'd from web server.
• Fixed: 3384824 Java 7 update breaks the code.
• Added some simple "Editing" functionality (by default not visible: https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/colossus/wiki/CheatMode).
• Fixed: Chat window did not always properly scroll to bottom when several lines came from server within short time (e.g. /help output).
• Some other small stuff became visible to users already earlier due to the fact when versions were installed to Public Server (e.g. /help, /contact stuff).
• On game client side, the reading from network and actual processing of the received data is now two separate threads; this prevents problems that client won't reply to server's "Hello, are you still alive?" requests in time.
• On various places removed the "synchronized" access, which did lead at least for some players with Java 1.6 to deadlocks (GUI freezes).

March 4, 2011: Release 0.12.1 from r5003

Two bugfixes and other minor improvements.

• Fixed: 3184301 "Pick Entry Side" when not required.
• Fixed: 3184700 Wrong phase when selecting creature to move.
• Prevent on server side that user could propose several (instant) games in the delay time until reponse to first propose is back to him.
• On BattleMap, Done menu item now disabled when it's not that players turn.
• After undo move and rescale, clear mover legion and rehighlight legions that can move.

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.

• Fixed: 3176758 "null pointer exception" - happened in particularly when aborting a teleport move by closing PickEntrySide dialog, and even permanent problems together with "pendingMoves" stuff feature (see next line, 3160858).
• Fixed: 3160858 "Move failed messages due to delayed server response". Visual feedback (clicked target hex highlighted red) and client prevents attempt to move an already-moved (just display update delayed case) legion once more.
• Fixed: 3160863 "illegal call to engage() message due to slow server response". Client prevents now clicking same (or any other legion/hex) for engaging when just clicked one (and just no feedback yet due to delayed server response).
• "First-aid" correction to: 3160873 "Concede hangs game" and 3133960 "Conceding battle leads to hung game": Now also inactive players concede directly ends the battle. This is not in in line with official rules, but all-in-all I consider this the better solution, if the alternative is having games hung regularly; implementing this in proper way (to be compliant with rules and have no risk of hung games) is simply out of reach by now. Created a feature request to "implement proper concede sequence in safe way".
• Minor changes to DinoTitan variant (some creature power/skill values, Spinosaur added, some battle lands, 2 needed in top of recruitment line in Springs, README file).

• A new variant "DinoTitan" added. The creator is looking forward to get feedback about it!
• Added an option to disable Warlock recruiting on the first turn.
• Fixed: 3033654 Battleboard Window (does not remember location nor size).
• Fixed: 2884952 GetPlayers: disabled player names.
• Some improvements in confirmation code per comments from developer's group, addition of a visited flag to legions so that move confirmation is more selective and usable, addition of a next key ('n') for the move, muster and split phases to move to the next legion that requires action.
• When using the N key to move to the next legion to act on, highlight the hex of that legion as well as placing the mouse over it.
• Fix for BattleTerrain/Hazards display feature. Fix existing specials (e.g. Drift) and add new ones for DinoTitan
• When a game is proposed, send a systemMessage announcing it.
• Better error handling for game starting: Added a generic "system message" method. Informs now for example about which player did connect ok to starting game, and if failed, report the summary which players connected successfully and which not.
• Synchronize (with value false) the global options that are not defined (e.g. teleport settings) from server to client to override possibly existing settings in client side config files.
• Added a RoundtripTimeBookKeeper for Webserver => WebClientC => WebServer pingRequests/Responses.
• WebServer Client handler has now own writer thread which is fed via a concurrent queue. Thus delays in writing to one client should not cause other clients to hang any more.

August 5, 2010: Release 0.11.0 from r4905

Some new features (see detailed descriptions below):

• Player colored angels and captured legion markers.
• Confirmation dialogs (optional) for omitted/forgotten split, move or recruits (Thanks to David Partridge!).
• Possibility to mark legions as "skip" for split, move and recruit (just made it "somehow", there's room for improvement in the usability)...
• "Need Lord for Battle Control" (Thanks to Bruce Sears!).

