Shareware Overload/ShartewareOverload.cdr/games/prince.zip/PRINCE.DOC

Text File | 1989-07-30 | 54KB | 1,255 lines

    INTRODUCTION

    You have just inherited the reign of a small domain somewhere in the
    boundless tracts of Central Asia. This immense landmass rolls on end-
    lessly from horizon to horizon, shaped, though not bound, by the scat-
    tered ramparts of its treacherous mountain ranges. The steppes are a
    vast sea of tough grass and gravel. It's an arid, windswept part of the
    world, a fit setting for some of the most desolate deserts on the planet
    -- they range from the Dasht-E-Kavir and the Kara-Kum in eastern Persia,
    to the Gobi Desert on the northern flank of the Chin Empire. In between
    those, the dreaded Takla Makan: its hellish dunes, shrouded in perpetual
    yellow dust, was the final vision of many a luckless caravan-driver
    along the old Silk Road; the very name Takla Makan means "you go in, you
    don't come out."

    For centuries now, Central Asian peoples have wandered back and forth
    over these enormous distances, sometimes on foot, sometimes on hardy
    Mongol ponies. They drive their herds before them, and often drive their
    neighbors out of homelands that were themselves stolen from even earlier
    settlers. Now and then, some of the more fortunate among these bands
    find a spot that they can keep for a few generations, and perhaps get a
    taste of prosperity from farming or, if they settle near enough to the
    great Silk Road, take part in some of the trade that flows back and
    forth between that decaying empire to the West and the mysterious one
    behind the Great Wall.

    And flow it does, a river of wealth and goods: there is fine leather
    from Samarkand, beryl and rock-wool from Balkh, jade from Khotan, Hami
    melons and Kashgar blades; there are horses from Ferghana and the
    Vokhan valley, much prized by the Tang emperors -- the "heavenly horses"
    that sweat blood and are said to be descended from Alexander's steed
    Bucephalus; there are spices from Delhi and Kashmir; furs and Muscovy
    glass from the frozen lands of the Samoyeds; and, of course, there is
    silk, and more silk, in every weave, texture and color.

    Away from the trade routes, though, the concerns are much more basic.
    For a band on the move, the unvaried diet of mutton and mare's milk can
    only be supplemented by charity or warfare. Even for a group that
    chooses to follow the sedentary ways of their farming neighbors, there
    remains the challenge of building and running the irrigation systems
    that are so vital in this thirsty land. These are the economic realities
    that face your people.

    All the while, there are the wars, the migrations, the displacements and
    conquests, the shifting alliances and the constant movement -- a massive
    human tide washing to and fro across a vast continent. At the moment, it
    is a noisy background above which no single voice is strong enough to be
    heard. Where Alexander with his armies once prevailed, there are only
    songs and stories; and here the Mongol juggernaut has yet to roll, for
    those who will be known as Genghis Khan's ancestors are as yet but
    upstart Kitai clansmen raiding each other's herds in the forests of Man-
    churia.

    For you, the young new ruler of your people, the vision of a better
    future consists of mustering the strength and wisdom to balance a hard


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    struggle winning the blessings of civilization, against a hard fight
    keeping rapacious neighbors at bay.

    That future is yours to build, but foundations have been laid by your
    father and his father before him. Your grandfather was a tough and canny
    Turk who rose to rank in a minor clan of the Kirghiz tribe. He came
    first into this region years ago with a troop of war-weary cavalry and
    their camp-followers, hoping to find some respite from the rampaging
    Hsiung-Nu. In this they were successful, and in time your grandfather
    established a settled community whose people began to learn the ways of
    farming. He formed strong alliances with several of the neighboring
    khagans, who themselves were relative newcomers: in the time of their
    fathers, their people had been forced to migrate from Sogdiana, a civil-
    ized provice near the Aral Sea, lately come under Persian rule.

    Always the instinctive politician, your grandfather soon cemented the
    alliance: he took the daughter of the strongest local leader as his head
    wife. As the years and his abilities unfolded, he eventually united the
    surrounding khaganates under his own rule. He consolidated a small but
    disciplined standing army, established a council of ministers to help
    govern smoothly. He also made plans to build a permanent irrigation
    system to make farming more reliable, so that it could continue as the
    source of prosperity that it was proving to be.

    However, he was never to bring this about. One summer morning, with
    a brigade of eager horsemen behind him and a twinkle in his eye, he rode
    away, bound for Kashgar. He'd often spoken of it: the City of the Stone
    Tower, junction of the two Silk Roads and sentinel of the Paimir Mount-
    ains. Your people mourned him for seven years before your father accept-
    ed the yak-tail banner -- even now, when the rumbles of autumn thunder
    gallop across the steppe and make even the steeliest warrior tense with
    dread, the old folks whisper that it's the Ghost Cavalry, finally re-
    turning from Kashgar.

    Where your grandfather brought your people the stability of farming,
    your father understood the power of gold. While he was a boy, his
    Persian mother entranced him with stories of her homeland, like that
    other princess, Scheherezade. These were tales replete with the riches
    of Samarkand and Tashkent, the splendors of Bukhara, the dangers of the
    deserts and chill beauty of the mountains; there were the wily traders,
    the noisy bazaars, the caravans of shaggy Bactrian camels that brought
    merchants their riches and customers their exotic goods and news of
    exotic places. And at the heart of these tales your father saw the pecu-
    liar magic wrought by that peculiar breed, the trader: simply buy low
    here and sell high there, and a certain amount of that magical yellow
    metal is yours to spend or keep. With enough of it, a man needs neither
    land, nor herd, nor prayers against drought and storm.

