The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-385-Vol-1of3.iso/s/sre0990a.zip/UNPACK.EXE/DOCS/WHATS.NEW

Text File | 1993-01-07 | 11KB | 185 lines

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│                        │ You can only upgrade from an older version │
│   SOLAR REALMS ELITE   │ if that version is 0.990 or NEWER!         │
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│      What's NEW!!      │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
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  Version 0.990
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 0. This version is NOT COMPATIBLE with older versions!  You will not
    be able to keep your old game running, so if this is a problem,
    do not run this version until you are ready for a reset, or run
    two SRE games, one old and one new.  I would suggest re-reading
    the documentation, because many things have changed.
 1. All prices have been slashed! 10 old credits are worth 1 new credit;
    this will seem strange for a while, but BRE has done the same thing,
    so perhaps having both games do the same thing will make it easier.
 2. New non-inflationary pricing system!  Prices will remain low for the
    entire game rather than increasing whenever the empire becomes
    larger.  The empires must pay to maintain the bureaucracy that will
    accompany a large empire.  There is an option at reset-time to keep
    the old inflationary pricing.
 3. Players can enter the game without creating an empire; they can see
    the scores, the game parameters, public messages, and bulletins.
    This will allow them to see the game without being in it, and also
    to send messages to those who are playing.
 4. The civil war system has been redone.  If you don't pay or don't
    feed your people, the severity of your actions will dictate the
    casualties in the civil war.  In the past, any lack of food would
    cause 1/2 of your planets to revolt --- in the new version, it
    depends on how much you fed your people (the less you feed, the
    worse the civil war.)
 5. Treaties can be sent to multiple targets instead of sending to
    one at a time.
 6. The food scale has been changed by a factor of 100:  your people
    require 1/100th as much food as they used to; the prices in the
    food market are now more sensitive, and vary more often than in
    the old versions.
 7. There are more research options now.  You can edit them also:  edit
    Text/Research.LST, a text file with various research planet
    advances.  I will have an explanation of the fields in a later
    version; I am still working on it.
 8. Players can list bank investments with the "S" key from the bank menu.
 9. Users can list the covert agents that are still out on missions
    and what missions they are performing by pressing "S" from the
    covert operations menu.
10. From most menus, the user can press "V" to visit the bank.  This
    will make it more convenient to get to the money for covert ops,
    attacks, and spending.
11. There are a few more ANSI files that can be displayed to the user.
    The title screen can now be changed, and the exit screen is available
    in unregistered versions.  Also, _all_ of the ANSI screens go in
    the Screens/ subdirectory, instead of some of them going there and
    others going in the main SRE directory.
12. There is a tournament mode now!  When you decide to reset the game,
    you can set up a tournament instead of a normal game.  In Tournament
    mode, you can set the first and last day of the tournament, and
    after the last day, SRE will rank empires based on their performance.
    Each empire will receive points for being Solar, Planet, or Weapons
    Master.  (You can assign the point values in the Resource.dat file.)
    The one with the most points at the end of the tournament will be
    the winner.  The number of points an empire has is not displayed
    to the user until the tournament is over, so empires can't gang up
    on the current leader.
13. A new Advisor tells the player the efficiency of his empire.  The
    efficiency is calculated by taking earnings, subtracting costs, and
    dividing by the number of planets.  (It is the profit per planet.)
14. The menus are configurable!  You can change the menu text and the
    menu colors in the Resource.DAT file.  For more information, see
    Resource.DOC.  There are over 150 text strings and 500 colors that
    you can set!  (This will make it possible to make translate part
    of the game [the menus and help files] into another language.)
15. The LOG option has been changed --- you can now set a filename
    for the LOG file; instead of being LOG: Boolean = yes | no, it's
    Game.LOG: String (a filename)
16. Planets get created continuously while a player is logged on.  This
    means that someone could be playing, buy up all the planets, and a
    few minutes later, find that another planet is available in the
    market.
17. The status bar's color can be set in the Resource file.  The
    stars by the empire name in the empire status screen will match
    the status bar's color.
18. You can now set a path/filename for score files, so that the batch
    file does not have to copy them out each time SRE runs.
19. Several names of resource options have been changed.  Most important
    are probably BIOS, VGA, Multitasker, LOG, Scores, and Treaty.  If
    you were using one of those, please read Resource.DOC for the new
    names.  I changed BIOS because in the future, I may be able to
    interface with DESQview's display routines, so the new format
    would leave direct video, BIOS, and DESQview output in the same
    resource option.