• Closing BattleBoard does not kill that player (for not involved player nothing happens at all, for involved player means conceding that battle).
• Public Game Server rejects now Clients older than 0.10.3.
• In Concede/Flee and Negotiation dialog, don't allow "x" dialog closing - need to click on of the actions.
• Server (game itself) sends pingRequest regularly (currently about every 30 seconds).
• Server (game itself) should not hang any more when can't write to a certain client - instead stops trying, informs other clients that one client is temporarily in trouble, and registers to selector to be notified when client becomes writable.
• Check Server connection shows round trip time
• In Remote clients (= also when playing with Public Game Server), do not show the Pause (earlier: Suspend) button.
• Numerous small changes to improve reliability / avoid server side warnings/errors/log messages.
• Admin can trigger re-reading of login message without server restart
• Changes to building, jar signing, keystore, local JNLP files, etc.

Some explanations for the new features:

Player-colored Angels and captured legion markers

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

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

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

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:

• A simple /ping command to notify another player (e.g. he has forgotten to click Done).
• Only game creator can start the game. If he is not enrolled, the first player from enrolled list instead.
• Arranged GUI items in CreateGame tab more compactly, so that Start button is (hopefully) visible on 1024x768 screens.
• Added info text in Hazard chart window that mouse over a symbol will give explanatory popup text.
• Admin stuff: Possibility to display some message to everyone when he logs in.
• When right clicking on a masterboard land with legions (but not clicked a legion itself), popup menu now offers also "Show legion(s)" action.
• Added as option: show the legion marker in autoinspector, rightclick-shows-legion and shift/ctrl popups
• Concede/Flee dialog tells "this will give XXX points to ..., raising the score from xxx to yyy". And some layout improvements.
• In Flee/Concede dialog, disable that Space activates the selected button. Note that Return key activates the "default" action of that dialog, which is Show Battle Map (which does not harm)
• In Flee/Concede dialog, mark the to-be-killed (= own) legion all as dead.
• In Flee/Concede dialog, added button for Show Battle Map, and text says from which side attacker enters.
• Lot of fixes related to game starting failing
• Prevent enrolling to a game that is already starting.
• Prevent on server side the starting of a game where not all enrolled players are logged in.
• On WebClient side, for check if game could be started, check also for instant games that all enrolled players are online.
• Directly after game start was triggered (state set to ACTIVATED), update GameInfo to _all_ logged-in users (not only enrolled ones), so that they see there is no point to enroll any more.
• Added a "wishlist and TODO" doc related to Public Game Server
• Improved the popup message which informs that the _WebClient_ connection was closed from server side, game is not affected.
• Some keep-line-alive functionality between WebServer and WebClient
• Some very simple keep-alive functionality also between "real" game server and client (i.e. actual game, not the WebClient connection)

February 6, 2010: Release 0.10.2 from r4699

Usability and stability improvements:

• Eliminated the "Done" after Engagements phase altogether
• When game was started by any player, in all enrolled players clients disable the Start button and show a text that game was started and by whom
• On WebServer start, initialize the nextFreeGameId based on highest existing game directory

• Disable the "C" shortcut for Concede on the BattleBoard to prevent accidental Concede when typing a "c" in the chat
• Added option to be asked for confirmation when leaving legions that could recruit without recuiting (by default enabled)
• Added that the beep and toFront for "my turn starts" are also done as defender when Flee or Concede dialog is presented
• WebServer writes all chat messages to a textfile
• Fix: When WebClient game starts, inform also not enrolled clients so that they move it to the Running Games table
• Fix: Prevent concurrentModificationExceptions for chat messages on WebServer side

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

• If active player dies during battle, server side automatically advances to next player instead of waiting for player finish engagements phase. This is related to: "2934399 Turn incomplete in multi-player"
• Proposed Games table shows now always both instant and scheduled games, not the ones or the others depending on the radiobutton as earlier. Also the action buttons for propose and enroll are active for instant games even if one has an instant game proposed or enrolled, now just a popup dialog tells then that and why one can't enroll to or propose an instant game right now
• WebClient: when variant changes and new variants max player count differs from previous, then adjust maxSpinner.maxValue (and all spinners current values, if needed)
• Removed keyboard shortcuts 'C' and 'D' in concede dialog
• Added a "Welcome Dialog" which will be displayed once for each new release. This time it will inform about the Colossus Public Game Server.
• Added confirmation dialog if there are still possible recruits not taken (Feature Request: 2937616 Muster discard "Are you sure")
• Added some Public Game Server FAQ document (pretty empty still)
• WebClient sends now some Client side version so server knows which features client can handle
• Prevent some problems when several players tried to start same game at almost same time. Games would stay hanging, eventually no more games possible
• Prevent the illegally called engage() and other warnings and errors
• Added some "general notification to user" functionality (popup dialog + beep) (so far only admin can send those)
• Eliminated the discrepancy between free ports / free game ports which caused a warning on startup of the game server
• Fixed the remove/cancel game issues, that it was not deleted from table, or caused exceptions, or whatever