    Though he was bred to be a warrior and not a trader, still your father
    brought some of that merchant magic to your people during his rule, and
    in time there was many a shrewd trader among them; they grew adept at
    buying and selling, and finding people with whom to buy and sell. In
    this harsh locale, demand is low for luxuries, compared to that for
    grain; grain and gold are what changes hands, and this provides a way to
    allay the uncertainties of drought and famine. A more lasting way, of


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    course, is to build permanent irrigation works, and such a plan your
    father often spoke of grandly; but when he died, he had never put down
    bow and sword for long enough to make the idea real.

    It falls to you, then, as you assume your rule, to realize all these
    ways of making your domain grow strong and prosper; effort and resources
    must be diligently applied, and in the proper balance. Each year you
    will meet with your Royal Council and decide how many acres of land must
    be cultivated, and how much grain to reserve in your storehouses. If
    your taxation is too high, your people may go hungry, some even starve
    or grow rebellious; if it's too low, there may not be enough next year
    for sufficient planting, or to feed the people while the crops are
    growing.

    As a wise and just ruler, you must make sure that there is enough grain
    left to provide each person with ten bushels; more, if possible, for a
    better-fed populace grows more quickly and becomes healthier, too,
    better able to survive the unpredictable ravages of disease. Above all,
    you must build up the irrigation system, for not only is it the surest
    guard against drought, it enhances the gifts of the earth and makes the
    crops bigger.

    In council, you will also decide whether you must buy additional grain
    through your traders in order to meet your people's needs, or whether
    there is enough surplus to sell, for the wealth of gold is just as vital
    as the wealth of the land. And it is gold that allows you to maintain
    your loyal troops, who have been so effective at turning away would-be
    conquerers, and when the occasion demands, at conquering new territory
    to accommodate an expanding populace.

    It is also in council that you must decide whether to send expeditions
    of conquest against your neighbors, or whether to send scouting parties
    to gather intelligence about their strength and potential threat. All of
    the information brought back is carefully kept by your scribes, so that
    you may refer to it while making your decisions. During the year, your
    country may be invaded at any time, so you must be careful to keep a
    portion of your troops at home for an adequate defense. Any time there
    is an invasion, your officers will keep you informed of developments.

    At the end of the year, your ministers will report to you with a summary
    of the year's important events, such as harvest yields, balance in the
    treasury, population count, effects of drought or plague, territory
    captured, and so forth. The future of your people is in your hands, and
    you have all that you need to rule wisely -- may you do so and prosper!













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    II. PLAY

    Note: most of the information detailed in this documentation is sum-
    marized in the Help facility, which is available online during the
    game. See section on using Help below.

                                     START

    From DOS, type PRINCE to start the game. The program will ask if you
    want to start a new game; if not, it will ask the file name of the
    previously-saved game that you wish to resume.  Then it asks you to
    select a skill level ranging from 1 to 5.

    This value sets the difficulty of play, from easiest to hardest. It
    affects the armed strength and aggressiveness of your hostile neighbors;
    no other aspect of play (farming, trading, etc.) is affected. There are
    optional command-line parameters, however, that make other aspects of
    play easier:

    'H' - Current Health factor included in Year-End summary. Appears as a
         percentage. This factor largely determines the fertility and mort-
         ality rates of your population. It also affects susceptibility to
         plague, as well as emigration and immigration.

    'S' - Scouting parties return with exact information.

    'N' - Printout of state of all neighbors at every turn.


                                 PLAY PROCEDURE

    You win by:
      Accumulating 100,000 talents of gold.
      Conquering all 15 neighboring domains in the region.
    You lose by:
      Conceding with the "Q" command.
      Managing to lose all your land, or people, or wealth (grain & gold).

    Each year, in your Royal Council (Main Screen), you decide:
      How many acres to plant -- enter value in PLANT CROPS field
      How many acres to irrigate -- BUILD CANALS field
        Irrigation improves crop yield and
        protects against drought
      How many bushels to store for next year -- STORE GRAIN field
      How many bushels to sell or buy -- TRADE GRAIN field
        Positive value means buy (at PRICE/BU. shown)
        Negative value means sell (at PRICE/BU. shown)
      How many troops to recruit for next year -- RECRUIT field
        This number will not be added to the SOLDIERS field
        until the following year
      How many troops to send out either to scout or attack --
        MOBILIZE field

    See MAIN SCREEN section below for Cursor Movement and Editing. Press
    RETURN after each time you enter a value, to calculate the results of


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    these decisions (shown in the fields below the bar); make sure that your
    grain expenditures will leave a PER CAP of ten bushels or more, as this
    is what you are feeding your people.

    When you're satisfied with the values, move cursor to COMMAND field and
    press RETURN. If MOBILIZE is nonzero, you will need to give the order to
    SCOUT or ATTACK a neighboring country. Decisions shown on the screen are
    put into effect at this point. You may be attacked by a neighbor; if you
    are attacking or defending, there will appear a screen telling you of
    the results of battle.

