release notes for Windows

Warning: v2.6.4 and before had a serious bug in the uninstall command that could delete your files. You should upgrade to v2.6.6 over the current version, do not uninstall first.

What happened was, when you installed, if you chose a directory that already existed for your cache directory, then when you uninstall that directory would be deleted, including its original contents.

Please back-up your data religiously, and my sincerest apologies to anyone who loses files because of this.

To work with Vista, try the beta version (2.6.7b6). For Vista 64 use these additional instructions.

for 2.6.7b6: removed debugging code.

for 2.6.7b5: works on vista, updated zip and libtorrent libraries, compiled by new developer stefan sandberg.

for 2.6.7b4: Fixed bug that prevented a down vote from removing that sheep and its edges. Fixed bugs with handling of resolution changes. Downloading disabled if disk free space < 100MB instead of 5% of total disk space.

for 2.6.7b3: Added upnp client, Limit curl retry delay to 1024 seconds, Cleaned up resolution change routines, Limited accounts have full permissions to all registry entries, Added "Basic" and "Advanced" configuration tabs, Added server configuration option, Added configuration option to render using all processor cores, Added max half-open connections configuration option.

for 2.6.7b2: Clears up bittorrent crashes caused by bad resume data.

for 2.6.7b1: deleteCache now more likely to delete older sheep, deleting a loop will also remove it's edges from the cache, a negative vote will remove that sheep from the cache, Updated to libtorrent 0.10, Added progress bar to first sheep download with bittorrent, Using fast_resume data to restart torrents faster, Get more peers from tracker if transfer rates are too slow, Fixed crashes due to invalid torrentHandles, Only allow 1 instance of the client to start bittorrent, Moved some configuration settings to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of, HKEY_CURRENT_USER to work better with multi-users., Verified silent install options, updated SheepGenerator to handle new XML options (Job and Time), stop all downloads when client free disk space below 5%, exponential backoff for curl retries, use If-Modified-Since for list.cgi requests.

for 2.6.6: stable release. share & enjoy!

for 2.6.6b14: cleanup dead torrents on disk, add option to cleanup download threads for users who have problems with lingering threads after exit.

for 2.6.6b12: report version to tracker.

for 2.6.6b11: Fixed crash when message queue is empty, Create "ElectricSheep.dmp" on crash to aid in debugging, Check for eddies, Max torrent downloads based on 1/3 total cache size, Minimum cache size is 300, Cleaned up config page, Added number of frames being generated to status message, Sheep in torrents now count for "Sheep Downloaded" display.

for 2.6.6b10: Reduced lag between sheep, Reduced BitTorrent processor usage, Fixed runtime error, Added all torrent's status to display. Under specific conditions, the bittorrent client would cause all other traffic on the machine to grind to a halt. The new torrent thread looks at all seeds on the client every 10 minutes to find the 3 worst-seeded torrents and seeds those only.

for 2.6.6b8, Faster display of first sheep.

for 2.6.6b7, libtorrent now sends client version and ID in agent string, Improved Seed handling, Reduced lag between sheep, Improved dead torrent cleanup, Better error handling, Fixed low framerate if not downloading bug, Improved framerate on startup.

for 2.6.6b6, Fixed cache size bug, Moved all file downloading to downloader, Fixed 0-byte .torrent file bug, Added client version and unique ID to the torrent session's user_agent string.

1) Administrator privileges are required to install and run using the default cache location. See this message for how to work-around this.

2) Setting the "on resume, display welcome screen" option may prevent Electric Sheep from downloading new sheep.


Changes from 2.6.4 to 2.6.5: Fix uninstall bug. Clean up installer and present GPL to user. Rate limit voting to protect server. Do not spontaneously exit on laptops on battery power.

2.6.3 to 2.6.4. Get those damn voting images into the right place even on virgin installs!

2.6.2 to 2.6.3: Voting now works on 16 bit displays. Install voting images inside of cache directory, whose location is now fixed, but should work wherever you put it at intall time.

2.6.1 to 2.6.2: nice voting feedback instead of the evil smiley. Update flam3 module (memory trashing bugs fixed). Fix bug where uniqueid was not terminated.

2.6 to 2.6.1: fixes bug where can download some sheep from old server, wait before reserving frames to reduce timeouts, reduce max repeats.