Beijing Paradise BBS Backup

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Beijing Paradise BBS Backup / PARADISE.ISO / software / BBSDOORW / 2002V2B8.ZIP / TWSYSOP.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-09-20 | 16.2 KB | 376 lines

Trade Wars 2002 Version 2 The story continues... by Gary Martin and MaryAnn Martin Many thanks also to Drew Markham, a.k.a. Videon and to John Pritchett for debugging and cleanup. Castle RavenLoft (913) 842-0300 and (913) 832-2888 Welcome! Right now you're probably dying to configure this program and get it running. Before I tell about that, I just want to put a plug in here. Trade Wars 2002 is the result of over 8 years of game testing and development. The version you have in your hands is 2.00, our NEW version, offerings tons of new features the players requested and some new twists that we threw in ourselves! It is one of the most complex games in the BBS world at this time. You probably can guess about the amount of development time that went into this game. Install and run this game for a few weeks and if you agree that it is decent and want to keep it, you will need to register with us. The registration fee is very small, just $20. Being registered will keep you in touch with further development of the game and all subsequent releases of Trade Wars 2002 will be free of charge to you. This un-registered version is almost fully functional. There are four options that do not work: You cannot edit any values in the Trade Wars Sysop's editor, Players cannot buy any of the other shiptypes in the game, and Players cannot build or enter Citadels on planets. Photon Missiles cannot be purchased. The rest of the game works 100% Try it, I think you'll agree that our registration fee is cheap for what you get! We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and US funds drawn on a US bank ONLY! Foreign funds will be returned as the cost of processing them is most often more than the registration fee itself! -------------------------- Ordering Info ----------------------------- To register, send $20 (US) in check or money order to: Martech Software, Inc. P.O. Box 1358 Lawrence, Kansas 66044 You will find an accompanying file on your harddisk called TWORDER.FRM, please use this to send in your order as it will speed things up. Please allow 3-4 weeks for your registration code to reach you by return mail. We will not transmit registration codes through the net. And we will not call with your codes. We have very little time to work on the game as it is. Also, US Postal Priority Mail doesn't seem to be any faster than regular mail! We get registrations from either coast in 3-4 days. Please include your BBS name, type and number as well as your address on the included form TWORDER.FRM. --------------------------- Update Info ----------------------------- If you registered Trade Wars 1.xx or 0.9x before January 1st, 1994, then you are eligible for a free upgrade to the new version 2.xx codes. You will find an update form included with this archive. Get it to us and we'll get you your new codes for 2.xx ---------------- Now on to the installation! ---------------- B E F O R E you do anything else! Copy the distribution archive 2002V2B7.EXE to a nice safe place. The installation process will delete the one from out of the BBS dir to save system space. Step 1: ERASE ALL FILES IN THE TRADEWAR SUBDIR IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY RUNNING Trade Wars 2002! (Optionally install version 2.00 in a different subdirectory. You can put it anywhere on your computer as you can fully control where the program looks for its data) Version 2.00 is NOT compatible in any way with the files from Version 0.90 through 1.03d Make sure and erase every file in the TRADEWAR subdirectory! Step 2: Run 2002V2B8.EXE and it will create the installation package for you. Put the executable archives TWSUPP.EXE and TWPGM.EXE and the batch file TWINSTAL.BAT in your Tradewars directory. You will have to set the Dos Environment variable (more info later) to indicate which node is what. Step 3: Run the batch file. (TWINSTAL.BAT) It will unzip everything into the current directory, create a directory called ANSI and put *.ANS into that ANSI directory. If you want to run two versions of the game, make another subdirectory under your main BBS directory and copy EVERYTHING thats in your Tradewars subdirectory. You will then need to make appropriate changes to the BBS setup or to the batch files that you use to call Trade Wars 2002. ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************* Please NOTE!!! During a first time initialization, the BigBang Universe Creator must be run. This process can take a while on slower machines. A LARGE portion of the Trade Wars 2002 Universe is contained in the External maintenance program called EXTERN.EXE This program must be run once a day. It does NOT support the modem so it should not be run as a logon event for users. (it also gives out info that users shouldn't see). Run it in your nightly maintenance batch file. We have noticed that some other door's external maintenance files screw up the environment so that EXTERN will not function correctly. We recommend that you put EXTERN.EXE *FIRST* in your nightly batch file. ------ Running TW2002 on Your BBS ------ The new version of TW2002 runs quite a bit differently than the previous versions. The Node configuration file determines how the system runs, what type of door drop file should be read (and where it is) and how communications should be handled. There are only two command line options that are used regularly. (there are some optional override command line options available). NOXMS The NoXms switch tells TW2002 to NOT use Extended memory to load its overlay files. NOEMS The NoEms switch does the same for Expanded memory. By default TW2002 will try to use Xms memory first, then Ems memory. If neither are available (in sufficient quantity) then the game will not load its overlays into memory and your disk usage will rise considerably as the program loads and unloads modules from the overlay file. EXAMPLE: TW2002 NOXMS NOEMS Calling Trade Wars 2002 this way would insure that no high memory was used at all. (Sometimes useful for systems such as Desqview) The third, optional command line item, is a node specifier. TWNODE=x Where x is a number from 0 to 254 The fourth, optional command line item is useful if you want to run TW2002 on a Local area network. Setup the nodefile for Local use, and call the game with the TWUSER=<username> command line option. TWUSER=name Where name is from 1 to 40 characters long. The standard method to setup TW2002 is to use a Dos Environment variable in the autoexec batch file to indicate which node a given machine is running. ╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ SET TWNODE=x Where x is a number from 0 to 254 ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ ║ ╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Sample Autoexec.bat entry path=c:\dos set TWNODE=1 <============ Upper or lower case doesn't matter prompt $p$g ╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ Trade Wars 2002 supports many different BBS interchange file formats. ║ ║ Select one from the following list for YOUR BBS! ║ ║ ║ ║ BBS Name Interface File Name Nodeedit Door Type ║ ║ ------------------- ---------------------- ------------------- ║ ║ World War IV CHAIN.TXT WWIV ║ ║ Generic System DOOR.SYS DOOR ║ ║ QuickBBS DORINFO1.DEF QBBS ║ ║ PcBoard DOOR.SYS DOOR ║ ║ R.B.B.S. DORINFO1.DEF RBBS ║ ║ RyBBS CURRUSER.BBS RYBS ║ ║ Wildcat CALLINFO.BBS WILD ║ ║ Telegard DORINFO1.DEF RBBS ║ ║ Spitfire DOOR.SYS DOOR ║ ║ Local Mode, no BBS LOCL ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Please note!!! TW2002 is designed to run in a small amount of memory. This system will work in 380K of RAM! We still recommend you shrink out most of your BBS before running TW2002. This system is delivered in an "as-is" basis. We do not guarantee that this system will work on your BBS. Any problems with your system, lost data or corrupted files are your problems to solve. As distributed this package will work fine on a PC-compatible running WWIV or QBBS. If your dog gets sick, you lose your job or one of your users gets into a gunfight over this game with you, it is still your responsibility. We *ARE* glad to try and help if you are having problems getting this system installed on your board. Good luck trading and watch out for the Ferrengi! Gary A. Martin, #1 and Castle RavenLoft (913)832-2888 Mary Ann Martin, #2 AutoSysop Validation, V.32bis Common Technical Problems and answers: ╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ W W I V S Y S O P S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ║ ║ ║ ║ Make sure that Use_Dos_Interrupts is set to NO for ║ ║ your Chainedit entry of TW2002. YOU MUST SET THIS ║ ║ off! It's very important. Otherwise you will see ║ ║ double characters remotely and it can lock up your ║ ║ system!!!!!!!!!!! ║ ╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Q: Trade Wars seems to run fine in Local mode, but goes crazy for the remote callers? A: TW2002 handles its own I/O. Make sure that you are NOT using some other utility program or the BBS itself to handle