BBS Toolkit/BBS Toolkit.iso/doors_2/ytbeta2c.zip/YTBETA.TXT

Text File | 1991-03-10 | 16KB | 323 lines

IMPORTANT NOTE. USE THESE BETA TEST VERSIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK. SINCE THEY ARE
TEST VERSIONS, THEY MAY CONTAIN UNACCEPTABLE BUGS!!!

YT Beta version 2.1 has the following changes...

The Xannor are no longer immune to sector mines. They will hit them in MAINT.

Increased the cost of Missiles by a factor of 5. This is to help offset the
destructiveness of the beasts!

YT Beta version 2.2 has the following changes...

Added computer option 14... "Find Nearest Ports". My thanks go to Richard
Vanhouten of West End TBBS (914)-858-8722 for hints on designing the linked
list search engine.

YT Beta version 2.3 has the following changes...

Removed the routine to move Xannor while people are playing. It was huge and
wasted a lot of program space. Put in its place a much smaller routine to have
the Xannor shoot MISSILES at random sectors while people are playing! (Evil
Grin!)

Fixed a bug that prevented users from moving a planet through the Xannor HQ
sector.. even if it was THEIR OWN planet!

Added a 5 second pause to end of Sensor Scan so users can have time to read
the information.

Internal restructuring to reduce memory usage slightly.

Changed the INIT program to generate a few more long warps than before.

YT Beta version 2.4 has the following changes/fixes...

Removed the delay at the end of the sensor scan. It was annoying!

Found and fixed 3 bugs in the team function. (WHY don't things like this ever
show up until AFTER versions get released?!?) Bug #1 would let more than 4
people on a team. Bugs# 2 & 3 related to the Team Captain function of
banishing a team member. It didn't work because of two dumb mistakes on my
part. It is fixed NOW. Because of bug #1, if you have any teams in your game
with over 4 members in then I strongly recommend that you re-initialize your
game so you can be sure all is well again. Sorry folks.

Added Rank% for The Xannor and The Mercenaries on the scoreboard.

Computer option 14 re-written to use less memory and to be even faster. My
thanks go again to Richard Vanhouten.

Increased the base price and maximum price of missiles and anti-cloaking
devices. The game was just too dangerous with the missiles and anti-cloaks so
cheap. Now there should be a better chance for people to survive longer.

More restucturing to cut internal memory requirements.

Changed maximum sale for missiles from 90% to 95%.

Yt beta 2.5 has the following changes/fixes....

Changed missile cost to a fixed 100,000 credits with a possible maximum sale
of 95% bringing the cost down to 5000 credits. No more price floating with the
amount of cargo holds. Prices based on the amount of cargo holds was meant to
help little guys but was greatly abused by the top players actually driving
the little guys from the game!

Changed mines to a fixed price of 35,000. Ditto above.

Changed Anti-Cloaking to a fixed 500,000 credits for the same reason I changed
missiles. There is no sale for Anti-cloaking devices.

Fixed a bug in YTMAINT where radio messages to/from dead players were not
properly being deleted when an inactive player was deleted from the game.

Change the price to buy ports. Before it was total production + total amount
of goods on the port. This was fine when the game initialized when the ports
are all small, but later on as the game ran, the ports got so expensive noone
in their right mind would want to buy them! Now the cost is just the total
production per day. This is much cheaper!

Updated the scoreboard routines for the new prices of missiles and mines. Also
each port owned is now worth 50,000 points on the scoreboard.

YT beta 2.6 has the following fixes/changes...

Re-wrote the Xannor portion of Daily Maintenance Program to make it more
intelligent. Before you could have groups of 500,000 Xannor wandering around
with them only guarding their base with 5,000 or so fighters! Not too bright a
policy on their part. (-; Now they guard their base much more carefully. I've
also greatly increased the Xannor re-gen. These two changes should make the
Xannor much less of a push-over and more of a threat.

Major change to the trading routine. You no longer have to haggle prices. You
are always presented with the best price and are given a "Do you accept [Y/n]"
choice. I had to think about this one for some time but the reason for this
was to make macro key (Command string saved key sequence) trading practical.
It was fun to haggle prices, but anyone with half a brain and a calculator
could always get 100% trading efficiency by looking at the port items' cost
display. That and trying to use a macro to trade was terribly frustrating. As
soon as you got you macro string set up OK, the prices would change and you
would have to do it ALL over again! This change should make "power trading"
tactics more practical and more enjoyable for the players.

Changed to lottery to only record wins of 100,000 credits (4 digits) or more
to the newspaper. Before I was recording matched of 3 digits or more to the
newspaper which was cluttering it up. I've also increased the TOP prize for
matching all -6- digits to something really substantial! (-;

Re-wrote the Autopilot function again. It is now 100% faster!! While testing
it took from 0 (REALLY 0!) to 220 milliseconds to find and display a path! The
220 milliseconds was for a path 66 sectors long on a 10MHz AT!

