[Explorer-devel] Galaxy Explorer 2.10 released

[<su...@fo...>]

Hi everybody,

I'm pleased to announce official release of the Galaxy Explorer version 2.10.
You shoiuld be able to download the source archive from the Galaxy Explorer
Source Forge site (http://sourceforge.net/projects/explorer) right away.

This game engine will be used for the upcoming highlander game of Thermopylae.
All judges are encouraged to move on to this version of the engine, too. Note
that due to the introduction of the blind game support and win criteria
control, the database format was changed in the usual upward-compatible manner.
Details can be found in the Files section of the Galaxy Explorer discussion
list (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/galaxy_explorer).

Following is a pertinent excerpt from the HISTORY file.

This is a major update of the Galaxy Explorer suite. The following has been
added and changed:
 
- One can elect to ignore any, both, or none of the winning criteria now using
the EditDB utility.
 
- In addition to the classic games, one can run blind games where the galaxy
size, the number of planets and races won't be revealed to the players, and
the initial race names will be scrambled to make guessing harder still.
 
- A new utility, MapChk, was created to allow judges assess the quality of
a map without actually seeing it, watch the increase of player visibility
horizon, etc.
 
- The command O DEFAULT was brought back in order: it would actually forget
to change player's default posture upon interpreting input (thanks to Ian
Kelly for the bug report).
 
- File streams were fixed to allow them to work with the newest GNU libraries
that are somewhat stricter about the stream flags.
 
- The template .forward file got the required double quotes around the
MailProcessor invocation sequence.
 
- All main programs finally started to use the return statement instead of the
exit() call.
 
A couple of minor bugs was fixed in the process as well.


Best regards.

Alexander