DP Tool Club 19/CD_ASCQ_19_010295.iso/vrac/terra835.zip/WHATS.NEW

Text File | 1994-12-03 | 48KB | 971 lines

Greetings from the N.U.G.I. ConSorTium 'HomeBrew' BBS!

                              Version 8.35 12/1/94

        Version 8.35 is a needed bug fix upgrade to Terra-Firma. When you
add a lot of new routines like I did to version 8.30 there are always bugs.
We like to call them bugs but in all honesty they are more program
errors than anything else. Terra-Firma is getting very complicated not
only to play but the way a lot of the routines interact with other
routines in the game. No one can remember every way in which one part
of a program interacts with all the other parts. I will continue to make
mistakes. The good news is that I like to fix them. As soon as someone
sends me in a bug, for which I am ever grateful (just ask all the sysops
who received free versions of Terra-Firma for sending in a great bug
report) I fix the bug. As soon as I think most of the bugs have been found
for a particular version, I do a bug fix upgrade.
        I had hoped to complete
the political menu options with my next version but this didn't happen.
As I originally stated, the political menu will be ready for version
8.40  which should be complete sometime in January of 95. This is my
4th upgrade for 94 with no end in sight! I am still having a great time
with Terra-Firma and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
        It is
a hard game to learn and play but then anything worth while always is. I
still get a kick out of all the strategies that are worked out with the game.
With the new Tactical Nukes that can defeat Defensive Grids things are
getting much more complicated, especially when satellites are combined
with in the defense. I assure you there are still great ways of defending
yourself and also some interesting ways of defeating players that think
they are safe.

        Thanks go out to Tilmon Hocutt as always. Mr idea man has never
let me down! In fact he's getting worse. I am almost starting to dread his
netmail! He has been suggesting so many great ideas that I feel guilty if
I leave any out. Robert McClure and Joseph Davis have been killing me
with their bug hunting abilities. I think it's mostly Joseph, with Robert
taking all the credit! <G> Just kidding. Or am I? We have a new bug hunter
extraordinair from the land down under, Jackson Harding who has sent me some
rather great ideas and bug reports. Thanks guys. You all know how much
I appreciate you genuine interest in the Terra project. Without you guys
it could never happen. As a special thanks and I hope thy don't get angry
with me. I have started naming special things and areas in Terra after
these bug hunters. Look for them.

1. Added the much asked for Tactical Nuke (thanks to Tilmon and Jackson)
which is capable of destroying a defensive grid. Check out the player.doc
for more info.

2. Robot players will correctly seek revenge if you attack them. Watch out
for these computer players.

3. The log on screen always displayed to players if they had been
attacked or killed and by whom while they were off line. I found it was
flashing by to quickly to see however. This will seem like a new deal but
it is really old and has never been seen due to my stupidity.

4. The time bug which caused a bell to ring on the remote end and a very
fast message to flash across the screen has been fixed. This was happening
just after the log routines completed.

5. Number 17 on the plant buy and sell which deals with selling items
captured with a tractor beam was not coming up correctly. It has been
fixed. The menu wil also come back automatically. Same with the computer
menu screen.

6. You can no longer enter negative numbers in the satellite credit
menu. For all of you who missed this bug, it was a great way to make
credits! No longer though...Sorry we must play fair....

7. Sent most of the game routines and doc files through a spell checker.
I can't spell worth  *%#!@ and was sick of this being pointed out to me.
Now I suppose everyone will get in on the act, looking for spelling
errors....

8. The price of anti-probes has been increased to more fairly reflect
the cost of buying and deploying death probes.

9. When unexpected errors came up, Terra was not saving off all the
files correctly. I have corrected this. This error would cause players
who encountered them to not be able to log back on. Now if this occurs
Terra will write the correct files when a player attempts to log back
on. They may still encounter an error at the first log on attempt
after an error. They will find if they try and log back in one more
time that they are able to log in.

10. Re worked the Tractor beam scanner to be a bit smarter. It won't do
a hell of a lot of good now to just jump from sector to sector with
level 5 planets hoping that the scanner will pick up something. I have
also adjusted the price down of the big 10,000,000 to 1,000,000. This
was never intended to be. I made a mistake with the extra zero.

11. A very random error 63 bug would crop up from time to time while
attempting to drop off colonies. I believe this error has been found. It
has never occurred with me but enough people reported it that it had to
be happening. It is a very random error. I went through the code with
a fine tooth comb. I found one small problem that may or may not
be the problem. As I said I'm just not sure as I can't get it to
happen here and run a debug on it. Keep an eye out for this if you are
interested in bug hunting. I would love to know the exact circumstances
that are involved for this error to occur.

