NEWS-2.6.3

This list is still in preparation; 2.6.3 has not yet been released.

WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 2.6.2.1

2.6.3 is a generic bugfix release.

Server / General

Changes affecting players (supplied rulesets)

• Fixed trouble when a new city is founded to the ruins of a former city, and that new city establish a trade route with a player who had seen former city, and is unaware that it had been destroyed HRM#871606
• Fixed a case where shared vision did not completely update recipient's map HRM#846106
• Fixed a bug where one could paradrop to peaceful nation's territory after continuing game from an old savegame HRM#879084
• Fixed a bug causing game sometimes to tell wrong reason of why an action failed HRM#879880
• Cease fire no longer runs out with an already dead player, making his former allies to hate the alive party of the treaty HRM#879055
• Made server not to end in a infinite loop after loading savegame with too high phase number. Such a savegame was reported to be created after spaceship was launched but game was still continued HRM#815196
• Unified writing of the city name Washington-on-the-Brazos between rulesets, so it doesn't appear multiple times in the same game in a bit different form HRM#867817
• Stealth units are no longer erroneously hidden even from allies HRM#764976
• Placing initial units is now done in shuffled player order HRM#850656
• Corrupt worker tasks are cleared. Those can originate, e.g., from buggy pre-2.6.2.1 Qt-client, and live in old savegames HRM#901938
• In a ruleset, such as civ2civ3, where caravans can help building wonder in a foreign city, refresh city info of the city owner when one does HRM#907977

Changes affecting other rulesets / modders

• Display of success probabilities for diplomats was off when targeting stack of units instead of individual unit HRM#859761
• Fixed pillaging of extras that are caused by something else than player actions. For the fix to work, both server and client must be at least version 2.6.3 HRM#861508
• Civilian unit trying to paradrop to an enemy city dies HRM#870004
• Prevented dead player from getting techs via Tech_Parasite effect. This caused trouble in alien ruleset where Tech_Parasite is granted by a tech HRM#873692
• Improved support of CityTile requirement type HRM#877780
• Fixed trouble preventing Small Wonders from working as impr_reqs for units HRM#884993
• Corrected success probability shown by action dialog when it depends on a special kind of road HRM#897490
• The included Lua engine has been upgraded from 5.3.5 to 5.3.6. HRM#889425

Changes affecting server operators

• write command now adds .serv extension to the filename if it doesn't have one. Only files with the extension can be read by the read command HRM#677584 HRM#892376

General

• Fixed buffer overflow vulnerability in reading in score log file. Score log functionality is not enabled by default. HRM#907791
• Fixes to memory handling errors HRM#863750 HRM#872662 HRM#874452 HRM#839702 HRM#894582
• Freeciv metadata Desktop files renamed and Appdata files changed to be more standards compliant HRM#853571 HRM#892377
• Minor optimization HRM#905312
• Various internal changes which should only affect developers. HRM#859775 HRM#861499 HRM#861500 HRM#861875 HRM#868649 HRM#870142 HRM#870178 HRM#871296 HRM#871873 HRM#872193 HRM#872904 HRM#874191 HRM#876088 HRM#879100 HRM#858229 HRM#891555 HRM#895052 HRM#896720 HRM#898550 HRM#898117 HRM#902626 HRM#904301 HRM#905828 HRM#905523 HRM#908900

AI

• AI is made more determined to attack enemy players that would be easy to finish off, as measured by the number of cities left HRM#855339
• The fact that enemy city is already empty no longer reduces AI's want to build unit capable of conquering it HRM#872220
• AI now might initiate spacerace if it's in technical lead and the only one who can do so even if there's other player who has better production HRM#894739
• Fixed an issue causing production of a player marked away to be unnecessarily changed HRM#904268

Clients

• Fixed middle-click display in case two or more units do different activities that will result in the same extra in tile. The bug would manifest itself only in exotic rulesets. HRM#861509
• Success probability for Poison City and Poison City Escape actions is now shown HRM#861825 HRM#861827
• Mine activity is again always referred as Mine, and never as Plant. This affects at least grouping of units in unit selection dialog. HRM#853128
• Show more standardized information about the actions in action selection dialogs HRM#874621
• Lua functions City:is_happy() and City:is_unhappy made to work on correctly on client lua console HRM#8811951
• Fixed trouble when mapimg settings are changed before entering game HRM#886678
• City dialogs now show correct tile output on the turn celebration is about to end HRM#885093
• Made client more robust against invalid worker tasks sent by the server HRM#885482
• Select new music track when music should continue with the same style. It was stopping after the first track. HRM#905818

