PC PowerPlay 29

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BATTLECRUISER:3000AD VERSION CONTROL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Updated : 07-01-98 Author : Derek Smart, Ph.D [Project Manager/Lead Developer/Designer] Lead Tester : Robert 'Pandora' Hentsche Public Version : v1.01D7C - 11-03-97 v1.04B - 03-18-98 (3DFX only for free v1.01D7C) v1.07D - 07-01-98 Testers Version : v1.07D - 07-01-98 ******************************************************************************* THIS VERSION CONTROL LOG FILE IS BEING MAINTAINED BY THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM AND IS MADE AVAILABLE IN ORDER FOR EXISTING BC3K GAMERS TO SEE THE CHANGES TO THE ENGINES THAT ARE FORTHCOMING IN THE SEQUEL. SOME OF THESE WILL BE IN THE UPCOMING PATCH RELEASE. OTHERS SUCH AS MORE ADVANCED RENDERING, WILL BE IN THE UPCOMING SEQUEL, BC:3020AD DUE OUT SOON. ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.07D PATCH 07/01/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 The missile contrails in software version are now rendered correctly. 001 The "Out of bounds index' error no longer occurs when continuing a game after playing XC. 002 Entering the planet with clouds on when playing the software version, no longer causes a crash. 003 The Main Menu, QUIT TO DOS has been changed to QUIT 004 Manual has been updated to match the current version of the game. You can either download the whole thing again, or download the changes file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.07C PATCH 06/18/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed a bug in the sound module which caused the engine sound to not loop. Since the code base is now DOS/WIN32 compliant and either environment can be built, a misplaced #ifdef introduced this problem 001 Reduced speed of IC laser shots in order to increase visibility. Still needs some tweaking in order to get it 'right'. The problem is that the level of detail code is rendering the laser shot to 'nothing' once it's fired. Therefore, you can't really see much once it leaves your ship. It looks ok in the external camera view. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.07 PATCH 06/16/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed a bug which prevented the OTS-Tanix weapon from being accessible 001 Fixed a bug which caused the Glide display to not switch back to 2D when joystick calibration was completed from CONFIG via the Main Menu 002 Shield impact sound changed to a more subtle type 003 Fixed a problem with GBM maps in Xtreme Carnage planets 004 Enabled surface AG on Xtreme Carnage planets. Legend for surface objects updated white - compound site (city, naval fleet, bases etc) green - dynamic blue - airborne craft yellow - naval ships 005 Only Air objects (objects with "A" in the dynamic flags in objects.scr) will spin if they collide with anything. They are also prevented from spinning if they are touching the surface. 006 Shockwaves on surface disabled until the proper ones are created. The space ones don't look so good on the planet. We're probably going to be doing some environment mapping and dynamic lighting for the surface, instead of using bitmaps. 007 Smoke trails added for: () Missiles in 'dumb fire' mode (no valid lock) () Aircraft that are about to blow up () Some surface object blast fragments 008 Explosions on the planet now follow a parabolic curve and will fall to the ground on detonation 009 Speeds on surface reduced some more 010 The REPEAT ACTIONS waypoint order is now implemented and resets the current waypoint to the first. The default order for the ship once it reaches the last waypoint in the pattern is always RTB. 011 "Match target speed" (SHIFT-`) is now a toggle. When on [M] is displayed in the HUD near the speed indicator. So, if you have a target in front of you, at say, 100km, you can match its speed. If you want to close or increase the distance, use the normal [`] and [tab] speed keys SHIFT-` turns off or sets the current CVD target for match speed. The [M] caret is constantly adjusting your set speed, but pegs at 0 and 1500 kps. Has no effect with A/P off. It makes dogfighting rather easy, because once you're on a target six, it prevents overshoot and maintains your distance from the target (just as it is supposed to). All you need to do is keep the target in your sights and blast away. It does make flying formation on the surface possible though (but still tricky, because ships are constantly varying altitude). You can test this by... - setting a waypoint for IC-1 (as shown in #012 below). Launch it - launch IC-2 and simply follow IC-1. You can do this by setting waypoints for as many ships as you like and flying in formation with them. Simply set the waypoints for each ship a few feet from each other and since they will all be on A/P, will follow the waypoint accordingly in space or on a planet. 012 You can now follow waypoints for the ship you're flying (set in tacOPS) from the cockpit and either in manual or a/p mode. Sample. - go to tacOPS and 'observe' the planet (works in space too). Click about 2-3 times so you can see the separation grid. - set 3 waypoints with 'proceed to next' orders and a 4th one with 'repeat actions' for IC-1. Try to space them apart by putting 2 to a grid. Each grid is about 2000km wide so don't go overboard! Note: If you ever wanted to see all the climate zones on Earth. Here's your chance. Set the waypoints headed North as far as you can go. Get ready to sit there for HOURS. - launch IC-1 and switch to it - Switch to it and you will notice that it's diving for the hard deck (needs to be fixed). Turn off the a/p and fly to about 1000ft and engage the A/P. The ship will now fly to each of the waypoints avoiding the ground, flying the pattern and repeating it when it passes the 4th one. - You will notice a waypoint designator on the top right corner of the HUD (inverse color for now so it's easy to see) and the range in km. The current waypoint being tracked is indicated by a vertical box in the HUD below the heading indicator. If you are doing this manually, fly toward this heading in order to reach the waypoint. - While the A/P is flying the waypoint pattern, you can still cycle targets in the NID or TACSCAN and view them in the CVD. The current target will be designated with an open triangle (see below). If you make this target the current destination, and engage the A/P, this will over-ride the current waypoint and the a/p will fly to the target. In order to resume following the tacOPS programmed waypoint, destroy or cancel the current target using [x] and the A/P will resume. - Since you have tacOPS control when flying an interceptor, simply activate it, alter the waypoints. This may be a bit difficult if there are objects showing on the map. So, use the command palette, select the desired waypoint and use the PLACE command to relocate it on the map. The ship will simply follow the new waypoint path and from the HUD, you will see the new distance. Press F1 to return to the cockpit. 013 Heading scale and waypoint changes The HUD heading scale shows up to three carets () A solid triangle is the current objective and relates to the box-X/Target leader line symbology, TTD, range scales etc. - This is the target currently selected in the NID or TACSCAN and set as the nav target using the FPD key [f] () An open triangle is the target shown in the CVD - This is the current target NOT designated with the FPD key [f] () a vertical box is the current waypoint (if set) When shown the current waypoint ID and range are displayed on the right of the HUD below the heading display 014 Terrain avoidance logic is implemented for aircraft on the surface It is currently active in the player ship even if the A/P is inactive. (WORK IN PROGRESS) 015 Turning on the A/P will set the current altitude as that which the A/P will attempt to hold. The altitude is relative to Ground level. AI ships have an implicit altitude hold of 250 feet. Needs some tweaking. 016 Lead indicator in HUD should be more accurate now 017 Lasers now fly at constant speed 018 Turret leading and target acquisition logic *final pass* implemented. Turrets and missile launches for carriers and stations will no longer fixate on a single target but instead will acquire and fire on targets as they come into range. They will no longer fire thru their platforms either. 019 Increased re-arm time for AI ships docking with their platform 020 Fixed yet another Voodoo2 specific problem with regards to texture memory. Anyone having this problem (reported before), please let me know. It no longer occurs on my Voodoo2 reference board, Voodoo Rush or Voodoo boards. Jon, I know you have a Pure3D, that was causing a problem. Please check it as well. Notes: (tweaking related) *At the moment, you can only clear waypoints from tacOPS. Once this model is finished, you should be able to use the normal NID 'waypoint clearing' to clear all or the current waypoint currently being tracked as well as cycle forward/backward thru the waypoint list. *The flight dynamics needs some more tweaking because when the ship is making a high bank turn (and pulling some serious Gs) it may collide with the ground! *At low altitude high speed during terrain following, the A/P may not be able to avoid a ground collision in time, so you may have to seize manual control. This needs to be tweaked. Remaining surface ops specific bugs *Some objects are displayed in the wrong radar mode *Some objects are in the air when they should be on the ground *Explosion animations that are repeated (fire) are displayed offset from the object's orientation *The objects on the 'test' compound sites are slightly offset *Time Of Day palette problems with clouds ON *A/P, during terrain follow mode will sometimes collide with ground/hill. It will also do a very sharp bank when turning to the next waypoint (if it's > 90 deg) and if it's close to the ground, will intersect it. *Flying N far enough, crashes the game when you get to the end *The ship needs to be destroyed if it collides with the ground/water *Surface object auto-generation needs to be removed from the PTE code and handled by the normal script entity creation. This will provide better control of object creation and prevent too many objects from being created and slowing down the game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.06 PATCH 06/10/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Distribution files now contain both software and Glide version. The software version is executed by default. To run the Glide version, use /g on the commandline. 