- Some tanks were changed to face in the opposite direction where it made more sense, as a minor visual improvement.
- A document was added that describes the project's philosophy.
- The Emscripten version now has an option on the main menu to open the manual.
Bug fixes:
- Custom missions can now be used in network games (thanks NY00123).
- A minor visual bug was fixed where objects appeared to be overlapping with the ground sometimes.
- A bug was fixed where targets could sometimes blow themselves up with their own bullets (most notably the hangars by shooting their own flags).
Custom mission files:
- New target types: water towers, radio towers and observation balloons. You can load new_targets.sop to see them.
- Replacement graphics no longer need to be the same size as the graphics they are replacing.
- It is now possible to have target graphics that are larger than 16x16 pixels. The new radio and water tower targets provide examples of this.
- The original.sop mission file now includes the original graphics and title music, to make it easier for people to make quick mods.
- The "owner" field in mission files was renamed to "faction". Objects are allied to factions, rather than belonging to planes. The manual page documents how the factions system works.
- The autopilot logic has been improved to avoid crashing the plane into the ground at low altitudes. This fixes a bug that made landing the plane almost impossible at higher game levels where the plane flies much faster (thanks to harlankoehn for the bug report).
- A palette was added to simulate the Atari version of the game (according to the source code, anyway; it's not clear the Atari version was ever completed).
- Planes are now shown on the menu, to give a feel for what the game will look like when choosing a palette.
- The manual page was improved, including to add "bugs" and "examples" sections.
- A minor tweak was made to one of the plane sprites to fix a one-pixel hole in the plane.
- Signatures have been fixed for macOS executables; this fixes Sopwith when packaged for ARM machines.
- There is now a
-voption that shows the program version number. - An AppStream metainfo file was added to allow a Flatpak package (thanks Will Thompson)
Some nice new features for modders:
- There's a new manpage that documents the format of Sopwith mission files.
- Four new target types (truck, tanker truck, flag and tent) have been added for use in fan-made levels. There are also ten slots for custom user-defined target types, if you want to create your own completely new ground targets.
- It is now possible to replace symbols (sprites) inside custom map files. An example file is included that changes the biplanes into triplanes, so it's finally possible now to face off against "The Red Baron" in his triplane!
- It's now possible to replace the title screen music in custom map files too.
- There is still no editor for making custom levels, but a Python library has been added for programmatically generating levels. An example level has been included, the first custom level!
- Objects in custom levels can now be arbitrarily mirrored and rotated.
- The numeric keypad enter key can now be used to switch into fullscreen mode, and also when entering a hostname (thanks TechKnight).
- A long-standing bug was fixed where the computer planes would try to take off by flying straight up and then immediately stalling.
- The score is no longer reset between levels (this was a bug).
- At end of level, the remaining planes now "tick down" properly.
- A bug was fixed where the app icon was shown as a black silhouette.
- The manual page now documents the dashboard layout.
- The score will no longer be drawn over the medals for very large values.
- There is now an emscripten (web) version, available on the website. (Thanks go to @midzer, who previously did an Emscripten port and whose work I built on to put the build script together).
- It is now possible to make and load custom levels (there is no proper level editor available yet though).
- There are now a number of alternative palettes that can be used that simulate different CGA palettes and old monitors (thanks techknight).
- There are now hotkeys to end or restart the current game (thanks techknight).
- There is now a
-pcommand line option to specify TCP port number. - The Windows package now includes a copy of the Unix manual pages.
- Sound is now oversampled to reduce sound aliasing (thanks @kmill).
- Starting level is now synchronized between players at multiplayer start.
- A bug was fixed with the keybindings menu not working (thanks ranguli, NY00123)
- A missing include was added to fix build on Alpine Linux (thanks John Gebbie)
- An input bug was fixed where a backspace would leave some visual corruption, and the cursor now blinks.
- A bug was fixed where the same medal could be awarded twice.
- Timing of music on the title screen was fixed (thanks @NY00123).
- Sound on Windows was fixed.
