NEWS-2.3.4

__NOTOC__
===WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 2.3.3===
The main reason for this release is to fix a client crash triggered by chat messages; see below. Other than that, there is the usual set of bugfixes.
====Server / General====
=====Gameplay=====
* Bug fix: when a unit was automatically moved to a transporter to save it from drowning or running out of fuel, the transporter could continue to appear empty. 
* Bug fixes in unit conversion and upgrade :
** Prevent cases where units could be converted or upgraded to a type only capable of carrying different cargo to the current cargo.
** Prevent conversion of a unit to a type that could not exist on the current tile.
* Units of types the owner cannot build are no longer prevented from upgrade. 
* Bug fix: quell spurious "No diplomat action possible" message when an ordinary attempt to move a diplomatic unit failed. 
* Following on from a fix in 2.3.3, when a border source such as a fortress is occupied by a unit of a nation other than the owner when a ceasefire runs out, ownership now transfers to that of the occupying unit. 
* When acquiring a technology such as Philosophy which gives further techs by an unusual route (such as through a hut), all progress toward the current research target was lost. Now it is preserved (although 'freecost' is applied). 
* Bug fix: when a city is traded and hence units change ownership, it wasn't checked whether those units provided diplomatic contact to a new nation. 
* Bug fix: assertion failure during map generation when no unit in the ruleset satisfied the first role in 'startunits'. 
* Bug fix: the tech upkeep with tech_cost_style 2 or 4 was much lower than intended; it only took into account a single tech rather than all preceding techs. As a result, tech upkeep in such rulesets will greatly increase. 
** The currently downloadable 'civ2-3' modpack (2.3-2c) thus has tech upkeep disabled. You may want to update your copy.
* An unknown effect requirement type in a ruleset now causes a loading error rather than being silently interpreted as "None". 
=====Clerical=====
* When a new nation is created in the editor, city style and leader sex are now set appropriately (previously they were always European and male). 
* A hardcoded year of -4000 is no longer sent to the metaserver in pregame, as it is ruleset-dependent. 
* One code tidy-up with no user-visible effect. 
====Clients====
* The client could crash when your name was mentioned in chat but you had set the 'highlight your player/user name' setting to no color. This could also prevent any connection to a server with the event cache enabled if your player name had been mentioned in the past. 
** Older clients can work around this bug by setting a highlight colour in their local options (you may need to start a local game in order to access the configuration dialog).
* Fix possible instability when loading some tilesets. 
====Tilesets / Art====
* Some internal SVG format fixes in the supplied flags to allow their use in web browsers; this has no effect on Freeciv itself. 
====AI====
* Fix some incorrect inferences about the ability of transported units or units in cities to defend; these are most likely to affect unusual rulesets (e.g., those with ocean cities). 
====Help / Documentation====
* Minor improvements to user documentation and in-game text. 
* Miscellaneous improvements to developer/ruleset docs. 
====Translations====
* The Spanish, Polish, and French translations are once more complete.
====Build/portability====
* Fix various compiler warnings. It's now possible to build Freeciv with GCC 4.7 optimisation level -O3 without any warnings. 
* Future-proof against automake versions which ignore ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS. 
* Suppress warnings about use of deprecated declarations in debug builds, allowing compilation on for instance recent OpenSUSE. 
See NEWS for older lists of changes.
Category:NEWS