Liquid War NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.

* January 2009: release of 0.0.6beta. This release has a remarquable
  new feature, which is a good example of what was perfectly not
  doable with old Liquid War 5. Indeed, maps can now have several
  layers, that is, players can move on different levels. This allows
  construction of tunnels and bridges, for instance. Additionnally,
  Debian .deb and RedHat .rpm packages are now available again, along
  with a self-installable MS-Windows .exe binary. As usual, this
  release comes with its load of bug-fixes.

* December 2008: release of 0.0.5beta. This one is playable. Local
  games should work, network is not fully implemented yet. There 
  are still many outstanding bugs and missing features but it should
  be worth downloading and installing the game even for end-users,
  non-hackers players, who just want to enjoy the game. Network
  support and bug-fixing become the next priorities.

* September 2008: release of 0.0.4beta. The major change is that
  the game now runs on both GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows. Other
  ports for platforms such as *BSD or Mac OS/X are very likely to
  be technically possible, provided all requirements are installed,
  however this has not been tested. The game has been released in a
  temporary state which only allows map loading. The motivation was
  to allow map designers jailed on Microsoft proprietary systems to
  draw maps without the hassle of trying maps on Liquid War 5 or
  relying on the mere hope that it would hopefully work, some day.

* January 2008: release of 0.0.3beta, which is not really feature
  rich from a user/player point of view, but reflects the actual
  development and recent evolutions in the game structure. Includes
  multithreading, safer memory management, cleaner interfaces, and
  revamped documentation.

* October 2007: lots of "underground" work this month. Code has been
  updated, restructured, fixed, hacked. Package includes new maps
  by Kasper Hviid, and has been splitted into a core liquidwar6
  package and an "add-on" liquidwar6-extra-maps package. Now focus
  will be put on 1) network code and 2) usability. It's time for
  players to toy arround with the game.

* September 2007: after a long time, finally a new release.
  Network code started pouring in, but it's not workable yet.
  Code has been updated so that it (hopefully) compiles better
  under various flavors of GNU/Linux. Next step remains enabling
  network. Note that a bunch of cool maps are now included. Oh,
  and, yes, LW6 is now licensed under the GPL v3.

* December 2006: a great effort has been put on packaging, so
  that people can try out the game. Debian (.deb) and Red Hat
  (.rpm) packages are available. Sound has been activated,
  and documentation updated. Network support is planned for
  next year, hopefully it should be available in early 2007.

* November 2006: finally, a workable demo. There's still no real
  interesting gameplay (no winner, no timeout, no goal) so it's
  really a demo, a toy, and not a real game yet. Still, at this
  stage, the current snapshot can be used to try out maps, and
  have an idea of what the game will look like. It (hopefully)
  compiles and runs, and lets you toy arround with armies. Next
  major step should be the addition of network code, sound support,
  along with documentation for map designers.

* October 2006: not many news, but many coding and commits.
  Most of the coding concerned arcane and very low-level elements.
  Now there's a serious urge for documentation, as many things
  have changed. Significant improvements include displaying
  the armies, having a working "shortest path algorithm", complete
  suite tests for all modules, full modularity, including dynamic
  loading of graphical and sound modules, an interactive console
  which is a Guile interpreter allowing interaction with the game
  and "whatever would not be available through the menu", and so on.
  Stay tuned.

* April 2006: Lots of coding recently.  Maps have been imported
  from Liquid War 5, and some algorithmic code actually started
  to pour in the game. For instance, teams can be placed on a map
  now, and most of the memory structures necessary to handle all
  the game's logic are ready. While the game is still not playable,
  it's getting closer to being a working demo. Plans have also been
  made to use libcaca as a third renderer, the first being SDL/GL
  and the second Allegro.

* March 2006: The refactoring which had been started in early 2006
  is now over. The game is now much more modular, the graphical 
  backend is loaded dynamically, and this backend itself is 
  structured in separated components. The algorithm part, the
  real "core" of the game is not written yet, but a decicated module
  "liquidwar6ker" has been set up, which has no dependencies on any 
  external libraries but liquidwar6sys and glibc. This should, in 
  the long term, ease up the work of using Liquid War algorithms & 
  structures in a completely different context.

* February 2006: It's been decided to use dynamic linking through 
  ltdl (libtool) to handle dynamic loading of graphical backends.
  This means that the liquidwar6 executable itself will not
  rely on SDL or any given graphical library. Only
  libliquidwar6gfx will. While this is not of immediate use
  since only one backend will be developped at first, it opens
  interesting perspectives, such as easing up a lot the
  process of writing an alternative backend, depending on
  Allegro or plain X11 or whatever is needed, should the
  default SDL/OpenGL not be fully adapted to one's needs. This
  is not commited yet, but probably be soon. Additionnally,
  Liquid War 6 has been tested on a big-endian machine (Apple
  hardware running GNU/Linux). Some patches are required
  (mostly linked to bitmap loading) but it basically works.

* January 2006: developpement is following its planned
  route. According to the "official road map" the project is on its
  tracks. The framework is here and works, it's possible to load a
  map, view it, and all this is done with a combination of scheme/C
  code through Guile, which is an order of magnitude cleaner than
  legacy Liquid War 5 code.  Documentation is available on
  http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/manual/

* December 2005: Liquid War 6 becomes a GNU package.  This is
  great. The short term and visible impact is that the official web
  page for Liquid War 6 moves from http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v6
  to http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/

* November 2005: Nothing really new on the code side, still I decided
  to release some package, to save people the hassle of accessing Arch
  depots directly. However the package does nothing usefull for end
  users yet. Spent most of my coding time/energy on PyGpsWeb.

* October 2005: Developpement is halted this month, will continue in
  November. I have other projects to finish now, which have closer
  deadlines than LW6 (which has none). But don't worry, developpement
  is now over, it's just halted for a period of a few weeks. FYI I'm
  concentrating on XUL and PostGIS/UMN Mapserver for now.

* September 2005: Continued the work started in August. I've also
  fixed some stuff in the old dusty Liquid War 5 code, basically I'm
  preparing a 5.6.3 release which will fix some bugs, and be Allegro
  4.2.0 compatible.

* August 2005: Coding is on its way, I've coded a bunch of things
  while I was in Spain. The good news is that: - OpenGL is rather
  simple to manage, I've been able to setup basic stuff quickly
  enough. No problem on this side.  - Guile is pretty usable, the scm_
  interface lacks a good tutorial, but it's very usable. I'm still no
  scheme guru, but wait 8-) Right now the current work in progress
  release does nothing interesting, but the framework is set up. I
  mean it displays stuff using OpenGL, and it's driven by scheme code
  which passes orders/parameters to low-level C code through Guile.

* July 2005: Liquid War 6 is launched. For now it's only pure
  vaporware, but I have decided to devote time to it. I'm not used to
  drop projects, so be patient and it will be there. I've written a
  roadmap, which describes what I plan, and well, let's code!