001 Fixed some explosion vector errors in some ground objects 002 Added shockwaves to some ground objects 003 Turret leading and target acquisition logic second pass implemented. Turrets and missile launches for carriers and stations will no longer fixate on a single target but instead will acquire and fire on targets as they come into range. 004 Battlecruiser changes - IOD graphics changed - IOD recharge rate increased - IOD firing sound changed 005 Changed interceptor laser graphics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.05d PATCH 06/08/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Increased the high speed value for the shuttles so that they are able to breach a planet's gravity and return to space when given the RTB order. 001 Added asteroid fields to entire galaxy. Previously, they were only in the SOL system for testing purposes. The number of asteroid fields is 155. btw, only the ones in the SOL region have scripted items in them. I'll script the others as I find time. You cannot yet collect cargo pods in debris fields, nor destroy the asteroids. You can only see a debris field from tacOPS as red sphere in non-debug mode. 002 Fixed a texture problem in the Centauri station 003 Fixed a PTE surface rendering glitch introduced during code optimization 004 Fixed some incorrect personnel messages related to drone/atv deployment 005 Fixed display 'bleeding' in Glide version 006 Fixed a bug which caused stations and carriers to launch infinite fighters 007 Enabled surface object generation on Earth, Mars & Sygan in order to test surface ops and start fixing problems with object placement and dynamics. Earth has some hostile, friendly and random regions, Mars is over-run by Insurgents and the guys over at Sygan...well, pay them a visit. Though BC3K does not display the region segments yet (will do once orbital surface scan is in), you can see the region segments by running either PTEproto or GLDproto. You will then see the regions once the GBM loads. 008 Deleted all old .POF files. Program will auto-create new ones when the planet is first entered. There will be a slight delay once planetfall is established. 009 BC bridge systems are now activated on new game startup and set to MODE 1 010 ACM_SKIP_ENABLE <on/off> script action added enables [ALT-CTRL-A] key sequence which allows player to skip the current scenario. ACM skip is OFF at the start of each ACM scenario and at the start of a game. The message "YOU ARE NOT YET AUTHORISED TO SKIP THIS SCENARIO" is issued by the SC if the player attempts to skip the scenario and the flag is off. The flag condition is stored in the save game file. When writing scripts, if you want to be able to skip an ACM scenario, you need to enable this flag. This function was put in so that players of the upcoming SDF campaign, don't cheat. It will not be used in the normal ACM. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.05c PATCH 05/30/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Increased the range at which ships will use their hyperjump engines. This means that they will fly to targets most of the time rather than jumping all over the place. This needs some tweaking though. 001 Reduced the hyperjump timer of all ships so that they make jumps less frequently 002 The hyperjump charge will now be 100% depleted when a ship jumps into a new region. 003 Final object explosion is now cued to play just before the shockwave 004 Fixed save/restore bug. Finally! 005 Ships jumping under AI control will no longer oscillate between jump points 006 Fixed the CVD vertical display bars for target damage stats (Glide) 007 Turrets will now fire in their relative directions. Used to fire ahead only 008 The turret rate of fire has now been increased in order to increase their accuracy. 009 Turret laser velocity is now independent of the platform it's on 010 Increased the precision in scaling code to reduce the jittering effect that's evident on small objects. 011 Precision collision detect is disabled if two objects are about the same size, or if the larger object is below a size threshold (30 Meters) 012 Removed escort/defend command conflict. If a ship is escorting an object and defending another, preference will be given to the ship it's escorting. If the escortee goes out of scope, the escort will revert to defending the other ship. If both go out of scope, it will revert to SAD mode. 013 AI ships in escort mode will now break and defend themselves if attacked while in escort mode. They will not attempt to follow the attacker but will break and return to escort duty once the attacker goes out of range. Previously, the escort would ignore attacks on itself but respond to attacks on the escortee. They will also attack ships that are within range IF the target they are attacking/escorting is not currently under attack. If the ship they are escorting jumps, the escort will break off any attack and plot a route to where the escortee jumped. They won't do this if they are defending a ship that then leaves the region. 014 Ships are no longer capable of ridiculous speeds. The max normal speed is Factor 9 (1500 mps). The A/B and retros can only go at 1.5 times max speed. Support ships, using the A/B and retros constantly will depleted all stored power in 15 mins. In the case of the BC, the time to depletion is dependent on the current Radine. AI ships will use short bursts of A/B in order to breach vast distances. Note that your max speed at any time is also dependent on the current amount of damage to the ship's systems. 015 The 'hyperjump' script action now causes a ship to visit intervening regions. 016 The BC NAVITRON navigation facility has been re-written to use the revised hyperjump logic (above). The journey class is preserved to allow the NID to show the entire route. 017 There are now only two primitives that support region spanning navigation. Target region specified by 'hyperjump' and target region specified by target object. If both are valid, hyperjump takes precedence. This may not be correct in some cases. 018 The EMD jammer is now more accurate. Note: If a missile has a lock and is flying toward you, when you turn on your jammer, there is a probability that the missile will be jammed as long as the EMD is on. BUT you must change your location because the missile will then assume a 'dumb fire' AI mode which causes it to fly straight ahead. In BC:3020AD, AI ships will also be able to use their EMD based on their AI level. 019 Cargo pods now created as HAZARD/MIXED so they are not valid AI targets 020 You will now be refused docking clearance if there are hostile ships in the region. The station will give priority to it's own fleet, transports etc before it even considers giving you docking clearance. So, it's in your interest to clear the region of hostile targets if you want to dock. Check your CAS display. If it's on, don't even think of trying to dock. 021 You will no longer lose 100,000 EPs if GHQ is destroyed when the Earth region is not your PZ. 022 Prisoners on the ship will now be transfered to the station when you dock. You will be awarded 2 EPs per prisoner. I thought of doing the same for intruders but decided against it because then everyone will be running home at the first sign of trouble. 023 You will now be awarded EPs for kills by your AI pilots, ATV drivers and personnel whether you're flying the ship or not. You will also be penalized with EP deductions if they screw up and destroy a friendly! 024 You can no longer reprogram an empty probe slot 025 Detaching a probe from the NID menu will no longer put you in outside view 026 Detaching a probe from the NID bridge menu will no longer drop you in an outside view of the BC. 027 tacops command palette teams for SH1-4 and ATV1-4 are now enabled if there are personnel in the ship 028 Reduced the number of active AG ships in a region 029 ALT-F1-F4 will no longer launch ships unless the current ship is the BC 030 Radar scanning circle is disabled if object is not 100% operational 031 Debris field sphere is only visible in DEBUG mode or from tacOPS 032 Marines will now prep for combat before going to any location. Also, you no longer need to 'prep' them beforehand because if you assign them to a location and they are NOT prepped, they will prep and then proceed. 