    At year-end, results of the harvest will be reported to you, along with
    population changes, military activity, and so forth.


    INPUT FIELDS
       PLANT (Crops):  Acres to cultivate.
          Each acre requires three bushels of grain for seed.
          One farmer can plant two acres.
       BUILD (Canals): Acres to build irrigation facilities on.
          Construction for each acre requires four men.
       STORE (Grain):  Bushels to save for next year.
       TRADE (Grain):  Bushels to buy or sell.
          Positive number is a purchase; negative, a sale
          Every 1000 bushels requires two men to transport it.
       RECRUIT:  Number of men to train for next year's army.
          It costs three talents to train each recruit.
       MOBILIZE: Number of troops sent for war or reconnaisance.
          It costs two talents per soldier mobilized.
          These troops will not be available to fight invaders.
          (See COMMANDS section below for giving them their orders).

    RESULT FIELDS
       SUBJECTS:  Total population for the current year.
       FARMERS:   Manpower available for planting and building.
       SOLDIERS:  Number of troops available to fight invasion.
       LAND:      Total land for the current year.
       TO PLANT:  Maximum acreage that can be cultivated.
       IRRIGATED: Acres for which irrigation canals have been built.
       GRAIN:     Bushels of grain left for feeding the populace.
       SEED:      Bushels of grain used for seed.
       PER CAP:   Size of an individual's allocation of grain to eat.
       GOLD:      Balance of gold in treasury after expenses and trade.
       EXPENSES:  Costs of military recruiting and campaigning.
       PRICE:     Trading price of grain for current year.

    This as well as other information appears in the online Help
    facility. The text appears in file PRINCE.HLP, which you may want
    to print out for reference.








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                                  MAIN SCREEN

    The opening screen informs you of your coronation and full title. Next
    you'll see the main screen, that of the Royal Council, with the follow-
    ing layout:


    ABOVE THE BAR

    These fields are for entering "what-if" data with which you will develop
    decisions about how to apportion and direct your country's resources for
    the current year. Each field is labelled, and as you move the cursor
    from one to another, a prompt also appears at the bottom of the screen
    elaborating a bit more on the purpose of the particular field (see below
    for mechanics of editing and cursor movement).

    Into each field, enter the approximate amount desired; when you enter or
    change a data-item and want to see the consequences, just press RETURN:
    all the other items dependent on that one will recalculate, just like a
    miniature spreadsheet program. The results are displayed in the fields
    below the bar. Whenever an excessive amount is entered, or one that
    causes an illegal result (such as trying to plant more grain than you
    have on hand, for example), an error message will appear at the bottom
    of the screen, and you may then go back and enter an appropriate
    quantity.

    Many of the items are very interdependent, so it will probably take
    several trial approximations, changing this field and that one until you
    get a satisfactory picture. Let the recalculation facility work for you
    -- you have more important concerns than bookkeeping!

    BELOW THE BAR

    These fields display the results of the data entered, calculated accord-
    ing to the rules of the game. For example, it requires three bushels of
    grain to seed an acre of land, so if you specify (in the "Plant Crops"
    field) that a certain number of acres are to be cultivated, then three
    times that number will appear in the "For Seed" display-field.

    INSIDE THE BAR

    Appearing inside the bar are the current year and the 'Command' field.
    When you are satisfied with the other fields, move the cursor to this
    one, at which point you have several options. If you press RETURN here,
    the decisions you have made for this year will be enacted, and the
    subsequent screen(s) will show the consequences of those decisions. If
    you enter a "/", a dialog box labelled "Orders: " will open up for the
    purpose of various military activities (see section on Commands below).
    The dialog box also opens by default if the MOBILIZE field is non-zero.

    The fields are grouped so that each row of fields deals with the same
    units (e.g., acres of land, bushels of grain, etc.). The status-line at
    the bottom of the screen shows not only the various prompts and error-
    messages, but also the current field-number, current column within the
    field, editing mode (Overwrite or Insert), CAPS lock and NUMS lock. The


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    rectangle below the bar also serves as a window for the online Help
    facility, and for the REVIEW command (see below).

    CURSOR MOVEMENT AND EDITING

    MOVING BETWEEN FIELDS
    TAB Key : Moves to next field in sequence.
    BACKTAB : (Shift-TAB) moves to previous field.
    U & D Arr: Moves to field just above or below.
    HOME Key : Moves to the upper left-hand field.

    EDITING WITHIN A FIELD
    R Arrow: Moves the cursor right one space at a time.
    At right end of field, cursor will tab to next field.
    L Arrow: Moves left one space if cursor is not in Col 1;
    Otherwise, it will tab to the previous field.
    ESC Key: Moves cursor back to Col 1.
    BACKSP : "Destructive." Deletes character to the left.
    DEL Key: Deletes character under the cursor.
    ^Y   : Deletes all to the right of cursor position.
    INS Key: Toggles between Insert and Overwrite modes.

