New Source Tarball and Windows Installer

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Hello Xconquerors,

  I have released a new installer for Windows and new source tarball. 
They can be gotten at:
  http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net

Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress and that there are 
some rough edges:
(1) Xconq will refuse to load the Opal game because of the way advances 
are set up in it.
(2) Xconq will take quite a while to load the Civ2 game. This is because 
it is doing some validation on the advances, and the way the validation 
is currently done takes some time. I will attempt to decrease the time 
used before the next release.

That said, what are the improvements?
(1) Most games now have a menu image associated with them. If you select 
a game during game setup, you will likely notice that a cropped 
screenshot of the game is displayed, instead of the generic Xconq logo. 
(Thanks to Elijah for this improvement.)
(2) Matthew Skala's 50km scale map of Antarctica is showcased in the 
Antarctica game.
(3) The Xconq games factory known as Elijah Meeks has produced not one, 
but three (or four) new games. The basic game is known as Starfleet 
Battles; it has three derivative games: Battle Tester, Kobayashi Maru, 
and Wrath of Khan. These games are quite fun, and are one of the reasons 
I ended announcing this release in the wee hours of the morning.
(4) I have added the concept of research goals to the sides. These are 
used by the AI to guide it down various research paths so that it does 
not merely research the advance that appears best to it at a given 
moment, but considers advances more strategically.
(5) In conjunction with (4), I have added a new advance property, 
'ai-next-goal'. If an advance is researched as a research goal and it is 
completed, then a new reserach goal is selected from a weighted list 
that can be supplied to 'ai-next-goal'. Game designers can use this to 
give the AI nudges in the directions it should research first.
Example for Advances game:
  (add leatherworking ai-next-goal ((4 saddle) (4 horse) (2 elephant) 
sledge navigation))
(6) Per Elijah's request (and borne of some necessity), I have 
implemented an 'advance-precludes-advance' table. This allows game 
designers to tell Xconq to "prune" a side's advances tree as certain 
advances are researched. Example:
  (table advance-precludes-advance
    (life-magic death-magic true)
    (death-magic life-magic true)
  )
(7) Probably some other things, but I am now too tired to think clearly....

I still have not gotten around to taking care of any of the other bugs 
or concerns that have been mentioned on the list over the past week or 
two. I'll start tackling some of them next.

  Enjoy,
    Eric