opencol v0.8-beta-bugfix-1

Changelog

Player-facing changes. Bracketed numbers are docs/port_bugs.md row ids (closed
rows live in docs/archive/bugs_closed.md).

0.8-beta-bugfix-1 — 2026-10-22

• Map around report, colony and other screens now keeps its own colours
  instead of being tinted by the screen's palette.
• No more Lost City Rumour popups and tunes for rumours explored by AI
  Europeans. [1163]

opencol v0.8-beta

Changelog

Player-facing changes. Bracketed numbers are docs/port_bugs.md row ids (closed
rows live in docs/archive/bugs_closed.md).

0.8-beta — 2026-10-22

Covers 0.7-alpha (2026-09-29) to 2026-10-22: 260 commits, 167 bug rows
resolved. Not exhaustive.

Headline: with the human idle, the AI and natives now play byte-identical to
the 1994 binary under the same seed: 1492-1599 on a random map, 1501-1569 on
the Americas map, and a War of Independence. Save+reload no longer changes how
a game continues.

Gameplay

• Natives: alarm, raids, gifts, demands, mission burning and Brave colony
  visits follow the original. [1000]-[1008] [1010] [1060] [1133]
• Europe market prices, drift and AI trade pressure match the original for all
  four nations; Sell All skips boycotted goods. [1011]-[1017] [1022] [1047]
  [1050] [1051] [1058] [1084]
• Europe docks: queue order fixed, invented 8-ship / 32-colonist caps removed,
  unit limits and "too many units" match the original. [999] [1067]-[1073]
• Privateer attacks no longer start wars; capturing a colony really ends peace.
  [992]-[995]
• Naval combat, drydock choice and unit rotation (sentried, fortified,
  repairing) fixed. [715] [996] [997] [1140] [1141]
• Colony production order, Custom House, mine depletion, spoilage, Bolivar and
  tea party fixed. [1014] [1023]-[1025] [1089] [1143] [1145]
• War of Independence: victory sequence, intervention, rebel/tory freeze,
  succession and REF landings fixed. [878] [1054] [1055] [1144] [1162]
• Americas maps no longer lose most Lost City Rumours to Braves. [1160]
• Optional divergences.unlimited_units setting lifts the original's unit cap
  (off by default; see docs/settings.md).
• 36 bugs of the original are no longer reproduced, listed in
  docs/dos_bugs.md.

AI

• Rival Europeans found, staff and run colonies, sail, trade and path as the
  original does; invented behaviour removed. [530] [711] [712] [964] [971]
  [1027]-[1046] [1048]-[1053] [1056] [1062] [1074] [1093] [1095] [1130]
  [1134]-[1138]

Saves

• Save+reload keeps all live state, including Europe docks, and new games no
  longer inherit the previous game's leftovers. [1071] [1087] [1103] [1128]
  [1129] [1150]
• Hall of Fame and settings.json writes fixed. [1086] [1115]

User Interface

• More invented English text replaced by the original's own. [1083] [1099]-[1101]
  [1123] [1156]
• Map menu is modal; popups no longer dropped in big empires. [1077] [1091]
• Colony screen, Go to Port, trade-route editor and village menu fixes. [998]
  [1075] [1078]-[1080] [1139] [1148] [1151] [1153]-[1155]
• Ship sinking dissolve works in resized windows; rival alarm marks draw
  correctly. [1061] [1161]

Stability

• Exit crash in audio fixed; very long games no longer disable AI latches.
  [1092] [1094]

opencol v0.7-alpha

Changelog

0.7-alpha — 2026-09-29

The lists below are not exhaustive — they pick the changes a
player is most likely to notice.

The project is now called OpenCol; the
binary is opencol.