20. You can have multiple resource files for different nodes.  See
    SYSOP.DOC for details.
21. For a list of things that have are NOT in 0.990 but WERE in 0.986,
    see WHATS.OLD.
22. The menus will automatically resize based on the size of the columns;
    if the numbers are small, the menu will not be as wide, so it will
    display faster.
23. LOCKOUT.USR has been moved to Text/Lockout.LST.  The format is
    the same (one username per line); the ANSI files have been moved
    to Screens/.
24. The configurable help text file has been renamed from SREHELP.DAT
    to Text/SRTopics.HLP.  You can create Text/Topics.Hlp if you wish
    to put your own text in there.
25. The help system now shows a menu and asks the user for a help topic
    number, so the players don't have to type in the entire word.  The
    help topic colors are configurable (!), so you can individually color
    them through the resource file.
26. When empires trade, the net worth of the trading deal is counted in
    the net worth of the empire who owns the goods.
27. Messages can be attached to trade deals so that the empire can
    tell his trading partner why & what he's trading.
28. The prizes in the Pick-5 lottery are higher than ever!
29. The game saves MUCH less often, so it should be significantly faster
    in most places.
30. The news file options have been moved into the resource file.
31. The player can automatically pay for all expenses if he wishes.
32. Players can set various preferences in an expanded Preferences
    section.  Included are options for paying all expenses, donating
    to the Galactic Coordinator, depositing everything into the bank
    at the end of each turn, non-redisplaying menus, and preventing
    Enter from exiting the spending menu.  These preferences remain
    in Data/Player.II even past a reset, so that they don't have
    to enter everything again.
33. When the player finds a bribed spy working in his empire, he can
    re-bribe that spy to work for him to spy on the empire who originally
    bribed him.  (Confusing?)
34. The system will not let players exit the "double spy" menu unless
    they press "Q".  This will prevent them from missing the rare
    occasion of finding a double-spy.
35. Users can get information about the game such as the amount of
    planets and food available, number of turns per day, turns of
    protection, and tournament information if a tournament is being
    run.
36. The sysop empire viewer has been fixed so that the scores and
    planets appear in the correct color and order.
37. The pirate editor lets you change the color of the pirate team.
38. The status screen now shows the net worth and total number of planets.
39. There is a new resource option (News.PirateRaids) for controlling
    whether pirate raids are reported in the news files.
40. Only one bribed spy can be working for you in another empire at
    a time; in the past, more than one spy could be bribed, but having
    more did no more than having one, so it was a waste of money.
41. New empires can choose the letter (slot) they wish to play.
    (This is instead of always filling the first slot.)  This way,
    players can sometimes choose the same slot after a reset.
42. During daily maintenance, "important" data files are copied
    to the Backups/ directory.
43. Neutrality treaties are always binding, even when their "time"
    has run out.  This allows players to have treaties of virtually
    unlimited length; to break the treaty, the player must break
    it from the Diplomacy Menu.
44. During reset, you can choose whether you want to reset the pirate
    names; if you don't want to do so, the names remain, but the pirate
    data is set to zero.
45.
  What to expect in the future
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 1. A research menu that allows the player to select areas which should
    be researched more than others.
 2. Special weapons that can be developed by research planets.
 3. Pirates keeping track of which empires have attacked and how much
    they were hurt.  (This will sort of give them "personality".)
 4. Message attaches to battle results, so that the empire who attacked
    can put a message to the person he attacked.
 5. Message attaches to treaty proposals.
 6. A statistics bulletin generator, or perhaps an interface to an
    external bulletin generator.  (If you are interested in writing
    an external bulletin program, please let me know!)
 7. A sysop-set date for the last day a player can join the game.  This
    will allow you to "close" a game after it has started, so that
    players can't start over.  (It may be useful in Tournament mode.)
 8. A variable bank interest, instead of it remaining at 10% all the
    time.  It will fluctuate based on various parameters.
 9. Listing all trading fleets that the player owns and are still
    out on their mission.
10. An Investment menu, where players can put money into different forms
    of investments and see a list of their investments.
11. Selected group message replies where users can select the empires
    the message is going to.  The current version allows either all
    the empires who read the original message or just the author,
    but nothing in between.