12. Fixed a ridiculous bug that would launch all transports on all your
satellites when a player was using the remote log on from the computer
menu. Some players liked the bug as it enabled them to launch all their
transports with just one log on. There is a problem with however in that
all transports would be going after the same items and the credit routine
was not recording credit transfers for the transports correctly. If this
becomes a problem with anyone please let me know and I will see what I can
do about making a routine that programs all or multiple transports.

13. Found another bug while I was playing with the time routines that
caused the time keeper in Terra to run to slowly. This has been fixed.

14 There was also a mistake in the new TAX routine. It would cause an
error when buying certain high dollar items. This has been fixed.

15. Fixed some cosmetic stuff that you may or may not notice during
game play.

16. Wrote up the new options in the Player.doc and added to the Hint/tip
section at the end. Also added an undocumented feature to Player.Doc
concerning bribe for Pirates joining your ships compliment of Fighter
ships.


Version 8.40 should be completed in January of 95. Some of the routines
that will be included in this upgrade follow. Please let me know if
you want something for Terra. Now is a great time for me to add things
in.

Robot players will be placed in a sector with their satellites at log off.

Other starbases will be randomly placed during the start up of a new game.

There will be some traps involved with the tractor beam.

The political menu will be in full swing. This will really add a whole
new dimension to Terra so be prepared.

A new weapon along with some other surprises.

Thanks.



                              Version 8.30 10/17/94

I need to thank Tilmon Hocutt for his dedication to Terra-Firma and
his extraordinary bug hunting ability. I swear he knows things about
Terra that I don't even know. Robert McClure has also helped me out
considerably with this new version. Robert has some great users on his
BBS. Lots of good bug hunting from his crew. A special thanks to
Joseph Davis of 'The Eat Flamimg Death BBS' 713-447-1927 for some
really excellent suggestions and bug reports. I also received
some great E-Mail from Panda BBS 703-364-3506 Peter Brochurst SysOp. One
of his crew G. Wazoo may turn out to be as big a bug hunter as Tilmon!
Thanks guys for all your time and effort. I could not make Terra-Firma
what it is without you guys!!!!!!!!!! I also need to thank Mark Lewis for
helping me make sure the OS/2 timeslicer was working properly.

***** Read them ALL! The good stuff is near the end of the 8.30 improvements!


1. Fixed bug in the scanner option which was printing info lines twice.

2. Added a -<MORE>- statement to differentiate between more and
the Press any key end of the scans.

3. Re coded the CYCLE.EXE program. Spent lots of time speeding up the
routines and taking a few bugs out. CYCLE.EXE now runs 100% faster! You
will be amazed at how little time it now takes the computer to run the Co-
pilots! I still can't believe it.....<G>

4. Fixed bug in CYCLE.EXE that caused the Death Probe not to properly
erase colonies it had destroyed. (G.Wazoo special)

5. Death Probe was wiping out too many Colonies. It was supposed to stop
at 25 colonies but was taking all the colonies in a 25 x 25 grid. This
has been fixed.

6. Death Probe was also re-listing all other players it found two or three
times during a scan. This has been fixed.

7. There is a known bug in Terra (somewhere) that I can't find. It has to do
with once in a blue moon loosing the Homeworld Sectors. It has been
reported to me twice and I have tried my damdest to duplicate it here
with NO luck. So I wrote a kludge with the CYCLE.EXE program. It now
checks each night to make sure the Home World sectors are located
correctly just in case this bugs pops up. I hate kludges but what are
you going to do.

8. Fixed a bug in the launch Sector Probe routine that was switching (not all
the time) sectors around. Damm thing would not always happen. Lots of
factors involved. Conditions had to be just right for it to happen so
it took a lot of effort on some great bugs hunters (G.Wazoo) to track
it down. It's officially squashed!

9. Fixed problem in Satellite routine that would take all robot-transports
off the satellite whenever a player tried to take 1 off.

10. Fixed problem in Satellites when player sent multiple robot transports
out after the same type of cargo all credits would disappear from satellite
this has been fixed.

11. Fixed a bug in the message routine that was not deleting messages
properly when a player used the delete option.

12. Took out the updating screen display when updating colonies. Changing
the levels of colonies at log-on can be a lengthy process if you have lots
of colonies. Taking out the screen display should speed things up
considerably! As a time guideline my bbs had 14 players in the game with
a total of about 3000 full level 8 colonies. I had 500 of my own and when
I log on with the new routine it would take about 17 seconds to process
my colonies. This is compared to about 1.5 to 2 minutes for the old routine.

13. BUSTED! A user informed me that he could use the Co-Pilot in his
unregistered version and he was correct! But no more.....

14. Fixed all the scan speeds! Things were slowing down considerably
when lots of players were making lots of colonies. Scans will zip along
nicely now. I even removed the scan option with no colony check as
the difference in speed was negligible.