033 Reduced price of VACPAK to 5000. Reduced initial amount to 10. Low warning level at 5, critical level warning at 2 (same as MEDPAK, NUTRIPAK) 034 Crew now consume 3 NUTRIPAKS a day. This means that you start off with 2 days worth of food for the crew. 035 Added right arrow in Tactical/Crew screen so that you can now cycle thru the personnel assignments list easily. 036 You will no longer be able to load a saved game if the alter-ego is dead 037 If you tractor personnel, they will be killed 038 The alter-ego now has the commander's name when deployed as a 3D object 039 The game will now end properly if the alter-ego ever dies. 040 You will no longer be able to dock while in hyperspace 041 Ships on the planet surface will now ignite a short VTOL power burst in order to take off if they are touching the surface. This will allow them to leave the planet and return to space if they need to. 042 Giving RTB orders to ships on a planet will no longer cause them to be docked with the BC immediately. They will fly from the planet to space and then seek the BC in order to dock. 043 Pressing [O] at any altitude takes you to space after responding to Y/N 044 Running out of Plutonium or Radine will now shutdown the shields/reactor 045 Stations and ODS systems will now launch missiles accurately. 046 You will no longer be able to launch missiles if the EMD is active. The EMD's performance is now directly linked to it's damage state. The EMD integrity must be at least 20% for it to work. Integrity is dependant on: BC: Weapons computer & tactical computer IC: Dedicated EMD system SC: Computer ATV: Computer & Weapons systems The greater the EMD integrity, the more effective it is at jamming missiles. A jammed missile operates in dumb-fire mode, so EMD is ineffective if a missile is launched on target and/or at point-blank range. 047 Persons deployed with the transporter are no longer assigned to a team which causes a GPF 048 Increased armor rating on cargo pods to reduce the risk of fragmentation induced destruction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.05b PATCH 04/30/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Alpha support now added to software renderer 001 Added 5 new shockwave bitmaps to Glide version 002 Fixed problem with out of memory allocation in horizon.cpp. Traced to debris field generation. If it pops up again, it ain't fixed. 003 You will no longer be able to dock with stations under repair 004 You will no longer be able to launch a probe if the probe assigned to the current slot, is deployed. You need to detach/destroy the probe before you can put anything in that slot. 005 The probe status is now updated correctly when destroyed 006 The cockpit COMMLINK will now flash when questions are asked 007 The COMMLINK will no longer auto-launch in XC when running in debug mode 008 Modified flight dynamics. Control of large ships is now a little more sluggish. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.05a PATCH 04/23/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed a problem with 2MB boundary limits on cards with 4MB texture memory 001 Full Voodoo 2 compliance. 002 Glide Gamma adjustment control added. The value is stored in setup.cfg the default is 1.4, valid range is 1.3 to 2.0. BCKEYS.TXT updated. ALT-, to decrease by 0.1 ALT-. to increase by 0.1 003 Glide ALT-SHIFT-G (movie) should now work, but it slows down the game too much to be useful. 004 Nebula updates - Cleaned up the nebula bitmap images and removed non-black pixels - Fixed Nebula dissapearing bug: Nebula would disappear if the previous group drawn was a destroyed object. - Fixed Glide flash showing black edge of nebula - Fixed vertical seams on nebula - Number of maps making up a nebula changed from 4 to 16 (each one becomes 64x64). Intent is to reduce the amount of texture memory needed 005 Disabled collisions with 'inactive' script objects 006 Missile smoke trail uses modified CONTRAIL.3D object 007 Missiles now disappear from the ILD as soon as they detonate 008 Missiles no longer emit trails when they detonate 009 Missile collisions are disabled from the instant that they are destroyed by a collision. 010 Missile guidance no longer operates while a missile is detonating 011 Transparent bitmaps (such as the gridwork bitmap) are now rendered transparent in Glide version. 012 Shockwaves implemented and completed. Software renderer uses a monochrome shockwave while Glide uses 16-Bit version. Three shockwave types are supported with different speeds that are used according to the size of the object for best visual effect. Only dynamic objects generate shockwaves. More shockwave types can be added at any time. Missiles are explicitly excluded. Note: Time to go alt+x crazy! 013 Fragmentation code modified. The degree of fragmentation now varies with AI class of object. Only large objects now generate large numbers of fragments. The maximum number that can be generated with max fragmentation in CONFIG and greatest magnitude is 75, the minimum is 5 014 Temporarily implemented smoke missile contrails. This is NOT meant for space but it's the only way to test it for now. Test on planets. Later, different types will be defined for missile types. So that smoke ones will be on ATA, ATS, SAM, APM missiles and other types on STS and OTS missiles. 015 Personnel images now 128x128 and stored in PCX format. This means that all scripts referencing NAME.CAF should be changed to NAME.PCX 016 The race/caste of the target is now displayed in the CVD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.04d PATCH 04/10/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Cleaned up tacops mouse handling (mainly effect Glide version) 001 # removed before probe number in probe name. 002 added 1 pixel spacing between probe number and location in tacops menu 003 ALT-/ key enabled in debug version only 004 Nebulae added. Eventually, each starsystem will have it's own nebulae bitmap. A total of 25 in all. In this version, Sol, Sirius, Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti have unique maps - Nebulae are not visible on planets. - Nebulae currently wrap around the Z-axis and have fixed width. - All regions in a given system use the same nebula. For you hackers (Pandora & co) who want to create their own nebulae maps for the 8-bit (software) or 16-Bit (3D accelerated) version - Nebulae bitmaps must be 1024x64 in 16-Bit PCX version 5 format Paintshop Pro (www.jasc.com) does these quite well - The nebula is located in the STE subdirectory as <system_id>.n16 for true-color files and <system_id>.n8 for 8-bit files (using default 8-Bit palette) for sofware renderer. Both MUST be v5 .PCX files. - system_id is derived from statics.scr, this contains system definitions in lines starting with "." eg ."ALPHA CENTAURI","a_cent" The first field is not currently used The second field is the system_id to be used for nebulae and (future) <system_id>.3d files. (eg alpha_c.n16 for the nebula to use in all Alpha Centauri regions). All following regions use this system definition until it is redefined with a new one (see statics.scr). - See updated STATICS.SCR in BCTOOLSG.ZIP for examples 005 Added new pilot images with eyepiece and mic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.04b PATCH 04/06/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed mouse related screen corruption in Voodoo Rush cards 001 Removed 'space' text from the Logistix/Power screen. 002 tacOPS will now accurately update a probe's status. However, a bug in TACTICAL allows you to modify a DEPLOYED probe's status. This will be fixed. 003 Probe menus entries: "View Probe/Local region" now show the name of the region to be viewed. 004 Detaching a probe now self-destructs it. This allows you to replace it. 005 The probe TACLINK state is now implicit and no longer a programmable mode. 006 Instruments are no longer linked to the probe's TACLINK mode. Only tacOPS now has access to the probe when in this mode. This means that NID, TACSCAN and BridgeViewer will no longer use the probe's TACLINK data. 007 A new state has been added to the ship's AI. This allows it to halt and re-orient itself before moving in a new direction especially when it's about to do a hyperjump. Hence, it will no longer fly backwards. 008 Modified JUMP <target> script action. <target> can be any script object. Unlike HYPERJUMP which allows the ship to use hyperspace to warp to a region once it jumps into an anomaly _without_ plotting a course, JUMP allows the object to actually plot a route and fly to the target. This action has no effect if <target> does not exist, i.e. has been destroyed. The <target> can be anywhere in the galaxy, the object is intelligent enough to reach it notwithstanding enroute attacks. JUMP is prefered to HYPERJUMP because it presents real world situations where the object is not guaranteed to reach the target. Also, scripts can be designed which require one object to find the other and perform intercept orders. Once changes are made to the AI kernel and resource allocation AI is put back in, all AG entities will use JUMP with a combiination of FLEE, to RTB. This means, no more ships disappearing and warping to base, once they jump. Yes, you will be able to follow a target all the way home. 009 A target that has HYPERJUMPed out of the region will no longer show up on TACSCAN after it has jumped. 010 In debug mode, IC,SC->orders and PROBE menus have added HYPERJUMP command that orders the object to perform an HSD HYPERJUMP to any region using menus similar to HSD in BC bridge. This is equivalent to the HYPERJUMP script action. (The object first flies to a random region exit anomaly). Note: Objects may still oscillate between regions (an unrelated problem that is yet to be fixed for all navigation cases). 