* Version 0.50 (December 3, 1999) - Fixed a small problem that would cause compilation errors for systems without a joystick. - If an imprisoned creature was defeated by another creature, the winning creature would become imprisoned itself. Fixed. - Healing an empty cell no longer crashes the game. - Robert Paige Rendell <rendell@cs.monash.edu.au> brought to my attention the fact that the manpage is missing the information regarding how to win the game. It's there now. - He also fixed a bug in the computer's spell selection logic regarding the imprisonment of the very last opposing creature (in order to win the game). - And last but not least, he is responsible for the mouse support, new in this version. * Version 0.45 (October 12, 1999) - Fixed the bug that would occasionally cause a projectile weapon to miss its target player. - Added a new window with tips about getting started with the game. * Version 0.44 (October 6, 1999) - Incorporated some joystick code, which was sent to me by Eric Sharkey <sharkey@ale.physics.sunysb.edu>. * Version 0.43 (October 25, 1999) - Replaced the usage of "find -printf" with that of "ls -l | cut". Should be a lot more portable. - Shai updated the scores for the board computer, so it now plays better on the board (field play is the same as before). * Version 0.42 (October 11, 1999) - New banshee graphics by Joerg, and he also scaled down the size of the basilisk a little bit. - With the intention of getting rid of the last few pieces of the old graphics, I copied the unicorn and golem into the manticore and troll, respectively (though I changed the colors a bit). * Version 0.41 (October 9, 1999) - Fixed a bug in the way rocks were handled. - Dan sent me a fix for the sound code, which should make the segfault that some people were experiencing go away. - Shai sent me some improved AI code. - Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu> sent me a patch, fixing the C++ compilation problems some people were having. * Version 0.40 (October 5, 1999) - Made the logo screen reappear when the game is paused or has ended. - Shai Roitman <shairoi@ibm.net> sent me AI code for the board. This makes the computer play a lot better on the board. - Now keeping a little bit more statistics (for the AI board logic). - Dan Hursh <hursh@sparc.isl.net> sent me some sound stuff (code and data). - In networked games, the server sends the random number seed to the client, instead of both of them initializing it to 0. - Also fixed a bug in the client-side networking code, which caused the error "sendto: invalid argument" on some systems. - If pthreads is missing then game will still compile, only without networking support. There is also a --disable-network configuration option to force exclusion of networking code. - Added some more rules to the computer field player, so now the hard skill level is harder, and the medium skill level is like the hard skill level of previous versions. - Changed the rate at which the phoenix and banshee cause damage to their opponent, and also improved the collision detection logic for their cloud weapon. Hopefully, these two creatures will be a bit more useful. - Fine-grained the collision detection logic for the phoenix/banshee cloud weapon, making it somewhat more useful. - Deleting players in the Define Players window could mess up your ~/.xarchon, and then the game would die, and you wouldn't be able to restart it unless you deleted ~/.xarchon. Fixed this evil bug. - With everything being slowed down, the troll and golem were moving at the same speed as everybody else. Now they're slower again. - The slower speed could also cause some fast missiles to "pass through" creatures every now and then, without hitting them. This has also been fixed. - If you stopped the game (using F12 for instance) while the field epilog ("the x side wins") was displayed, and then start another game, then the first battle of the new game would end before it even begins. Fixed this bug. - Like in the original ARCHON, now when the game changes from strategy to battle, the two opposing creatures slide into position. At the end of the battle, the winner slides back to its position on the board. - New basilisk graphics by Joerg Osarek <joerg@osarek.de>. * Version 0.31 (September 15, 1999) - Fixed a few typos in the manual page. - Fixed a bug that would allow the banshee to return to the board, as the winner, even after it actually lost in battle. - Modified the ground-unit distance-counting on the board. Now it's different than how the original ARCHON has it, but it is more "correct." - Dan has finished replacing the entire light side (original) graphics with his own graphics. Yay! - The configure process now verifies that the find command accepts the "-printf" option. (Without it, "make install" fails.) - Now that there are some animations (in the elementals), I found that creatures would keep animating while blinkling (after getting hit). Fixed this. - Previous version changed the format of the configuration file, and if you had an ~./xarchon from an earlier version, it would die. Now I inserted a version check. - Slightly changed the way exchange behaves, so both creatures erase (row-by-row) the other creature beneath them. * Version 0.30 (September 12, 1999) - X ARCHON has a new home page, located at http://xarchon.seul.org. It is hosted by the SEUL project (http://www.seul.org), whose goal is making Linux more user-friendly, and thus a better competitor in the desktop market, which is now dominated by The Evil One. - New graphics for the air- and fire-elemental by Mark Shoulson <mark@kli.org>. - Changed (again) the way the shapeshifter is cloned. The cloned creature is now dimmer than its light-side opponent, and the blue flashes are gone. - Fixed a bug that would cause the game to crash if a new game was started when an elemental was fighting in the field. - Introduced short pauses while the computer is selecting a spell, so the other player can tell what's going on. - If any two adjacent non-diagonal direction keys are held down, the game now interprets this as their equivalent diagonal direction. For instance, pressing 4+8 on the numeric keypad is the same as pressing 7. - In my never-ending quest for The Right Speed, this time I slowed down the cursor movement on the board, and creature movement in the field. - Fixed a bug that would not let you define new human players without also configuring them as computer players. - It is now possible to immediately terminate a game in progress, by pressing the F12 key. - Added network support. It's