January 2, 2010: Release 0.10.1 from r4646

Some usability improvements:

• Tell the names of logged in users, not only the number
• PGS: Access to userMaps now synchronized to prevent the hang/crash we had once recently
• PGS/WebClient: Most of the text fields now automatically select all text when they gain focus
• Corrected the text "redisplaying last 50 messages" (from 10 10 50)
• Improved text in MasterBoard BottomBar during engagements phase
• Added options for: when my (masterboard) turn starts, beep and/or bring my masterboard to front
• PGS: when lastOnline was changed (user does login or logoff), write back users file to disk
• When webclient user logs out, cancel proposed instant games he created. Also clear running games table and gameHash.

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!

• Fixed: 2910472 Undo broken when blocking a split
• Fixed: 2894243 ExperimentalAL crashed when unable to enter all creatures and 2873695 Close when AI can't fit on troops (same thing)
• New feature: The Public Game Server (aka WebServer/WebClient) functionality is going online now!
  Accordingly, the hostname field in WebClient is now pre-initialized with "play-colossus.net".

October 15, 2009: Release 0.9.3 from r4577

Again bugfixes and corrections:

• Fixed 2877055: Some GUI preferences don't load on startup

• Fixed: 2864777 Illegal rangestrike over walls
• Do not choose Experimental AI as "A Random AI" because it occasionally crashes
• When ExperimentalAI encounters a "getParent called ..." problem, show at least an error message in a dialog box explaining *why* Colossus will now close :-(

• Fixed: 2859914 Balrog placement ignores score (aka: Balrog every 300 again, not 50)
• Fixed: 2864790 Aborting load game with remote player - No GetPlayers dialog
• Fixed: 2838276 "my Strike Skill" is wrong for nonnatives to bramble (actually, just improved the dialog to make it's meaning clearer)
• Fixed: 2855208 Balrog exception in V0.9.2 (ConcurrentModificationException)
• Probably fixed: 2864777 Illegal rangestrike over walls
• Max Heap size now 256MB
• If invalid variant name is in config file, show a warning and reset to Default instead of hanging with NPE

September 6, 2009: Release 0.9.2 from r4519

More bugfixes and corrections:

• Fixed: 2835558 WARNING: Could not find creature with name none
• Fixed: 2820231 Illegal rangestrike
• Fixed: 2848651 and 2828028: Legion flyouts
• Fixed: 2837746 Balrog variant: Caretaker counts not reset between games
• Fixed: 2839241 Faulty anchor tags (Crossreference links in docs worked for Inetnet Explorer but not for Netscape)
• Make loading and saving of Balrog games work
• Make Auto Done act properly when there is no Recruit action or undo possible
• Add in save game also a property that tells with which release / revision of Colossus that save game was created.
• Eliminated some race situations in game startup (thread interaction/notifications)

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

Just a few bugfixes.

• Fixed: 2836720 Resync error during loading saved game (when UndoRecruit had been done)
• Fixed: 2838300 Auto Done (added description for it in documentation)
• Fixed: 2837666 Help About pop fails (when some logging property file was not defined)
• Fixed: 2837660 Creature information pop up failing

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):