    EQUIVALENT KEYS
    Arrows : "Wordstar diamond." L,R,U,D = ^S,^D,^E,^X
    TABS  : TAB,BACKTAB = ^R Arrow,^L Arrow
    INS Key: ^V
    DEL Key: ^G

    COMMANDS

    'Command: ' (Field for Single-character commands)
    RET: Closes current Royal Council and enacts its decisions.
    / : Opens dialog box for orders to MOBILIZEd troops.
    Also opens if troops are MOBILIZEd when Council closes.
    ? : Calls up the Help facility.
    Q : Quits the game. Will double-check with you, then ask whether you
        want to save the game, and, if so, to what file.

    'Orders: '  (Dialog box)
    ATTACK and SCOUT must be given with a direction, i.e.,
    NORTH,SOUTH,EAST and WEST. N,S,E,W may also be used.

    ATTACK:
    Number of troops entered in MOBILIZE will fight the country lying in the
    specified direction. Gains, losses and other info will be reported.

    SCOUT: (also RECON)
    Reconnaissance by soldiers MOBILIZEd in given direction. They will
    report estimated troop strengths, approximate size and wealth of the
    domain, and apparent hostility (i.e., likelihood of attack). Accuracy of
    report goes according to the number of soldiers who are sent and live to
    tell the tale -- up to about fifty; more than that usually brings dimin-
    ishing returns, since chances of getting caught go up with the size of
    the scouting party. Results of reconnaisance are stored and can be
    called up by the REVIEW command.


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    REVIEW: (also REV)
    Will show a table summarizing reconnaisance done so far. Your armies out
    on campaign (ATTACK command) will update this information the same way.
    Enemy invasions modify some of the information: enemy troop estimate
    is reduced by the number killed in your defense of their invasion, and
    enemy territory estimate is increased by the number of acres they win
    from you, if any. Also shows the year a reconnaisance item was acquired.


    OTHER SCREENS

    The year-end report screen is shown every year, with a summary of farm
    productivity, births, deaths, plague, population, wealth, etc.

    In between, there are screens that report results of campaigns and in-
    vasions, as appropriate.








































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    CONSTRAINTS & CONDITIONS


    PER CAPita grain should be 10 or more (prevents starvation and riots).

    Occurrences of starvation increase chance of riots and starvation.

    Health index below .75 increases chance of plague.

    Higher PER CAPS increase population and disease-resistance (up to 40).

    Grain price fluctuates around .05 talents per bushel, but not very far

    Neighbors are "live:" resources of their countries fluctuate, too: their
    wealth depends on population, land and current grain-price; population
    growth or decline depends on wealth; land depends on their military
    successes & failures; hostility level (i.e., how likely they are to
    invade) varies; their number of new troops depends on population and
    hostility level.

    Size of enemy mobilizations depend on their hostility and wealth.

    An enemy's hostility-factor can change:
    Decreases when enemy is defeated severely enough (more than about
    15% casualties).
    Increases when you are defeated severely enough.

    Accuracy of scouts' troop-counts goes up with size of patrol, unless the
    'S' parameter was included in the command-line at the start of the game.

    When MOBILIZing, forces left at home face possible raids the same year.



    STRATEGIES

    The only way to acquire more land is by force of arms.

    The surest way to wealth is to buy low and sell high.

    Make sure that all those not farming are BUILDing or RECRUITing.

    When MOBILIZing, leave enough troops at home to defend against raids that
    may come the same year; i.e., before campaigning forces return.

    Successful campaigns bring gold & land; also sudden jumps in population.

    Overpopulation can sometimes be a problem -- deal with it promptly:
    if you can't make a quick conquest of territory, starve the population
    for a year or two - the survivors will be better off, and you can avoid
    a downward cycle of poverty. (To rule well, as Kublai Khan once said,
    "You must be as good as you can be, and as evil as you have to be.")
    Of course, if you do this too many times, the people will start rioting
    and looting the granaries.


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    A conquered neighbor just may be followed by a much more threatening one.

    Increase troops quickly at first, while enemy strength is still unknown.
    Increasing troops slowly but steadily thereafter is the most painless.
    Larger troop-buildups just before a campaign will cover its casualties.

    Keep reconnaisance info up to date - items are marked with year acquired.

    Stability can be gained by consistently applying a simple formula:
    try to buy at least a few thousand bushels when price is below .05
    likewise, always try to sell a few thousand when price is above .05
    BUILD at least some canals every year; the long-term benefit is great.












































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    III. HELP FACILITY

    When you type "?" in the Command field, the dialog box opens up with the
    prompt "Topic: ," while displaying instructions and main topic-heading in
    a window that opens up in the Result-Fields area of the screen. In
    response to the prompt, you may either specify one of the topic-headings
    by number, or type in a keyword that you believe is associated with the
    material you're looking for (distinction between upper-case and lower-
    case is ignored). In the first case, Help will display the first few
    lines of the topic specified; in the second case, it will stop at the
    first occurrence of the keyword that you specify.

    If you think it has stopped near the material you want to see, you may
    scroll through the text a single line at a time: RETURN advances the
    scrolling forward a line, and BACKSPACE scrolls back up a line. Alterna-
    tively, you can press the TAB key to keep searching for the next occur-
    rence of the keyword; if the search reaches the end of the Help file
    without another "hit," you'll get a beep and a message to that effect. At
    any time during scrolling or tabbing, you can break it off by hitting
    ESC, which will put the cursor back into the dialog box, waiting for
    another keyword from you to search for.