Gameplay

• Rival European AI plays properly: it expands, its colonies pick real build
  projects, its Pioneers plow, clear and road, and its ships no longer idle in
  Europe or circle the map. [953] [954]
• AI colonies seat workers sensibly — food tiles get farmers and fishermen,
  building jobs are not abandoned, and colonies stop starving for no reason.
  [562] [567] [568] [569] [572]
• Braves attack units caught in the open instead of standing next to them, and
  raids burn the lowest owned building tier as the original does. [822] [925]
• Factory-tier production math matches the original when inputs run short —
  Rum, Cigars, Cloth, Tools and Muskets. [897] [910]
• Coastal forts no longer fire on neutral or allied ships. [465]
• Treasure Trains need the right Galleon capacity and cash in correctly,
  including the King's transport offer. [484] [736] [738]
• Veteran Dragoons harden into Continental Cavalry, not Continental Army. [534]
• Founding Father effects corrected (Bolivar, Brebeuf, Las Casas, Pocahontas);
  more invented effects removed. [476] [477]
• Trade routes actually carry their configured cargo instead of running empty.
  [949] [982]
• Wagon Trains can no longer board ships. [482]

Graphics

• Damaged and sunk ships pixelate away inside the dissolve animation, whether
  the kill came from combat or from a coastal fort. [462] [464]
• Your own winning unit no longer plays the death dissolve. [533]
• Map draw order fixed so plowed fields sit correctly under roads and rivers.
  [622]
• Units outside a colony keep the original's fixed position as the
  fortification is upgraded. [536]
• Damaged Artillery uses its damaged icon, and the sidebar shows a repair
  countdown instead of a stale order letter. [763] [705]

Sound

• Every sound cue in the original was traced and wired: combat now picks the
  attacker- and defender-specific shot, loss and sinking cues, native attacks
  get their own stings, and colony, Europe, mission, tea-party and raid events
  all fire the right sound.
• Title-menu music is back — the menu opens on the Natives theme and then
  cycles tunes like the map does.
• The three original option flags (Background Music, Event Music, Sound
  Effects) now gate exactly what they gate in the original.
• Scout and native-encounter cue order fixed. [502] [729] [765] [849]

User Interface

• Report screens repaired: Religious, Congress, Economic and Naval Adviser had
  wrong fonts, missing columns and mis-formatted numbers. [973]-[979]
• Popups that showed blank choice labels now show their text, and a batch of
  invented English popup strings was replaced with the original's own text (or
  removed). [541] [542] [543] [983]-[990]
• Unit and sidebar names corrected, including Continental Cavalry showing as
  "Soldier". [538] [591]
• Diplomacy text no longer substitutes a nation name for a leader's name. [468]
  [474]
• The colony jobs popup lists indoor jobs, not just the nine field jobs. [900]
• Trade route editor regained its table headers; long cargo names stop
  overflowing. [945] [946]
• Simultaneous fortress fire resolves one combat at a time instead of stacking
  every announcement ahead of every result. [535]
• "This unit cannot attack" no longer wedges input during a Go To. [469]

Quality of Life

• Optional message log strip under the screen (display.window_log_lines in
  settings.json, 0-24 rows) keeps the popups you just dismissed readable.
• Placing a colonist from the fence picks a job that makes sense for the tile.
  [944]
• Sentried units wake for approaching enemies, including REF landings. [539]
• Popups raised inside a colony are no longer held back by a detour to the map
  or the Colonopedia, and the docks-required warning appears at once. [950]
  [951]
• Confirmation prompt restored before attacking a village on reduced movement.
  [940]

Technical Improvements

• Save/load: a long list of state that used to reset on reload now survives —
  cargo on trade-route carriers, ships' passengers, Brewster's immigration
  filter, and more. [972] [981] [982]
• The original's music driver is emulated rather than approximated, so song
  selection and the tune pools behave as the DOS build does.
• docs/known_divergences.md records the deliberate differences from the
  original, so they stop being re-reported as bugs.
• The largest source files were split by feature (AI, colony, Europe, units,
  reports, turn, game loop) with matching test targets.

linux-colonize v0.6-alpha

Changelog

Highlights

• Colonies with a Shipyard can build ships — Caravel, Merchantman, Galleon,
  Privateer and Frigate, at the original's costs. Previously the build list held
  only Artillery and Wagon Trains. [481]
• Rival AI ships no longer sail in visible loops or wobble in place for dozens of
  turns; idle ships roam and warships engage. [449] [451]
• Rival AI land forces are no longer passive during the War of Independence; the
  war now actually resolves. [522]
• Trading with a foreign European colony works the way the original does: a
  loaded ship or wagon bumping the colony opens the real trade dialogs, where
  they name the cargo they want and you choose goods or gold. It now requires
  Jan de Witt (otherwise you are refused for mercantilism), is blocked during
  war, and is human-only — the AI never attempts it. The old invented "dock
  inside a foreign colony and transfer cargo freely" flow is gone. [475]
• Difficulty affects combat again, as in the original: beginner handicaps that
  were missing are in, on Discoverer an undefended colony of yours cannot be
  taken in the first 80 turns and your own attacks hit twice as hard, and a
  fabricated Discoverer penalty on your attacks is gone.
• Turn order follows the original's interleaving — some rivals, then the natives,
  then the remaining rivals, then the King — rather than a simplified
  human-first order.

