Software Vault: The Gold Collection

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Text File | 1993-05-01 | 29KB | 644 lines

╓────────────────────────────╖ ║ EC Commander (ECC.EXE) ║ ║ by ║ ║ John P. Corea ║ ╙────────────────────────────╜ SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS - IBM compatible with MS Mouse & VGA Monitor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EC commander will only work on the Esterian Conquest Door game version 1.5 or higher !!!! If your favorite BBS is running an earlier version ask your SysOp (in a nice way) if he could upgrade as the newer version is much more realistic and much better ! SysOps : EC commander will not work in LOCAL mode since you have no facility for capturing reports or uploading orders. ECC is SHAREWARE, not FREEWARE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You may use ec commander on a TRIAL basis. It is a limited use version and will cease to function after 60 plays (60 times you run ECC) or after July 1st 1993 (whichever comes first).This gives you plenty of time to decide if you like it enough to pay the measly $6.50 I am asking.I hope you'll love it and happily send me the $6.50. Notice the usage counter in the upper right hand corner of the screen....When it reaches zero the trial period has expired.... Alternately, you can send me $5.00 and a formatted floppy in an SASE (floppy mailer). I will copy the registered version to your disk and mail it in your mailer using your postage (make sure you put enough postage on the mailer). In other words, I'm really asking $5.00 for the program. The extra $1.50 covers the cost of a floppy disk, a disk mailer, and postage.. Got it ? The registered version will have your name embedded within the program ! DISCLAIMER ~~~~~~~~~~ This product is distributed AS IS. I specifically disclaim all warranties ,expressed or implied, including ,but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with respect to defects in the diskette and documentation, and application use or purpose. In no event shall I be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage including but not limited to special, incidental, physical, consequential or other damages. OVERVIEW ~~~~~~~~ What is ECC ? ECC (ec commander) is an offline Graphical User Interface for playing the BBS Door game called "Esterian Conquest" . ECC requires that you have a MOUSE and a VGA monitor. By using ec commander you will enjoy the game even more and play the game much faster and have a better grasp of where all your fleets and planets are. You never need to write anything down or even touch the keyboard when using ECC ! In fact, ECC ignores any and all keyboard input and recognizes mouse movement and button presses only . By using ECC to play Esterian Conquest you will spend only a few minutes online during each maintenance period as opposed to 20-30 or more minutes. I believe that ECC significantly increases the fun of playing Esterian Conquest. By using ECC you can get involved in more than one game of Esterian Conquest without it being simply too much work. Playing Esterian Conquest the 'OLD' way takes much more time and alot of writing and erasing to keep track of planets and fleets. Playing it the 'NEW' way is a piece of cake ! FEATURES ~~~~~~~~ What will ECC do ? 1) Display a grid of the Esterian Galaxy (the map) 2) Display all planets in the galaxy with color coding to differentiate between your planets, UnKnown (undiscovered) planets, UnOwned (planets you found to be unowned) neutral planets, and enemy planets. 3) Display all your Fleet locations 4) Display all your Starbase locations 5) Display all information about each planet, fleet, starbase 6) Issue Fleet orders 7) Issue Build Orders 8) Issue Starbase orders 9) Display reports 10) Display your empire status (profile) 11) List all other empires in the game 12) Automatically commission all ships in stardock 13) Automatically load armies onto troop transports CAVEAT ~~~~~~ ECC automatically commissions all ships for you. ECC automatically loads armies to Troop Transports. ECC will not allow you to detach a fleet which has only 1 ship. ECC sets fleet ROE to 6 by default. You may change a fleet's ROE by selecting the fleet and the use the Fleet ROE function on the Main Menu. When you detach a fleet the new fleet's ROE will be equal to the ROE of the fleet you detached. PROCEDURE Playing Esterian Conquest using ECC : ~~~~~~~~~ 1) Copy the file named "REPORTS.ECC" to your upload directory 2) Call BBS and enter Esterian Conquest Door 3) Answer NO to ANSI (default) 4) Join the game as usual (if you are joing a new game) 5) When you get to the prompt where EC says you have messages waiting, or if there are no messages when you get to the Main Menu Open CAPTURE LOG (usually ALT-L) and name it "EC". If you don't name it EC now you will have to rename it later. The convert program requires the capture file be named "EC" (no extension, just EC). If there are messages waiting, capture them Non Stop by typing "NS". You can read the messages offline using ECC or you can print out the file created by CONVERT and named "REPORTS". 