    At this point, you may opt to quit Help altogether, in which case you
    just press RETURN, and the game resumes.

    During scrolling or searching, the display shows the current line-number
    and the most recent topic-heading read. The intent of this is to help you
    stay oriented while peering through this diminutive window.

    The text of Help is just a text-file on the disk called PRINCE.HLP. If
    you wish, you can add to the Help text or customize it to your taste, but
    before doing so, you should know about a couple of relevant particulars.

    First, there is a 200-line limit on what the program reads from the .HLP
    file; any more than that is simply ignored. As distributed, the file is
    149 lines long, which leaves a bit of room for notes or whatever of your
    own choosing. The first 7 lines of the file are what is displayed when
    Help is first called; it considers the 8th line as line #1 of the Help
    text proper.

    Topic headings are single digits in column 1, followed by a right paren
    in column 2, for instance: "4)". When the search or scroll routine sees
    this configuration, it will display whatever else is on that line as the
    current topic heading. If you decide to modify the Help file, it's
    probably a good idea to save a copy of it somewhere; make sure you name
    the modified version PRINCE.HLP -- that portion of the program is not
    overly smart, and won't know what to do otherwise.










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    IV. PROGRAM NOTES

    "PRINCE" AND ITS PREDECESSORS
    by Terry Dyke

    "Prince" is a variation on a type of game program that has a long
    tradition among microcomputer enthusiasts. The first one I remember
    seeing was a BASIC listing in "Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calis-
    thenics and Orthodontia" in early 1976, when that publication was a
    skinny newsprint affair, and you had to know somebody, it seemed, to get
    your hands on a copy. That game was called "Kingdom," and I took  the
    listing over to a friend of mine who had built an Altair micro  with a
    whopping 32K of memory; he'd also recently acquired a "TV Type- writer"
    -- CRT terminal -- so he was no longer confined to tiny  machine-lang-
    uage programs entered via the front-panel switches.

    I was anxious to exploit this glamorous new boon to hobby computing, as
    well as to make use of a "high-level" computer language, even if it was
    BASIC. I'd been reading that Tiny Basic was starting to be used on a lot
    of home micros, and that Altair Basic was even pretty close to a full-
    blown one. So, we hurriedly entered the source code for "Kingdom,"
    cleaned up a couple of syntax errors, and we were off and ruling. Many
    bleary-eyed hours later, we saved the program onto yet another new
    marvel, the cassette recorder.

    Since then, the game has turned up in various incarnations on bulletin
    boards and in computer-club libraries. It seems that the most ubiqui-
    tous of the lot was "Hammurabi," which, unlike "Kingdom," had a spe-
    cific setting, ancient Mesopotamia. That, I thought, was a nice touch;
    it aided the willing suspension of disbelief, just like a play or a
    movie or a story. As a childhood fan of those Avalon-Hill board games in
    which faithful simulation is so important, I definitely appreciated the
    similarity between a good game and a good yarn.

    Still, "Hammurabi" was recognizably just "Kingdom" dressed up in Baby-
    lonian robes; it added little to the basic structure of the game. More
    recently, the game has appeared on a ten-dollar games disk from an
    outfit that distributes through a nationwide bookstore chain. This time,
    it was called "Ruler." Even though it did have the improvement of being
    implemented in compiled BASIC, it was put back into a generic setting,
    and some aspects of the quality of play are uneven and frustrating. For
    example, I found it impossible ever to profit solely by farming, but
    since land prices varied all the way from 1 to 10, sometimes from one
    turn to the next, it quickly became obvious that one could make out
    quite handsomely by becoming a real-estate speculator instead. But I
    always wondered: From whom, exactly, is this monarch buying territory
    for his realm? Of course, in fairness, that question is a legacy that
    goes all the way back to "Kingdom."

    Perhaps the best variant of the game was an offering from Instant
    Software called "Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio" for the venerable Apple
    II. The setting was two fictitious city-states in Renaissance Italy,
    and the game even had a great little graphics sequence during each turn
    that would paint the present picture of your domain, with palaces and
    churches in their current stage of construction, a number of stalls in


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    the marketplace for your merchants, and little plows and furrows over
    the area of land under cultivation. There were many additional elements
    in the structure of the game, such as money, construction of these
    buildings, accommodating trade, raising an army, etc. You could also
    have several players going in parallel, each with their own country,
    although there was hardly any controllable interaction among them;
    basically, whoever achieved the games's goal first was the winner.

    Another good innovation that "Santa Paravia" included was an input-
    screen that you could call up from time to time and change various
    parameters affecting your governing policies. You could set such things
    as how high your taxes were, whether your justice was lenient or harsh,
    and quite a few other things of that sort. All of these would have some
    effect on the success of your reign and the outcome of the game. The
    input-screen was a step in the right direction, I thought, but still, in
    the main sequence of play, "Santa Paravia" shared with its predecessors
    a very avoidable liability: data was input via the traditional line-by-
    line, prompt-and-response dialog, and that makes it impossible to go
    back and change your mind about a particular value once you're past that
    point in the dialog sequence.