Colonies and production

• Hammer production now debits lumber every turn. Lumber used to drop correctly
  one turn and then bounce back to full the next while carpenters kept working.
  [466]

• Production previews now match what the turn actually produces (food, hammers,
  and the lumber consumed).

• Sons of Liberty percentage updates the moment a colonist joins or leaves,
  instead of at end of turn. [447]

• Schoolhouse teaching progress survives save and reload, and exported colonists
  no longer look fully trained when they are not. [506]

• Specialists in a colonist's job menu gained the Clear Specialty option,
  returning them to Free Colonist. [431]

• Running out of tools now reverts the right specialists instead of flattening
  them to plain Colonists, and on-the-job skill learning happens at most once per
  job. [509]

• Cargo can be dragged straight from one docked ship into another's hold, without
  a detour through the warehouse; shift-dragging performs a real transfer with an
  amount prompt instead of being misrouted through warehouse logic. [432]

• A colony's "enemy ship blockading the port" flag, which gates the Custom House,
  no longer gets stuck — it refreshes every turn.

• Clicking an already-built Carpenter's Shop (and some other buildings) no longer
  claims it has not been built. [430]

• The warehouse-full spoilage warning quotes the correct existing stock, capacity
  and deposited amounts. [433]

• Opening a colony lands on the Construction view rather than Production. [443]

• The construction cost popup uses green text, right-aligns hammer and tool
  costs, and pages through long lists instead of splitting into columns. [436]

• The build preview no longer shows a hammers restriction that does not exist in
  the original.

• Units standing outside a colony's fence, stockade, fort or fortress are drawn
  at the original's fixed position instead of shifting down as the fortification
  is upgraded. [536]

• "Need tools to finish construction" warnings are back; they had gone silent
  when the colony produced no hammers that turn, or when the project was a unit
  (Artillery, Wagon Train, ship) rather than a building. [537]

• A single ton of pre-existing warehouse overflow now stays in store instead of
  being silently clamped away, matching the original's rounding.

Combat

• Attacking a foreign colony always asks for confirmation, including an
  undefended one. [437]

• Destroyed, sunk and demoted units pixelate away with the original's dissolve
  effect instead of vanishing or leaving a stale sprite. Damaged ships now
  disappear inside that animation instead of sitting visible on the map until
  your next turn. [462]

• Ships sunk by coastal forts play the sink animation. [464]

• Coastal forts fire only on enemies and Privateers — no longer on nations you
  are at peace with. [465]

• Ships sailing past enemy warships, Forts and Fortresses are slowed or stopped
  and lose movement points, with the original's escape messages. This replaces an
  AI-only invented "naval ambush". [455]

• Native raids were badly broken: villages could attack and gift in the same
  encounter, raid without ever reporting losses, and re-raid the same colony free
  of charge every turn. Fixed. [442]

• A ship that loses to a coastal fort sails on undamaged; the port used to freeze
  its movement.

• Paul Revere's colony auto-defender no longer spends 50 muskets from the
  warehouse — that was invented. It swaps in a temporary Soldier that always
  disappears after the fight.

• Braves attacking Artillery auto-lose, as in the original; the port matched that
  rule too broadly before.

• Post-battle promotion checks the right nation, and only converts soldiers to
  Continental Army under the right conditions. [504]

• The Combat Analysis dialog shows icons beside the bombardment, ambush/terrain,
  fort tier and village-type rows, and the mislabelled "Tories"/"Rebels" rows now
  read "Tory Unrest"/"Rebel Unrest".

