Wesnoth 1.7.15 aka 1.8-rc1

[ivanovic]

Wesnoth 1.7.15 aka 1.8-rc1 is out!

This is the first release candidate for the upcoming 1.8 series. We are confident that we are really close to 1.8 now but we do need lots of players testing the game and reporting all bugs they find. We do encourage every player to test this release and report all bugs they find so that we can still fix them before we release 1.8. Beside this content creators should start porting their work to the soon to come 1.8 series. Since we are in a feature freeze for some time already, WML should be rather stable. The add-on server was already restarted when 1.7.8 was released. Please make sure that everything you upload is compatible with 1.7.8 and later.

Finally we are confident that the multiplayer lobby is stable enough for many users at the same time. Many crashes and several glitches were fixed. Some smaller problems like tiny graphical glitches might still be left. If you find one that is reproducible, please do not hesitate to report it. Please do not forget to include the resolution you were running since the multiplayer does automatically adopt to different resolutions.

Beside this the most important fix is probably related to fixing even more OutOfSync errors. From now on units with generated traits should work again for multiplayer games (they were leading to OOS errors up till 1.7.14). We also found out that the scenario "Dark Forecast" was using some macros that seem, at least in this usecase, not multiplayer safe. They were replaced and Dark Forecast should finally work nicely again. Beside this you will most likely notice a little change in the behavior of the AI. The default AI (yes, for singleplayer, too) was changed to use the new work that eg Crab worked on at Summer of Code.

Some other important things to mention:
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The multiplayer lobby was improved further. Please test it and report any bugs you find.
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We believe that we are finally really close to the release of the 1.8 stable series. But to be sure that there is no blocker left please do check this release and report every problem you stuble upon.
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If you experience problems with mouse events (clicking!) not working make sure to check which version of libsdl you use. If you are using libsdl-1.2.14 try downgrading to libsdl-1.2.13. The problem is reported upstream though we are grateful for any additional details you can provide especially regarding how to reproduce it (the upstream developer seems to not be able to (easily) reproduce it). Please add your information in this bug report or in one of the linked reports: https://gna.org/bugs/?14770
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Of course there is also the full changelog listing (almost) all the changes since 1.7.14. A changelog with changes that might be visible to most users (and only includes these) is the players changelog.

Downloads
Sources:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.7.15.tar.bz2/download (270.4 MB) md5sum
Here is the xDelta for the sources:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.7.14.tar-wesnoth-1.7.15.tar.xdelta/download (1.7.14 to 1.7.15, 6.7 MB)
Check http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7034 for info on using xdelta.

The Windows package is already available. You can find it on the download page.

The MacOSX package is already available. You can find it on the download page.

Many of the Linux packages have already been created. All known packagers have been contacted. Information about where to get the respective binaries or how to get them work you get on the Linux binaries site for the Linux binaries. Download links for the other supported systems will be listed at the downloads page once the binaries are available.

As a fallback you can also get the sources from http://files.wesnoth.org/ - you should first try to get files through SourceForge to help us save bandwidth. Please get the files from sourceforge.net if possible.

The multiplayer server for 1.7.14 and later is already up and running. This server can be used to play with 1.7.14 and newer versions. Older versions are no longer supported. If you do encounter problems, please report them.

A new add-on server was started when 1.7.8-beta1 was released. All content uploaded to this new server should be compatible with the following 1.7.x beta releases, release candidates for 1.8, as well as the final 1.8.x series. If you encounter any problems with content from the add-on server not working as expected, please notify the content's author, most of them should be here in the forums.

If you find any bugs don't hesitate to report them, but please read the instructions on how to post bugs first. Instructions for bug reporting can be found at http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/ReportingBugs.

Enjoy!

PS: Within the next seven days anyone asking when the binary for xyz will be ready will be banned and the post will be deleted. Such questions just distract the developers and packagers and don't do any good, so better not ask them...
Bugreports in the forums tend to get forgotten. You will get better results by following the guidelines and report them in the bugtracker.

