Beta 17 of Crawl 4.00 is now generally available for testing
purposes. Everyone is encouraged to migrate to this latest
build. Character files from beta 7 (also known as pr7) and
above should be compatible with this release.

Source files, a precompiled 32-bit windows binary, and a
precompiled DOS binary are there for the taking.

The source should compile on a variety of platforms, and has
been known to build for DOS, Windows, MacOS, Solaris, Linux,
and FreeBSD targets. Ports to unsupported platforms are
always welcome.

Appended below are Gordon's latest release notes.


Source bundle:
ftp://ftp.dungeoncrawl.org/LATEST/devteam/cr400beta17-src.zip


Win32 (9X/NT/2000/ME) binary:
ftp://ftp.dungeoncrawl.org/LATEST/devteam/cr400beta17-w32.zip


DOS binary:
ftp://ftp.dungeoncrawl.org/LATEST/devteam/cr400beta17-dos.zip


-db


--- BEGIN RELEASE NOTES ---

I'm still not sure I've nailed the items bug,  but I found
a few very nasty bits of code that _could_ have caused it.

Other than that,  in no particular order:

* autobutcher will now correctly switch back to bare hands.

* handle_nearby_ability() for monsters now takes into account
  monster friendliness and player visibility.

* wrapped #ifdef DOS_TERM around some of Brent's changes in
  view.cc to avoid problems with DOS gettext() and puttext().

* needles thrown by skilled characters will no longer
  destroy walls (sigh).

* monsters not carrying ammo won't bother picking any up
  if they're in a fight.

* no more shapeshifter zombies.

* "vastly" improved stabbing messages.

* some grammatical fixes for speaking monsters.

* clarification: wanderers should not start with any spells,
  although some may start with spell skill(s).

* attacking enslaved creatures now breaks the charm.

* MAJOR: fixed zombie generation in the various dungeon
  branches lacking zombifiable "native" critters. Should
  clear up most of the level hangs.

* fixed up monster_polymorph() to avoid hanging problems.

* shapeshifters no longer gain special abilities of critters
  into which they polymorph.

* MAJOR: incredibly, monster enchantments were not being reset
  on level generation (so, new monsters could 'inherit'
  enchantments from previous ones). This was probably
  responsible for All Kinds of Weirdness(tm).

--- END RELEASE NOTES ---