• Colossus releases (what we so far called "Public Builds") will now have a version number, starting with this one being 0.9.0.
• A new AI type "ExperimentalAI". It uses some kind of genetic algorithm to find better "optimal battle move" combination (evaluating really all theoretically possible combinations would simply take too long). As the name indicates, it is still in very experimental phase ;-)
• Added "Battle Dice Rolls history/scrolling functionality" (thanks to Bruce for that!)
• Added a Battle generator tool (mostly for internal use)
• BattleLandsGenerator including BattleLandRandomizer now functional again (were broken for years)
• Improvements to game loading error handling (from cmdline: wrong filename, tolerate missing .xml extention, ...)
• Changes to save game format, now version 2
• "One todo done. 1.21 gigatodos still to go."
• Fixed: 2057072 If game in trouble, "Save" might not work either: File => Save Game and Save Game As now done directly via "localServer" object, instead of via network message as earlier.
• Added Tim Hoban's patch for #2352320, HumanHater being under-aggressive against other AIs. (Reworked onlyAIsRemain a bit.)
• Improvements to "Public Game Server". But: No, it's still not ready to use yet :-/
• Fixed: 2675045 NPE during createSummonAngel after Negotiation + related cleanup
• Added Maven building. We have now a Continuous Integration build running which creates site report (copy paste detector, dependencies, ...).
• Basic functionality to suspend/resume a game, e.g./especially when AI's are playing.
• Fixed: Not all angel summons allowed - ID: 2316688
• Changes to Help - About dialog:
  • More informative build info (timestamp + user + revision instead of just revision)
  • LogDirectory now derived from actual logging-property (instead of simply assuming it's still system temp dir)
  • Dialog has now a meaningful title
• Also Game Setup (Get Players) dialog shows now the build info/version (version is only properly set in official builds).
• New Save Game format: includes now additionally a "redo" log part
• Whole Save/Load game tragedy now in better shape:
  • Saving of game now reliable for all situations except during engagements/battles. I.e. one can save at any time during split, move or recruit, or between engagements/battles.
  • When Saving, the splits/moves/recruits done since phase start "Done" can now be undone.
  • Done button in correct state accordingly.
  • Warning message when attempting to save during an engagement or battle: this will not result in a save game from which one could continue playing.
• SaveGame and SaveGameAs menu items/actions stay disabled until game setup is completed.
• Save Game file does not contain the variant data files any more.
  Note: For continuing a saved game that uses a custom variant (does anyone even do?) you need to load the variant once manually before so that the application knows it (and where to find the files for it).
• Added "autoDone" option (when nothing to recruit at all, or after last engagement).
• Make SplitPrediction for equal-height children with 50% probability swap "keep" or "split off". So, e.g. for initial split now it does not blindly assume any more that the Titan stays in original legion and Angel is split off.
• Work ongoing to get Colossus part of Fedora (e.g. using now self-written simple option parser instead of werken.opt).

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

• Fixed the problem that Quit in WebClient did not really directly Quit
• Fixed: 2322870 Bogus packet (only half message written and then fully)
• During pick color (and pick initial marker), display in the bottom bar a message telling so
• If game is already 512 turns (or more ;-) do not display the split history graph (would cause error messages)
• Move WebClient classes to own, new package
• Improvements to the "accepting clients" handling
• Quite some work on the "Scheduled Games" functionality for WebServer code
• Made the "Load Extern Variant" mostly work (does probably not work if there are remote players, and also load/save a game not totally ok). Details see bug tracker item: 2483419 "Custom variant: remote players? load game? instructions!"

• Several improvements to speed up loading of saved games:
  • Do not send events of legions of players that will be dead at the end
  • Skip Caretaker Display and some other screen updates
• Quite some changes to things reported by "FindBugs" tool
• Added in File Menu new item "Check Connection"
• Fixed: 2128216 NW Stresstest opens GUI window and hangs
• Some cleanup in accepting clients stuff (removed some redundant variables; send some message immediately after accepting the client
• Improved handling for remote clients one game end with AutoQuit

October 29, 2008: Public Build from r3455

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

• Options are now loaded and saved based on whether it is AI or not, instead of depending on whether it is a <bySomething> name.
• Fixed: [2081285] Preferences of <by-.....> named players: GetPlayers dialog now prevents <byColor> and <byType> names for Human players
• Fixed: [2158066] Unified has nonsensical mustering rule
• Added label with info text "Click a creature for details!" in Caretaker
• Clicking the chits in FullRecruitTree or HexRecruitTree also pops up now the CreatureDetails (until then this could only be done in Caretaker)
• Fixed: [870430] Attempt to Concede in a Battle you're not involved in
• Fixed: 1900956 Nonentry of summoned or mustered unit
• Fixed: 2167276 Doubled Reinforcements
• Fixed: 2160218 Incorrect bramble effect on rangestrike
• Fixed: CowardSimpleAI constants incorrectly affecting SimpleAI.
• Fixed the "multiple recruits possible" problem reported for Public Testing Build
• Fixed that EventViewer showed all recruitings (after first battle) as "Reinforced"
• Fixed: 1895129 carryover gui issue: should not close with "x"
• Fixed: 2060183 Legion overwiew in user info window needs scrollbar
• Fixed: 2060208 Legion split tree fails if too many legions

