2.3 Beta 5 released!

[cybersphinx]

After a somewhat longer delay then intended, and a not published 2.3 RC1 (due to possible problems found after having already tagged it), we have finally released Warzone 2100 2.3 Beta 5.

There is a bug in 2.3 beta 5 that makes campaign play nearly impossible (it causes a crash when trying to reinforce an away mission). It has already been fixed for 2.3 beta 6.

Changes:
This release again brings lots of fixes and some new features. The most noticeable one is the changed terrain visibility, now you always see the range of your units (what could be done via 'z' before). The broadcasted message when a player picked up an oil drum was removed again. The screenshot folder is now called "screenshots" instead of "screendumps". For the full list of changes, see below.

Savegames from Beta 4 should still work, for multiplayer, all players need to use Beta 5.

The Windows installer for this release was built on a different system than usual, please report any irregularities. If your virus scanner complains about it, please report it to the maker as a false positive (and tell us, so we can report it to them as well). The installer is cross-compiled on a Linux system, the hosting is done on Linux, the file never even touched a Windows system before the download.

Bug Reports:
As usual, we need bug reports to fix problems in the game. Please note that we use tickets only to track bugs, for discussions about how features should work and feature requests we have a dedicated forum section.

For bug reports, see BugReporting for details, in short: Search the existing tickets for your problem, if one already exists, feel free to add more info (or maybe the problem has already been fixed in SVN, then the ticket will be closed). If there is no report yet, make a new ticket. Be as detailed as possible in both summary ands description, and either log in with your forum account or leave an email address so we can contact you if we need more information. The more information we have, the easier it is to fix problems, so include savegames/instructions to reproduce the bug, crashdumps, backtraces, screenshots for graphical problems... if you can. When you attach files to a ticket, please add each text/image file separately and uncompressed, so we can view them easily in trac (savegames can be zipped).

Download:
As usual, downloads can be found on our download page.

Detailed Changelog:
2010-01-02: Version 2.3.0 beta 5

• General:
  • Change: Show sensor visibility coverage on terrain and minimap (ticket:#1289, r8918)
  • Change: Add more key shortcuts (ticket:#806)
  • Change: Screenshots now get saved in "screenshots", not "screendumps" (r8818)
  • Change: Deselect campaign transport when trying to give it orders instead of just doing nothing (r8856)
  • Change: Revert broadcasting picking up oil drums, per forum consensus (r8888)
  • Change: Add support for an optional descriptive header for stats files (r8897)
  • Fix: Tally up construction borgs/trucks in SP games as well (r8726, ticket:#966)
  • Fix: Trucks can't guard things, super cyborgs can (r8808)
  • Fix: Don't deselect a retreating unit if it's the only unit selected (r8815)
  • Fix: Can order more than one transport at one time in multiplayer (r8854)
  • Fix: Make VTOLs finish patrolling/scouting before returning to rearm (r8863)
  • Fix: Rearming pads now actually rearm at the speed they're intended to, rearming upgrades affect rearming pad repair speed (r8864)
  • Fix: Auto-repair was sometimes instantaneous (r8898)
  • Fix: Assorted bugfixes (r8793, r8807, r8843, r8846, r8849, r8860)
  • Fix: Various Xcode project fixes (r8798, r8800, r8820, r8852, r8859, r8915)
  • Fix: Update win32 cross-build scripts (r8851, r8903, r8906, r8908, r8910)
• UI:
  • Change: Add small text, use for ready button (r8795)
  • Change: Show version number of games in the lobby (r8795)
  • Change: Updated images (r8803)
  • Fix: Commanders now display the correct amount of power/health in the design screen (r8877)
  • Fix: Design screen issues with two weapons and indication of active component (r8881)
  • Fix: Correctly calculate secondary weapon shadow power/HP, allow changing primary weapon without removing secondary weapons (r8883)
• Multiplayer:
  • New: Add the laser satellite to the limits screen (r8729, ticket:#1227)
  • New: Add a host has dropped dialog when the host drops (r8717)
  • New: Add a host only dialog that warns them they are about to kill the game if they quit (r8717)
  • Change: Fix the hash routines to use network byte order (r8762)
  • Change: Host can change position and color of other players (r8805)
  • Fix: Enforce default limits if host did not enter limits in the limits screen (r8713)
• AI:
  • Change: No base builds faster by droids cooperating on more buildings; remove AI cheating of 1500 free power on full base games (r8847)
• Balance:
  • Update cyborg lasers to match changes to regular lasers
  • Change cyborg transport research icon to cyborg transport
  • Change Lancer's prereqs from HEAP Mini-Rockets to HE Mini-Rockets Mk3
  • Allow only Dragon to have multi-turret; decrease its HP by 50 (r8895)
• Translations:
  • Updated: Brazilian (r8699), Finnish (r8913), German (r8761, r8916)

[yamar]

Yay! this looks exciting! correct me if I'm wrong, but can you have two weapons per tank now? is that what I saw?

Thank you DEVs! warzone just keeps getting better!

Yamar

[Zarel]

Yay! this looks exciting! correct me if I'm wrong, but can you have two weapons per tank now? is that what I saw?

You've been able to have two weapons per tank for a while. It was just disabled because, among other things, there were a lot of bugs. I recently fixed most of those bugs, so it should be good now.

[praefectus]

Great news - thanks all devs !

[yamar]

You've been able to have two weapons per tank for a while. It was just disabled because, among other things, there were a lot of bugs. I recently fixed most of those bugs, so it should be good now.

Yes, but we can use it now, that is what really matters! Thanks for fixing the bugs Zarel.

[mcdebugger]

Wow! Multi-turrets back on-line!
And some good changes... Glad to see all the betas in the series
And this is nice feature to broadcast message when host leaves a game. And what about situation when app crashes on the host or host has connection problems? Will it be logged?

[poVoq]

Don't have the time to check it right now, but was this included:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4316
even though it does not show up in the change log?

P.S.: good work on the new release otherwise it seems!

[Zarel]

Don't have the time to check it right now, but was this included:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4316
even though it does not show up in the change log?

No, it hasn't been changed yet. I still need to find a good control scheme.

[XboxJosh]

I noticed that the "soft" fog of war (is that what it's called?) does not recede when a Satellite Uplink Center is built, is this intended?

[Per]

I noticed that the "soft" fog of war (is that what it's called?) does not recede when a Satellite Uplink Center is built, is this intended?

Good question. The Satellite Uplink is rather odd when it comes to vision. I will look into it.

[themac]

I wonder if you have tested all that looking combinations of twin turrets and bodies in the meantime because many tanks looked really ugly with two turrets on it.

[poVoq]

Don't have the time to check it right now, but was this included:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4316
even though it does not show up in the change log?

No, it hasn't been changed yet. I still need to find a good control scheme.

Whats wrong with MMB or alternatively alt-LMB?

[KukY]

I wonder if you have tested all that looking combinations of twin turrets and bodies in the meantime becuase many tanks looked really ugly with two turrets on it.

It is enabled only on Dragon.

[themac]

Ah, great! That is what makes sense to me I think! =D

[Warzone2010]

This is my frist posting on here so I say hi all, I think I will for the next version 2.3 beta 6 to be released any way, will you be able to add some suff from Multiplayer in to campaigns?
Like

Twin assauit Gun
Twin assauit Cannon
Heavy Repair Turret
All the power generator upgrades has in Mk 1 2 3 for campaign one like the gas turbine can't remder what it called, and is there any way to take the stupid clock off campaigns only keep it on for some of the missions that need a timer on.
I hope am not asking too much just some changers I like to see in the next reslease or in 2.3 beta 7 some day.