Software Update: FreeCol 0.11.5

Colonization was released on DOS by Microprose in 1994. Gamers who spent a lot of time on that game at the time should watch out for a new addiction. In fact, a group of developers is working on an open source version of this turn-based strategy game, called FreeCol. Up through version 1.0, the team will focus on developing an exact copy, but with modern features such as an isometric map and multiplayer support. After that, a development plan is drawn up for version 2.0, to which everyone can contribute ideas. However, it is not that far yet; the developers recently released version 0.11.5 with the following changes:

FreeCol 0.11.5

The FreeCol team is happy to announce the release of FreeCol 0.11.5, which is a timely hotfix release fixing the map generation bug in FreeCol 0.11.4. All 0.10.x and 0.11.x games, except those generated with broken map regions in 0.11.4, should continue to work with 0.11.5.

We hope you enjoy FreeCol 0.11.5. Onward to 1.0.
The FreeCol Team

common problems
There was a major reorganization of the translation subsystem. This may have caused an increase in the number of untranslated texts appearing. This should go away in time as the translators resynchronize. Feel free to help at translatewiki.

Autosaving may have been disabled in old savegames, as a bug(BR#2825) with the autosave interval could not be fixed in a completely backwards compatible way. Manually set the autosave interval if you have problems.

bugs
For the 0.11.5 release we only fixed the map generation bug which incompletely generated regions, which could hang the game for various reasons but most quickly when the display tile regions option was activated.

There are now less than fifty open bug reports. The majority of cases are now UI issues, followed by reports that are blocked in the `What would Col1 do?’ state.

Changes since 0.11.4 release

Bug fixed

• Map region generation has been fixed, see BR#2885.

Changes since 0.11.3 release

New features

• Major improvements to map scaling, suitable for higher resolution displays BR#2726.
• Overall scaling of most text, icons and many panels in the GUI is a new feature to help users with high resolution displays. This can now be set at the command line with the “–gui-scale percentage” option. See also BR#2726.
• The monarch now sometimes provides troops and gold when declaring war PF#4.
• Native nations may support the REF or the player following a declaration of independence PF#5.
• Added attack animations for artillery, damaged artillery, privateer and frigate BR#2722.
• Added Col1-compatibility game option to auto-disembark units in colonies, PF#54.
• Multi season year mods from Fenyo.

Bug fixed

• Bryce mod no longer duplicates requirements BR#2816
• Unblocked trade routes BR#2819
• Windowed mode can not be changed while panels are visible, mitigating but not really fixing BR#2820.
• Temporary goods warning message disable works again BR#2822.
• Military report REF units should aggregate correctly BR#2823.
• Autosaves can be disabled again BR#2825.
• Colonies are named before claiming the tile they are on (reverting an old behavior), but rejected suggested colony names are now recycled.
• Several cases of missing i18n fixed.
• Some panels, for example, Europe Panel have been made internally and externally resizable to prevent problems from wrongly cut off parts of the panel and its buttons BR#2786.
• The WorkProductionPanel does not anymore cut off the top part of a forest or similar in the tile image it is showing, similar glitches have been fixed in other places.
• Fixed missing window frame icon after switching between windowed and fullscreen mode.
• Fixed colors for minimap in markovoss mod.
• Fixed partially wrong dialog background texture in Classic FreeCol UI mod.
• Fixed rare crash when loading a savegame with the map centered over a colony BR#2875.
• Fixed font loading for languages ​​needing localized glyph sets BR#2877.

Other improvements

• Better preloading of resources and other code improvements to game startup.
• Code for resource management reorganized. This results in major savings of RAM BR#2843 and is also including less, but more correct, thread synchronization.
• The size of the game in windowed mode now correctly adapts to the space used for task bar and window decorations.
• Several minor improvements in image quality (for example, dynamically drawing labels, building images, fixed icons, better scaling code).
• Some AI efficiency improvements.
• Improved where line breaks are added to text in InformationPanel.

Developer issues

• Updated project file and developer documentation for using NetBeans.
• Code for the major gui classes reorganized with less circular dependencies and not as large classes.
• Some code cleanup, like adding @override, reformatting and improving comments, contributed by calebrw.
• Most types of resource keys renamed to bring them into a consistent scheme.
• Large message renaming for consistency and ease of checking.
• Nation options now have a distinct tag that does not rely on capitalization.
• Other serialization naming consistency fixes.
• Added –headless command line option.