the Modem I/O. A program such as Gateway is not needed with TW2002. Also, make sure you are using the door mode on your BBS that removes the BBS from memory. This is the safest setting. Q: No matter who runs the game, it always comes up as the same player or as me! (the sysop) what is happening? A: TW2002 looks for your Door Interface file wherever you told it to. If you have it pointing to the wrong one (not one the BBS makes whenever a user tries to run the door) then it will always try to run that configuration. Also, if your Dos Environment variable TWNODE isn't set, it will default to Node 0 (local mode) Q: Running TW2002 on WWIV, remote callers get double characters? A: Under WWIV's Chainedit, you have Use Dos Interrupts set to "Yes". Turn that setting off as you are asking both the BBS and Trade Wars to transmit characters to the remote user. Q: When I run TW2002 I keep getting error codes 002 or 103.? Its never worked since I got it. A: You never ran the TWINSTAL.BAT file when you first got the archive. If you do not run this, then the appropriate data files were not created. Borland Turbo Pascal Error Messages you can get with TW2002: Number Meaning With regards to TW2002 ------ ----------------------- ------------------------------------------- 2 File not found You are missing a file. 3 Path not found You are not using the batch files we included. 4 Too many open files Increase your FILES= statement in your CONFIG.SYS We recommend about 25. 5 File access denied Either a file has been set to read only, a directory is full, a RENAME tried to rename to an existing file name or a file is not open. 6 Invalid File Handle Your file handles have become corrupted, DOS err. 100 Disk Read Error An attempt was made to read past the end of a file most often. Something is corrupted in the record pointers. 101 Disk Write Error Generall an indication of a full hard disk. 103 File Not Open File is closed when it shouldn't have been. 104 File Not Open for Input Text file is closed when it shouldn't have been. 105 File Not Open for Output " " " " " " " 106 Invalid Numeric Format Generally this is only caused when reading a BBS interface file (that has the user's info). It happens when TW2002 is trying to read a numeric value from an interface text file and there isn't a valid number in the file. Errors 150 through 162 indicate various HARDWARE failures. If you're getting these, then something is wrong with your PC and I can't be of much help there. Some commone ones are: 152 Drive not ready Controller problem or drive not spinning 154 CRC error in data Scrogged disk (real technical eh? (grin)) 156 Disk Seek error Head problem or bad controller 157 Unknown media type Did you just change to DOS 4.0 or 5.0??? 158 Sector not found Head problem or bad controller 159 Printer out of paper Hit Control P! Disable printer logging. 160 Device write fault Disk problem 161 Device read fault Disk problem 162 Hardware Failure Reported due to Dos sharing violations, mostly having to do with Lan or multi- user problems. If you encounter this error, then you have a configuration problem with your multinode BBS setup. Make sure Share is being run. Fatal errors generally indicate a problem that must be fixed before you can continue to run the game. 200 Division by zero Now I hope you cannot make one of these happen as I check before every division to make sure it DOESN'T happen, but you it might. 201 Range Check Error Array index out of range. 202 Stack Overflow NOT ENOUGH MEMORY for the stack! Type @ while at the main menu in TW2002 and it will tell you how much memory you have left with the game running. If you're under 5K, then you're in trouble. 203 Heap overflow error Same as 202. 204 Invalid Pointer Op. Can be caused the same as 202. 205 Floating point overflow Most likely someone has used the editor and put an insane amount of credits in a credits field somewhere. YOU CANNOT make enough money in TW2002 to cause this with normal play. 207 Invalid Floating point You have a real thats trying to be converted to a Operation Long int and its greater than 2 billion. 209 Overlay File read error TW2002 had a problem getting an overlay from the TW2002.OVR file. If you're not using EMS, then the .OVR file is missing or is setting on a bad sector on your harddisk. If you are running EMS then you have a bad memory chip! (yak) Well this covers a large portion of the technical support for TW2002. If you have further questions, contact us at Martech Software via US Mail or via our Fax machine. We recieve such a large amount of Email through the nets that we can no longer handle Sysop inquiries this way.