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Revision: 1.46
Committed: Mon Apr 26 13:11:32 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month ago) by elmex
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added client.html to new website.

File Contents

# Content
1 Client
2
3 <h2>The Deliantra MORPG Client</h2>
4
5 <p>This is the new Deliantra client which was written from scratch
6 in Perl with C bindings to SDL/OpenGL. It was written to have a more
7 immersive overall gameplay and to base as ground to implement new
8 features.
9 </p>
10
11 <h3>Screenshots:</h3>
12
13 <p>Screenshots? See on the <a href="screenshots.html">Screenshot page</a></p>
14
15 <h3>Download:</h3>
16
17 <p><a href="play.html">See the Play now! page</a> about the downloads!</p>
18
19 <h3>Installation notes:</h3>
20
21 <ul>
22 <li>
23 <p><b>Windows</b></p>
24 <p>
25 To start the client, run the executable, i.e. by doubleclicking on it with your left mouse button or
26 use the context menu of the right mouse button.
27 <b>Note:</b> The windows binary might take a while to start (up to some minutes), as it needs to unpack itself
28 and start up everything it needs.
29 </p>
30 </li>
31 <li>
32 <p><b>GNU/Linux</b></p>
33 <p>
34 <b>
35 Please note that you need glibc-2.3 and x-libs with XFT.
36 </b>
37 <br />
38 <b>AMD64 users should use the amd64 binary.
39 (But if you want to run the 32bit client on an amd64 you would need
40 ia32-libs and a 32bit OpenGL driver, eg. nvidia-glx-ia32
41 (for NVIDIA) or fglrx-glx-ia32 (for ATI))
42 </b>
43 </p>
44 <p>
45 After downloading you need to extract the client and execute the extracted binary.
46 </p>
47 </li>
48 <li>
49 <p><b>Mac OS X</b></p>
50 <p>
51 To start the client, just double click on the <tt>.dmg</tt> image file to open it and start the client.<br />
52 <b>NOTE: You will need an Intel CPU for this binary, it will not work with PPC CPUs! Also you will need Mac OS X 10.5 or later.</b>
53 </p>
54 </li>
55 <li>
56 <p><b>Build from source</b></p>
57 <p>
58 If you want to build the client from source there are two ways that
59 are explained on a different page: <a href="client_cpan.html">Source installation</a>.
60 </p>
61 </li>
62 </ul>
63
64 <p>
65 <b>For further instructions and informations look at the <i>Help!</i> button on the top!</b>
66 </p>
67
68 <h3>News:</h3>
69
70 <p>
71 <em>
72 2010-04-25 Version 2.11: Spell list has been rearranged to show more
73 interesting information and worked around some music related crashes.
74 </em>
75 </p>
76
77 <p>
78 <em>
79 2010-01-15 Version 2.10: Fixed the blending of the fog of war.
80 </em>
81 </p>
82
83 <p>
84 <em>
85 2009-12-22 Version 2.09: The fog of war and lighting transitions are now
86 smooth. Also the fog of war texture is customizable now and a crash with bad
87 user input in the "Host" field has been fixed.
88 </em>
89 </p>
90
91
92 <p>
93 <em>
94 2009-12-05 Version 2.06: The Apple/NVIDIA font problem has finally been fixed!
95 Also some other OpenGL driver bugs have a work around now.
96 </em>
97 </p>
98
99 <p>
100 <em>
101 2009-09-16 Version 2.05: The command completer algorithm has been improved by
102 marcmagus. Thanks for the contribution! Also a small bugfix for a crash
103 in the audio engine has been added.
104 </em>
105 </p>
106
107 <p>
108 <em>
109 2009-04-26 Version 2.04 is a small bugfix and feature enhancement release of
110 the client. A Japanese font is included with the distribution now and
111 a workaround of the incompatible ABI change in pango (font engine) has been
112 implemented. Another bugfix related to connecting to the server
113 went into the windows release.
114 </em>
115 </p>
116
117 <p>
118 <em>
119 2009-01-15 First release in the new year, version 2.03 comes with a
120 many changes in the GUI. For example the auto pickup toggle has been
121 moved into a checkbox to the top of the main window.
122 The configuration is now saved automatically on exit.
123 Shimmering during smooth scroll has been reduced a lot and some displaying
124 bugs have been fixed in the inventory. More workarounds which make the
125 client more stable on broken OSes were also implemented.
126 </em>
127 </p>
128
129 <p>
130 <em>
131 2008-12-26 The Chrismas release of version 2.02: Hidden mapspaces are
132 marked visually by a question mark and are made as bright as the darkest
133 mapspaces. A crash has been fixed when the user clicks on the map during
134 login. New tips of the day have been introduced. And more minor stability and
135 visual fixes.