6) At the Main Menu prompt UPLOAD file named "REPORTS.ECC" (ASCII UPLOAD). This captures all the text required by CONVERT to create the binary data used by ECC. 7) When returned to the Main Menu prompt Close CAPTURE LOG . 8) Leave BBS and copy the captured text (named or renamed "EC") to the directory where CONVERT and ECC reside. 9) Run CONVERT.EXE 10) Run ECC.EXE and make your moves (build orders, fleet orders, etc) 11) Copy the ASCII file named "ORDERS.ECC" to your upload directory 12) Call the BBS back and enter the EC door and when at the main menu prompt upload the file named "ORDERS.ECC". You have just issued all of your orders to the EC Game. 13) Wait for next maintenance period and repeat the above starting with step two. You can leave the file named "REPORTS.ECC" in your upload directory as this file never changes. USING ECC.EXE (ec commander) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After you have run CONVERT.EXE on the "EC" capture file you are ready to have fun and play Esterian Conquest using ec commander. Run ECC and a grid will popup displaying the Esterian Galaxy. Note the galaxy map, or grid, is 45 by 45 which is the size of the map for a full scale EC game. If you are playing in a smaller game, it doesn't matter, just ignore the area of the map you aren't (can't) playing in. You will see a display of the sector you are pointing to on the lower right side of the grid. If you are pointing to a sector outside the playing area, it will not display that sector. There are 4 size games of Esterian Conquest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1) 25 players - Galaxy = 45 by 45 - 125 planets 2) 16 players - Galaxy = 36 by 36 - 80 planets 3) 9 players - Galaxy = 27 by 27 - 45 planets 4) 4 players - Galaxy = 18 by 18 - 20 planets Attempting to order a fleet to a sector out of bounds will not work. If you play the game right, you are looking to colonize, scout, bombard, or whatever , other planets and so you won't order a fleet out of bounds.. *** NOTE *** There are no error messages with ECC. It simply won't allow you to make an illegal move. For instance, if you try to order an ETAC to bombard a world, it won't allow it. Similarly, if you try to order a destroyer or any other ship other than an ETAC to colon- ize a world, it won't allow that either..************************** PLANETS COLOR CODE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are 5 colors which depict the status of various planets. The color code is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. The color code is as follows: GRAY = UnKnown (Planets you have yet to discover) GREEN = UnOwned (Planets you have found to be unowned) BLUE = Neutral (Planets you have found belonging to neutral empires) RED = Enemy (Planets you have found belonging to enemy empires) MAGENTA = Your Planets This feature alone eliminates alot of the work involved in playing Esterian Conquest the OLD way ! When you see a green planet, send out an ETAC and terraform it !! QUICK !!!!!!!!! PLANET COMMANDS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When you first join a game you will see some of the grids colored in gray and one of them colored in magenta. Notice the upper right corner of the screen. This is the color code for planets as well as fleets and starships. All planets colored magenta are your planets. Planets colored gray are UnKnown or undiscovered planets. Planets in Blue are planets you have discovered and are neutral. Planets in Green are UnOwned planets you have discovered. (go getem) Planets in red are planets you have discovered which belong to an empire you have declared ENEMY ! If you want to declare an empire as enemy, do it online. Personally, after playing several games, I see no good reason to do this as it will cause your fleets to chase enemy fleets even if they are bigger and often your fleets are de- stroyed. *** If you are going to declare an empire as enemy ALWAYS do so AFTER closing the capture file ! The same rule applies to sending messages ! Do so AFTER closing the capture file ! This is VERY IMPORTANT !!!!!!! ************* Point to a sector which has a planet and click the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON and all known information about that planet will be displayed below the galaxy grid. Naturally, if the planet is your planet you will have ALL the information about it. If it is not your planet you will have some information, but not complete information. If you have scouted the planet you will have information on maxproduction, owner, armies and ground batteries (this is useful if you plan on attacking this planet). If you have merely discovered it then you will have information on max production and owner. If you have not discovered a planet and it is not your planet then the planet is Unknown and you won't have any information about this planet. BUILD ORDERS : If the planet you have clicked the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON is your planet and there are points available for that planet then you may issue build orders. To issue build orders point to the "Issue Build Orders" menu selection box on the right of the grid and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. A build menu will appear on the lower right corner of the screen and the mouse will change to a pointing hand cursor and will be