isn't 100% perfect, but it works. The biggest flaw is that you cannot press Escape at all. If you need to get back to the menu--at the cost of ending the game--press F12. Also, I only got to test the networking code against "localhost", so it might fail when a real network is involved. ;-) - Finished the man page. Yippie! A nice side effect is that the "stuff" subdirectory is now gone. - Finally added the about box. * Version 0.22 (August 31, 1999) - New graphics for the dark dragon (and its fiery breath) and the Shapeshifter by Matt. - Made the computer player realize it can't cast spells if its mage is imprisoned. - Fixed numerous bugs in the computer's spell decision code. - If the game would be over as a result of a field battle, the window would turn into a gray rectangle, and you couldn't see the board in its final state. Fixed. - It is now possible to configure a human player to use the keys Return, Space and Right Control. - Slowed down the "fast" weapons a little bit, hopefully now the computer will kick everybody's ass a little less. (It rhymes!) - Slightly changed the way teleport behaves when you teleport one creature on top of another, to make the defending creature visible throughout the entire teleport. * Version 0.21 (August 29, 1999) - Added some titles to the Settings|Select Players window, and-- more importantly--the ability to choose which side goes first. - Fixed the bug that kept the window icon from being set correctly. - Added a new module, theme.c, which handles all the theme stuff, and, in particular, the GUI parts. This code was previously in actors.c, and has been moved in the hope of making actors.c more platform independant. - Fixed a typo in the description file of the `archon' theme (data/archon/NAMES) which made the game die if you tried to fight with the light wizard. * Version 0.2 (August 28, 1999) - New graphics for the light wizard and light phoenix by Dan. - Easier computers (ie, higher values for skill level) will now play slower slower in the field. In fact, the higher the skill value, the slower the computer will be. - Implemented a "configure" using autoconf and automake. Also added a "make install" target. - Noticed that the computer scoring code did not pay attention to the luminance of the square when it was considering a battle. Fixed. - Implemented a GTK-based GUI, using the excellent GUI builder, GLADE. No more recompilation to change simple game play options! - The game has been "theme"-ified. (Although presently there is only a single theme.) - Introduced concept of "players." Using the GUI, players and defined as human or computer, and then configured accordingly. Before starting a game, select a player for each side, and there you go. - Easier computers don't know how to shoot diagonlly anymore. This is supposed to make them easier to beat. - Convert the computer statistics file into a text file, making it machine-independant. * Version 0.1 (August 12, 1999) - I think that GUI matters aside (and assuming there are no bugs), the game is now complete. It has all the stuff the original game has, with a fully functional computer player, which kicks serious butt when you play at a low enough skill level (try 2). - Changed the format of the statistics file. In the *really* off chance that anyone has bothered to play a thousand games just to the computer, well... :-) But on the other hand, a new-format statistics file is provided. See the README about installing it. - Changed the dark side's fire control from space to enter. - Improved board computer logic to know about power points. - Changed field computer logic to be a little less random. - Teleport and exchange could be cast on imprisoned creatures; this has been fixed. - Fixed a bug in shift-time that delayed recovery of imprisoned creatures in certain situations. - Noticed that when the phoenix/banshee activate their cloud, the game becomes somewhat slowed down (at least on my Pentium 60 system). To fix this I need to re-write most of the stuff in canvas.c, something I don't want to do now (but maybe in the future). - Combined rock images into field background images to reduce the time it takes to display a frame. - Changed the way the shapeshifter is cloned. Both creatures are now intended to look the same, except that blue color flashes periodically to remind you which one is the shapeshifter. - Implemented spell logic in the board computer. It isn't extraordinary smart, but it gets the job done. - Changed names for elementals. For instance, what was previously known as the "elem-air" is now known as the "air-elemental". - With all the changes in the field play call, the range of values the COMPUTER_FIELD_SKILL has grown. The default setting is now 30, for a not-so-challenging computer opponent. * Version 0.08 (August 5, 1999) - New graphics by Dan: everything on the light side, and the goblin on the dark side. - Swapped the keyboard controls for the light and dark sides. - Changed the computer's field movement logic to reduce the chance that it will run right into the other player's missile. - Fixed a few bugs in the computer's board logic, and now it seems to play a little less randomly. (But you might need to play against it for a while before you notice that, because it bases its decisions on statistical data.) * Version 0.07 (August 3, 1999) - Fixed all the "reply too short" situations. (Hopefully...) - Incorporated some board logic into the computer player, in place of the old totally random behavior. The new logic tries to make moves that begin a battle, but only if the computer will win that battle. It guesses who wins by consulting statistics which are gathered when any battle is over. Thus, after enough battles take place, the computer should make reasonable guesses. Actually, this is all in theory: in practice, the computer still seems to play in a pretty random fashion. This will be fixed in a later version. - Used Matt's new floor tiles. These new tiles use far less colors than his previous ones (suitable for those of us who have a 256-color display). - Removed some really useless stuff from the old/ directory. * Version 0.06 (July 31, 1999) - Fixed a bug which caused an "Alarm clock" signal to prevent the game from starting. - Introduced a system for keeping track of the average damage creature [x] causes creature [y] (and vice versa) when playing at skill level [n] against opponent [o]. The idea is to have board computer consult this data when making a decision. These statistics are kept in a file called .xarchon.data which lives in the user's home directory.