011 Ship RTB order moved to ORDERS pullright menu section 012 Tacops Transporter/OTS deployment reticules are cleared if observing a space region. 013 Transporter is not available if the BC is not in the space region of the observed planet. This means that you cannot transport personnel when in TACLINK mode. 014 TTD probe name now has number appended eg "LR PROBE #1" 015 Jump flashes should now dissipate when the the game is in a paused state 016 Fixed ejected IC pod forgetting it's platform (BC). This causes it to overload its RTB orders with FLEE and never returns to the BC 017 IC pod should now RTB if it is in space even when BC is not in the same region. It will plot a course to the BC regardless of location. Later, when surfaceOPS are being addressed, it will drop to the surface and send out a distress signal and request personnel evac. 018 If you have a planet selected in the CVD and you activate tacOPS, it will no longer OBSERVE the planet. Instead, it will start tacOPS (as normal) and you can then select the planet and OBSERVE it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.04 PATCH 04/01/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed a problem that was causing the software version to fail when the 2D card was initialized. 001 Manoevering dynamics code for surface objects updated 002 Ships doing a hyperjump from one location to the other will now use an anomaly to leave the current region and be immediately located in the target region. 003 The BC, under AI control, will now come to a halt when it jumps to a region 004 Ships will no longer cause damage to their launch platform when docking 005 Scripted AI ships with escort orders will now be able to follow their target where it goes (using new nav code) 006 Scripted AI ships with escort orders will now revert to SAD mode if their target is destroyed or goes out of scope. 007 Using new nav code, entities (AG or scripted) can now acquire, engage and attack a target in *ANY* part of the galaxy. They will use advanced route finding logic to locate the objective. You can test this by scripting a ship to take out a station and then manually follow it as it plots a route. 008 tacOPS will now be automatically updated if a probe you're observing in TACLINK mode, jumps to a new region. 009 Work started on space<->planet navigation. On completion, AI entities will be able to fly to/from planets as well as attack surface targets as they do in space. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.03f PATCH 03/30/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 More Glide compatibility changes 001 Glide lighting changes, graphics engine support for phong vertex intensity (pending). You can see the latest efforts in the recent version of OVIEWER.TXT (3/29/98) 002 TACOPS camera now shows the shimmering effect for transported personnel. 003 In order to capture screen shots of menus, mouse button 2 was temporarily used to capture a frame and forgot to remove it. This is why TACOPS mouse button two functionality is very sluggish. This has now been corrected 004 Zoom in rate in tacops reduced (now same as zoom out rate) 005 IC pilots now only transmit "searching" messages if their orders are PATROL,CAP or SAD. 006 When an AI object switches region it's position is now correctly set near the ingress object. 007 Objects ordered to JUMP AT <egress object> should now stay in the target region 008 Added maneuvering re-alignments for objects with objectives that are directly behind. 009 Modified maneuvering for ground objects to prevent them using pitch or roll (for ground objects that don't use drone logic) 010 Objects in HALT tactical state should reduce speed and stop maneuvering (unless in FIXED_ORBIT state) 011 Fleeing objects currently vanish (do not move to adjacent region). This will remain as is until the current navigation changes are completed. Then all AI/AG ships will have a launch platform (planet,station,carrier) they come from and return to (or at least attempt to). This will allow you to chase ships that jump out, and follow them all the way home. Strategically, you will be able control what goes on in the universe because by destroying stations, you stiffle the launch capabilities (until they are rebuilt), supplies etc. 012 Escorts/scripting should now operate across space regions (not planets yet) 013 Most navigation related issues should now be fixed and region spanning is complete. Try recalling one of your support ships from across the galaxy. Space<->planet navigation, will be addressed in the surfacOPS task schedule. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.03e PATCH (maintenance) 03/10/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Fixed a problem in one of the indexes which caused the wrong message/action NOTE: When using the Glide version, you MUST set the DPMI memory in the shortcut to AUTO. A value of 16384 will NOT work because the game uses way past that much memory. This will cause spurious out of memory allocation errors if you limit the amount of DPMI memory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.03e PATCH 03/09/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Primarily a Glide update Implemented in GLIDE: - fixed near z problem. - screen shot (windows .BMP format: 640x480 24-bit RGB uncompressed) - planet distance hazeout - some planet day/night lighting - pte texture naming fix - uses hardware for solid polygons/fills - personnel image mapping - clouds on planet (currently they move relative to the viewpoint in x/y) - started to work on planet GBM splitting bitmap into 8 256x256 maps, added support for this in: - Planet GBM shadow (256-colour) - Low res planet (512x256) on the fly conversion. - tractor beams (uses cloud bitmap, effect may vary depending on which cloud map was last used) - made some changes to support z-buffer (for later) - improved object lighting - jump flashes - flare transparency (coloured) - bridge instrument backgrounds - cloud layer white-out - solar blindspot - transparent animation backgrounds - blackout - EMD noise effect - Some lines are drawn anti-aliased. - Cloaking - Planet rings - shield animations - plant map in NID (temporarily: uses H_MAP.PAL file) - The joystick calib and cd-rom checks will now work OK in Glide version Pending for Glide completion: - flir (IC infra-red display for night time flying) - sun rendering glitch - display rolling/cramping (which occurs when system is damaged) - clean up glide configuration when switching between lighting modes. - dynamic multiple source lighting - Glitches when switching to 2D Frontend screens - Glitches when planet tmap is loaded during hyperjump transition - Various cockpit display glitches 001 Changed Glide tractor beam effect and modified the software renderer version so it is closer to the Glide version. Also changed beam so it is more conical shaped (probably needs a rear section to enclose the entire ship). 002 Added contrail technology to missiles. Currently a temporary animation is used as placeholder. Gary is working on the final ones for space/planet as well as final beam type laser shots. The current one in the interceptor is also temporary. hehe, the missile control also shows you the flaw in the missile logic since you can see what it's doing <g> 003 Increased visibility of explosions, laser shots etc 004 Completed surface clouds. Check it out!! 005 Implemented Crista's new personnel images. The originals are 150x150 but due to the format of the current version of the game, had to be resized. This makes the images smaller and less distinct. In v2.0, the bridge is different and I will find a way to make the images larger. NOTE: New bugs NOT included in BC3KBUGS.TXT because they were work in progress and being looked at now as TOP priority items. - AI ship navigation. Sometimes they can't jump due to new changes in logic - Save/Restore bug - Spurious memory failures in HORIZON.CPP when debris field active - Collision detect imprecision (causes misses when firing at small targets) - Asteroid field collision detect completion - Gamma correction for 2D display ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.03a PATCH 02/15/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 The asteroid field extent sphere is now visible in normal mode 001 Time dilation is now restricted to x4 except when in debug mode 002 The shuttle's shields have been fixed and now has 100 units 003 The shuttle had an invalid laser indicator which now shows the integrity 004 The shuttle IFF indicator has been moved to the correct location in the HUD 005 The ATV is now deployed immediately behind the shuttle 006 The mining drone is now deployed immediately ahead of the shuttle and has a random roving AI model. It moves across the surface, pauses to mine, changes direction at random and continues moving. It will reverse in a random direction if it hits another object. To see this in action, launch the drone say on Mars, target it in the F10 camera view, get a good angle and just watch it. Like a total idiot, I sat there one day and watched it rove the Martian surface for over 30 minutes. Some of the views were just too cool. Deployed personnel use similar logic for the time being. 007 Implemented a new laser animation for the IC and some ships. This is a TEST and NOT the final version. 