• Fixes to both Gtk and Qt clients:
  • City dialog now shows city's airlift capacity HRM#858965 HRM#899057
  • City dialog now shows city's size HRM#872815 HRM#901393

• Fixes to the Gtk3 and Gtk3.22 clients:
  • The default for new installations is now to have Chat and Messages display separately. This does not affect old installations with the setting value already saved. HRM#860624
  • Fixed a problem causing Fog of War sometimes being too dark HRM#862511
  • City dialog tooltip no longer proposes selling a building when it can't be sold HRM#885725
  • Extraneous files have been removed from the default theme HRM#894559
  • Fixed crash on receiving some chat messages with link tags HRM#910832

• Fixes to the Qt client:
  • Map Image files saved with correct name HRM#860076
  • Improved icon selection about Irrigate and Mine activity results on various terrains HRM#861867
  • Don't include plus sign to the display of money gained when player is actually losing money. It used to show it like "+-2". HRM#863755
  • Don't show bogus move points information about enemy units, from which client does not know the truth HRM#857638
  • Fixed warnings Qt was giving about Freeciv themes HRM#891563
  • Refresh goto dialog Airlift information when unit selection changes HRM#908664

• Fixes to Sdl clients:
  • Made worklist display to refresh reliably when its contents are changed HRM#861461
  • Update climate change icons when ever they should HRM#861479
  • Fixed keyboard key bindings for building bases, such as Fortress and Airbase HRM#861497
  • Improved tooltip and icon selection about Irrigate and Mine activity results on various terrains HRM#861498 HRM#894434
  • Corrected order buttons' tooltip about the completion time of the activity. The turn count displayed was wildly off. HRM#861460
  • Tooltips for more order buttons shows information about their result and completion time HRM#861501
  • (sdl2 only): Don't try to show nation legend in races dialog, where it doesn't fit at all HRM#858718
  • Toggle Mini Map Mode button has been removed. It did nothing. It only confused users by its existence HRM#898649

Tools

Ruledit

• Save multiplier offset and factor to the ruleset saved HRM#908577

Help / Documentation

• Windows installers place a shortcut from start menu to the freeciv documentation directory to make it easier to find the documentation HRM#871325 HRM#871297
• Clarified that sandbox ruleset Ecclesiastical Palace does not function exactly as second capital. Similar change was already done for civ2civ3 ruleset HRM#898469
• Improvements to error diagnostics of custom modpack content HRM#899315 HRM#899339 HRM#901829
• Miscellaneous other improvements to in-game text and user documentation. HRM#861462 HRM#864579 HRM#871307 HRM#883116 HRM#884474 HRM#856804
• Miscellaneous changes to developer/install/ruleset docs HRM#875196 HRM#899594 HRM#899608

Translations

• Updated translations:
  • Complete translations: Catalan, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian
  • Incomplete translations: Finnish (100% core, 91% nations, 100% ruledit)
• Ruledit searched some translated strings from wrong domain, and thus failed to find them HRM#902423

Build/portability

• Fixed regression in 2.6.2 that was causing configure checks for Windows _mkdir() function to fail in debug builds HRM#863322
• Fixed compiler warnings seen with -O3 optimization level HRM#870481 HRM#870482 HRM#886330 HRM#886331
• Silenced Qt's deprecation warnings in debug builds where they were being turned to errors. Release builds still have the warnings enabled HRM#870968
• Fixed compiler warning with clang-11 HRM#883284
• Fixed compiler warning with gcc-11 development version HRM#894423
• Fixed other compiler warnings seen with various setups HRM#871676 HRM#871686 HRM#871688 HRM#882483 HRM#893306
• Gettext bootstrap files included in freeciv distribution updated to gettext-0.21 ones. This improves compatibility with builds in OpenEmbedded HRM#882434 HRM#883109
• Fixed some autoconf-2.70 warnings. More remains. HRM#889543 HRM#889544
• nanosleep() is used instead of deprecated usleep() HRM#896807

See NEWS for older lists of changes.