- Medals are no longer cleared after a crash. Players now keep their medals until the end of the level, like their score.
- The purple heart medal is now only awarded to players injured in combat. Surviving a bird strike or crashing into an ox doesn't cut it.
- Out of tree builds were fixed (thanks Will Thompson)
- The close button now quits the game (thanks Will Thompson)
- The help screen is no longer shown when aborting the game.
- Multiplayer support was added for the Windows version, at long last.
- Help text is now shown for new players. This is shown on game start in novice mode, but won't be shown again after a successful flight. The help text will also appear in other single player modes, but only if it looks like you're really struggling to get the plane off the ground.
- It's no longer possible to flip the plane upside down while sitting motionless on the runway (a bug since the original DOS versions).
- It's no longer possible to get wounded on the ground. If a plane shoots another on the ground, that's a successful raid. This fixes a bug where a wounded plane on the runway would still be damaged after takeoff.
- The game no longer freezes up in multiplayer mode if the other player quits. When establishing a connection, a helpful message is shown about how to abort.
- An extra help doc was added for macOS users.
- If the game quits with an error, a friendly dialog box now shows the error.
- Some minor manpage fixes: the deleted missiles mode flag is no longer mentioned, and the spacing appears correct on OpenBSD man(1).
- Lots more internal cleanups making good progress towards eventually adding support for custom levels.
- An embarrassing bug was fixed where you could win by bombing your own buildings.
- The ox "splat" screen now shows correctly if you are shot down and crash into an ox.
Bug fixes and changes in this version:
- libm is included as a dependency when needed (thanks slicer69).
- No error is printed if the config file doesn't exist (thanks Kenneth Pronovici).
- The screen is now redrawn properly when in menus and the window is uncovered or resized (thanks Kenneth Pronovici).
- Some potential crashes were fixed when near the edges of the map.
- Some of the code has been refactored to centralize how levels are defined. In the future this will help to support custom levels.
Documentation changes:
- Build instructions were clarified (thanks Kenneth Pronovici).
- Better documentation of novice mode was added to the manpage (thanks Kenneth Pronovici).
- References to the -p argument were removed from the manpage and the help text (thanks Kenneth Pronovici).
Changes in this version:
- Sound has been reenabled. Sound output is now passed through a bandpass filter intended to make it sound like a real PC speaker, and also plays back at a much quieter volume, to be less startling to new players.
- Medals are now awarded to reward players (thanks creichen). The Unix manpage includes some details about the medals and how to attain them.
- There is now a configuration screen for setting key bindings, which are stored in the same configuration file as other settings.
- Thanks to SDL2's renderer API, the game now scales up to arbitrary window sizes and resolutions, and isn't limited to just 320x200 or 640x400.
- Network performance has been improved significantly.
- The Unix manpage has been significantly improved and expanded. A separate manpage was added for the configuration file.
- Sopwith now runs on macOS, and Mac .dmg packages are generated.
- Also now builds and runs cleanly on Haiku.
- The Windows .exe now has metadata and an icon.
- The missiles feature was changed to a hidden setting since it's not very fun and doesn't really fit the game's theme.
- The networking option to use a "TCP loop" has now been merged with the normal "connect" option, for simplicity. The target server may be a real server or a TCP loop server, and the clients will autodiscover.
Bug fixes:
- Movement precision within the game was made significantly more precise. This fixes a long-standing issue where fractional movement values were just being discarded, instead of being included in calculations as they should have been.
- Fix computer planes not shooting when tailing the player's plane (creichen).
- Fix planes crashing into their own bullets (creichen).
- Fix players able to turn quickly when wounded and using the autopilot.
- Damaged ground no longer remains on the title screen after the game ends.
- Network games no longer desync when only one player uses harry keys mode.
- Big oil tank explosions now match the magnitude of the old explosions from Sopwith 1 and Sopwith 2. The command line option to disable them has been replaced with a configuration variable.
- A bug was fixed where it was possible to stop the plane in midair when playing the game in novice mode (thanks Alaux).