Changed the initialization program to make the ports initial production
larger. This is so they do not get sucked dry or saturated too quickly by
players using macro-key trading techniques.

Changed the Plague function to kick in sooner for ports and planets in
maintenance program. This will help prevent wharehouse production levels from
reaching scientific notation levels. (-;

Fixed a bug that prevented a person from leasing Earth after they got killed
if they were the previous owner.

Yt 2.7 BETA has the following changes/fixes...

Applied the autopilot sppedup to YTMAINT which should speed up maintenance
processing some.

Fixed the scoreboard routine in YT and YTMAINT so it doesnt get a division by
0 error generating the scoreboard if there are no living players in the game.

Adjusted YTMAINT plague routine so a port has to have at least 100,000 total
production before it has a chance of contracting the plague.

Changed YT-INIT so that the Xannor HQ is placed in a random sector rather than
in sector 85 every time.

Re-wrote Control-R replay of saved commands to work a little better when the
player hits control-R multiple times in a row. (What a bother that turned out
to be! I ended up re-writing the whole input routine from scratch!)

REMOVED "Computer malfunction". It was irritating and didn't really serve any
useful purpose in the game.

The Xannor will no longer shoot missiles when the current player has a score
of under 2,500,000. This gives the little guys a break.

Re-wrote the "The Xannor have moved their headquarters!" routine in YTMAINT to
be a little more intelligent. (As far as the Xannor's actions are concerned.)

Speeded up "Find Nearest Port" routine a bit.

Added a NEW program, RMT-INIT.EXE. This goes with the NEW Main Menu Command
"Initiate Genesis". This new program/function will allow the PLAYERS to
re-init the game. You define using YTCONFIG how many ports a player has to own
to be able to use the Genesis Function. The default is 200. The maximum is 300
(ALL the ports) and the minimum is 20. The amount you define will determine
just how often you wish your users to be able to re-start the game. (If you do
NOT wish your players to be able to re-start the game, set the amount of ports
needed to init the game to "999". What RMT-INIT.EXE does is read in your
previously defined defaults and uses them and runs an initialization. It will
run with NO intervention when called from the GAME by a PLAYER and, since
re-using your old defaults for a re-init is convient, it will also run if
started from the DOS prompt. If you run it from the DOS prompt, it will ask
you if you really want to re-start the game using your old defaults. What
RMT-INIT.EXE will NOT do is run an init from scratch. The old data files from
a previous initialization MUST be present in the current directory before
RMT-INIT.EXE will run. When a player "Initiates Genesis", RMT-INIT.EXE will
re-init the game, then return the player to your BBS system.

The Xannor now shoot missiles if attacked.


YT v2.8 Beta has the following fixes/changes.....

Well, the warning at the top of this document has finally come true.. version
2.7 HAD AN UNACCEPTABLE BUG IN IT! The was a problem with the new RMT-INIT.EXE
program which caused it to not initialize the proper amount of planet records.
(I accidentally re-used a variable. )-; IF YOU RAN THE OLD RMT-INIT.EXE
AGAINST YOUR GAMES DATA FILES YOU WILL HAVE TO RE-INITIALIZE YOUR GAME USING
YT-INIT.EXE! RMT-INIT.EXE is fixed but it cant fix the damage its younger
brother did. You will have to re-init from scratch using YT-INIT.EXE. Really
sorry about that one folks.

The Xannor now shoot missiles back AT you if you shoot missiles at them and
don't wipe them out.

More re-writes to the Xannor routines in YTMAINT. They are a bit more
intelligent yet.

Since so many files have been updated from the last official release version
2.0 and this beta 2.8 version, I am including the ENTIRE package of files this
time, instead of just the update files.


YT Beta 2.9 has the following changes/fixes....

Changed "Find Nearest Port" to pause every screenfull instead of every
"Distance" step. This makes it much less tedious to use.

Change "Complete Port Report" to show which ports are owned, unowned, and are
owned by the current player.

DELETED the routine in YTMAINT that had the Xannor drop a mine on a randomly
picked player on occasion. It was unfair and unrealistic since this player may
have been under a large defense force.

ADDED A NEW FEATURE ALLOWING SYSOPS TO LOCK CERTAIN USERS OUT OF THE GAME! Now
you may lock anyone out of the game by placing their name in a file called
"LOCKOUT.DAT". This file can be edited with any text editor. To use it, place
the players REAL name AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR BBS in "LOCKOUT.DAT" and they will
be denied access to the game until you remove their name from "LOCKOUT.DAT".

Fixed CHAT. I broke it so it would work only once per play! Now all is well
again.

