Wesnoth 1.9.7

[ivanovic]

This is another release of the 1.9.x development branch. As with normal development releases, it may include many more bugs than stable releases from the 1.8.x series — additionally, 1.8 content is not compatible with 1.9.x due to the many changes in the game engine and WML syntax between both branches. Don't be disappointed if the game crashes every now and then — "normal" players (those who want a stable gaming experience) should not use this release, and stick to the stable branch instead. However, if you want to test the future of Wesnoth and help us find bugs early, you are welcome to check out this release. We require your help for finding and fixing issues. If you find a bug, please do not assume that it is so obvious that we already know about it. Report it and make sure that we are aware of it.

This release includes various fixes and changes. Among the most noteworthy are probably the improvements in the WML engine allowing content creators to use filtering in some places more effectively. Besides this some graphics and translations were updated.

So far there are no known issues (besides the stuff listed in the bug tracker). So let's directly head over to the most important features of this new release (at least the most important things that the other devs do want you to know about ).

Important changes and new features

Boost program options dependency

In order to build Wesnoth a new dependency has been added. The dependency is boost program options.

Of course there is also the full changelog listing (almost) all the changes since 1.9.6. A changelog for the most visible changes for users is the players changelog.

Known Issues (might be fixed in the next release(s))

There are no known issues at the moment.

Downloads

Source code:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.9.7/wesnoth-1.9.7.tar.bz2/download (322.3 MB) md5sum
Here is the XDelta for the sources:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth/files/wesnoth/wesnoth-1.9.7/wesnoth-1.9.6.tar-wesnoth-1.9.7.tar.xdelta/download (1.9.6 to 1.9.7, 7.1 MB)
Check http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=7034 for information 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.

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

Many of the Linux packages have already been created, and all known packagers have been contacted. Information about where to get the respective binaries or how to get them to work can be found in the Linux binaries page in the wiki. Download links for other supported systems will be available at the downloads page once the packages are created and published.

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

The multiplayer server for 1.9.7 is up and running. This server can be only be used to play with other 1.9.7 users. If you do encounter problems, please report them.

A new add-ons server for 1.9.x is already running. It was started during the development of 1.9.0. If you encounter any problems with content from the add-ons server not working as expected, please notify the content's author — most of them should be here in the Scenario & Campaign Development forum.

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 ReportingBugs. Again, we require your help for finding and fixing issues, no matter how trivial or complicated they are!

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...

Bug reports in the forums tend to get forgotten. You will get better results by following the guidelines and report them in the bugtracker.

[Insinuator]

Boost program options dependency

In order to build Wesnoth a new dependency has been added. The dependency is boost program options.

Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean, exactly? I read through the changelog and I must be missing the connection.

PS: The homepage hasn't been updated.

[Anonymissimus]

Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean, exactly? I read through the changelog and I must be missing the connection.

If you don't understand what it means it's not important for you.
It's important for creating the game what you don't do when installing it.

EDIT
I have no idea for an explanation to a non-dev...

[shadowmaster]

In order to build Wesnoth a new dependency has been added. The dependency is boost program options.

Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean, exactly?

If you are compiling from source, you will need to get the Boost.Program_options dependency if you don’t have it installed already; if you are a distribution packager you’ll also need to make sure to update your package’s runtime and compile-time dependencies list.

If you are not compiling Wesnoth from source, all of this is completely irrelevant to you.

[Insinuator]

Ah, I see. Thank you.

[Lord-Knightmare]

I can't download this version! I tried all the browsers but none get the job done. Safari can't start it. Opera hangs. Chrome stops downloading when the file is 50% and Firefox has the "mounting failed" problem...
I'm stuck with 1.9.4

[alluton]

That sounds bad but my firefox can download 1.9.6 atleast.

[tr0ll]

I can't download this version! I tried all the browsers but none get the job done. Safari can't start it. Opera hangs. Chrome stops downloading when the file is 50% and Firefox has the "mounting failed" problem...
I'm stuck with 1.9.4

Are you on MS-Windows? (If so, that behaviour smells of virus blocking or trying to infect the downloaded exe file. Did you wait for your anti-virus software to finish scanning the file before running it?)

It is unlikely a problem at the server end, because each time you try to download the file Sourceforge gives you a different mirror site. Would be nice if the download page showed an MD5 or SHA1 sum next to the link so people could check...

[shadowmaster]

Would be nice if the download page showed an MD5 or SHA1 sum next to the link so people could check...

In the 1.9.7 downloads list you can click on the View Details icon (looks like a lowercase ‘i’) to the right of the Size column to get the MD5 and SHA1 sums of individual files.

[Lord-Knightmare]

I can't download this version! I tried all the browsers but none get the job done. Safari can't start it. Opera hangs. Chrome stops downloading when the file is 50% and Firefox has the "mounting failed" problem...
I'm stuck with 1.9.4

Are you on MS-Windows? (If so, that behaviour smells of virus blocking or trying to infect the downloaded exe file. Did you wait for your anti-virus software to finish scanning the file before running it?)

It is unlikely a problem at the server end, because each time you try to download the file Sourceforge gives you a different mirror site. Would be nice if the download page showed an MD5 or SHA1 sum next to the link so people could check...

No, I'm using Mac OS 10.5.8

[charris]

The xdeltas don't seem to work with xdelta3, which is what xdelta points to on fedora 15. This may be because I can't figure out the right options for xdelta3, which has largely incomprehensible documentation/examples. In any case, if anyone knows how to get it to work I'd appreciate some help.

[ivanovic]

The xdeltas don't seem to work with xdelta3, which is what xdelta points to on fedora 15. This may be because I can't figure out the right options for xdelta3, which has largely incomprehensible documentation/examples. In any case, if anyone knows how to get it to work I'd appreciate some help.

The reason for this is simple:
I am using xdelta 1.1.4 to create the deltas, not 3.x. Those two seem to not be compatible with each other.

[Ant]

Hello,

i am not sure if this is right thread for this, but i just compiled 1.9.7 on Ubuntu 11.04.

The game runs and everything seems to be working, but the mouse input feels really slow.

The mouse cursor is hanging maybe about 0.2-0.3 seconds behind the hand movement, which makes the input feel really slugish and inexact (since the cursor is behind the hand-movement, it causes me to regularly overshoot with the cursor).

A second thing i noticed, but i am not quite sure if my perception tricks me, is that the speed of the movement animation is much lower then in the 1.6 version. Even with accelerated movement set to 8 times the original speed, the units take a really noticeable time to reach their destination.

[shadowmaster]

I believe the unit movement animations were slowed down in 1.9.x (relative to 1.8.x, anyway) to allow the saurian running animations to be more visible by default.

As for the mouse issues, try disabling the Color Cursors option in Preferences → Display; I find that to be really annoying and I’m not sure myself why it’s the default in the first place. The slowness stems from the fact that Wesnoth has to draw the cursor itself on every frame when that setting is enabled, because SDL 1.2 doesn’t support non-B&W cursors natively.

[Ant]

Thanks Shadowmaster,

the culprit was the color cursor option. After disabling it, the mouse was smooth as in the older versions. It probably really shouldn't be the enabled by default, since a lagging mouse is a real usability issue.