Restructuring:
- Code has been ported to SDL2.
- Rewritten graphics code
- Major internal restructuring: removal of obsolete code, removal of some global variables
- Sopwith configuration file is no longer ~/.sopwithrc on *nix systems, but can now be found at ~/.local/share/SDL\ Sopwith/sopwith.cfg
- Updated man page (doc/sopwith.6) to match Debian's manual page. Provided by Kenneth Pronovici.
- Applied patches from Adrian Reber to bring Sopwith up to date with bug fixes provided by Fedora. This should avoid crash on start-up problems and makes compiling more robust.
- The function asynclos() in swasynio.c includes a parameter which is never used. Calling functions do not bother passing a parameter. To avoid undefined behaviour the definition of aynclos() has been fixed. Thanks for Michael Tautchnig for reporting this bug. Closes Debian bug #748172.
- Updated manual page to provide current default keys and mention the location of the custom keys file (~/.sopwith/keys)
- Removed stray object files from tarball.
- Added rule to makefile "tarball" which performs more complete clean-up and makes tarball in parent directory.
- Added
SDL_CFLAGSflag to src/Makefile to bring us in line with FreeBSD patches. - Updated copyright notice on help screen.
- Removed compiler optimiations to avoid crashes when game is built using versions of GCC newer than 4.6.
- Corrected initialization error that would prevent sound from playing at start-up.
- Updated documentation to include command line flags for playing music (-p) and starting Sopwith in quiet mode (-q). Thanks to John Corrado for pointing out this bug.
- Dropped support for GTK-2 as toolkit is being obsolete.
- Tidied up configurating script.
- Fixed program crash when video display is not available. (Thanks to Denis M from the Gentoo team for reporting this bug and testing the patch.)
- Brought game into compliance with Debian patches. Fixed errors in documentation. (Thanks to Ken from the Debian project for helping with these items.)
- Added slightly more intense explosions to oil tanks. This new feature can be turned off from the command line with the "-e" flag.
- Fixed most outstanding bugs reported in Debian. Fixed some compiler warnings. Added intructions for exiting the program on the title page. Sound is now disabled by default.
- Cleaned up some compile errors from gcc 4.4.1 on Ubuntu. Added -g command line option. -g and a number, such as -g2 will start the game on difficulty level 2. Normally the game starts at zero.
- Fix some compilation errors due to an error in swinit.c
- Fix networking which got broken somewhere.
- Allow control via arrow keys, for people with "unusual" keyboard layouts
- Fix right-ctrl for ctrl-c (thanks to electricelf)
- Support Gtk+ 2.0 and some GNOME HiGification
Psion Port:
- devfs support
- improved screen squishing for revo
Code cleanup:
- Removed a load of redundant code including the last remnants of the old Imaginet code. Also some archaic stuff like the ATARI/IBMPC defines
- Some of the keyboard code moved out into a system-independent module.
- Fixed bug with harry keys mode and returning to home from the left (thanks to Kodath duMatri)
- Fixed bullets being colored (instead of always white like they should be).
- Now totally under the GPL!
- Removed old redundant collision detection code
- PsiLinux port: Keyboard code added, video code improved. This port is now playable!
- Fixed gtk+ port turning off key repeat
- Fixed SDL version drawing a blank screen on changing video modes
- Fixed consistency failure with flocks between clients with different screen widths
- renamed "getmode" to "getgamemode" to avoid conflicts with standard unix function (thanks to Edwin Groothuis)
- SDL Icon is now set from the internal sprite table, not from an external file (no more "icon.bmp not found" errors)
- Added manual page
- Start of PsiLinux port (for Psion Revo/5MX)
- Collision detection code rewritten
- Save button added to settings dialog in Gtk+ version
- Added original documentation to doc/origdoc.txt
- Code restructure:
- All rendering is now done directly to the appropriate buffer, the old Atari rendering functions (which I thought were CGA functions) are no longer used as there are now native 8-bit versions.
sopsym_tis used for storing sprites;ob->ob_symwdt/symhgtremoved as they are no longer of any use
- Gtk+ port! (work in progress, no sound yet but it is playable)
- Game no longer thrashes the CPU when waiting for keypresses or the next gametic.