008 First testers release of Glide version. Contains a few quirks and a some things aren't Glide compatible yet, such as planetary GBM, proper lighting, PTE clouds etc. Coming in next version. Try the cloaking! The Glide version is NOT very stable so please don't complain. 009 Support added for gas giants, which means no PTE surface. The code still needs to be modified to remove the surface on such planets once I define all of them. 010 Reduced the displacement value of CRAFT1,2,3 cargo units ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.02c PATCH 01/29/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 The following stations did not have texture map information. I probably removed this information by accident when putting in the new explosions last year. This would make them Gouraud shaded by default. They are all Type 4 stations which means the base class object was incorrect. PIXAN, VELARI, PROCYON, ADONIS, ALIDIS, SOVAR, LV130 001 The following stations had a filled polyon that did not have explosion parameters, causing the polygon to be rendered. They are Type 1 stations which means the base class object was incorrect. RAMIX, STARWIND, SARIEN, MAJORIS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.02b PATCH 01/24/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 Manual Corrections p.48 Autopilot Indicator, A/P [mode] You can [LEFT CLICK] on this symbology to turn the autopilot on or off and use [SHIFT+A] to change modes. You have control of the craft in DIRECT mode and in AI mode, the ship's computer or pilot, takes over. p.51 [1] Operating Mode Current operating mode. The ship's afterburner A/B or retro-thrusters R/R indicators are also displayed above when engaged. p.152 The Deployment Menu in the ATV HUD is number [13] 001 Fixed a bug in the extents calculation for PTE surface objects. Enter Earth with a craft and fly at 315 deg toward the WHITE dot on the NID map. This is a sample city mission zone with some objects and a starbase (no you can't dock there). When you get there, at low speed (2) observe the area and objects at the location. Note: Surface ops completion will fix the bug which has some objects flying and others showing up in the wrong display 002 Fixed a bug in the object placement in the PTE. Objects are now placed centered in map quadrants. This required updated .POF files. 003 The PTE now has support for high-res GBMs (Global BitMaps). These are the maps used on the external surface of planets/moons. This won't be obvious until surface ops is completed. 004 Mercury now has it's own high-res GBM. MERCURY.ZIP is on the web site 005 Put rings around Jupiter to match Uranus and Saturn. 006 The asteroids in the rings are now enabled. They were disabled in v1.02a due to a bug which caused asteroids to be created outside the ring. This bug will be fixed shortly. 007 Finished putting asteroid fields in all SOL system space regions. 008 Fixed a bug in the launch from station transition camera which would cause a crash when the satellite (1 of 4 views) view transition was used. This resulted in a crash (blank screen) when sometimes launching. Since 1 of 4 views is picked at random, this crash is rare. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE v1.02a PATCH 01/21/98 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 000 A manual was released on 01/13/98. This is the final public manual that will be released before the final v2.0 release. 001 Fixed XC bug which caused the wrong message to be displayed when you died 002 The evac condition will now properly reset when canceled 003 Collision detect is now activated for destroyed objects under repair 004 Probe 4 was mapped incorrectly to probe 3 in TACops 005 Added gap to TACops probe menu after first item 006 Planet shadow is now smooth. It depends on the position of the Sun which can now be elevated from the z axis (in Earth region the elevation is 23 degrees to match the spin axis of the Earth). The Sun position should be different in each space region (Uranus for example should have a solar elevation of closer to 90 degrees). 007 Added support for rings with asteroid fields to planets. 008 Added support for dynamic asteroid fields in various space regions with full collision detect. Hyperjump engines are disabled when inside an asteroid field. If you are in hyperspace transition a field is in your path, the ship will drop out of hyperspace. Debris such as the hulk of ships, ghost ships, discarded cargo pods etc, may sometimes be present in fields. In hostile fields, expect to see mines and other nasty things. 009 Major overhaul in collision detect system. It is now extremely precise and fixes numerous problems in features using collision detect. 010 Missiles now have proximity detonation technology which causes them to detonate when within a certain range of the target. 011 Shield impact animation is now implemented and will be played when a ship is hit with it's shields up. Due to the changes in collision detect, several animations will be played wherever a hit occurs. Though the animation is scaled accurately to match the size of the target, they will look blocky and pixelated if an inpact occurs in close proximity of a large target. 012 Major overhaul in navigation route finding logic. AI ships will now be able to span the galaxy without getting confused along the way. Player's ships can now span space regions as well as enter/leave planets. 013 Fixed anomalies with shuttle shield, integrity and IFF mapping 014 Targets in the NID are now color coded. Planets - Green Moons - Grey Jump points - Blue Worm holes - Brown Flux Fields - Yellow Comet/Meteor/Asteroid Field/Black Holes - Red 015 Added keyboard mapping CTRL-Z which sets the NID range to maximum 016 Added "stalks" to NID blips to give better feeling of depth. The stalks are pointing away from the center of the NID (your position) It seems that the grid interferes with this visual depth cue so the grid is disabled unless a target is selected, cancel your target to remove the grid. Note: the stalks are a fixed length and only indicate relative position. 017 The NID grid in space is supposed to indicate a flight plane to the target. This was unclear and caused confusion. Chevrons have been added to the grid to define which edge of the rectangular grid indicates direction to the target. When the chevrons are pointing up wrt to the display, the ship is pointing towards the target. The chevrons are active only if a target is selected. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.7C PATCH 11/05/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 MIDI music will now loop correctly 002 You will now lose 100,000 EPs if GHQ is destroyed even if Earth is not your patrol zone 003 Fixed a bug in Xtreme Carnage due to recent directory changes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.7B PATCH 11/03/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 BCKEYS.TXT update - ALT+p now activates PERSCAN - ALT+l now launches the current probe - h now changes the HUD color - SHIFT+h now declutters the TTD - CTRL+SHIFT+. and CTRL+SHIFT+, MIDI volume controls added 002 BC EVACUATION CHANGES: - Fixed some bugs in the BC evacuation procedure - Increased the timer countdown to 2 minutes - You can use PERSCAN to see if personnel are making it to the support ships. The countdown WILL continue! - After a MANUAL or AUTO evac completes, any previously deployed ships or personnel remain where they are in the 3D world. Personnel on the BC are vectored to available ships. The status of these ships is set to EVACUATED and launched. Once the transition ends, the BC self- destructs and in some cases, the fore shell will eject though this will only happen if there are survivors that did not make it to the ships. If they survive, they too are transfered to the new BC. Sometimes if you evacuate and return to the region, you may see the eject BC shell. Once the evac transition ends, all evacuated personnel are transfered to the new BC and the ship states changed to readying as the personnel move to their stations. NO cargo is transfered during an AUTO evac. If you want to save your cargo you should use a MANUAL evac and transfer cargo to the shuttles and ATVs. - The BC fore shell is now eject during an evac or normal destruction. - GALCOM will NOT give you a brand, spanking new ship. The new ship will be slightly damaged to discourage you from scuttling their property. - If the alter-ego (you) dies in an evac, the game will end and you will be listed as killing in action. - You are only allowed to evac your BC up to three times before you are retired from active duty. - If you were under court-martial status when you evacuated, you will be sent to trial when you arrive at the starstation. 003 The Free Flight scenario has been changed so that the Earth region is free of AI entities for 30 mins. This can be used by new players in training and is based on the extensive walkthru I am in the process of writing. 004 Destroyed drones will no longer be listed as active. 005 Misc revisions: - Each person consumes 1 Nutripak per day (24 hrs) - 1 Medpak heals a person by 25% - Personnel go offstation if LF <= 90 || FF <= 10 - Personnel go to Medibay if LF <= 15 - Cloning will now take 1 hr - The mining drone will now take 4 hrs to fill to max capacity 006 Artifact revisions: - The Celestial Orb now updates LF of personnel faster. FF will not increase - The Celestial Orb will now increase personnel AI over time - JAC randomly repairs systems at the rate of 1 every 10 minutes 007 False alarms for item levels,ie nutripak, radine etc, no longer generated 008 Pilots in recovered ic evac pods will now leave once the pod docks 009 People will no longer automatically leave a shuttle when it docks. This allows you to launch/retrieve a shuttle without going through the hassles of sending personnel to it. 010 Fixed TACTICAL screen corruption if intruders make it to the Medibay. They will now be correctly listed. 