15. Added the ability to do a full data printout for your capture
buffers with out those 'Press any key to continue' lines in the report
generator. Of course you can still print it out to the screen with the
good old 'Press any Key to continue'.

16. Fixed the opening screen of the player editor for the registered
version. Why didn't someone tell me about this?

17. Files will now close properly when players drop carrier!

18. Co-Pilots will now drop off Sector Protectors in
the sectors it colonizes. If you have them, it will auto drop them.

19. Added more HULLS! Now a level 99 ship can have up to 10 Hulls. There
is only one restriction. All 10 hulls must be filled with the same
item. Folks have been asking me for more hulls for two years. I designed
Terra different from Tradewars in that Terra has Co-Pilots and Robot
transports so I never saw the need for more hulls and did not design the
data files for them. So to avoid a complete re-write of data files I
figured out a way to get 10 more hulls on the a level 99 ship. But like
I said, all items in the hulls must be the same. There is always a price.
Hell, it's a great way to put 500 worker robots and full loads of Metals
and Electronics on a Satellite quickly!!

20. Changed the time routine again! Players on some bbs's have lots of time
from the SysOp and some do not. A few SysOp's asked me if I could limit
the amount of time each player can play the game to keep things fair. The
way I had it set up was to check the users BBS time remaining and if it
was less then the time the SysOp had configured for Terra then that's all
they would get. If their BBS time left was greater then they would only
get the time setup by the SysOp in the INSTALL program. Of course you can
play Terra as many times as you would like in a day. Every time you
log into the game the time remaining is really up to how much BBS time
a player has left on the BBS. If he has a lot then he will get another
full 90 minutes of Terra playing time if that's what the SysOp has set up.
Terra will now remember how much time a player has been in the game and
limit that player to a total of whatever the sysop has set up in the
INSTALL program. This way players on a bbs with lots of time cannot get
more Terra playing time then someone who does not. This will tend to piss
off players with lots of time, but should help out new players. Terra
can be set up to run for 90 minutes by the SysOp! Any one who wants to
play Terra more than 90 minutes a day would have to be a serious fanatic!

21. You can now contact your Satellites from the Computer menu and
program the Robot Transports. You can also transfer credits due to the
wonders of electronic banking. For all other Satellite options you must
be docked at the Satellite. How else are you going to transfer fighter ships
from a few hundred sectors away? You thank G.Wazoo for this goodie!

22. MY comm software was updated to test for OS/2 before DV. Which should
help out those OS/2 SysOps who run DV emulators or programs like OS2SPEED.
It was also updated for Novell which eliminates the need for the NOVELL
question or OS/2 Question in the SETUP/INSTALL program.


23. Wrote a program included in the new TERRA830.ZIP called CYCLEOS2.EXE.
this program is designed to run under an OS/2 minimized .CMD batch file.
This program will let OS/2 SysOps run the Terra-Firma nightly cycle
program from another OS/2 minimized window enabling them to get the bbs
up and running faster! I love OS/2!

24. The political Menu has begun! As of this release (8.30) I am only
implementing a few options. I have lots of ideas but need some feedback
from my beta teams and interested parties on just what to add. As of now
Terra will keep track of just who has the most colonies in any one of the
six given areas of the Terra-Firma universe. All items purchased in a given
area will be tracked and 5% of the total amount will be given to the player
who is in control of the area when they log on. You gain control of an area
by having the most colonies in it. The nightly CYCLE.EXE program will
check each night and change any player who has made more colonies in a
given area then the previous player who controlled it. The player with
the most colonies in an area will control the area for one (1) full solar
day. (or until the nightly maintenance program is run). Even if a player
should surpass the number of colonies the controlling player has during
his/her time in Terra, it will not change until the next day.

25. My plans for the political menu in Terra include the six players who
are in control of the areas will be on the Universal council. They will
be able to vote on things like the presence of protective grids in sectors,
The tax rates and War between the areas. Declaring war between areas will
become a big part of Terra and players in the future will have to choose
an alliance with a certain area. These things are being alpha tested as we
read (and write). Most, if not all will be coming into version 8.40!

26. Fixed a random bug that would let players build a satellite to close
to a launch sector.


                              Version 8.20a  7/23/94


I would like to thank all the great SysOps and players who sent me their
ideas and BUG reports. They were very helpful. I also need to thank
Tilmon Hocutt of Fido Net 3651. This man is an IDEA MACHINE and also a
first class BUG hunter! Thanks Tilmon ..........


1. Fixed bug in attack routine where player being attacked off-line did
not loose their fighterships in battle unless killed.

2. Let Computer players keep their colonies when they are killed in this
version. (They should have anyway...... :-) )

3. When scouting other sectors you now have the option of scanning all
surrounding sectors or not. Should speed things up!