136 </em>
137 </p>
138
139 <p>
140 <em>
141 2008-12-12 Version 2.01: The client tutorial has been rewritten, to match
142 the GUI changes of the last months. The random switching between
143 message window tabs when a new tab was opened has been fixed.
144 Fixed minor displaying bugs of the speech bubble of NPCs and other
145 minor things.
146 </em>
147 </p>
148
149 <p>
150 <em>
151 2008-12-05 Version 2.0: Last minor fixes round up the version 2.0 of our
152 client: The Log window can't be closed anymore by Alt+x, Also wont Alt+x or
153 other Message window operations crash the client anymore directly after startup.
154 Also the invisible/cached parts of the map are darkened even more, so that
155 invisibile parts can be distinguished from dark parts better.
156 </em>
157 </p>
158
159
160 <p>
161 <em>
162 2008-11-09 Version 0.9978: Some minor fixes:
163 The healthbar is now correctly smoothly moved. Own text in NPC dialogues are
164 emphasized now. A crash bug in the macro dialogue has been fixed. The tooltips
165 in the Mesage Window tabs are updated correctly now. And Alt+x won't let
166 Message Window tabs disappear for ever anymore.
167 </em>
168 </p>
169
170 <p>
171 <em>
172 2008-09-29 Version 0.9977: A race condition has been fixed that could lead
173 to client freezes or crashes on login, especially on slower systems. The
174 smooth movement is no longer choppy. The default font for messages is now a
175 (hopefully nicer looking) proportional font. Text display has been tweaked.
176 The client no longer makes unnecessary screen refreshes and uses less CPU
177 time.
178 </em>
179 </p>
180
181 <p>
182 <em>
183 2008-09-05 Next version of the client: 0.9976 comes with many fixes for Mac OS X,
184 like some fixed keyboard issues on OS X. Improved the protocol with compression
185 and fragmentation, leading to more efficent bandwidth usage. Implemented crash
186 diagnostics, which are sent to the server, for easier debugging. Important fix
187 with the default resolution, which was too small. Added theming support, with some
188 basic themes. And some other minor fixes all over the place.
189 </em>
190 </p>
191
192 <p>
193 <em>
194 2008-08-27 Version 0.9975 comes with a small fix with the initial resolution and
195 a carification of the weight/value autopickup option. There is also a <b>Mac OS X</b>
196 port available now of the client!
197 </em>
198 </p>
199
200 <p>
201 <em>
202 2008-08-01 Version 0.9974 comes with smooth scrolling for player movements,
203 workaround for a possible OpenGL slowdown, and other small fixes and enhancements.
204 </em>
205 </p>
206
207 <p>
208 <em>
209 2008-07-07 Some minor fixes and features: IPv6 support, chat tabs have tooltips
210 again and converted to a new non-blocking API. Also fixed the CPAN distribution.
211 </em>
212 </p>
213
214 <p>
215 <em>
216 2008-05-23 Next release: 0.9972. The map cache has been extended a bit to store more
217 map changes (fixes some minor bugs). Fixed some crashbugs when the client is
218 logged out and some UI elements were used. The server XML format is now also
219 supportet in item tooltips. The keyrepeats are ignored now in some conditions.
220 And crashes when the map cache is corrupted are now prevented. Also the client
221 configuration is now stored in pretty printed JSON.
222 </em>
223 </p>
224
225 <p>
226 <em>
227 2008-05-05 Long time no release, but now we got some fixes for you: Some issues
228 with the default sort order have been sorted out, some tooltips were fixed,
229 a long standing bug with the stats tab being empty has been resolved and some GUI
230 fixes have been done. Also the pseudo-items are now only shown in the inventory
231 and not the floorbox. Have fun!
232 </em>
233 </p>
234
235 <p>
236 <em>
237 2008-03-30 Release of version 0.9970: Reduced documentation memory usage, fixed
238 the stat gauge tooltips that have gone missing since 0.9966. Fixced a grave bug
239 with tile id allocation, which effectively disabled the tile cache. And last
240 but not least: The NPC Dialogs have also been fixed.
241 </em>
242 </p>
243
244 <p>
245 <em>2008-03-24 Release of version 0.9967 of the Client: A memory leak was fixed
246 where the messages in the message window were kept for ever and the client
247 consumed more and more memory. The highlighting of the chattabs is now red and
248 not blue. The history handling of the chat input will now not erase the
249 typed input if the down cursor key is pressed. A keyboard modifier display has
250 also been implemented, (for example to signal whether numlock is on,
251 which caused problems under windows). Also a bug with the layout font under
252 windows has been fixed.
253 </em>
254 </p>
255
256 <p>
257 <em>
258 2008-01-19 Another release of the Client, version 0.9965: Some bugs
259 have been fixed: A race condition was found in the database access and
260 a bug which crashed the client with nvidia drivers has been fixed.
261 Some minor bugs in the GUI, the message fontsize and chatbox label padding,
262 have also been fixed.
