dopewars drug dealing game / News: Recent posts

This release improves Unicode support in the text-mode client, and adds support for networking on the Haiku operating system

This release improves the appearance of the text-mode client, adds a British English translation, and fixes a bug selecting sounds from the options dialog of the Windows client.

This release fixes the metaserver, which has been broken since SourceForge moved to HTTPS. It also adds support for modern 64-bit operating systems, and newer software libraries such as GTK+3 and SDL 2.

I've just released version 1.5.12 of dopewars. This security bugfix release corrects a potential
exploit against the Windows server, which was not
fully patched by the 1.5.11 release.

I've just released version 1.5.11 of dopewars. This is largely a security bugfix release, fixing a potentially exploitable bug in the Windows server when running as an NT service.

I've just released version 1.5.10 of dopewars. This is largely a bugfix release, fixing a server DOS and some minor bugs in the text-mode client.

I've just released dopewars version 1.5.9. This is largely a bug fix release (there was a slightly annoying crash bug with version 1.5.8 which occurred in some circumstances when you clicked on the "drop drugs" button in the graphical client). There are also, however, some minor improvements to the text-mode client, primarily to allow it to work better on screens which aren't 80x24.

If you find any bugs with this new version, use the "Bugs" link at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dopewars/ to report them.... read more

What's new in version 1.5.8?

- Quique has kindly provided a Spanish translation
- Robin Kohli of www.19.5degs.com has provided a default set of sounds
- On Windows XP systems, the new-look controls are now used
- I now build for RedHat 8.0 systems, i.e. with GTK+2
- Unicode should now be used throughout the program, when using GTK+2
under Unix or under Windows NT/2000/XP systems. UTF-8 is used for all
network messages, so different clients and servers should now be much
more interoperable. (This is implemented as a network ability, so when
talking to a client or server without the "UTF8" ability, all messages
will be translated into the locale's default encoding to maintain
backwards compatibility.)
- I've removed the separate dopewars-esd RPM. The ESD plugin is now
included in the main RPM, as are the default sounds, so everything
should "just work" when installed. SDL is still in a separate package,
however, as it's quite possible to have a full-featured RedHat box
without having the SDL libraries installed.
- I don't make Alpha RPMs any more. If you're still using RedHat on an
Alpha, then you should be able to rebuild the source RPM. RedHat seem
to have given up on any new releases for the Alpha architecture, and I
no longer have access to any RedHat/Alpha boxes (they all run Debian
now ;)... read more

What's new in version 1.5.7?

- Sound support. This uses the ESD or SDL libraries on Unix systems, and the native Windows multimedia system on Win32. If building from source code, the configure script should detect the available sound libraries. If you're installing from the binary RPMs, you'll need to install both the standard "dopewars" RPM and one of the two sound plugin RPMs. Once it's up and running, you can choose which sound system to use with the -u or --plugin command line option.... read more

I've just released 1.5.6 of dopewars. This is largely a bugfix
release, so if the thing still crashes, yell. The server now has a few
more sanity checks to catch cheating clients, and I've fixed a memory
corruption bug in the server code that may have been the cause of several
reported crashes with 1.5.5 and earlier.

The GTK+2.0 client should now work properly in non-UTF8 locales.
(Pango warnings with 1.5.5 were due to translations being presented in
a non-UTF8 codeset, as all the location names, drugs etc. are read in
before the GTK+2.0 code starts up, and so are in the locale's encoding.)
On startup, the GTK+2.0 client now converts all strings from the locale's
encoding to UTF-8. Any invalid UTF-8 strings are truncated at the first
invalid character. When running in a UTF-8 locale, configuration files
are read and written directly in UTF-8.... read more

To those of you that aren't monitoring the SourceForge project page for dopewars, I've just released version 1.5.5. This is mainly a bug fix
release, for example adding extra error checking to the server's setup of its Unix domain control socket, and fixing of a bug that could occur if you were attacked by another player while in the "deal drugs" dialog. A little more sanity checking is also now performed on the configuration file.... read more

I've just released version 1.5.4 of dopewars. This is mainly a bug fix
and stability (hopefully!) release, and should address the problems that
Debian and YDL users were experiencing on PPC systems. The most visible "new"
feature is the configuration file editor in the GTK+/Win32 client, for those
that find the traditional Unix "vi ~/.dopewars" approach daunting. It only
allows fiddling with a limited subset of the configuration so far, but it's
relatively easy to extend it - suggestions or code patches welcomed. In return,
I expect to see more custom servers out there. ;)... read more

The 'old' metaserver, at bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk, used by dopewars clients up to version 1.5.0, will shortly be shut down. When this happens, these older versions will no longer be able to communicate with the metaserver. Thus, it's recommended that you upgrade to version 1.5.1 or higher (preferably 1.5.2) as soon as possible!

A beta of dopewars-1.5.0 is now available. This features a graphical client, and a major rewrite of many parts of the code (mainly the underlying network stuff, for security and responsiveness). Give it a go, and let me know of any bugs (please!) so that we can ensure that the final release goes smoothly. Also, now is the time if you want to add a new translation to dopewars (or to update existing translations)...

The dopewars project, previously hosted solely at http://bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk/~ben/dopewars/ now has an additional home at SourceForge! This is to allow developers easier access to development codes (by CVS) and to take advantage of SourceForge's mailing lists and forums. Translators are particularly needed for translation of the development version of the dopewars code into other languages!