October 10, 2008: Public Build from r3425

• Fixed: [ 2078529 ] "Preferences" => scales value is now read from cf file on startup.
• Help=>About now tell also the actual .colossus dir and also the log directory where Colossus[012].log files will be created.
• When game is over, MasterBoard tells so also in Title and in "phase" label, and DONE button invokes then the Quit/Close/New/Cancel dialog (same as closing the window with the "x" in upper corner always does).
• When gameOver state reached, skip summon/reinforce + kick next engagement (perhaps we undo this skipping of summon/reinforce soon again...).
• Fixed (hopefully): [ 2074220 ] Exception while loading game with dead players. This includes a lot of small changes related to loading/replaying a saved game.
• Fixed: [ 2044310 ] LoadGame: wrong legions existing/content/location (same as 2074220)
• During loading of a game the Masterboard Bottombar (where normally the phase is displayed) shows a "replay ongoing - turn x of n (please wait)" text.
• Fixed: [ 2090866 ] AI spinners wrong intialized
• Fixed: [ 2091811 ] Preferences window should restore if requested from menu
• Fixed: [ 585329 ] Net game lockup from negotiation window; (made sure that Negotiation and ReplyToProposal dialogs are closed when same type of dialog is opened; and close them when battle starts).
• Feature Request [ 2083312 ] game type - pantheon 12: created a new variant "BeelzeGods12" - it's basically Beelzebub12 with the Gods and some rules from Pantheon.
• When creating new BattleMap, dispose previous one, in case it is still open for some reason...
• Fixed: [ 2060169 ] Skipping rangestrike, rangestriker(s) stay highlighted
• During serverSocket creation, catch any exception, not just IOException. Also first display an error message dialog, before doing System.exit().
• Fixed the problem that games with remote players could not be loaded
• When starting new or loaded game, wait until all clients have caught up with load/preparations, before doing setupPhase to start the actual game.
• StatusScreen window now does not use scale any more (see [ 2078529 ] Preferences)
• Fixed: [ 2073991 ] Game hangs on AI Split
• Fixed (partially): [ 2074220 ] Exception while loading game with dead players: Now it can be loaded without exceptions, but it wants initially as many clients as originally players were involved; especially troublesome if there were remote clients that are dead now...
• Removed SVG support and the Batik library
• Slightly rephrased text in summon dialog and corrected catched to caught in some method names ;-)
• Tower teleport now only allowed from lands which really have the isTower attribute, not as before if they have a startlist (e.g. Abyssal, Mantio).
• Fixed the server-client communication, now (hopefully) the right way. Several of the mysterious battle and game-end related bugs shouldn't happen any more, e.g.:
  • Fixed: [ 2072769 ] Game hangs when AI titan killed by AI
  • Fixed (most likely):[ 2090150 ] Stack Counter left after a battle
  • Fixed: [ 2095361 ] Game hangs when AI Titan killed
  • Fixed: [ 2097773 ] Battlemat fails to close
  • Fixed: [ 2113621 ] Major battlemap bugs that end gameplay
• Some corrections and improvements to CreatureDetails dialog
• When user selects Quit, trigger a timer which would do a System.exit() after 10 seconds - to make sure that the java/javaw process will really terminate.
• Fixed: [ 2111020 ] After game completed, start new one: clients don't come in
  (when all expected clients did connect, stop listening to socket and accepting connections)

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...)