011 Damaging player's ships with high impact weapons, ie Vagrant, will no longer cause screen corruptions and other anomalies. 012 Fixed screen corruption in sh->drone-unload feature 013 The required spare parts for a repair are now indicated in TRADCOM, prompting you to buy them while you're there. 014 Personnel can now make it to the ATV when sent there 015 You can now change the ATV assignment from the TACTICAL->CRAFTS->ATV screen 016 The ATV data is now consistent when accessed from the ATV screen or via the SHUTTLE screen in TACTICAL 017 You can now assign personnel to an ATV from the TACTICAL->CREW screen 018 The shuttle now has 50 units of shields and 125 units of armor. The ATV now has 50 units of shields and 500 units of armor. Note: The displays in these crafts have NOT yet been update to reflect these changes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.7A PATCH 10/28/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed yet another problem in the MIDI which would cause a strange timing effect when at the Main Menu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.7 PATCH 10/27/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Soundfx changes: - A sound is played if your shields are hit. - ATV now has it's own engine sound. Thanks Pandora! - Fixed a bug which would cause the game to crash when it tried to play a new MIDI song at launch or when the ship jumped to a new region. - MIDI volume levels can be increased by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-. - MIDI volume levels can be reduced by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-, * Quite recently, a bug was discovered which prevented the system from playing a song when the current one was finished playing. This is no longer a bug in the system but a problem in the file format. The original songs were composed in MIDI format and converted to the SOS .HMI format for playback by the Take 2 musician. Since I don't have the original MIDI files, we can't fix them. There is no utility to convert from HMI format back to MIDI, so that won't work either. I am still figuring out how to solve this problem. * In lieu of the above, you can now have your own MIDI music. Locate your own MIDI files and use the MIDI2HMI utility available at the web site, to convert them to the SOS .HMI format. Typing the name of the program will reveal the options though you don't need to use any of them. Once you've converted the files, you can use the WIN95 utility in the MIDIPLAY.ZIP file, to play and test them. If they play correctly, then they will play fine in BC3K. The files must be named RUNTIMEx.HMI where x can be from 1-9. Once you've converted and named the files, copy them to your BC3K directory. The game will then use them instead of the onces in the BC3LIB6.RES file. To revert to the originals, simply delete the .HMI files you created. 002 In game French, German, Spanish translation supported completed. BC3K will now load the appropriate image & sound resource file based on the installed language. This feature is NOT supported in patches and will only be available in the retail v2.0 for European markets. Some internal messages are not yet translated, nor are the scripts (last on the list) 003 The French and German soundfx are in BC3LIB5B.RES and BC3LIB5C.RES. The frontend images are in BC3LIB1B.RES and BC3LIB1C.RES. This is for testers only since only the retail v2.0 will have multi-lingual support. The patches will NOT have multi-lungual support. To use these files, simply download the above files and unzip them into your BC3K directory. Then use the /l? commandline to activate the desired language. Make sure that the FRENCH.LNG and GERMAN.LNG files are also present in the directory. 004 Objects in orbit will no longer try to flee if badly damaged 005 You can no longer tow an object that is in orbit 006 If one object tows another, collision detect is disabled between the two 007 Missiles can no longer be destroyed by lasers. Mines still can. Weapons launched from the same ship cannot collide with each other unless one is a mine and the other is a missile. 008 A cargo pod can no longer be collected if it is blowing up. This used to cause a GPF if a shuttle was en-route to collect it. 009 AI ships will no longer dock or rtb with a target that is blowing up 010 Scripting changes: - Fleeing objects now fire the NOEXIST event and clear the EXIST flag when they disappear. 011 Xtreme Carnage changes: At the end of every level when XC_INIT is called... - all values are re-initialised - shield/engine/laser/afterburner/reactor are reset to 100% efficiency - IC armor/fuel are set to default values - IC fuel is set to default value - pilot/copilot FF & LF are set to 100% - display rolling/cramping anomalies (due to damage) are repaired 012 You no longer need to lower shields/weapons when docking. When you launch these values are what they were on docking. 013 The visual range of dynamic objects and lasers has been increased 014 Dynamic objects will stop maneuvering if they are exploding 015 Added fragmentation option to CONFIG Explosion fragments are now debris objects or lasers. Size/speed and spin of debris fragments is determined by size of object. All types cause damage if they impact a ship. Exact type is chosen at random. If an exploding object is textured, fragments use those textures. If the object is a missile, laser fragments only are used. 016 An object with a rebuild time will no longer vanish when destroyed. It will be visible (but not targetable), and will show varying degrees of gridwork depending on how much time remains before the rebuild timer expires causing the object to be completely visible and active once again. To test this, start in debug mode (/d1), target GHQ, switch to the F10 external camera, adjust the view as necessary and destroy it with ALT+X In the interest of gameplay, max rebuild time is 8 hrs and min is 1 min. Starstations have the longest rebuild time of 8 hrs. Buildings vary. The max rebuild time will be reduced upon majority request. * Note: Rebuild will be implemented for carriers, cruisers and transports so that the carcass will remain for a short period before being finally destroyed and removed a random time later. This means that after a huge skirmish, you could basically turn a space region into a ship graveyard. * At the moment collision detect is disabled for a destroyed object that is being rebuilt. Later, this will be enabled and special color bleep in the TACSCAN will be used to identify these type of objects. 017 CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-S attempts to restart the sound when you lose it under OS/2 018 The system will now check the active state for an interceptor before it broadcasts a message from the pilot to prevent sending messages though docked. 019 More work on collision detect/avoidance. ---work in progress--- and getting there. AI ships may behave strangely in this work in progress. 020 Probes in SCI-LINK mode will no longer report laser shots 021 The support ship menu is now available in the tacOPS computer 022 The support ship menu is now accessible from any ship, however, you will only be able to launch ships from the Battlecruiser. All other command work as normal. 023 The 3D object for personnel, ATV, drone will no longer be removed unless there was a successful transfer. 024 Restored the missing frame for the Navitron computer 025 Changes in CO-PILOT cockpit - cleaned up CVD ship integrity display - moved target filter from RSA to CVD - implemented HID, damage to HID can effect it's stability - revised RSA, these depend on IC computer integrity for stable display - The thrust keys will now work from this seat 026 ILD range is now 5km, in SVGA enemy missiles are diamonds, own missiles are squares. 027 Jump time now based on engine integrity, allowing the player to overtake a fleeing ship that is jumping and wait for it to arrive at it's exit anomaly. This means that you now have a greater chance of catching a damaged ship if it decides to flee. This probably won't affect ships that are in good condition. Requires further testing/tweaking. * Note: You CANNOT find an ai ship that has jumped from one region to another via sub-space. The system removes the ship from the system so that processing for it, does not reduce the game's speed. ACM scripted ships and those in XC or FF that are created to persist, are not affected. If these jump and they are designed to persist, you should be able to located them by jumping after them. 028 The 3D objects for a drone/ATV or personnel will no longer be removed if there is insufficient space in the ATV or shuttle. 029 The HUD color is reset to default when returning to space from a planet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.6A PATCH 10/14/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Soundfx changes: - If your ship gets hit when your shields are down and you take damage, a different sound is now played (GETHIT1.WAV) - If you hit a ship with it's armor breached, a sound is played (HIT1.WAV) - You will now hear shots from hostile ships firing at you and within range - You will now here turrets soundfx when ships/stations with turrets fire. This does NOT apply to your own ship! - The collision sound (CLUNK.WAV) is only played when two ships collide and you are one of them Note: A shield animation is being implemented. This will play an animation for up to 5 areas on the ship that are hit. It will be precise using the advanced collision detect routines so that if you hit a ship on the left side, up to 5 animations on that side will be played. This requires new pointers in the object file. This will invalidate ALL previous saved games. 