[gabba]

Just wanted to mention a widespread known bug and its workaround:
In Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Pulseaudio and Wesnoth don't play well together, and you're likely to get one of these symptoms: 100% CPU usage, stuttering sound, no sound, or a freeze when trying to quit. Workaround and discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29109

[Pp2]

Just wanted to mention a widespread known bug and its workaround:
In Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Pulseaudio and Wesnoth don't play well together, and you're likely to get one of these symptoms: 100% CPU usage, stuttering sound, no sound, or a freeze when trying to quit. Workaround and discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29109

In ubuntu 10.04 Lucid alpha3, all those problem are corrected. However, be sure to turn of "compressed savegame" or more then half of your save will be corrupted. And not only those that are created, I got case of corrupted save on open. I double checked the know lucid bug and none are about compressed file so I really don't know what to think about it. Also, it is impossible to install an older version of libsdl than 1.2.14 in lucid without major tweak without crashing Gnome(at least for a Macbook pro 5.4 as the error message at startup was about my graphic card driver), I had to remove it in command mode to get gnome booting again. And be sure that you will not get official support from canonical as libsdl-1.2.14 will be the only one shipped from the main repository until 10.10 get out. However, like mentioned in the wesnoth bug list, you will not get any problem in fulscreen mode and you will be abble to left-click if you hold down the right mouse button while left-clicking. Lastly, you will not be abble to download UMCs ingame , so you will have to download them from the web interface http://addons.wesnoth.org/1.8/.

[ivanovic]

However, be sure to turn of "compressed savegame" or more then half of your save will be corrupted. And not only those that are created, I got case of corrupted save on open. I double checked the know lucid bug and none are about compressed file so I really don't know what to think about it.

Okay, I do *not* know about this problem with compressed savegames broken. So far no developer has seen this issue so it would be nice to get some more details like the libs used. Wesnoth directly does use zlib and so far, at least on my end, I had no problems with compressed saves. Is there maybe something broken in the lib shipped upstream? Please provide (a lot!) more information.

Also, it is impossible to install an older version of libsdl than 1.2.14 in lucid without major tweak without crashing Gnome(at least for a Macbook pro 5.4 as the error message at startup was about my graphic card driver), I had to remove it in command mode to get gnome booting again. And be sure that you will not get official support from canonical as libsdl-1.2.14 will be the only one shipped from the main repository until 10.10 get out. However, like mentioned in the wesnoth bug list, you will not get any problem in fulscreen mode and you will be abble to left-click if you hold down the right mouse button while left-clicking.

Okay, this is the basic problem that libsdl has, there is nothing we can do about it.

Lastly, you will not be abble to download UMCs ingame , so you will have to download them from the web interface http://addons.wesnoth.org/1.8/.

What?!? Completely new to me. I am able to download addons ingame. Please provide (a lot) more details!

In general: Please use paragraphs. Something like "one paragraph per problem" might be nice. Also do consider providing more details since without details it is unlikely that we can reproduce issues.


EDIT: shadowmaster just pointed out to me that your problems with saving and downloading stuff might be related to Ubuntu shipping a broken version of boost-iostreams with their system. There is a known bug in vanilla boost 1.41 that at least manifests on x86_64 boxes (more info). Here is the respective part that I included in the release notes till beta 6 (I removed it hoping that it was finally fixed for all distributions...):
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There seem to be problems with Wesnoth and boost 1.41 iostreams (especially on 64bit systems). For now we advice not to use boost 1.41 or check if your version of boost already fixed the issue (a fix should be included in archlinux and gentoo, possibly in other distributions, too)
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Please do check which version of boost you are using and consider posting a bug report for the ubuntu people telling them about the issue.

[AI]

Lucid (10.04) ships with 1.40. I don't recall if that version was bugged too.

[BomSite]

Only one small thing, I don't know if it is important enough to make 1.8

In the campain about the made of the scepter of fire, there are units appearing into rock when the last board starts.

Even the enemy does it also. (and he is so stupid to attack the trolls directly)

[Skylar]

The units standing in the rock seems to be there for quite sometime already and it does look funny. A waste that such a good game face this kind of problem.