4. Terra will no longer scan for colonies automatically when you enter a
sector as this was slowing things down considerably when lots of players
were making lots of colonies. Under the scan option, you now have the
choice to scan surrounding sectors with a colony check or not. There is
also a new option to scan for colonies in the sector you are in. This
should take care of the speed problems.

5. Computer players will now only be allowed to colonize up to 5 sectors
a night instead of 10. The computer was kicking BUTT!

6. Randomized the gaining of RANK for computer players. They tended to
stay very even if not killed off at different times.

7. Now you can enter into a TRADE AGREEMENT with a sector council. This has
the effect of making a HOSTILE sector into a FRIENDLY sector! This will come
in very handy when you need to make a defensive grid in a hostile sector.
It will cost upwards of 20000 credits and the sector council will take 5%
off the top of your daily colony output for that sector.

8. Your Colony ship can now have a TRACTOR BEAM installed at any StarBase.
The tractor beam is used to pull in any space debris you may find wandering
through the universe. You can also use it to capture Transport Barges
which may be carrying VERY valuable cargo between planets or Starbases. This
cargo can then be sold to any level 5 planet......

9. You can now build a DEFENSIVE GRID in a sector with 7 colonizable planets.
The defensive grid will not work without at least 7 colonies power output.
It may be difficult to find a sector with 7 colonizable planets but they
are out there! Once the defensive grid is in place, you can orbit your
Colony Ship there when you log off and as of this version you will be fully
protected! There is NO weapon in this version of Terra which can penatrate
the defensive grid! You can buy the satellites and probes necessary to build
a defensive grid at a starbase. They cost some serious credits!

10. A new device for ver 8.20 is the GENESIS DEVICE. If you are a Star Trek
fan then you will have no problems with this one. When a Genesis Device is
launched into a barren planet it will transform the planet into an Earth
normal world. This will help when you can't find a sector to build a
defensive grid in. It will also come in handy when colonizable planets are
getting hard to find!

11. THIS IS A BIGGIE! Colonies are now able to upgrade their planets! It
takes about 8 solar days for a colony to build up a level 1 earth normal
world or Terra-formable world into a level 5 planet. You can then dock at
this level 5 planet and perform any functions as on any level 5 planet!
Plus, once the planet has been upgraded to level 5 and the resident
colony has grown to a level 8, you will start to earn a profit from all the
daily transactions that have gone on at the planet! As an added bonus,
mercenaries can not attack a planet that is higher then a level 3. Due to
the intensified planetary defensive of a level 4 or 5 planet. So once
your colonies have upgraded themselves they will no longer be subject to
attacks from mercenaries. A Death Probe however will still vaporize them!

  Please send me your BUG reports and ideas for version 8.30!


                              Version 8.00   4/20/94

        I always thank the great folks who help me out testing Terra and
        sending in bug reports. I had a list of people to thank for the
        following bugs being reported and can't find it anywhere! I also
        trashed the old netmail messages so I guess they are gone forever!
        I feel like crap about it. But hey, at least I fixed the bugs!
        Sorry folks.


1.  I changed the version number to 8 due to some significant changes to
Terra-Firma.

2.  Terra now has Robot Players that the computer controls. They colonize
the Universe during the running of the Nightly CYCLE.EXE program. They will
send messages out when attacked or killed by other players. They even do
some attacking of their own!  I spent a lot of time and energy developing
Terra for Multinode play and as I write this, I still believe it is the
only Multinode Space war with real time attacks and trading outside of
Galacticom type stuff. Which none of us can afford anyway...but I digress.
Anyway, with all this multinode stuff I sort of forgot about the smaller
1 node bbs which is where I started all this silliness from. The Robot
Players should help these BBS's get the game rolling when you just don't
have a lot of players to make an interesting game.

3.  New players can obtain a one time loan from the Universal Council for
100,000 credits to add to their starting credits of 50,000. This is only
for first time players. If you die or self destruct, tuff luck!  When your
full colonies start producing, 2% of the total is subtracted when you log
on to pay back the loan. This is a 0% interest loan by the Universal Council
to lure Captains into colonizing the Universe, as they are deeply committed to
expanding their power base!

4. New players will now be under the protection of the Universal Council for
a period of 10 solar days. Again, if you are killed or self destruct this
will not be in effect. It's only to help brand new players develop some
protective satellites and to get some full colonies rolling. Other players
will not be able to find them while they are off line for the first 10 days.
However they are still able to be attacked in real time on a multinode
system.