263 </em>
264 </p>
265
266 <p>
267 <em>
268 2008-01-06 First release in the new year, version 0.9963: Among the
269 changes are some minor bugfixes, optical tweaks and performance
270 improvements on the GUI. Some to the user invisible changes were
271 improvements of the server side widgets and a reimplementation of the
272 message window to allow to undock chats from the central message window in
273 future releases.
274 </em>
275 </p>
276
277 <p>
278 <em>
279 2007-12-25 Released version 0.9960 with some important fixes in the item animations
280 and GUI code, along with an API update to a more recent EV version the documentation
281 had some minor improvements. And last but not least the face loading consumes less CPU.
282 too.
283 </em>
284 </p>
285 <p>
286 <em>
287 2007-12-09 Released version 0.9959, main changes were a bugfix of the
288 audio-jingle playing (sometimes a jingle was played repeatedly if there was no
289 server-provided music available). Also some debugging hooks were added and
290 the code was updated to follow API changes in some of the modules used.
291 </em>
292 </p>
293
294 <p>
295 <em>
296 2007-11-27 Released version 0.9956, main changes were an improved event loop
297 for better performance and compatibility under windows,
298 and the server list has been disabled due to problems with activestate perl.
299 </em>
300 </p>
301
302 <p>
303 <em>
304 2007-11-03 Released version 0.9955, Main changes were adjustment of the default
305 resolution (to 800x600) and making fullscreen the default. The widget extension
306 system was also officially enabled.
307 </em>
308 </p>
309
310
311 <p>
312 <em>
313 2007-10-14 Released a new binary. Main feature: Rename to 'Deliantra'.
314 </em>
315 </p>
316
317 <p>
318 <em>
319 2007-09-02 <b>Finally!</b> We released a non beta version of the client.
320 The version 0.99 is considered mostly stable and playable now. Changes
321 from the last release are: Better compatibility with OpenGL drivers,
322 better face caching, background music and spatial sound effects,
323 more default keymappings and the item descriptions are in the tooltips
324 now (eg. in the inventory).
325 </em>
326 </p>
327
328
329 <p>
330 <em>
331 2007-05-09 <b>Big news!</b> There is a <b>Linux binary</b> now too! Get it and play with it! :-)
332 </em>
333 </p>
334
335 <p>
336 <em>
337 2007-04-24 Next windows beta with following changes is out:
338 Better character creation dialog and item descriptions in the inventory
339 are now in the tooltip rather than spread over the message window.
340 </em>
341 </p>
342
343 <p>For older news look at the bottom of this page.</p>
344
345 <h3>Features:</h3>
346
347 <p>
348 These are the features that are already implemented and work (minus bugs).
349 </p>
350
351 <p><b>Technical:</b></p>
352 <ul>
353 <li>Runs on GNU/Linux and Windows.</li>
354 <li>
355 Uses hardware acceleration if it exists (but also runs without as
356 long as you have OpenGL).
357 </li>
358 <li>
359 Windowed/Fullscreen mode in multiple resolutions
360 with scaling invariant user interface.
361 </li>
362 <li>Smoothing and fog of war.</li>
363 <li>Very nice font rendering with pango (gtk's font renderer).</li>
364 <li>Sound and background music.</li>
365 <li>Face prefetching for the game graphics.</li>
366 <li>Integrated documentation browser with linking and images.</li>
367 <li>Server side widgets (these are server side defined dialogues).</li>
368 </ul>
369
370 <p><b>Gameplay:</b></p>
371 <ul>
372 <li>
373 A minimap which keeps track of explored territories
374 and helps you to navigate on the worldmap.
375 </li>
376 <li>Easier key binding with the ability to <b>record</b> actions.</li>
377 <li>Gained experience is shown in the statusbox.</li>
378 <li>Reporting of stat-changes (stats, resistancies and other stuff) in the statusbox.</li>
379 <li>Online wiki style help.</li>
380 <li>Message window entry with history.</li>
381 <li>
382 Command completer, eg. completes 'cbh' to 'cast burning hands', which
383 eases the input of commands.
384 </li>
385 <li>Command repetition with '.'.</li>
386 <li>
387 There are tooltips all over the GUI which help a lot.
388 </li>
389 <li>Spell list with key-binding shortcuts and tooltip descriptions of the spells.</li>
390 <li>Skill list with quick key binding.</li>
391 <li>
392 NPC dialog system makes chatting with NPCs a lot easier and
393 improves overall game interaction.
394 </li>
395 <li>Inventory operation shortcuts, like: ignite/thaw, inscribe and rename.</li>
396 <li>Healthbars above monsters and players.</li>
397 </ul>
398
399 <h3>News archive</h3>
400
401 <p>
402 <em>
403 2007-04-22 Another windows beta has been released: A problem with map-ghosting
404 was fixed and other bugs werde fixed. Also a texture cache workaround for buggy
405 opengl drivers was implemented (which could reduce the memory leak inside the
406 driver).
