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1995-02-18
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243 lines
-= BRECon Interplanetary Bulletin Generator version 0.093 =-
-= (C)1995 HighwayWare =-
-= Documentation and Users Guide =-
-- DISCLAIMER --
| This utility (BRECon) is FREEWARE. Therefore, USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. |
| There are NO warranties or guarantees of any concievable form associated |
| with this program, other than the fact that it WILL occupy space on your |
| storage media, be it floppy, hard, tape, WORM, 8-track, whatever. :> |
| |
| If it screws up, feel free to delete it and send me nasty netmail. |
-- System Requirements
BRECon now will function on 8088/8086 systems. Now only about 300k
of memory needed, irregardless of League size.
-- Overview
Ok, it's "just another BRE bulletin generator". (yawn). Yep, that's it.
Yeah, but it's one that WORKS with the new (v0.961+) version of BRE! Now
that's a plus. (version 0.07 changed to work propely with ßeta versions of
BRE)
I used to use BREMIL and BRESPY (copyrighted by their repective authors)
to make my IP "master" and "bulletin" lists. But since the data formats
for BRE changed (0.956 to 0.960), those old, but excellent, utilities no
longer functioned as designed. So I fired up TP and coded up my own. And
there were a few idiosyncracies about those two progs that bugged me, so
I made what I consider to be a few improvements.
One - a SINGLE copy of BRECon can function for as many leagues as you run.
No more having umpteen copies of the same bulletin generator wasting your
valuable HD space.
Two - SPEED. BRECon is FAST. Period. All sorting is done entirely in memory,
and disk access is kept to a bare minimum. No more 30-second delays while
your huge BRE league is processed. (that bugged me the most about those old
utilities)
Three - ease of setup. BRECon is entirely commandline driven. No RESOURCE.DAT
to add parameters to. (save for bulletin names, BRE itself needs that.)
Four - Elimination of "dead" data. How many BRE bulletin generators have you
seen make seemingly endless screens full of data on systems that haven't even
RECONNED yet! This, in my opinion, is both lazy programming and a waste of
hard drive space and player time. This baby here only produces bulletins for
systems that actually HAVE something to report to you. No more waste.
-- Nitty Gritty (or how to use de dang thing)
For a quick look see on how to use it, just type BRECON /? at the DOS prompt.
A help screen will pop up with the info you need. But since you took the
trouble to load up your text editor or whatever to read this file, I'll tell
ya how to use it now.
BRE IP (InterPlanetary) games are USUALLY won or lost based on which "planet"
(BBS) achieves the highest cumulative score. Some Leagues use different
values, such as region count, or possibly Networth. ....I assume you know
this already. What BRECon does is sort the ENTIRE league, by whatever "value"
you see fit, and then produce a "master list" and/or "bulletin list" of said
League, in order, from #1 to #whatever. Options for League Sorting are: by
Regions (default), Score, Networth, and System Number. However, due to some
SysOps and users input, "Realm Sorting" has also been implemented. Irregard-
less of what type of "League Sort" you use, you can specify one of four "Realm
Sort" types, which are identical to the League sort types. Confused? Don't be.
Here's an example commandline for BRECon:
BRECON p=c:\doors\bre253 ls rr both b#
..that just told BRECon to sort League 253 by Score, Realms by Regions, and
to produce both BULLETIN.LST and BRE_253.ANS/.ASC bulletin files, using nu-
meric format.
Now I bet you're confused :> Read on...
Let me explain in detail the parameters BRECON needs.
One: The PATH to the BRE game you want to produce bulletins for. Precede the
complete path with a 'p=', just like in the above example.
Two: Sorting options - Four types here, with two applications. Use 'L' for
'League', and 'R' for 'Realm', with the appropriate 'field' designator
after it. I.e., use 'LR' to sort the LEAGUE by REGIONS, 'LS' to sort by
SCORE, 'LN' for NETWORTH, and 'L#' for a simple numerical order. The same
basic principle applies to 'Realm' sort. 'RR' for 'Regions', 'RS' for
SCORE, 'RN' for NETWORTH, and 'R#' for alpha-order.
Three: Output file "toggles" - BRECon will, by default, produce TWO output
files. These two files will have the names BRE_xxx.ANS/.ASC, where
xxx is equal to the Interplanetary League Number. For example, if you
are playing in, say, League 999, BRECon will produce BRE_999.ANS and
BRE_999.ASC, color and ASCII bulletins respectively. Use B# to gener-
ate NUMERIC format BULLETIN.LST files.
However...
You ALSO have the option of producing either a "BULLETIN.LST"-style
output file ONLY, -OR- producing BULLETIN.LST -AND- the BRE_xxx.ANS/
BRE_xxx.ASC files simultaneously. Toggle these options with the key-
words 'BULL' or 'BOTH'. Specifying BULL will cause BRECon to produce
only a BULLETIN.LST file, whereas specifying BOTH (duh) produces both
types of files. I think you'll figure it out.