5. Yeah! For all you folks who keep asking me for more cargo holds or
whatever it is that Tradewars (boo-hiss) has. I have enabled the ability to
have ten, yes count them (10) Robot Transports parked at a satellite! So,
now you can launch 10 Robot transports from each Satellite that you own! You
could have 100's of Robot Transports running around the universe a day! Of
course they do cost credits.........<G>

6. Terra-Firma consumes much of my spare programming time. It has grown very
large in size and popularity. I want to thank all the great sysops and users
who have registered and helped to register Terra-Firma. Because Terra takes
so much of my spare programming time I feel the need to up the price from
$15.00 to $20.00 dollars. I have always charged the same for Terra as my
other 5 doors which in no way compete with the size and following of Terra-
Firma. Or with the time spent in updating the code. I have released newer and
better versions of Terra consistently for the past three years and will
continue to do so as long as the interest in it keeps up. You will still be
able to register all of my doors in a one price package deal of $35.00
dollars which is a bargain in this high priced Door age! This package of
course includes Terra!  As always, all future updates will be free to
registered sysops.



        <-----------Known Bug Fixes  for Ver 8.00--------->

1. Fixed the bug in the attack routine from the same sector. It was giving
back -negative numbers. (That's not a bug, it's a screw up!) I did not get to
many complaints about this as most of you must have gotten smart and attack
from other sectors.

2. The Robot Transports in Ver 7.04 would not launch for fighters unless you
wanted 10 trips or 3 trips or less. Did you get that? This is now fixed.

3. Death probe search has been revamped as has the Area Probe search.

4. In Version 7.04 I added a check to make sure satellites were not dropped
off to close to launch sector 4759. I then proceeded to randomize the launch
sector between the five different Home world planets and forgot to add the
check for those sectors. Well, this has been fixed.


5. Some multinode systems were experiencing the dreaded Network backing up
message that Terra generates when some of the same game files were open and
players were trying to write to the same files. This has been cleared up.


6. That's it for known bugs and this version. I must be getting better at this
as the number of bugs per version release has consistently gone down. <G>


7. Just as this release was going out the door, it was reported that the
{D} delete was not working when you received a message. Terra trashes all
messages after 4 days anyway so this is not a big problem. I decided to let
it alone until Terra 8.01 is ready.




                              Version 7.04   2/1/94

1.  The player editor would not respond to a ship upgrade unless you quit
out of it and re-ran the program. The problem this would create was the
program telling the user that the level of things were to low. This problem
is fixed.

2.  There was a serious Error 63 bug that surfaced at various times during the
transport routine of either colonists or mercenaries. This would exit out of
game but leave the game hanging with the Error 63 message on screen. The
error has been fixed and I have also changed the error routine so that the
game will always exit back to the bbs and not hang there waiting for the
SysOp to press a key. This error was rather serious and the need for 7.04
without a lot of changes was mandated. Sorry folks, I hate these things to!

3. Terra now has a new install program that will allow the SysOp to configure
the forcing of internal comm routines and also the type of handshaking if
they so desire.

4. There was also the mention of Terra being Free in the player docs which
confused some folks. This has been stricken forever <G>. Terra is and
will remain Shareware.

5. Found a bug in the Mercenary routine that would cause a double listing
of the same colony in the colony report section. This has been squashed.

6. Found a bug in the nightly CYCLE.EXE program that was not recording the
player number correctly when making colonies with the Co-Pilot! This was
part of the ERROR = 63 problem! It has been squashed...

7. Of course Terra 7.05 is in the works. So, if you have any additions you
would like to see in the game please let me know now........


                          Version 7.03

I need to thank Robert McClure and all the folks from the Eat Flaming Death
BBS for helping out so much with this 7.03 beta test. Lots of new and great
ideas came from these folks...... Thanks Guys/Ladies........


I have included a player editor in 7.03. It will not operate unless Terra-
Firma is registered.

1. Ship to Ship REAL time attacks! Now you can blow up your buddy while
online together!

2. Need a level 25 or greater Colony ship to purchase a Death Probe. This
keeps new players from blowing up old players and not hanging around with the
game long enough to get into it.

3. Anti-Probes will keep your Colony Ship safe from those big mean and
nasty Death Probes!

4. Scanner scrolling by to fast in some sectors has been fixed!

5. You can no longer build a Satellite within 3 sectors of the game launch
sight. This gives beginners a shot....

6. Where am I? From the Computer Menu now has a map of the Terra Universe.
Some Guru from Nowheresville was supposed to help me out with some great
looking ANSI screens but I guess he died or something. I ain't no ArTeest!

7. Intergalactic prices will now stay the same no matter how many times you
log in.

8. You cannot buy Co-Pilots in the unregistered Version......

9. Transporting Colonists no longer takes 56 key strokes. Streamlined and
smooth!

10. Updated the Zmodem Player Doc file downloading routine.

11. You can now view your colonists destinations from the main menu!

12. You can now input a 0 in the Trading Partner routine. For some reason
this went south for awhile.

13. Fixed bug in the Co-Pilot Nightly Cycle routine.

14. Fixed bug in the Hit a Sector Protector routine that was logging players
out of the game every now and then.

15. Messages about logging into a trading partners satellite were scrolling
by at great rates of speed! This has been fixed.

