Robosport TCP Primer
 - Fallous fallous@ksu.ksu.edu
[Hey, I asked him, and he said he just wanted to be known as "Fallous." I can't help it. -Jason]

So you've had Maxis' RoboSport gathering dust in your trusty software shelf, and heard that it would work with a TCP/IP link? Well you're right! And this is to help you set up the beast, since the Maxis docs remain very silent on the issue of Amiga networking.

First, you will need AmiTCP (3.0b2 and 4.x have been tested, but all versions should work) or Mlink. Of course, it helps to actually have these installed and some sort of net connection as well.

Before you start RoboSporting on the net, you will need to create an entry for it so AmiTCP can handle it. This is painless if you do exactly what I tell you. cd to AmiTCP:db and edit the services file. Go to the bottom of the file, where you should see entries for Amiga clients and their port numbers. on a line under one of these entries, enter:

RoboSport 4555/tcp

make sure to type it in EXACTLY as written, since this is case-sensitive.

If you're already running AmiTCP, you will have to restart it by rebooting, or stopnet. After restarting AmiTCP, you are ready to proceed.

After running RoboSport, and entering the copy protection codes, you will have a menu sitting in the middle of the screen, which is the QuickStart menu. Press the right mouse button and go to the titlebar menu. Under the Edit heading will be the line "Open TCP/IP Connection..." and that's what you want. After releasing the button on this selection, a TCP/IP Configuration window will appear in the center of the screen. There are 2 ways to run RoboSport in the TCP mode:

First, make sure that the secondary option button is lit, then enter the name you want for yourself in the "Your Name" textfield, then press enter. Second, in the "Host Name" textfield, enter the site name of the machine you are going to connect to (the server or primary machine). Press enter and click on OK button. You should get a window saying "Waiting to Talk." If you get something other than this message, recheck that you enter the hostname address correctly, retry, and if it still doesn't work, skip to the troubleshooting section of this file.

Again, make sure that the secondary option button is lit, then enter the name you want for yourself in the "Your Name" textfield and press enter. Then enter YOUR address in the "Host Name" textfield, and press enter. Then click on the primary button, make sure it's lit, and press the OK button. You should now have a menu that will list the names of the users as they log onto your machine. When all of the users you wish to have are on the list, continue with the game.

Installing on Mlink:

Ok, there are two ways to use RoboSport with Mlink, and both involve the SERVFILE tooltype.

  1. - With an existing SERVFILE

    Simply add: RoboSport 4555/tcp to the end of the existing file.

  2. - Without an existing SERVFILE
You need to create a file and set Mlink to check it for port aliases. This is easily done by simply editing a file (which we'll call foo, but could be any name) and on the first line type:

RoboSport 4555/tcp

then save the file.

Once you have saved the file, click once on the Mlink icon, and go to Information in the Icons menu of WB. Click on the SERVFILE tooltype, and type SERVFILE=work:foo (or whatever the full pathname of the file you created is) and save the new information. Now all should be well.

Actual Game Play:

Game play is pretty much according to the manual from here on, but there are some warnings that should be noted. First, only the PRIMARY machine should end the different play sessions, such as Talk, etc. If a machine crashes, let the primary machine cut it off the network. Also, if you experience numerous crashes during network play, try to avoid using the talk window to communicate. Most of us use an IRC client to talk and stay away from the built-in talk window since we've experienced a number of crashes when using the talk window, but they seemed to disappear when we stopped using it. The running of the game is covered in the manual, and is fairly obvious anyway, so I won't get into the intricacies of the game itself. A word of caution though: This is an old game, and I recommend that you turn off all commodities before running, as well as disabling any 040 features such as copyback, etc. The game is marginally system-friendly, but it does generate Enforcer hits out the wazoo. You may have to suffer a few crashes before getting it running, but that's the joys of computing.

TroubleShooting-

As of now, I haven't encountered any difficulties by using this file to set-up RoboSport. However, if someone does find problems, email me at

fallous@ksu.ksu.edu

and I'll try to solve the problem and include it in this troubleshooting section for the next update.

DISCLAIMER---

This little piece of help was generated by fallous, who is not responsible (for anything actually) for any damage or cursing, or criminal acts committed out of sheer frustration with this file. If you need any online help, I can be found on IRC, either Undernet or effnet, #amiga.

Have Fun, and don't break anything.