001 Powerful missiles no longer cause incorrect damage values to ship systems 002 You can now test the FRENCH.LNG, GERMAN.LNG and SPANISH.LNG by putting them in the current directory (NO need to delete ENGLISH.LNG) and using the debug command to enable it, ie /l? parameter. ?=1-5 for the language used. !You CANNOT change languages mid-stream, ie start with English and then change to German but use the English game that was in progress. Note: Only the game kernel text is translated in this file. I cannot send out the scripting and frontend text (menus already translated) to translate until the project is FINISHED. This will be added to the end of the .LNG file once no more text changes are required ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.6 PATCH 10/10/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed problem with co-pilot Systems Status Display 002 Fixed SAVE/RESTORE bug (again) 003 The v key will now view the current object in any mode 004 Explosions are now time based to make them less frame rate dependent 005 In debug mode, the A/B and R/R were excessively powerful. They are now only this powerful if the current CVD target is a planet or moon. 006 ***WORK IN PROGRESS*** Implemented new momentum based collision detect for ships, lasers, missiles You can now creep up on a large target without fear of the old Take 2 implemented collision detect, prematurely bouncing you away from the object. Notes: - Lasers pass through lasers - Missiles can be hit by missiles and by lasers (both blow up immediately but see blast notes) - Ships can collide with ships (both effected by momentum of collision, recovery is slow). Collision damage is applied to both. - Ships can be hit by missiles (ship momentum effected by blast, recovery is slow). collision and blast damage is applied to ship. - Ships can be hit by lasers (ship is destabalised (stunned) by hits if shields are down). - If the players ship collides with an object a collision sound is played. - Collisions result in spin applied to objects. 007 Final version of revised Xtreme Carnage 008 **WORK IN PROGRESS** Proximity explosions has been implemented. When an object explodes, it produces a shockwave which can damage any objects within it. The object disintegrates in 3D polygonal objects which are dynamically textured using the object's texture maps. These fragments will will fly at random speeds and random spin. Shockwave blasts from exploding objects will damage nearby objects and cause a chain reaction if any object that's hit, also explodes. Missiles and laser are unaffected by shockwave blasts. [currently, the 3D fragments are not created] 009 Removed obsolete GALCOM database ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.5 PATCH 09/24/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed a bug which caused a crash in the INVERSE-TACTICAL view 002 Fixed incorrect damage factor for Vagrant missile in Tactical 003 Fixed Roster STATS 'experience point' misalignment 004 The ATV was incorrectly configured with shields (manual has been updated) 005 Fixed a problem in the animation renderer which caused a random GPF crash when animations such as explosions, jump anomaly etc were played * reproducing this and fixing it was a beauty 006 Pressing SHIFT+t in debug mode will no longer declutter the TTD as well 007 Fixed ATV menu misalignment 008 Tractoring an object multiple times is no longer allowed. If you try to tractor an object that's already tractored, you will get a red flash X 009 Docking with the BC with one of your ships in tow, will leave the towed ship behind. To tow the second ship, use the BC tractor beam. You will then be prompted to bring the ship in if you wish. 010 Changed XC weapons rearm to include space missiles only ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.4 PATCH 09/21/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 In XC, the ACM status has now been corrected to read, LEVEL. Other ACM specific info removed. 002 The target filter in the IC pilot CVD has been reformatted. It was also removed from the co-pilot's RSA system 003 Fixed a bug which caused the laser animation to remain active even after the fragmentation animation was played. 004 EPs now awarded for destroying ground objects 005 Synchronized explosions completed for all objects 006 Fixed a bug in XC which caused the game to crash when IC was destroyed 007 Fixed a script bug in XC which caused script events to fall through 008 In XC the COMMLINK will now be displayed when a new level is activated 009 FATAL has been revised as follows: - Uses only Vagrant and Ralix missiles. If you don't have these in the weapons bay, then you will not see any in the weapons selection list - Only cruisers and carriers can carry these two missile types though you can arm your interceptors with them. If you see one of these missiles headed your way, it's curtains. - These two missiles are expensive, huge and very, very deadly. Check the updated WEAPONS.DOC or TRADECOM for info. - When you designate a FATAL target with d, you no longer have to get a valid lock in the MTD. FATAL will maintain it's internal memory lock and fire the missile once the target comes within it's parameters ie lock time and range. - You can designate any number of missiles to a target - You CANNOT manually launch missiles that have been assigned to FATAL. You will have to cancel the target which causes FATAL to make the previously assigned missiles available to the weapons launch system. - Once the target is designated, you can pretty much forget about it and let FATAL do it's job. This is keeping with the functionality of the PTA system which controls the turrets in a similar fashion 010 TACTICAL/INVERSE-TACTICAL views revised. See # 036 above. 011 You can now cycle targets in external views using the . and , keys 012 Been playing around with the music - again -. It seems to work ok but still has some quirks: When current song is finished, it won't restart. You have to go into CONFIG and turn MUSIC on/off again. Also, it should play a new song each time you jump. This seems to work. Sometimes, the game will hang when launching on jumping. If this happens with music ON, it means it crashed when trying to load a new song. If this happens often, go into CONFIG and turn music OFF. To have music, you must run SETUP.EXE from DOS and activate your MIDI device. Test it to make sure your sound card works! 013 Implemented a new 'hit' soundfx. This will be played when you or target are hit by laser. It's not perfect yet but it'll do for now. This sound is only played when you hit a target with shields. Once the shields are breached, you should hear a different sound. Remember, the sound environment is distance cued (even for cameras) therefore the playback volume is dependent on your distance to the target. rtPatch refused to build a patch for BC3LIB5A.RES (28MB) after several hours, so I modified the code to use the HIT1.WAV file from the current directory. Since I have no way around this problem, it will remain this way for all patches distributed on-line. 014 Changed the soundfx that was used when a target was destroyed or hit after a shield breach. The sound file was already in the resource file, I just changed it. This one is more sublte and not as raspy as the one that is being used in prior versions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.3 PATCH 09/16/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Xtreme Carnage scripts updated to be more streamlined and better structured like the ACM ones 002 Experience points are now used to keep score in Xtreme Carnage. You can gain and lose experience points based on the destroyed target. Now compete against your friends for who has the highest level score. 003 Xtreme Carnage level info is now displayed in the CVD. Like ACM, is shows the start, completion and down time for each level. (Pending: Need to remove ACM STATUS heading in translation) 004 Xtreme Carnage now has a bonus Level 11 which runs free form with active active threat auto-generation for a period of 24 hrs before shutting down. 005 XC now has high-res map support. Also changes names of two planets. 006 Split Neptune space region into three parts 007 Fixed tacOPS surface mode probe menu mis-alignment 008 Fixed tacOPS 'zoom back/rtb' menu bug 009 Fixed tacOPS shuttle tow menu (feature itself does not work yet) 010 If a player ship is towing another and it docks with the BC, the towed object is updated so that it no longer thinks it is towed. 011 FATAL system now maintains LOCK on a target if the target leaves HUD FOV (Bug: leaves "sticky mtds" on display in some situations though). This means that once you achieve a LOCK on the target, FATAL will now launch a missile when it comes within range. You no longer have to orient the ship in order to maintain lock, FATAL does this automatically as part of it FAst Target Acquisition and Lock technology. (Pending: Need to suppress weapons list so that only STS missiles are displayed). 