16. Improved the INSTALL program....

17. Long range Fighter attacks now are more realistic. They now need fuel
for their trip!

18. Some mis-pellings were corrected......<G>

19. The defender of an on-line attack has a 3 in 10 chance of being able
to escape from the sector once he is under attack.

20. The co-pilot routine now checks to make sure you have not entered the
same sector twice.

21. Colony readings from scanners and scout ships now say whether they
are yours or other players.

22. There is now a player editor available to Registered sysops!

             Version 7.02

I need to thank Mike Anderson aka Peter Rabbit of FiDoNet 379 for pointing
out some rather flawed areas of my Sysop.Doc and assisting me greatly
with ideas for the newer setup for Multinode.

1. Cleaned up some silly errors, mostly line spacing and screens flashing
by at a great rate of speed.

2. Completely changed the Startup procedure for Terra. The new Command line
looks like 'TF.EXE TERRA1.CFG' This helps out a great deal in a multinode
setup. While not making anything more difficult for a single node setup.
Just run the install program. It comes with it's own help screens and
everything is explained in the TFSYSOP.DOC.

3. To play in LOCAL mode you must now enter LOCAL on the command line.
TF LOCAL

4. Sorry, that's it! I had to deal with these problems before I can add more
features. I was also completing my new Door game The Hacker, which I am going
to release shortly after it comes out of beta....





             Version 7.00


First of all I need to thank Tilmon Hocutt, Neysa Dormish and Shawn
Hayden of Fido Net 3651. Without these guys a lot of the improvements
you will enjoy with Terra-Firma would not have been Possible.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Terra-Firma has gone interactive! If multitasking or running on a Lan,
Terra will send messages between nodes. I have not installed real time
ship to ship attacks yet. I want to see how everything works out with
the messages first.

2. (As of 11-1-93 Not Complete) Higher level ships now have more cargo holds!

3. Planet Defenses have been beefed up. You can now be attacked with
anything up to 50000 fighters. Be careful in those hostile sectors!

4. Rumors have been coming in from deep space about possible War Lord
Pirates that have gathered together smaller bands of pirates into
formidable fighter fleets. They are tricky! The Universal Council will pay
handsome rewards for these bandits!

5. Bounders are new! Now you can purchase Bounders from any level 5 planet.
Bounders leap into sectors ahead of your Colony ship to make sure you have
not accidentally headed into a sector with a NOVA or Black Hole etc..
Bounders will not help with Satellites as they can be easily programmed to
ignore them. Also bounders do not fool Pirates, rebels, raiders etc.....

6. Inactivity timeout has been increased to 5 minutes.

7. You will no longer be able to unload all Colony ship supplies to a
satellite and wait for the inactivity timer to throw you out, then sign
back in with a full load still on your Colony Ship. I have fixed this
problem.

8. Robot Transports can no longer increase productivity on a satellite past
100% In fact a satellite can not be increased past 100% at all.

9. High Level ships should now have no problem launching all fighter ships.

10. Scout ships will no longer go into the negative.

11. The attack mode of launching a group of fighters against a satellite
has been fixed. You will no longer loose massive amounts of fighters from
a satellite unless of course you loose them in a fair fight.

12. The Report Generator has been fixed! Everything listed in the report
generator will now be up to date.

13. I also separated the report options for the Report generator into a
menu of choices.

14. Planetary fighters and Pirate attacks are now a bit more unpredictable.
Not to mention dangerous!

15. Electronics and Metals can no longer be moved from satellites until they
go into the negative.

16. Players no longer get a free Satellite when they are killed and sign
back into the game.

17. You no longer have the option of signing back into the game after death
with a new alias. You must use the original name you signed in with.
You will have to wait 30 days for the nightly cycling
program to delete you, if you want to change your alias.
It was playing havoc with my data files.

18. Players will now loose 10% of fighter ships and a level of their
Colony ship besides all personnel on board when you hit a sector
protector. Players were hitting a sector protector and then with nothing
else to loose, running around the Universe taking out all the Sector
Protectors they could find.

19. All scans now detect colonies. How did we miss this one? The only
scan in previous Versions that picked up colonies was the sector probe.


20. You no longer loose your bank account when your ship is destroyed.

21. The docking bug with the Robot Transports has been fixed.

22. The cycle program was not deducting the correct amount of cash from
satellites after running the Robot Transport routine.

23. The non-stop feature in the sector probe readout sometimes stopped.
This has been fixed.

24. All Data files have been redone as have the .EXE portions of Terra.
This has created a much smaller zipped file for downloading.

25. Changed the message editor to one I wrote for Who-Dunit. This is
easily expandable if you need more that three lines. Please let me
know.