407 </em>
408 </p>
409
410 <p>
411 <em>
412 2007-04-14 Another windows beta has been released: Support for smoothing
413 on crossfire+ servers has been implemented along with the support for the
414 large 64x64 tileset!
415 </em>
416 </p>
417
418 <p>
419 <em>
420 2007-01-25 Next beta released to the world: loads of bugfixes, added
421 'bind apply ...' to the context menu of the inventory, improved local
422 database handling, rework of the whole keybindings (much easier now!).
423 </em>
424 </p>
425
426 <p>
427 <em>
428 2006-12-03 Released next beta, further bug fixes. Pickup flesh has been implemented too.
429 </em>
430 </p>
431
432 <p>
433 <em>
434 2006-11-07 Another beta release: The off-by-one bug in the map displaying has finally been found
435 and fixed! This hopefully also fixes other problems with the map :) Have fun and please tell us
436 about your experience with the CFPlus client!
437 </em>
438 </p>
439
440 <p>
441 <em>
442 2006-09-29 New beta is out! Changes: minor bugfixes, added documentation and a 'tip of the day' dialog.
443 </em>
444 </p>
445
446 <p>
447 <em>
448 2006-09-21 Another update of the cfplus.exe is online now. Changes: Fix in the NPC speech bubble code.
449 </em>
450 </p>
451
452 <p>
453 <em>
454 2006-09-20
455 And again: A <b>new CFPlus beta</b> is out! The ghosts on maps have been fixed, along with other
456 minor bugfixes. NPC speech bubbles were also added!
457 </em>
458 </p>
459
460 <p>
461 <em>
462 2006-08-14
463 A <b>new CFPlus beta</b> is out! <b>Healthbars</b> are in!!! Players and Monsters now
464 have a healthbar on top of them, which shows their actual health status.
465 This renders the 'probe' spell mostly useless, but we will find other ways to
466 replace it!
467 </em>
468 </p>
469
470 <p>
471 <em>
472 2006-08-14
473 The <b>next CFPlus beta release is out!</b>: Inscription and renaming shortcuts have been
474 added to the Inventory. The interface got line frames to be more eye pleasing.
475 On top of that the documentation browser has been greatly improved and the documentation
476 improved also a bit. And other minor stuff has been implemented and fixed.
477 </em>
478 </p>
479
480 <p>
481 <em>
482 2006-07-30
483 The long awaited beta release! The last bugs we wanted to fix and features we wanted
484 to add are done and CFPlus is ready for the first more serious testings. Please make sure to read the
485 documentation and the tooltips if there is something not yet clear. Although the documentation
486 is far from complete at the moment, it might be helpful.
487 </em>
488 </p>
489
490 <p>
491 <em>
492 2006-07-24
493 Lots of detail work was done now, and there are still some minor issues that
494 need to be cleared until the client is ready for a beta release. We were working mainly
495 on the documentation the last two days. There is light on the end of the tunnel.
496 </em>
497 </p>
498
499 <p>
500 <em>
501 2006-07-03
502 Finally: The alpha release! Lots has changed since 2006-06-12 and
503 we are happy to present the first test release!
504 </em>
505 </p>
506
507 <p>
508 <em>
509 2006-06-12
510 The new NPC dialog system has been added, and character creation
511 helper dialogs. Along with many other bugfixes and improvements.
512 </em>
513 </p>
514
515 <p>
516 <em>
517 2006-06-02
518 Added pickup configuration. The window titles work again and
519 some other bugs and enhancements went into the gui toolkit.
520 Shift-middle click lock/unlocks items in inventory now. First version
521 of the spell dialog is in and a context menu item has been added to the
522 inventory to allow to get/drop a specified count of items.
523 </em>
524 </p>
525
526 <h2>Authors/Contact</h2>
527
528 <p><b>The Deliantra Development Team:</b></p>
529
530 <p><b>
531 95% of the client, stuff like: protocol handling, widget toolkit, OpenGL integration, windows build,
532 the map, help viewer, all the cool features and all other stuff the user never sees.
533 </b></p>
534 <p>
535 Marc Lehmann <a href="mailto:schmorp@schmorp.de">schmorp@schmorp.de</a>
536 <a href="http://home.schmorp.de/">http://home.schmorp.de/</a>
537 </p>
538
539 <p><b>The remaining 5%, stuff like: client theme graphics, (some) dialogs, key bindings, inventory and some 'concept' code</b></p>
540 <p>
541 Robin Redeker <a href="mailto:elmex@ta-sa.org">elmex@ta-sa.org</a>
542 <a href="http://www.ta-sa.org/">http://www.ta-sa.org/</a>
543 </p>
544
545 <p></p>
546