• Winning an attack against a Tory stack no longer plays the dissolve death
  animation on your own attacking unit. [533]

• When several coastal forts fire in one turn, each fort's announcement and its
  Combat Analysis resolve one at a time, instead of every announcement arriving
  first and every analysis afterwards. [535]

• Sentried land units wake and drop their orders when an enemy moves adjacent;
  previously they could sleep through a Royal landing beside them. [539]

War of Independence

• The King's reinforcements generate Regulars and Cavalry for the correct side.
  [505]

• Royal Expeditionary Force units move under the full rival-nation turn logic
  instead of a special-case hunting routine.

• The Crown's invasion force is seeded at the start of the game rather than at
  your declaration, at the original's per-difficulty sizes, and grows by a saved
  royal purse that buys units periodically — replacing an invented
  growth-on-tax-event rule.

• When the Crown's land force runs dry it falls back to a difficulty-scaled Tory
  uprising against one of your colonies, with the original's trigger chance and
  targeting.

• The intervention force is sized from your ally's actual military strength with
  a fixed composition per landing, replacing an invented "three landings on hard"
  rule.

• The King's Man-O-War sails back out to the high seas after a naval battle
  instead of disappearing.

• A tribe defecting to the Crown shows the original's text, and its musket and
  horse adjustment uses the right value instead of over- or under-arming it.

• Trying to sail for Europe after declaring independence explains itself in a
  popup rather than a status-bar line.

• Popups about rival monarchs weighing independence no longer appear absurdly
  early in the game. [424]

• Continental Army mustering happens at the start of the turn after you declare
  independence, not instantly on the declaration turn. [532]

• The foreign intervention force no longer lands twice in one turn; the
  announcement and the arrival are separate events, as in the original. [540]

Europe, trade and the Crown

• The King's tax audience was rebuilt from a fabricated schedule onto the
  original's turn- and year-based system, with the real scoring formula — rebel
  sentiment, tax rate, treasury, population, turn count — deciding whether and by
  how much taxes move. It shows the real text for each trigger too: victory,
  royal wedding, war, Naval Act, Stamp Act, instead of one generic message.
• Negotiations gained the original's Military Assistance request.
• The trade-route sea-stop picker shows a proper destination list.
• Paying back taxes on a boycotted good raises the original's Pay/Cancel dialog
  quoting the sum, and tells you when you cannot afford it, rather than silently
  doing nothing.
• Veteran Soldiers recruited, trained or bought in Europe can arrive already
  mounted as Dragoons, as in the original. [508]
• Damaged ships with no repair port go straight to Europe for repairs instead of
  loitering on the map. [463]
• Custom House and European Status sale lines scroll three times faster. [425]
• The Merchantman's order box is drawn in the right place, and Master Carpenters
  carrying tools look like colonists rather than Hardy Pioneers. [419] [452]

Natives and diplomacy

• Cancelling a talk popup with Escape no longer wedges diplomacy permanently —
  every later meeting used to fail silently until you restarted. [461]
• Contact and encounter popups for different tribes or nations no longer
  interleave; one meeting finishes before the next starts. [427]
• Moving into a native settlement walks all the way in and opens the menu instead
  of stopping a tile short. [418]
• The village menu lists its options in the original's order, with Attack near the
  end. [501]
• A village holding a grudge follows through and attacks after you refuse a
  demand; distant villages with no grievance can no longer demand anything at
  all; and gifts or demands happen once per real encounter rather than back to
  back. [417] [439] [441]
• Trade, haggle and demand dialogs show the chief's portrait. [422] [426]
• A chief's tales of nearby lands reveal land on the same continent only, instead
  of also uncovering ocean and other landmasses. [492]
• Treaty and diplomacy messages use the correct nationality ("Dutch", "Spanish")
  instead of wrong or post-independence country names. [468...

linux-colonize v0.5-alpha

First release.

What works:

1. Most of the UI, if rough.
2. Founding colonies, producing stuff, buildings, buying and selling with Europe.
3. Combat.
4. War of independence and victory.

What emphatically does not work properly: European AI.

Bugs abound; I've only played two campaigns to conclusion, as English and Dutch. But playing and winning is definitely possible.

Requirements:

• (On Linux) glibc 2.17 or newer (that's like 2012 tech; you're probably fine).
• THE ORIGINAL GAME FILES. Get it from Steam or GOG or wherever, and put the files in the COLONIZE directory next to the executable.

Please report any bugs.