• Quite some internal cleanup, architectural changes (NIO, less threads, started to share code between server and client instead of duplicate it, rearranged java packages, game shutdown/cleanup more properly, memory freed, ...)
• Changes which eliminate or at least provide more logging info related to [ colossus-Bugs-1813362 ] "Battle hangs game, perhaps due to Java 1.5 ?" {perhaps caused by GTK window Look & Feel?}.
• In Game setup a checkbox for "HotSeatMode". If mode is active, it restores on player change the MasterBoard of the active player and minimizes the others. Does not cover the battle maps yet. Also the satellites (game status, eventviewer, ...) come and go with their respective MasterBoard.
  So, something left to do here...
• The items in the MasterBoard menu which are more like "Preferences" (as opposed to: "actions") are now all moved into an own window (Window=>Preferences).
  Documentation for Client is now accordingly split into two files (actions in the menu, and meaning of the various Preferences items)
• Includes now the WebClient (and WebServer) functionality.
  We have the code working, but no server running :-(
  If you are willing to help organizing something into that direction, don't hesitate to contact us!
• Player name in the status screen stays in player's color. This allows telling who e.g. the green player was when green is dead.
• Restricted logging to the Colossus classes.
• Added "configure your favorite colors" functionality in Preferences.
• It's now possible to close the MasterBoard of a dead player (when several human players play on same computer). Earlier this would have quite the whole application. Also the dialogs related to Close and Quit are changed quite much.
• Closing the network client (or when it fails) you are back to the main GetPlayers dialog (instead of just whole application gone, as earlier). Web client dialog behaves the same.
• Last Recently Used lists for server host and port work better now.
• Network client has now a timeout and shows an error message when it fails, and dialog stays up, so one can try again.
• Server port visible and modifyable in GetPlayers dialog.
• New variant "Abyssal3" added.
• Various improvements to stresstest script.
• A new (unfinished?) feature in the menu of the battle window: the new help menu contains an entry to show a summary of the terrains on the battle land.
• A new dialog showing information about a player: a click on a player's name in the status screen shows a summary of a player including the legions and creatures currently owned.
• Improved log messages for earned points and half-points, and for acquiring, and failures in acquiring.
• Fixed: [ 1964752 ] Changing scale value sometimes causes exception.
• Bugfix: the AI hints for the Undead variant were fixed so the AIs should go for a third Naga in Plains if a Griffin could be mustered on the next move. Also some other (minor) special creatures/lands typos in variant data fixed.
• PickMarker and PickColor dialog layout changed to avoid wrap situations.
• Angel Summoning changed: instead of the 2-step-procedure (select legion on masterboard and then creature from legion in dialog) the dialog shows now all possible donors with the summonables red bordered. And the dialog contains some text instructing how to used it.
• Negotiations (offer and accept) do work now.
• Autosave filenames (and those created by just "File=>Save" without specifying own filename), are now long style; i.e. at the end they contain info about turn number, active player and phase.
• In new SummonAngel dialog, Titan in possible donor legion is now shown in player color with right power value (instead of the black default icon)
• In negotiation dialog (make offer), clicking on marker toggles whole legion (all chits) to dead or all to not dead again.
• Save preferences back to clients cf file also then when preferences dialog is "close"d (not only when client/masterboard is closed).
• Fixed: [ 2044243 ] "After summon and left offboard, can't after battle summon"
• Fixed: [ 700478 ] "mandatory strike skipped": DoneWithBattleMoves now checks that it's indeed move phase.
• Fixed: [ 1859016 ] "Done key and box disabled ?randomly?": "Done" action (Button & Menu) should now be correctly en/disabled during normal play, also for the non-active players; (but the situation after loading a game is not handled yet [1702874]).
• Fixed: [ 2028230 ] Terrain penalties not applied in combat (ogre out of brambles)
• Fixed: [ 2058959 ] Angel can fly over volcano
• Fixed: [ 2046854 ] If Titan is killed in negotiation, game does not end
• Partly done FR [ 491247 ] "Closing a question box": In PickStrikePenalty dialog, added "cancel", and cancel or closing window do now cancel the strike, rather than striking with default.
• Fixed: [ 1895129 ] "carryover gui issue"; this means also partly done FR [ 558825 ] "Clickable spillover": For picking carry targets, now clicking a valid target does the carry there, clicking anywhere else does not harm (dialog and carry mode keep alive).
• Fixed: [ 1608709 ] Problem mustering when choice (make it impossible to bypass the Pick Recruiter dialog via Done key shortcut)
• Made the PickRecruit and PickRecruiter dialogs somewhat more informative.