26. I am presently working on interactive ship to ship attacks. You can
still attack a Colony ship that has been parked in a sector over night.
Along with this I am working on ship to ship docking to enable trading
back and forth between online players. As of now you can both be on the
same satellite and Trade goods that way.

27. I have added a Zmodem download feature to the main menu for Downloading
the Player.Doc file and the what's new file. In the Zip version of Terra700
you will see a file called TERRADOC.ZIP. This file should be left alone as
it is the file a Player will download containing the PLayer.Doc and the
What's.NEW file. The SysOp must have DSZ.EXE or COM in the TERRA sub-directory
or in his path command to enable this feature. Terra is a big game and
requires players to read the docs. Lots of players have asked for this
feature as they loose to much online time reading the docs.

28. Fixed intermittent time bug.


29. Added Co-Pilots! Now your colony ship can colonize the Universe while
you are off-line!


Following is a list of things I am working into the game:

Ability to program satellites to produce whatever you want, instead of just
Fighter Ships and Torpedoes.

Shields for the Colony Ships

A game End. I haven't decided just what to make the ultimate goal yet,
any suggestions out there?

Upgradeable planets, with the ability to make a planet fortress which
would be Death Probe Defendable.

While I'm on the subject. I have received a lot of suggestions to add
features that can be found in Tradewars. I will entertain any ideas that
do not include something already used in another game. Come on guys be
creative!

Tactical Fusion Nukes for wiping out individual sectors.

The ability to purchase a Co-pilot Robot that will continue colonizing
planets while you are off line.

These are just a few of things I am presently working on
for Terra. I love suggestions. If you didn't see a suggestion of yours
here. I may still be considering it just not enough time yet........





             Version 6.00

1. All I added to this version is the new report generator. So Many sysops
   and players have asked for this feature that I had to include sooner or
   later! You can now get a location for all of your Satellites, sector
   protectors and colonies. * IMPORTANT * You must restart Terra with the
   TER_INT.EXE program or the Report Generator will only see Colonies, etc
   that were made after you started playing ver 6.00.


2. Terra will now run local from within the BBS environment.


3. There is a known bug in the Sysop feature which lets you subtract time
   from a player. You can subtract the time but at the next timer update
   the players time goes back to where it was. This is a problem in the
   EasyDoor software I use for my comm routines. I have waited for the
   Author to give me some feedback on this long enough. I know he will get
   around to it sooner or later as he has always come through in the past.
   As the bug is not a real problem to the game I will wait for the next
   Terra update to fix it. For the time being I have deleted it's use in the
   TFSYSOP.DOC.


             Version 5.05

1. Version 5.05 is mainly a bug fix version. (was when I started now there
   are some rather big changes!!!)

2. Fixed the opening quote in Chat mode.

3. The timer was not functioning correctly. Was letting users play for
   hours! The sysops loved me for this! It's working well now....

4. The warp engines on the satellites were doing strange things to the supply
   lists. All is under control.

5. The Death Probe option was not coming up for Registered sysops! This is
   now functioning properly.

6. Fixed a few things in the Player Editor. I realize this is a ruff program
   But I never intended to send it out. It was mainly for my use in testing.
   I will make it more user friendly before the winter is out....

7. Fixed a log on bug that would not let players on a BBS that does not
   require full first and last names to log in properly.

8. Docking at your satellites has now been automated. The relay uplink
   can still be used, but now as soon as you dock at your satellites your
   ship computer will be auto linked to the satellite computer.

9. Fixed an error in the pirate attack routines that was intermittently giving
   back negative numbers!

10. Fixed error that was dropping carrier on callers who ran the game out of
    time....Game will now save all files and return to BBS when the 1 minute
    mark has been passed.

11. Cleaned up group listings in transporters. Big numbers of colonists were
    scrolling off the screen.

12. Players can now input groups with a higher number then 9 in the colony
    transport. How did we miss this one?

13. Now your colony ship is worth half it's value for a trade in on a higher
    level ship....

14. I would like to thank Kim Newman and David Murphy a couple of great sysops
   who have their &^%$ together! They helped me out more in a few weeks of
   having Terra on their BBS than 15 beta test sights!  I also need to
   include Hans Hansen in here. The man is full of ideas! He has also helped
   me to find a few :) errors!!

15. This is a big thanks for nothing to all you beta test sights that couldn't
   wait to put Terra through the paces!







             Version 5.00 is here (and a long time coming!)


1. Fixed a few bugs that some of you SysOps sent in. The biggest one being
   the launching of all Robot Transports when one was launched. Found a cute
   little bug in the colony count/subtract.