    Such a state of affairs is most awkward, considering that the focus of
    play is in creating an overall balance, an optimum among a number of
    interrelated variables. That, and the fact that there's usually a fair
    amount of arithmetic in the way that the variables are related, usually
    meant a lot of bookkeeping and "what-if" calculation on the side when
    playing one of these games. Surely, one of the most bewildering spect-
    acles imaginable is somebody who is obliged to keep a dime-store calcu-
    lator in front of his multi-kilobuck computer!

    So with an enduring enthusiasm for this type of game, I still had a
    bagful of dissatisfactions with the slips and flaws of earlier versions
    of it; there were none of them that I completely enjoyed playing, since
    even the minor aggravations add up substantially after enough hours.
    Eventually, I decided to do something about it, and "Prince" is the
    result. The design of it, I hoped, would embody all the ideals I had
    come to appreciate from the flaws and quirks and near-misses of other
    versions of the game.

    First, there is the data-entry-screen orientation, with its recalcula-
    tion feature. This, along with the online Help and the REVIEW command,
    eliminates offscreen bookkeeping and calculation. It also allows you to
    juggle variables and play "what-if" until you are satisfied it's some-
    thing you're ready to commit to. I wanted a user interface that's easy
    and intuitive for beginning use, as well as quick and comfortable for
    extended use; that's one of my main interests as a programmer, anyway,
    and a lot of tinkering and refinement went into the interface.

    Since this sort of game is basically an economic simulation, I wanted an
    economy that is somewhat more complex and interesting that just planting
    and allocating grain, but still manageably simple for a modest-sized
    program. So, "Prince" includes money and trade; the opportunity for gain
    through speculation is still there, but rather than using land as a
    store of value, gold is used instead. The fluctuations in prevailing
    prices are not large, so it's more of a challenge to build up profits in


                                   13








    the business of buying low and selling high.

    The crux of most good games is conflict, so this one allows you to raise
    and army and put it to good use. This also alleviates the old problem of
    the anonymous real-estate dealer: to get more land in "Prince," you have
    to go out and conquer it.

    It's important, I felt, to make sure that the various things that happen
    to you unpredictably are things that you also have some way to avoid, or
    at least, protect against. For example, it earlier games, a drought can
    occur at random intervals and decimate your crops; if that happens,
    there you jolly well are -- there's not much provision you make for such
    an eventuality, other than having the good sense to be enormously pro-
    sperous already; that more or less begs the question, since achieving
    prosperity is largely the point of the game. In "Prince," though, you
    can build up your irrigation system as a hedge against drought.

    The same holds true for occurrences of plague, also a traditional calam-
    ity inflicted at random in this type of game. In "Prince," there is an
    overall health index maintained for your people; consistently allowing
    them more than the minimum ration of grain will increase this index, and
    so lessen the impact of disease, both the chances of its occurring and
    the amount of damage done when it does occur. Conversely, occurrences of
    plague or starvation will reduce this health index. Increases in the
    health index also determine the net population growth, since abundance
    of food correlates positively with fertility in almost every society,
    particularly less-developed ones.

    Another traditional hazard is the loss of some portion of the year's
    harvest to rats. This even appears in "Santa Paravia," and indeed, in
    the earliest versions of "Prince." But no longer; it didn't really seem
    to add any interest to the game, since the eye tends to drop to the
    bottom line on the harvest report, anyway; and to remain consistent with
    the "be-able-to-do-something-about-it" principle, there would have to be
    some sort of pest-extermination facility available, so I junked the
    whole idea of rats.

    In a simulation like this, it's important that the variables behave and
    interact in a balanced way, that their typical values tend toward the
    middle of their ranges, rather than toward one end or the other. Other-
    wise, you will find that you're trying to maximize or minimize a factor,
    rather than optimize it. That spoils a lot of the fun, since optimizing
    is by nature more challenging than simple maximization or minimization.
    For example, in "Santa Paravia," one can choose the percentage level of
    two types of taxation; it turned out that the best advantage is always
    gained, as far as I could tell, by setting one type to the maximum and
    the other to zero. That simply eliminated the question of taxation from
    the dynamics of play. Another example: in "Ruler," as I mentioned
    earlier, it never seemed possible to optimize one's farming activities
    in such a way as to come out ahead; once this becomes apparent, one
    fares a lot better by virtually ignoring farming and concentrating
    instead on buying and selling land.

    Apparently, such balancing of variables is largely an empirical process,
    one that depends on the initial values selected, the proportions of


                                   14








    random factors, and so forth. The only reliable way I know of going
    about this is to play the game a lot and tweak the various values,
    increments and ranges accordingly. I'll personally vouch for the fact
    that a great deal of this did indeed occur during the development of
    this game! I've also persuaded several of my friends to submit the
    program to rigorous play-testing, and their compliance has been grati-
    fyingly thorough.