December 28, 2007, build r2890

December 24, 2007, build r2882

• We have now the Wiki pages in use. Mostly for developers, but there there are also web start file(s) for more experimental builds - i.e. already some while before the public build is done.
  For details check out the ExperimentalBuilds wiki page.
• Improvements to Battle Map:
  • Shows the die roll needed to hit.
  • Shows adjustments (get more/less dice due to hazard or rangestrike)
  • Legion markers show near the legions entry side
  • Done button, turn+phase+activePlayer indicator
  • An own page in the docs folder describes the features of the Battle Map: Description for the features of the BattleMap window. You can also find this page from the documentation index ("The full docs are here.") on Colossus main page.
• Changes in EventViewer which should eliminate some (harmless?) exception in AWT Event Queue.
• Vendor tag in Java Web Start file now "Colossus development team" instead of David Ripton.
• Action key and menu item for "Done" now in sync with "Done" button.
• Default setting for legion visibility now "Ever revealed ..." instead of "Only own".
• Legion info popups: holding shift key, ever each legion will appear a small legion flyout showing it's contents, and if known the legion value. Holding control key, they are shown only for own legions.
• Improvements to "View Battle Map": land name now top-right, so the normal "Land name corresponds to land number on MasterBoard" rule applies now. Additionally it shows the neighbor lands (both in the title, and in the map are inactive buttons telling e.g. "Left: Woods 39").
• A LOT of internal cleanup and corrections.
• Slightly improved handling of Save Game if directory "saves/" does not exist yet or can't even be created.
• List of hosts in Network Client now not user dependent any more, eliminated one possible NullPointerException (game would hang), and in the alphabetically sorted list the Most Recently Used one is preselected.
• Some cleanup and fixing for AutoInspector and EventViewer regarding initial size, position, and showing/disposing code cleanup; size+location were forgotten/reset to default if EventViewer was left disabled for one full game; now fixed.
• Inspector and show-legion (right-click) window show legion value (and owner, if not own legion) in title; concede and flee dialog also show legion values (=> feature requests [1818878] and [ 503862 ]).
• If duplicate player names, tell this as message box, instead of silently just doing *nothing*.
• Engagement window collects now all results, no matter whether it is enabled or not, and does not forget old results when closed; and if at game start (saved via options) enabled, it *IS* visible (even if empty). I.e. it behaves like all other satellite windows.
• Game Setup window is now a JFrame (instead of being a JDialog as it was before) which means, it can be minimized, and has own taskbar icon.
• EngagementResult and EventViewer windows now handle time-losses properly (before, they just told "won in 8 turns" and "destroyed").
• Updated in documents that recommended Java version is now 1.4.2.
• After the fix for [1769985], when used Load Game button player types and names were all wiped out. This is now corrected again.
• Most likely fixed now: [1789116] and [1737239] ("Illegal move" message when going with a 4 up to tundra/mountain).
• Fixed: [ 1758248 ] Help - About is now also shown even if autoplay is on.

September 6 2007, build r2711

• Fixing: [ 1769985 ] "Auto quit when game over never changes"
  In GetPlayer dialog options are also saved when using Load Game, not only when starting new game.
• The dialog box for "Illegal move" tells now a more concrete reason why the server considers this move illegal. This is related to [1789116] and [1737239] (attempt to move from Plain 29 to Tundra 2000 and one gets this message eventhough this move should be allowed).
  Hopefully with this improved message this gives a clue what is wrong there.

July 24 2007, build r2706

• MasterBoard menu items significantly rearranged:
  • Player menu now called Autoplay
  • Part of Graphics menu items moved into new "Window" menu
  • Look & Feel under new Windows menu instead of being own menu
• "Show all recruit chits" replaced with 4-choice selection whether to show "None", "Strongest", "Recruit Hint", "All".
• Additional event in EventViewer to show "Masterboard movement roll"
• Various bugfixes
• Documentation updated:
  • Added a doc describing all the Client side options (in MasterBoard menu).
  • A document describing all the options/settings available during game startup (in Get Player selection dialog) was already added few weeks ago.
  • Smaller other updates, corrections, NAME-tag adding in various other HTML-doc files.