New Paradise 2000 client!

[Trent Piepho <xyzzy@speakeasy.org>]

I'm pleased to announced a new beta version of the Paradise 2000 Netrek
client.  Beta 4 is now available with new features and a few bug fixes,
summarized below.  I don't have in all the stuff I want to do, so it's still a
beta version.  This version comes with some installation instructions and an
organized and very well commented sample netrekrc file, if I do say so myself.
Players behind a NAT firewall (like Linux IP_MASQ) should take note, as this
version lets you toggle on the UDP portswap option for NAT compatibility.

You can see the web page at:
http://www.speakeasy.org/~xyzzy/netrek/

Or download the client:
ftp//ftp.netrek.org/pub/netrek/clients/paradise2000/paradise-2000-beta4.tar.gz
ftp://xyzzy.dsl.speakeasy.net/pub/paradise-2000-beta4.tar.gz

I just uploaded the client to ftp.netrek.org, but Dave needs to move it from
incoming and into the proper directory.

New in beta4:
	Made lowerCaseT default to on.  When on, 't' sends messages to your
team and 'T' sends messages to player T.  When off, you have to hit shift-T to
send messages to your team, and that sucks.

	Fixed the showIND feature, which draws an X through independant
planets on the tactical and galactic.  It previously didn't work.

	Fixed the Bronco ranks so they match the standard for current servers.

	The metaserver list now shows all working servers, not just those with
players on them.  Maybe once upon a time there were too many servers to list
this way, but not anymore.

	New option, "singleRCD", which makes RCDs implicitly singlemacros,
which mimics the RCD behavior in COW.  What this means is that an RCD can be
sent with a single key, instead of pushing the macro key first.  E.g.  ogg
would be control-o instead of 'X' followed by control-o.  Default is on. 
Several of the default RCD control keys conflict with, and will override, the
default keys for other things.  For example, control-9 is the key for the
pickup RCD, and is also the key for warp 19.  If you want a warp 19 key,
you'll need to remap it or turn singleRCD off.

	Bug fix, you couldn't make a single key macro that was a control key. 
Now you can.

	Client now tells server is has the SHIP_CAP feature.  The Paradise
client has always had this (it was a Paradise invention!), but the Vanilla
server, unlike the Paradise server, needs to be told.

	The smaller heading tic that indicates desired direction will be drawn
when you are locked onto a planet or player.  It will be green and indicate
the direction to the locked on object.  Before it was not drawn when you were
locked on.  In addition, it is not draw when you are orbiting or docked.

	Made the UDP portswap code an option, settable in the netrekrc file
with udpTryPortswap.  You can also change between portswap on normal mode via
the UDP options menu ('+'), and then try re-establish while playing.  Portswap
mode on causes the client to send the the first UDP packet to the server,
instead of the server sending the first UDP packet to the client, as in normal
mode.  Portswap will work with most NAT setups, while normal mode won't.  Some
older servers don't support portswap.

	Increased max players from 20 to 32 in Bronco mode.  This was
necessary because max players in the Vanilla server was increased in version
2.9pl4.

	Sound can now be turned on and off while playing via the options
menu.

singleRCD:  	boolean (on)	RCDs are implicit singlemacros
udpTryPortswap:	boolean	(off)	The the portswap method for UDP connection

New in beta3:
	Default metaserver address changed to metaserver.us.netrek.org,
because metaserver.netrek.org is broken.  You can use whatever metaserver you
want by putting a "metaserver:  blah.blah" line in your .netrekrc. 

	Fixed a small bug with short packets 2.  Sometimes the playerlist
wouldn't refresh after a player died, so they would still be listed as '--'
instead of 'CA' or 'SC'.

	New server/client feature, 19FLAGS.  Replaces the SELF_8_FLAGS feature
with a much better one.  In almost every packet, 19 of the most important
flags are sent, like shield, cloak, alert status.  In fact every single player
flag except war reprogramming and self-destruct is sent.  This way a single
lost packet won't cause your flags to be wrong, as they are resent every
update.  Due to a server side improvement, bandwidth usage is actually
slightly less than it was before.  Server support added in Vanilla 2.9pl4.

New in beta2:
	Behave a little nicer as an X program.  Metaserver window will no
longer fail to appear when using WindowMaker.  The window manager delete
window protocol will work for most top level windows.

	When the puck travels at warp 15 or 31, it will no longer cloak.  This
is a kludge fix to a problem created by the CLOAK_MAXWARP kludge.  The hockey
server at MIT has a server side kludge to fix this; when at warp 15 the puck
reports its speed as 14.  What a mess.

	Short packets 2.  Finally add support for these to the Paradise
client.  This reduces bandwidth and improves playability with packetloss.

	Support for the SELF_8FLAGS and SELF_8FLAGS2 features.  Combined with
SP2, should eliminate the problem where your don't see you shields/cloak/other
state change because of packetloss.

	Support for the SBHOURS feature.  When in a starbase, your hours
played stat reflects time in a base.

	Option to omit the team letter from the player IDs on the galactic. 
So instead of things like 'F2' and 'R5' there would just be a yellow '2' and a
red '5'.  Letter clutter on the galactic.

	Shrink phasers, like in BRMH.  Phasers lines shrink toward their
target, in one second they get to about half length.  Aids with timing your
phaser cycle, and lets you see who is phasering who easier.

	Some new sound effects.  Currently, there are 17 different sound
effects.

omitTeamLetter: boolean (off)  Omit the team letter from ships on the galactic
shrinkPhasers:  boolean (on)   Shrink phasers as they cycle

From beta1:

	Stereo sound effects.  Super sophisticated psycho-acoustic 2D sound
placement.  Well, not that sophisticated, but it does place sounds by where
they happen on the screen.  You need to have permissions on /dev/dsp, and the
sound server paradise.sndserver must be in a place the client can find it. 
You can define in your .netrekrc file where the sound server is and what
device to open.

unixSoundPath:  /name/of/sound.server            (default paradise.sndserver)
unixSoundDev:   /dev/dsp			 (default /dev/dsp)

* You also need to add the line, "playSounds: on", to your .netrekrc file in *
* order to turn sound effects on.  The "play sound effects" entry in the     *
* defaults menu doesn't work.                                                *

  [in beta 4 is does work]
******************************************************************************

	Support for wheel mice.  If your mouse if configured properly in X,
you should be able to scroll the message windows with it.  On the tactical,
the wheel will fire torps by default.  You can bind keys to the buttons with
'buttonMap', just like other mouse buttons.  The up direction is button p and
down is q.  So to make up det and down plasma, you would have a buttonmap of
'pdqf'.  Remember that buttonmap also goes through the keymap, so if you have
space bar mapped to det, you would make your buttonmap 'p qf'.

	You still can't lock onto cloaked players from the playerlist, but
attempting to do so will no longer crash the client.

	Re-enter the game after you die and are at the MOTD by pressing the
space bar, rather than clicking on the race window.  Stop entering on the
wrong team in 4x4 hockey games.

	No puck player letter on tactical.

	Correct metaserver address!

	32 position ship bitmaps.  There are twenty files named R?.C?, these
are 32 positions ship bitmap albums.  You will need to add an entry into your
.netrekrc file for them, eg.  shipBitmapPath:  /path/to/these/files (default
is ".")

Some new features, rcfile option, type, default, description:
detCircle: int (1700)          Draw red circle around ship
headingTic: boolean (on)       Tic mark to indicate heading
puckArrow: boolean (on)        Tic mark to indicate puck heading (hockey)
tractorID: boolean (on)        Show ID of tractored player next to ship