Fixed function in YTCONFIG for "Last day maintenance run". It was not working
properly for year-end rollover.

Fixed the problem with players ending up with negative credits. I THINK!

Fixed the problem with users being able to stay on past their time limit if
they were repetedly pressing control-R to replay a macro.

Changed scoreboard to show 2 points past the decimal point. i.e. 99.51%
instead of just 99%.

Increased the initial defense level for planets won in the Super Lottery.

Added a NEW chat routine. This one looks much nicer in the color mode.

Changed YTMAINT Port Plague routine so it will no longer reduce a port's
production below 25 units per day. The old routine would reduce production to
a minimum of -1- unit per day. This was too small and was causing ports to get
wiped out!

*** I -THINK- I sucessfully patched my compiler to run at 38400 baud. You will
have to replace your existing BRUN30.EXE with the one in this package. Try it
and let me know if it works. PLEASE?!? ***

YT Beta 2.A has the following changes/fixes....

My 38400 patch works, so I have been told! (-;

REMOVED the ability to buy Earth. This is likely going to an unpopular
decision, but due to the problems caused by some players dominating Earth's
ownership, and the complexity involved in trying to limit this (to keep it
fair for the weaker players) the only real logical solution was to just make
Earth a non-purchasable port!

This, however, is likely to be well recieved. (-; ADDED SHIELDS! Now in order
for someone to be killed by missiles/mines/fighter attacks their shields will
have to be reduced to 0 units. This should add a new dimension to the game!

THE SHIELDS FUNCTION IS A MAJOR REVISION! P=L=E=A=S=E TEST THIS THOROUGHLY FOR
ME AND GET BACK TO ME WITH ANY PROBLEMS/SUGGESTIONS!

Removed the limit on the amount of turns that could be purchased at one time.
This didn't serve any real purpose since the player could always keep going
back to Earth for more!

Removed the routine that forced a player to wait one day before logging back
in if they managed to kill themselves. This was done to save some program
space after adding shields.

Compiled the program optimized for SPEED instead of for SIZE as before.

YT beta 2.B has the following fixes/changes...

Fixed YTMAINT. It was not properly subtracting player fighters upon Xannor
attacks where the fighter force was wiped out.

Added MISSILE and MINE PRODUCTION to planets! Planets will now produce 1
missile per day for every 1000 total production of ore, organics and
equipment. Planets will produce 1 mine per day for every 2500 units of
production. IN ORDER FOR THIS TO WORK WITH DATA FILES PRODUCED FROM VERSION
2.A AND EARLIER, YOU WILL HAVE TO RUN THE (INCLUDED) PROGRAM 9ATO9B.EXE. This
little program will initialize 2 new fields in the planet records of the main
data file. Once you run this program you will no longer need it and may erase
it from your disk. Also, if you are starting out from scratch you will not
need it at ALL and may erase it.

Modifed YTMAINT.EXE for the new planet production feature. Also, moved the
planet lottery to the END of maint, AFTER the Xannor move. This was because
the Xannor were usually destroying lottery planets before the player ever got
the chance to get to them!

Dropped shield power cost to 50 credits per unit from 200 credits per unit.

Added a routine to inform players when someone purchases a port from them.

Version 2.C ot Yankee Trader has the following fixes/changes...

MAJOR BUG FIX RELEASE! The maintenance program in Yankee Trader 2.B had a
SERIOUS bug in it. It was caused by moving the planet lottery to the end of
the maintenance routine. I (stupidly) zapped a pointer variable for planet
records in the Xannor.Maint subroutine and so, since Xannor.maint now came
before planet.lottery, whenever someone won a planet in the lottery the
pointer for the planet records was wrong and it pointed instead to someplace
in the sector records. When someone won a planet, a sector record would get
zapped causing invalid and/or fractional (!!) warp paths to be displayed. I'm
sorry but there is no way to fix the data files short of a complete re-init of
your game. )-:

There is some hope however, since winning a planet in the lottery is a
somewhat RARE occurance, your game's data files MAY not have been damaged and
you MAY NOT have to re-start your game. I have included a small program that
verifies the integrity of your games data files. It is called CHEKDATA.EXE.
Run it, and if it reports that "All is well" you do NOT have to re-start your
game. HOWEVER, if it reports damaged data is detected, you MUST restart your
game using YT-INIT.EXE or risk lock-ups or other game malfunctions.

I am terribly sorry about this folks, but things like this happen from time to
time. Once you run CHECKDATA.EXE you will no longer need it and may erase it
from your system. There is no need to keep it any more since it is does NOT
check ALL the data files, just the ones that could have been damaged by the
bug in YTMAINT.EXE.

There are no other changes to this version. I felt it was important to get
this release out ASAP since by doing so, I might get it to you soon enough to
prevent you from having to re-start your game.