- 'S' key to toggle sound fixed
- Network connect now allows you to connect to a different port than the default (use host.domain.com:port)
- Network option to connect to a TCP loop (forwards between two sopwith clients using a third "man in the middle" server)
- Fixed "holes" in ground when using solid ground (the solid ground function was originally hacked from the line ground function, it is now practically rewriteen).
- Fixed out of sync netgames when starting a netgame after playing a single player game already.
- Build now uses autoconf/automake
- Code cleanup:
- intson, intsoff calls removed, bmblib.[ch] removed from build
- Build process changed: SDL code moved into a seperate subdirectory, Gtk+ code is in another directory. All the game code is compiled into a single module "sopwith.o" and this is linked with the appropriate modules for Sound, Graphics and Timer. This allows multiple ports for Gtk+, SDL etc, while keeping the game itself seperate from the display specific code.
- Added a 'dos' subdirectory with relevant code for if/when I do a DOS port.
- Added options menu, game options are saved to disk (sopwith.ini on
Windows systems, ~/.sopwithrc on Unix). These were available before but
required command line args). Game options:
- enable/disable missiles
- solid ground (draw as a block like sopwith 1)
- hud splats (option to disable)
- wounded planes (option to disable)
- animals (oxen and birds)
- harry keys (pull up/down keys are relative to screen, not plane)
- fullscreen/double scale video options
- More sensible versioning system
- When you die, you are taken back to the menu rather than immediately restarting.
- Splatted oxen turn the screen pink (as in Authors Edition)
- Icon
- Code cleanup: lots of reordering of the initial setup and restart code
- Menu code is now all in swtitle.c (except the options menu which is in swconf.c)
- Networking! I have hacked in TCP/IP Networking based on the old asyncronous multiplayer option code. There is a new option on the main menu "Network" through which network games can be started.
- Fixed use of auxdisp which was why the score was not displayed and was also why the map was not being properly refreshed.
- Fixed command line args and updated help screen
- Title screen based on the "network edition" title screen.
- Extra command line args:
-f(fullscreen)-2(double size window for easier viewing)-l(network mode, listen for connection)-j(network mode, connect to host)
- Sopwith now quits if you hit ctrl-c, not escape, like in the original. However, for lazy people not wanting to wait while their plane crashes and the game exits, if you hit ctrl-c 3 times it quits immediately.
- Hitting escape in menus now takes you back to the previous menu.
- Major code cleanup - this is the main difference. I have created headers for all the source modules so that it is no longer neccesary to include millions of "extern" definitions in every file (which is tedious, ugly and prone to bugs). I have also reformatted all the code so that it looks nicer, and removed some obfuscations so that the code is more readable in places.
- CVS Tags have been added to all source files for if/when I put this into CVS.
- Various extra code hacks: sopwith1 theme music (was different music in sopwith 1, I extracted the music sequence from the hexdump),
- solid ground (also ala sopwith1)
- Video and Sound is all working (afaik)
- ASM removed/replaced.
- Internally it draws everything as if it were still using a CGA screen, I have written some SDL code that "emulates" a CGA screen and draws it to an SDL screen.
- Sound is done in a similar way: The digital output in LibSDL is used to make the appropriately-pitched beepings to sound like a PC Speaker :) The API to the PC Speaker code is identical to those of a small library I wrote a while back to control the PC Speaker in DJGPP, this is incase I want to do a DOS port.
- Moved all of Andrew Jenners decompiled code into amj/, I do not use this directly but it is useful in deciphering some ASM functions. attic/ has all the asm source and other source files that are redundant now.
- doc/ has all the documentation that came with the source
- current bugs: crashing into an ox doesnt turn your screen pink, map/status bar dont refresh properly (?? score not displayed)