positioned at the build menu. The Build Menu will look like this Points : Points available to spend GB Ground Batteries BB Battleships CA Cruisers DD Destroyers SC Scouts TT Troop Transports AR Armies ETAC ETACS SB Starbases minus plus Click on the appropriate arrow ( ) to either add or substract builds for each ship. The points available will be displayed and when you have 0 points left you can either subtract previous builds or click on the DONE selection box (). Make sure the finger is on the proper selection arrow and press MOUSE LEFT BUTTON to issue build orders. Click on the DONE selection when you are finished.. You can point to the sector where the planet is and click the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON to review the build orders. You may go back and re-issue build orders at any time. *** Because of a slight flaw in the Esterian Conquest game regarding POINTS AVAILALE I had to do some work to get ec commander to handle this bug. The problem is that Esterian Conquest will give an invalid statistic on points available if the particular planet doesn't have a starbase. For instance, the EC game may say you have 235 points available (detailed planet info) but you don't unless you have a star- base. In attempting to reconcile this problem I noticed that for some reason if a planet has no starbase and Esterian reports points available greater than current production then the actual points available = the max ground batteries ! Don't ask me why, I didn't write EC, just ECC ! Maybe a future version of Esterian Conquest will fix this flaw. **Another bug I found with EC1.5 concerns a planet's armies. The total planets database gives an inaccurate number of armies. The detailed report gives the correct figure. Quite possibly there is already a newer version of EC and when I find a BBS running it I will make any changes necessary to EC Commander . BTW, I do not run a BBS and so I am not a registered user of Esterian Conquest. I am strictly a player of the game and I wrote ECC to make playing the game more fun. FLEET COMMANDS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the upper right hand corner of some sectors you will see a little dot. This dot indicates that you have fleets in this sector. You may only have one fleet, or you may have several fleets, but there is only one dot. To see what fleets you have in a sector which has a little dot in the upper right corner point to that sector and click the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. Below the galaxy grid you will see a list of fleets with a Red box next to them. To get more details on an indi- vidual fleet point the mouse button to the "Fleet Select" menu box on the right side of the galaxy grid. Press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. The mouse cursor will now be positioned below the grid and will be a hand with a finger pointer. Place the finger tip on the little red box next to the fleet you want details on and click the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. Instantly you have all the details about that fleet ! ORDER A FLEET : To order the SELECTED fleet on a mission point to the "Fleet Orders" menu selection box to the right of the grid and click the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. A list of all possible missions will be displayed. Select the mission by pointing to the appropriate blue box and clicking the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. After you select the appropriate mission (if you select an inappropriate mission it will not be allowed and instead a possible appropriate mission will be selected for you, the mission selected (or selected for you if you make a mistake) will have the selection box turn green. Move the mouse pointer to the sector where you want this fleet to fulfill it's mission. If , for instance, you are ordering a fleet to BOMBARD WORLD, you would point to the sec- tor containing the planet you want to bombard. After pointing to the sector of your choice, press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. Look to the bottom of the grid to the fleet details and you will see the current mission displayed. IF you want to change the mission do so by repeating the above steps. Otherwise, point to the menu selection box labeled "Execute Order". You will then be returned to the main menu list. You have just ordered a fleet on a mission ! You can always go back and change the orders any time you choose. *** A fleet must be SELECTED before you can order it on a mission. You select a fleet with the Fleet Select option. When a fleet is SELECTED, details about that fleet are displayed below the galaxy grid.*** ** After ordering a fleet on a mission you must select "Execute Order" for the order to be completed. You will then be returned to the Main Menu. Fleet Order Procedure : 1) Point to the sector containing fleet you want to order and press LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. A list of all fleets in that sector will appear below the galaxy grid with a little red box next to each fleet number. 2) Point to "Fleet Select" and press LEFT MOUSE BUTTON The mouse cursor will now change to a Pointing Hand and will be positioned below the galaxy grid where the fleet list is located. 