    One final comment about variables: you may notice that it's possible to
    play for dozens of "years," presumably living to an unrealistically ripe
    old age. Very true; however, I've found that the outcome of the game is
    generally very apparent by year 40 -- you've either got the situation
    quite comfortably in hand by then, or you're forestalling inevitable
    doom by only the thinnest margin. Figuring that you began around age
    twenty, that would make you sixty or so by then, and that seems a fair
    enough concession to realism. Indeed, early versions of "Prince" in-
    cluded a random aging factor that increased the likelihood of death with
    each passing year; but it didn't seem to add any interest to the game --
    it was just something that came out of nowhere, regardless of how wise
    or foolish your strategy. So, about the time I was consolidating the
    "be-able-to-do-something-about-it" criterion, I removed the aging
    factor. Certainly, when our time comes in real life, there's not a whole
    lot we can do about it, but much of the appeal of these alternate worlds
    that we enter through the looking glass of the CRT is that they are in
    some ways better, or more to our liking, or more under our control. So,
    if you care to play past the age of 110 without a decisive win, loss, or
    embarrassment, more power to you!

    The story aspect of this game is set in tenth-century Central Asia for
    mostly arbitrary reasons, but not entirely. Mostly, stories in that
    setting have the same kind of appeal to me personally that, say, pirate
    or knights-in-armor tales might have to someone else. But there is the
    added advantage that the cultures of those times in that part of the
    world were economically fairly simple; the factors governing power,
    territoriality, even basic survival, were relatively few, consistent,
    and stark. And very suitable for a simulation of this sort.

    It's not hard to imagine that the game could have been set equally well
    in any number of other locales; the local flavor here is mostly verbal,
    so if that proves sufficient, it's a credit to the player's imagination.
    Indeed, some use of graphics such as those in "Santa Paravia" could have
    been used to similar advantage in "Prince." The reasons for the omission
    of graphics is, again, mostly a matter of taste. It's an area of comput-
    ing I'm generally indifferent towards; the graphics in "Santa Paravia,"
    good as they were, were nevertheless no match for what was going on in
    my mind's eye, as well as agonizingly slow; in moments of private bias,
    I've assumed that "Prince" could still provide a vivid experience, just
    as many books do, even though they have no illustrations.

    At any rate, there's the fact that this program was done in Turbo Pascal
    Version 3.0, with its 64K limit on object code, and "Prince" is already
    crowding that limit. Inclusion of pictures would have been at the cost
    of much functionality that is there instead. Now that Turbo 4.0 and 5.0
    have broken the 64K barrier, future versions of "Prince" may indeed
    include a discreet amount of graphics. Let me know what you think.


                                   15









    VERSION 2.2

    This new version of Pince is essentially the same game as version 2.1,
    but with a couple of features added. I also reworked some of the logic
    in several parts of the program and fixed a couple of bugs. Most notable
    among the latter was the "five-planets" bug, wherein the population of a
    neighboring country sometimes would jump to a size big enough to over-
    crowd at least five habitable planets.

    New Features:

       o Save-game feature. At quit, there is an option to save the game in
         its present state. At startup, there is an option to restore a
         previously-saved game.

       o Five levels of difficulty. This is set with a startup option.

    Additions and Changes:

       o Year-end report screen now makes it plain whether your farming was
         profitable or not.

       o Greater magnitude of resources. Generally larger numbers for Land,
         Population, etc. Game now goes to 100,000 talents.

       o Emigration added. Short food supplies causes people to leave the
         country; starvation doesn't start until supplies are very short and
         health is low.

       o Immigration added. People come into the country from time to time,
         especially if conditions are favorable (PER CAP and Health okay).

       o Neighbors may now increase their hostility factors for internal
         reasons (overcrowding, extreme poverty).

       o Neighbors don't automatically increase hostility after a victory or
         decrease after a defeat.

    DEVELOPMENT NOTES

    As noted above, "Prince" was written in Turbo Pascal (Ver 3.0) on a
    vintage Compaq portable (Norton SI 1.0) whose only concessions to
    customization are 640K of memory and a 10-Mb hard disk that must have
    been one of the last ten-megs ever manufactured. The video on the Compaq
    is a CGA work-alike, but I've tested "Prince" on a friend's Leading
    Edge, which uses monochrome and Hercules graphics, so the program is all
    right in that environment. As far as I've been able to tell, it should
    also work on AT-style machines with conventional video, but 386 systems
    and EGA-type video are completely unfamiliar territory, and if you have
    access to any of this stuff, I'd be grateful to know how well (or
    whether!) the program works on it.

    The concern for compatibility stems from the fact that "Prince" does a
    lot of direct writing to the screen, which is of course notoriously


                                   16








    hardware-dependent. The code can discern the presence of monochrome vs.
    CGA video hardware and adjust accordingly, but this is still behavior
    that IBM seems to disapprove of as being rudely pre-emptive of DOS, and
    probably antisocial as well. Nevertheless, the advantage to be gained
    poses quite a temptation, that of blistering speed in screen-updates;
    many programmers have yielded to it, including, as I understand it,
    those at Lotus during the era that preceded Version 2.0 of 1-2-3. So I
    hope I'm in good company in this regard.

    As you might expect, the program makes extensive use of random func-
    tions, and indeed, such an application could be a regular Roman Holiday
    for statisticians. My approach, though, was largely empirical, and I
    would take no offense to hear some of the algorithms described as "brute
    force." I made very little use of "textbook" numerical or statistical
    techniques, other than enough to report that the Turbo random function
    produces rather unremarkable results in a chi-squared test, and has a
    period somewhat shorter than ideal.

