After much hard work and discussion, 0.3 has arrived.  This is an important milestone for us, because it marks the point where we will advertise the project wider.  More on that soon.  Version 0.3 starts to include some of the important parts of the game now that the core is complete.  Changes/additions include:

* Tech Research
* Production
* Effects System
* Rotating Planets
* Numerous bug fixes

For more on what the future of the project holds:
Roadmap: http://www.freeorion.org/index.php?title=Roadmap

Thankyou so much to everyone who has worked towards this release.  In leading up to this release we've made some important decisions about the future of this project.  One of those changes is that we will be releasing incremental builds/versions every month.  This should help the community to test and enjoy changes, and to work with a version that is close to what the developers have.

As mentioned before, we are now happy for you to spread news of this release, and FreeOrion in general, to other news sites, publications, or whatever you please.  We are looking in particular for new coders.  More information on how you can help will be available on the website, and forums in particular. You can help continue the development of FreeOrion through various ways:
* Programming
* Art
* Music/sounds
* Game Design
* Bug testing

When you report bugs you find in 0.3, please remember that there are three different categories, each with their own place for submitting:
* bugs - these are glitches, crashes, inaccuracies, etc, which are obviously not the way we intended the code to be:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=75752&atid=544942
* feature requests - these are improvements to the UI (eg, turn button should be bigger) and other related enhancements (eg, add autosave to options menu).  Please use the feature request page to add these:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=544945&group_id=75752&func=browse
* game changes - the game design work is done on our forums, and that is the appropriate place for you to take an active part in the development of the game design
Also important, when you post a bug/feature request, please be sure to check existing and fixed bugs/feature requests to make sure you are not submitting a duplicate.  This saves us time leaving more for developing the game.  Also include the save game files when reporting a problem, and include it in zip format (gz, tar.gz, etc, are unacceptable).

The next important milestone is space combat.  This is a huge area and there will be a lot of discussion and ideas around.  This is a good time to remind you that the leaders of this project reserve the right to make a decision about game design.  While we try to involve the community as much as possible in the design process, this is not always appropriate or desirable.

Enjoy this release, and I encourage you to help make this a great game.

Thanks,
Mark Saward (Tyreth), and the FreeOrion team
December, 2005