3) SELECT the desired fleet from the fleet list by positioning the finger tip of the pointing hand cursor over the little red box next to the fleet ID number and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. You have now SELECTED a fleet and all information about the fleet will be displayed below the galaxy grid. 4) To order the SELECTED fleet on a mission point to the "Fleet Orders" menu selection box and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. 5) The fleet order menu will now appear. Point to the desired order and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. 6) Point to destination (the sector where this fleet will carry out it's order) and press left mouse button 7) Point to "Execute Order" and press LEFT MOUSE BUTTON If you don't want to issue any new orders for the SELECTED fleet than just point to Execute Mission and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. The order will remain what it already is. DETACH FLEET ~~~~~~~~~~~~ To detach a fleet the fleet must be "selected" and then click the left mouse button on the "Detach" function . Detach ships in the same manner as you issue build orders. Click on "DONE" and the new fleet will be created. FLEET ROE ~~~~~~~~~ To change the ROE of a fleet SELECT the fleet and then point to the Fleet ROE menu selection box. An ROE adjuster will appear and the mouse will change to a Pointing Hand Cursor. Lower ROE ██ Raise ROE Done Place the finger tip of the pointing hand cursor on the desired button and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to alter the ROE. Point to the DONE button when finished. STARBASE COMMANDS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are only two starbase commands : Move and Halt. On the main menu you will see two functions dealing with starbases. To select a starbase for moving or halting press BOTH MOUSEBUTTONS in the sector where a starbase exists. If a starbase exists in a sector a bright dot will appear in the middle of the sector (remember, a dot in the upper right hand corner means a fleet, or fleets are in the sector). Pressing BOTH MOUSE BUTTONS simultaneously will bring up a starbase list for that sector on the bottom of the grid. To SELECT a starbase for moving or halting, press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON on the Star- base Move / Halt function on the main menu which is to the right of the grid. Now point to the sector where you want the Starbase to move and press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON again. That's it ! If the starbase was previously halted it will now move to that sector. If the starbase was already moving to a sector and you repeat the above steps it will be halted. In other words, the Move / Halt function is a TOGGLE.. AUTO PILOT TOGGLE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you are going to be unable to play Esterian Conquest for a while you should turn on Auto Pilot which lets the Esterian program control your empire. Basically the auto pilot puts your empire in a defensive mode where it builds lots and lots of armies and ground batteries and some ships. Don't use the auto pilot unless you aren't going to be playing for several days. The Auto Pilot toggle is just that. If auto pilot is off and you click the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON on the Auto pilot menu button then auto pilot will be turned on. If it is on and you do the same it will be turned off. Click on the Profile My Empire and you will see the status of auto pilot. PROFILE EMPIRE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click on this menu selection and see all the statistics for your empire. EMPIRE LIST ~~~~~~~~~~~ Click on this selection and view a list of all empires in the game SET TAX RATE ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click on this selection to adjust the tax rate of your empire. Three buttons will appear : Tax Rate : xx current tax rate ██ Increase Tax rate DONE Decrease Tax rate Press the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON with the mouse finger on the appropriate button to either increase or decrease tax rate, one point per button press. The tax rate will be displayed just above the buttons. Click on the center button when finished. READ REPORTS ~~~~~~~~~~~~ To read the reports from your fleets which appear as you first enter the game (if there are any) select the "Read Reports" menu function. A view port will appear on the bottom of the screen. Positioning the mouse cursor ABOVE the view port and pressing the LEFT BUTTON will cause the reports to scroll downward.Position the cursor on the bottom of the view port will cause the reports to scroll upward. There is also a mouse bar on the right of the view port which you can drag to any point in the report. Press the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON when finished reading reports. Notice that even when you exit I leave the reports up. You may want to use info in the reports to make moves. Once you select another function the reports window will disappear. BTW, you can even type your own notes in the reports window if you want. IMPORTANT REMINDERS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Remember, the