    Having spent many an aggravated moment in the midst of some game hanging
    at the mercy of a pseudo-random generator that was long on the pseudo
    and short on the random, I became convinced that the quality of the
    random function is surely important enough to drag out a textbook or
    two. Apparently, the construction of a high-quality random-number gen-
    erator is something of a black art, but one that has been thoroughly and
    extensively practiced in recent years.

    The resulting random-generator that found its way into "Prince" is
    actually a composite of two very different, well-tested and generally
    acknowledged random functions, plus the one built into Turbo; the Turbo
    function is used to select between the two others, and the result is a
    random distribution that is much more "robust," I believe the term is,
    than any single function by itself. The period of such a composite is
    much longer, too, being the sum of the periods of all three component
    functions. This considerably slims down the chances of getting stuck in
    noticably repetitive sequences. Just as well, because a single turn in
    "Prince" can call the random function several hundred times.

    The development environment, aside from that built into Turbo Pascal, is
    one that I've gradually built up over the past couple of years. I'll be
    making it available, in a good deal more refined form, as a MEDIA
    METHODS freeware offering called The Programmer's Toolkit. So Turbo
    hackers take note (especially if you haven't upgraded past version 3.0
    yet).

    Those C hotshots always have nice, juicy subroutine libraries available
    to them to do their dirty work, so the centerpiece of the Toolkit is a
    fairly versatile library of general-purpose subprograms that do most of
    the low-level, repetitive stuff like disk I/O, various screen-writes,
    type-checked input, and so forth. They're all pretty straightforward,
    and most could be readily duplicated by anyone with a DOS Technical
    Reference Manual, IF they wanted to take the trouble. There's very
    little hocus-pocus (inline assemler, etc.) that these routines use,
    unless you consider standard BIOS and DOS calls to be in that category.

    I've used commercial Turbo libraries at times, but it seems that they


                                   17








    want to give you all sorts of flash and be everything for every possible
    situation, with little regard for program size. The Toolkit shoots for
    one of those 80-20 deals: deliver 80 percent of the functionality with
    20 percent of the code. Besides the routines that recapitulate the Tech
    Manual, there are routines for handling windows (again, with a compact,
    no-frills approach) and formatted data-entry screens just like the one
    you see in "Prince's" Royal Council. With the data-entry screens, I've
    opted for a few frills, but the source code is set up in a very flexible
    manner, so that the various amenities, such as the status line or the
    additional prompts attached to each field, can be included or omitted at
    will. The screen itself can be built in a very intuitive way with any
    text editor, the source text looking very much the same as the end
    product. The source for the screen can either be read from a text file
    at run-time, or else incorporated into the program source-code at com-
    pile-time.

    The library system is geared to get around a lot of the limitations of
    pre-4.0 Turbo. The whole library is kept in a single text file, so you
    don't have to litter your disk with a bunch of tiny "Include" files that
    nevertheless take up the minimum 4K apiece. Working in conjunction with
    the library are the "Make" program and the Librarian. "Make" reads your
    source program while consulting a table of names of procedures, func-
    tions and modules that are currently in the library. That table, which
    you can maintain, is structured to reflect the dependencies among the
    various routines, so if Make comes across a call to the library routine
    "Foo" in your program, and "Foo" happens to call "Bar," and "Bar" calls
    "Grunt," then the output of Make will specify Grunt, Bar and Foo, in
    that order. This output is is next picked up by the Librarian, which
    then fishes out the specified routines from the Library file, and writes
    out copies of them, in the order specified, to a file that you can then
    Include in your main program. No muss, no fuss.

    Of course, if you have Turbo version 4.0 or later, a lot of the need for
    Make and Librarian goes away. However, the library routines themselves
    are still as useful as ever.


    MEDIA METHODS SOFTWARE

    Media Methods is the descendant of a communications-consulting firm that
    has over the years assisted a number of clients in finding integrated
    solutions to their communications and computing problems, has put
    together a regional cable-television programming service, has produced a
    number of industrial and educational video presentations, both linear
    and interactive, and has developed and sold a number of computer appli-
    cations for communications vertical markets, including a program that
    helps buyers of radio and television advertising, and one that helps
    advertisers in placing their spots on cable television.

    "Prince" is the firm's first entry into the freeware market, and we are
    offering two different disks of high-quality software at affordable
    prices. The Toolkit (described in DEVELOPMENT NOTES), "Prince" and the
    Complete Entertainment Disk are all available now.

    (See file MMSOFTWE.DOC)


                                   18








                         MEDIA METHODS SOFTWARE
                              Now Available


    ENTERTAINMENT DISK

    Registered version ($15.00) contains;

         "Prince," without commercials.

         "Automata" - Explore cellular automata; Lotus-style interface.

         "Life" - A very fast version of John Horton Conway's famous
              game, in both text and CGA graphics versions.

         "NewMusic" - Use a rational notation to write a melody, then
              hear it played by the program.


    PROGRAMMER'S TOOLKIT (For Turbo Pascal)

    Shareware version contains:
         Make program
         Librarian program
         Source code for the Basic Library
         Demos for
              Windows
              Formatted data-entry screens

    Registered version ($20.00) contains:
         Make program
         Source code for Librarian
         Source code for Complete Library, including
              Windows module
              Formatted data-entry screen module






















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