2. This Version of Terra is ShareWare! Price $20.00

3. Added support for Multinode/38400 locked ports.

4. Terra-Firma is now MultiTasker aware!

5. Terra will auto detect fossil driver or run internal comm routine!

6. Avatar support.

7. Updated Install and Cycle programs.

8. Wrote a small Terra Hint Booklet which will be coming out in an upcoming
   issue of DoorNet Magazine. (possibly not, as I pissed off Steve Lin)

9. Can now move from sector to sector just by entering the sector number.

10. NO more quitting and cheating by putting all your credits in the bank
    then killing yourself and signing back in to 50000 more credits!


          Anyone can presently call my Support BBS 413-445-7519 and
      register Terra-Firma while online with a visa, master charge,
      discover or American express credit card. This registration will work
      for all my door games which include WhoDunit, Enquirer and the Busted
      Door. I have a new Door coming out soon. This will also be included.
      Once you register any one of my games the Registration number will
      work for all. So in fact it is like getting 5 doors for the
      price of one! A player Editor for Terra-Firma will also be made
      available on my BBS to all Registered users.
      A list of my current Door Games will be posted at the end of this
      document. All new users have a full 90 minutes of DownLoad time.
      All files are FREQ. from 1:321/227 9600 v32/v42b or HST speeds from
      1:321/210

     ***********
     *IMPORTANT**************************************************************
     ***********                                                            *
                   If you are a REGISTERED owner of any Previous NUGI game  *
                   the old REGISTERED KEY will no longer work! You must call*
                   my BBS and leave me a note on how I can get a new key to *
                   you. I will NetMail, SnailMail or upload it to your BBS. *
                   Just give my bbs a call 413-445-7519 and let me know.    *
                   Or leave me a message in FidoNets DOORWARE Echo DDS_ECHO *
                   or DoorNets D_SYSOP or NUGI Support Echo.                *
                   I will take care of you the same day. Also, there is a   *
                   player editor available for D/L pr FREQ from my BBS for  *
                   Registered Sysops.                                       *
     ***********                                                            *
     *IMPORTANT**************************************************************
     ***********




          Version 4.01 is here with the short awaited Death Probe!

1. The Death probe can search a 25 X 25 sector area in 12 hours. During this
   time it has enough destructive energy to destroy 25 colonies, 25 sector
   protectors, 5 satellites and 5 colony ships. It's sweep through the
   Universe is completely recorded in the News option from the Computer menu.
   At this time there is no defense against the Death Probe. Star bases are
   the only place you can purchase a Death probe if you have 1 million
   credits! The Death Probe will not destroy anything that belongs to the
   Player who launched it.

2. Added a Warp Drive for your Satellites. The Warp Drive enables you to
   move your Satellite to any other sector in the universe providing it
   does not have another Satellite in orbit. It also must have a planet
   to put the satellite in orbit around. Warp Drives can be purchased only
   at a Star base.

3. Did lots of cleaning up. Some of the menus will look different. Some of
   the screens will be easier to read. I think you will enjoy it....

4. The Registered key you receive For the price of $20.00 will
   work for all N.U.G.I. door software (Who-Dunit/Enquirer/BUSTED!)
   so it's 4 for the price of 1. All future versions and NEW programs
   from N.U.G.I. will work with this registered key. A great deal!

5. Last but least. The Death Probe option will not operate unless Terra-
   Firma is REGISTERED. This is a thanks to all the great SysOps out there
   who have registered Terra-Firma. It also helps me feel better about the
   systems out there which have been running Terra-Firma but could care
   less about paying. I have been improving and backing up my Door soft ware
   for almost three years and will continue to do so in the future.

    Version 3.01 has a three new upgrades I hope you will enjoy.

1. No more inputting a sector with those stinking commas!
   From the main menu you can just enter "M" then the sector number you
   wish to go to and your off! Providing you have the fuel <GRIN>.
   This option was brought to my attention by Al Grundy of the Grundy BBS
   in South Carolina (803)-776-0323 <With Exclusive Married With Children
   Giffs!> Who wishes my move routine was more like Tradewars! Well it's
   closer now.

2. Robot Transports which you can buy and dock at your Satellite. They can
   be programmed to go back and forth to the nearest star base and transport
   back whatever you wish to your Satellite. They can move 12 times in a
   24 hour period. This is to help you build up your Satellites faster.

3. Sector Probes (Different from AREA Probes) will now look into each
   sector of a direction you choose and will report back everything they
   find in the sector to include: How many planets and of what level and
   type. The type of star. Satellites and other players to include other
   players colonies. Thanks go out to Roann Vecchia and Michael Richardson
   for reminding me of just how large a 10000 sector Universe is and how
   hard it can be to find other players.


   Any Ideas are welcome!! I love suggestions!

                                    Dave Wendling
                                    N.U.G.I. Central ConSorTium
                                    (413)-445-7519 FiDoNet 1:321/227
                                                   DoorNet 75:7413/2