SDL Sopwith
[ Get it! | Screenshots | FAQ | News | Github Page | Discord | Documentation | History | Links ]May 20, 2023
SDL Sopwith v2.3.0 comes hot on the tail of the v2.2.0 just a few days ago. Here’s a quick summary:
- Sound on Windows was fixed.
- Changes to medals: they’re no longer cleared after a crash, and the purple heart is only awarded if injured in combat.
- The close button now quits the game (thanks Will Thompson)
- A bug with the help screen introduced in the previous version was fixed.
A more complete list can be found in the release notes.
May 16, 2023
SDL Sopwith v2.2.0 has just been released; here are some of the highlights:
- Multiplayer support was added for the Windows version, at long last.
- Help text is now shown for new players. This is shown on game start in novice mode, but won’t be shown again after a successful flight. The help text will also appear in other single player modes, but only if it looks like you’re really struggling to get the plane off the ground.
- It’s no longer possible to flip the plane upside down while sitting motionless on the runway (a bug since the original DOS versions).
- It’s no longer possible to get wounded on the ground. If a plane shoots another on the ground, that’s a successful raid. This fixes a bug where a wounded plane on the runway would still be damaged after takeoff.
A more complete list can be found in the release notes.
July 18, 2022
A new release of SDL Sopwith, v2.0.0 is now out after many years of inactivity within the project. This new release is a new major revision of SDL Sopwith and includes a large number of changes and improvements, some of which have been waiting in development for a long time. Here’s a selection of some of the changes:
- The code has been ported to SDL2. This brings a number of improvements but one nice one is that the game can scale to arbitrary window sizes and screen resolutions.
- Sound has been reenabled. Sound output is now passed through a bandpass filter intended to make it sound like a real PC speaker, and also plays back at a much quieter volume, to be less startling to new players.
- Medals are now awarded to reward players; thanks go to Christoph Reichenbach for implementing this feature. The image to the right shows the selection of medals and ribbons that players can attain. The feature can of course be disabled.
- Documentation has been significantly improved - the Unix manpage for sopwith has been greatly expanded, and there is a separate manpage for the configuration file.
- There is now a configuration screen for setting key bindings, which are stored in the same configuration file as other settings.
- The game has been ported to macOS, and a macOS .dmg package is available on the download page.
- Network performance has been improved significantly.
Move from Sourceforge to Github
The project recently moved from Sourceforge to Github and if you have visited in the past you may notice that this site has been visually refreshed. Among other things you’ll find:
- A fresh new download page with downloads for both Windows and macOS packages.
- A new set of screenshots to replace the old ones, demonstrating a variety of different operating systems that SDL Sopwith has been ported to.
- The links page has a comprehensive set of links to other Sopwith-related things that you’ll want to check out if you want to learn more.
If you’re interested in contributing to the project, check out the Github page as your starting point; you’ll find the source code ready for hacking on, along with the Markdown source to this site itself.
Older news
See the old news page.