capture file is the raw data used by the CONVERT.EXE program. This file must be named "EC" . You run the CONVERT.EXE program BEFORE running ECC.EXE . After you run ECC and play the game it generates another ASCII file named "ORDERS.ECC". This is the file you UPLOAD (ASCII MODE) to the Esterian Conquest game to issue all of your orders. *** ALWAYS erase the capture file from your Download directory after copying it to the ECC directory or the next time you turn on capture the file will be appended and the new data will not be read by CONVERT. The best thing to do is to MOVE the file to the ECC directory instead of copying it. If you fail to erase or move the captured text and the next time you capture text it is APPENDED to the end of the file then when you run convert it will read the old data and never get to the new data and you will have bogus data ! ** You are making 2 calls to the BBS to play EC during each maintenance period. The first call is to get detailed info. The second call is to upload your orders. ************************* ** Naturally you must have a noise free connection or the captured text may cause the CONVERT program to function improperly.If after running convert things dont look right to you exit the game and take at look at the capture file "EC" and see if there are garbled characters in it. If so, you had a noisey connection and must call back and capture a new report by repeating steps 2 through 8 as out- lined in PROCEDURE ************* ** The best point to turn the capture file on is after at the point where you are informed that you have messages waiting or if there are no messages then turn on capture at the Main Menu. If there are messages, turn on capture (ALT-L) and then type NS to receive the messages non-stop. You will be able to read the messages OFFLINE using ECC or you can read printout the file called "REPORTS" which is created by convert. FUTURE RELEASES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The potential for future improvements to ECC is great ! Whether there will be any improvements depends solely on the users of the program. If I receive alot of feedback (and registrations) I will add features. I have alot of ideas to make the EC game even better ! HINTS ~~~~~ To make the whole process even easier you can create a batch file to handle the whole process. Create a batch file in the directory where ECC and CONVERT are kept (in this example : "ECPLAY" CD\TELIX (changed to TELIX directory) TELIX (run communications software This time you are downloading reports .) CD\FILES\DOWNLOAD (change to directory where capture file exists) COPY EC C:\ECPLAY (copy the "EC" capture file to the ECPLAY directory DEL EC (Delete EC (dont want to leave it there for next time you capture it may append to it and cause problems) CD\ECPLAY (move to the ECPLAY directory) CONVERT (run CONVERT.EXE to convert the capture file) ECC (run ec commander) COPY ORDERS.ECC C:\FILES\UPLOAD (Copy the orders data to the upload directory) CD\TELIX TELIX (And this time you upload orders) Naturally you would make the directories appropriate for your setup. Whenever you want to play EC just move to the directory where ECC and CONVERT and EC.BAT exist and run EC.BAT !!! Also, you dont have to be using TELIX, it is just used for explanation purposes. Any communications software can be used as long as it has capture capa- bility and ASCII upload capability.. Remember the process requires 2 calls to the Door game during each maintenance period. The first call gets the reports from the previous maintenance, the second uploads your orders. REGISTRATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Included is a file named "REGISTER.FRM". Please take a minute to fill in the blanks and include a check for $6.50 and within 24 hours of receiving your check I will send you a registered version of ECC with your name embedded in the program. As a registered user you will be entitled to receive any future releases of ECC for the price of $1.50 which is just to cover the cost of a disk, a mailer, and the postage. I will notify you by mail when a new version has been released and I will include details of what's in the new version. You may leave me a message on The Diamond Mine BBS 1-908-899-9684. I am always involved in a game of EC on the Diamond Mine so maybe you'd like to play a game against me. One of the benefits of using ECC to play Esterian Conquest is you don't spent much time ONLINE to play the game. ONLINE time for each maintenance period is only a few minutes as opposed to 20-30 or more minutes ! ** CHARACTERS LOST - After many hours of testing ECC I have found that on occasion a character is somelost lost in cyberspace during the upload of ORDERS.ECC . Losing a character will cause all subsequent orders to be invalid. If you see that the upload of ORDERS.ECC has failed you must redo the entire process (DL REPORTS, rumn CONVERT, run ECC, upload ORDERS). The reason you must start over is because you don't know which orders were successful and which weren't. If you tried to UL the same ORDERS.ECC over again it would most definitely issue invalid orders and abort.. I have only had to redo the process because of lost characters twice in about 100 tests..