Quadra 1.2.0 Released!

Ten years after Quadra 1.0.0 was released, and more than 200,000 downloads of the open source version, there is finally a new stable release of Quadra!

We're been rather bad maintainers, the last release having been released almost eight years ago (in October 2001), and not really working all that hard on Quadra, but the fans (that's you!) just kept downloading and playing the game, amazingly! The numbers are just insane: no less than five years after the last release, downloads exceeded thirty thousands (in 2006), and in the last year, are still clipping along at around a thousand downloads per month!

But now you can get the new release, Quadra 1.2.0 (both in source form, and the Windows installer), from our download page.

What's new? Well, on the surface, it's still rather similar to the 1.1.8 version, but things changed underneath, keeping it up to date with the more modern technologies, fixed many crashes, made it more friendly to use in some subtle ways, and more robust regarding to the Internet playing. In more details:

• Added a notification of new versions in the title screen.
• Automatically updates the public game server address if it moves.
• Now requires Internet Explorer 5 on Windows.
• Stores high score recordings and configuration files in a user-specific application directory, so that non-administrators can play on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista.
• Added a full screen mode to the X11 driver, which is now the default (use the "-nofullscreen" option if it gives you problems, or switch on the fly with Alt-Enter).
• Removed support for Svgalib
• Added a "-boringrules" option to disable the reduction in attack strength normally applied to crowded games (this should remove any need to run older versions of Quadra for rule purposes).
• Fixed compilation on Darwin/Mac OS X (using X11, without sound or CD music, and having incorrect keyboard mappings, this is only for the truly daring!).
• Added a "-connectfile" option to read from a specified file a server address to connect to.
• Refresh the list of Internet games when returning from creating or joining a game.
• Fixed the crash on level changes (also known as the "sound crash") on X11.
• Fixed the "trails" on X11.
• Added a "-nocd" option to avoid using the CD music.
• Fixed a bug where exiting Quadra with the "No Music" option selected would stop the CD player if it was running (Linux only).
• Fixed the bad appicon behaviour with Window Maker.
• Fixed the high CPU usage on recent Linux systems.
• Added a User-Agent to the HTTP client code.
• Fixed many compilation problems with modern GCC versions.
  
• Fixed some compilation problems related to "basename".
• Fixed many bugs related to the SPARC port.
• Fixed Valgrind warnings.

This was made possible through the contribution of some people outside the core team (the following list from the NEWS file, let me know if anyone is missing!):

• Damian M Gryski
• Hunor "Kacsa" Csordás
• Simon Pantzare

Now, have fun!