(The ANSI/ASCII files will be created in the BRE directory specified
on the commandline with the "p=" parameter. BULLETIN.LST will be
created in the \GAME directory, where BRE expects it to be.)
Oh yeah, separate your parameters with a SPACE. Parameters may occur
in any order, upper or lower case on the commandline.
**Important Note: If you wish, BRECon is capable of generating NUMERIC-FORMAT
BULLETIN.LST "indexes" - i.e., instead of typing the ENTIRE system name at
the Bulletin prompt, you may instead type "BBS#". Remember, BRECon will NOT
produce bulletins for realms which have no players or data - therefore, the
numbers in the index file refer to the system's League Rank (determined by
which Sort Type you specify), NOT the IP BRE System Number! Simply omit the
"B#" parameter from the commandline to generate FULL BBS system names in the
BULLETIN.LST file.
-- RESOURCE.DAT
I did mention something about NOT having to edit BRE's RESOURCE.DAT file,
didn't I? Well, I LIED. :> Yup, fire up EDIT.COM and start typing.
Make sure to add the appropriate 'ExternalScoresAnsi blah blah blah' lines,
or your faithful BRE addicts wont get to see your pretty new BRECon screens.
(Consult the file RESOURCE.DOC included with BRE for more details on extern-
al file installation).
-- Error Logging
BRECon will produce an error log, "BRECON.ERR", in the event of any runtime
error. I have endeavored to make this utility as bug-free as humanly
possible, but, heh, things happen. The error log will list exactly what went
wrong when and if the program blows lunch. It's a standard text file, so
feel free to TYPE it or whatever.
BRECon WILL NOT run if the INUSE.FLG file generated by BRE is present.
Multinoders, please keep this in mind.
-- Complaint Department
Please direct all complaints to >NUL. Or, in lieu of that, Netmail the
author, Mike Nichols (that's me!) at any of the following addresses:
1:320/997 (Fido)
30:203/0 (SGA-Net)
67:107/100 (PSI-Net, Alpha #28)
50:590/110 (RGSNet)
84:140/0 (RTSNet)
85:861/130 (ITC)
Or, call my BBS direct at (203)347-6997 or (203)347-0680. 300-28800bps.
Suggestions are appreciated. This file may be Freq'ed using the "Magic
Name" BRECON from any of the above addresses, 24 hours a day.
-- Suggestions?
PLEASE. I need 'em. Any input at all is welcome. Send your ideas via net-
mail to any of my addresses, or call my BBS is you have the time and leave
feedback to me.
-- Credits
A BIG part of the crdit for BRECon deservedly goes out to Borland Inter-
national, producers of Borland Turbo Pascal 7.0, without which I'd have
much difficulty producing this program. (I hate DEBUG). Here's the oblig-
atory line...
Portions Copyright (c) 1983,92 Borland (thanks, guys!)
My Co-SysOp, Ken Coomes, thought up the neato name, BRECon.
-- More Legal Babble
I hereby release USE OF this program into the public domain, as FREEWARE.
However, I retain FULL rights of ownership to the source code. You MAY
NOT hex-edit, reverse-engineer, tamper with or otherwise modify this
executable. Failure to comply with this restriction is punishable under
United States (and international) copyright laws.
-- Revision History
02/18/95- v0.093 Released - minor "tweaks". Added commas in all numeric
fields for easier reading. I.e: "1999" now appears as "1,999" and
so forth. Added capability to produce NUMERIC-FORMAT BULLETINS.
(Use the B# switch with either BULLONLY or BOTH parameters)
11/13/94- v0.092 Released - dropped 286 requirement, now will run on 8088
or 8086 systems. MAJOR memory improvement! Now only needs around
256k free to sort ANY league, of ANY size. (up to BRE's internal
limit of 255 systems/25 realms per system) Drastically reduced
size of .EXE file (about 33%). No speed loss, even without 286
instruction set enabled.
11/10/94- v0.091 Released - fixed minor liguistic errors in "Inactive Sys-
tems" listing. Added a short-'n-sweet HighWayWare "plug" to the
bulletins. (why not? everyone ELSE does :)
11/05/94- v0.090 Released - Fixed runtime error 103 (file not open). BRECon
was trying to close TIMES.BR even if it didn't exist. (Due to a
league-wide reset) Ooops. Made mods to output files to reflect
lack of "League-Wide" recon information.
11/03/94- v0.080 Released - Stripped out useless system ID routines. Fixed
prompt color being set to dark grey in BULLETIN section of BRE
(if BULLETIN.LST was being produced). Also made BULLETIN.LST
screens clear the users screen before display. Reduced system
memory requirements by approx 2048 bytes.
10/20/94- v0.070 Released - Minor bug fixes: BRECon was not properly restoring
the screen color upon exit. (Thanks to Ed Stangler for telling me
about this one) Revamped help screen a bit. Changed the way runtime
errors are logged a tiny bit, too. Tweaked string handling a bit for
"strange" version names in ßeta versions of BRE, now will work with
these versions.
10/19/94- Initial release (v0.060)
* Versions 0.01-0.05 never released to public.
[EOF]