There’s a new bug fix release of the 0.22.1 stable version of DCSS. Source packages and binaries for Windows, OS X, and Linux are available now. We recommend all 0.22 users upgrade to this version. Major bug fixes and updates:

Support for distributing player ghosts files with releases. Now local games will have a starting set of ghosts available for ghost vaults.

New tiles for Azrael, shock serpents, dream sheep, mana vipers, and the Robe of Vines.

An additional set of Gnoll player doll tiles (male and female).

Fix WebTiles menus for older versions of Firefox.

81 bug fixes, adjustments, and cleanups in total.

The biggest game-play change in this release is the incorporation of ghost data taken from 0.22 games played on the CAO and CBRO servers for use in offline games. 0.22 introduced “permastore” bones files so that ghost vaults always have an available ghost definition to draw from. If a level has no recently made ghost in the normal bones file, the permastore file provides more long-term data that can be repeatedly drawn upon. The problem was that offline games previously had no initial ghost data, forcing ghost vaults to fall back on making clone ghosts of the player. Thanks to work by advil, crawl can look for pre-existing permastore bones files we ship in the game data, copying these over to use as a player’s starting permastore. advil has curated this ghost data to remove excessive numbers of ghosts from the most popular combos and to filter out any offensive usernames. In the future, we’ll be able to make this release ghost data using more servers and will be improving the way the ghost data is handled and stored in general. If you have previously installed 0.22.0, we recommend that you remove any files named `*.store.*` from the bones subdirectory of your saves folder, in order to get the full effect of this change.

As usual, there are scores of smaller bug fixes, vault tweaks, description updates, and the like, so be sure to upgrade! In the bullet list above, I’ve linked a few new tiles we received for trunk that I’ve also added to 0.22.1. Also, a certain worm tells me that we may have a couple new splash screens coming our way. One will depict the exploits of a Deep Dwarf Artificer and the other the antics of uniques like Asterion and Louise (PlogChamp)! No ETA on these new splash images, but look for them to arrive in trunk when they’re ready.

Finally, we’ve also made a 0.21.2 bug fix release. Many of the bug fixes here are ones that have already been made in 0.22, but see the 0.21 changelog for a more detailed summary. The source packages as well as binary packages for Windows and OS X can be found in the 0.21 release folder. The Linux 0.21 component of the debian repository has also been updated. To install the Linux packages, just follow the Linux instructions on the download page, replacing 0.22 by 0.21 in the instructions.

Happy Crawling!