012 Corrected lens flare annulus shape 013 Synchronized explosions with differential time release playback. You've GOT to see this to believe what I've gone and done. After redoing explosions for over 200 objects, you'd _better_ like it. 014 Fixed problem with Saturn map disappearing. 015 View updates (some may be removed and moved into Battlecruiser Commander. These ONLY work in debug mode) The engine supports the following types of views: TACOPS : (various) INTERNAL: FRONT WITH COCKPIT FRONT CLEAN REAR LEFT RIGHT TURRET EXTERNAL: SEARCHING LOCKED FLOATING TRACKING SPECTATOR TWIN OBJECT Explanation of the EXTERNAL views: SEARCHING This mode is used when switching from one subject to another (modified) the camera shifts location smoothly between objects. It is not selectable or controllable by the user. LOCKED This view fixes the camera with respect to the object. The user (old) can control the position (pitching/yawing/distance). The camera always points towards the object. The view of the object is not effected by orientation of that object. Toggled with FLOATING using F8. FLOATING This is similar to LOCKED except that the camera is always (modified) "upright" so that if the ship rolls, this is visible from the camera view. The user can control the position of the camera distance and yaw. "pitch" now effects the cameras elevation wrt the object and is not effected by object orientation. The camera always points towards the object. Toggled with LOCKED using F8. TRACKING This is used for flybys. The camera tracks the object, but it (old) does not move with the object. The user has no control over the camera, and the camera is always upright. SPECTATOR This view also has a fixed camera position. but the user (new) can control the direction the camera looks in and zoom in/out. It is similar to the basic tacops view. TACTICAL/ The most flexible of the external views. Two objects are INVERSE - used, object1 and object2. This view constantly tracks TACTICAL both objects so that irrespective of their orientation and (new) position, they are always in the centre of the display. Object1 appears closer than object2 (and may obscure it), the user can change the only distance of the camera to object1. The camera is always upright. This is similar to a "padlock" view, except it is external to the object. TACTICAL views are selected when you cycle through the views with repeated use of the F8 and F10 keys. The sequence is: LOCKED TACTICAL FLOATING INVERSE TACTICAL This sequence is designed so that double presses of F8/F10 toggle you easily between the two tactical modes in the heat of battle. When F8 is used, TACTICAL views relate to the players ship and it's CVD target. When F10 key is used, the tactical views relate to the players ship, it's CVD target and *that targets* target. The latter allows you to observe another ship and see how it behaves wrt it's objective irrespective of yourself. "Target" here refers to the flight objective of an object. Eg: an escort ship might switch flight objectives between a threat and leader. Note that if any object is assigned to a TACTICAL view and there is no object target, the view reverts to a LOCKED view, the TACTICAL view will be automatically re-establised when the object selects a target. Orbiting structures (such as stations and ODS) do not select targets. They may select multiple targets for turrets but that doesn't count as a "target" in this sense. Use arrow keys to shift the closer object away from the screen center. HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN move the viewpoint away from the object per usual. Numeric keypad 5 resets the view. The default setup has the closer ship 1/4 of the way up from the bottom of the screen. Example: 1. Run game with /d1 /q to disable autogeneration 2. Start new game (Free flight) and launch BC 3. Use Tactical to assign an FE to SC1 4. Press a to turn off BC auto-pilot 5. Press 0 to disengage engine and halt the BC 6. SHIFT-P to Enter Perscan wait for the FE to enter the shuttle 5. Press ESC to return to the bridge 6. Launch SC-1 with ALT-F5 7. Switch to SC-1 with ALT-F5 8. Press . three times to target the BC from the shuttle 9. Press f to assign the BC as the FP target for the shuttle 10.Press a to engage autopilot shuttle will now fly a pattern around the BC 11.Press F1 to remove cockpit and external view diagnostics 12.Press F8 twice to select external TACTICAL view Sit back and watch, after a few passes you'll see what the view is doing. Note: the SC is better for this demonstration than the IC, IC flight dynamics are too crisp, it accelerates too rapidly to clearly see what's happeming, and it may illustrate certain weaknesses in it's flight model. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.2 PATCH 09/14/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed HUD weapon selection corruption 002 Fixed GPF in Tactical weapons view 003 Removed all OTS weapons from BC default startup weapons list ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.1 PATCH 09/13/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Disabled ships (grey) will no longer be able to hyperjump 002 Fixed COMMLINK access bug introduced in multi-language support 003 Fixed Radar Mask text error introduced in multi-language support 004 Interceptor shields now set to max at XC launch 005 Problem with ai ships being unable to jump ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE D.0 PATCH 09/11/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Support for 70 video card chipsets. Use bc3000ad /v? command to see options 002 Probes can now be detached causing them to be destroyed and a slot made available for a replacement. Select the desired probe and send it the 'DETACH' command. 003 Multi-Lingual support. This is NOT included in this patch and can only be obtained from the publisher. Supported languages are French, German, Italian & Spanish. 004 Extensive speed optimizations and improvements in all renderers 005 The planetary object is now rendered using triangles and supports high res or high definition textures. In order to keep the patch file down, only the Sol system has high res map support. You can download high-res map support file (BC3KMAPS.ZIP) when it becomes available. This will provide high-res map support for all planets and removes the cloud cover from planets which do not require them. 006 Since all the rendering modes are now perspective correct, the CTRL+t command is now obsolete. These have also been removed from CONFIG 007 Rendering options have been revised in CONFIG. Refer to manual for an explanation of the new options. The patch file will delete this file and allow BC3K to create a new one on startup. Go to CONFIG and change your settings as desired. 008 Complete manual in Adobe Acrobat format now available. The BC3KMAN.PDF file requires the Acrobat 3.0 reader available at www.adobe.com. Once you install Acrobat, you can load this file and view or print it. 009 Cloud layers implemented with view fogging at cloud layer. Further optimization is required to reduce speed drop when banking at certain angles 010 You can now turn shadowing on/off for the planet's external view 011 Revised ship cloaking effect. It is now transparent. Try it against the backdrop of a planet or from any turret view. 012 Implemented lens flare effect complete with solar white-out. Watch for spectacular effects during flybys, view controls and in tacOPS view modes. 013 The planet surfaces are now segmented into friendly, neutral and hostile regions based on alien nation and castes. 014 Keyboard commands modified. Please refer to new BCKEYS.TXT or Appendix A of the manual for new commands. 015 Intruders will no longer beam onto the ship if it is FULLY cloaked 016 Revised object explosions. Still needs some synchronization 017 Revised jump gate object 018 Tilt control added to external views and tacOPS, tilt adjusted by INS and DEL on the numeric keypad. 019 External F8 & F10 view keys now toggle between LOCKED/FLOATING camera modes 020 As of v1.01D.0, save game files are now backward compatible -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C5 Fix Pack #3 04/23/97 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 FINALLY fixed this bug which prevented you from leaving nullspace. To leave, target the fluxfield in the NID, press f to lock it to the Flight Path, then press f again to program it into the Flight Path Designator. Turn your weapons systems off or the FPD won't work. You can now either engage the a/p to do the jump, or do it yourself. 002 Fixed a problem introduced in Fix Pak #2 when fixing bug #013. This caused personnel to be 'stuck' at their locations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C5 Fix Pack #2 04/22/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed a mouse crash bug on the bridge 002 Fixed a problem with incorrect cargo pod space calculation which would cause the shuttle to report insufficient space on some pods. 003 Fixed a bug which caused interceptor 'defend all' command to only launch interceptor 2 004 Added the probe list to the NID menu for easy manipulation. Probes should now be easy to launch from the bridge. NOTE: If you link to a probe which then gets destroyed or reaches it's jump range (all probes can jump n times), it will be detached and self-destruct to avoid capture by the enemy. If this happens when you are linked to the probe using the tacLINK feature, you will get static in ALL systems which are getting data about the region the probe is in. This includes (a) bridge (b) TACSCAN and (c) tacOPS You can remove this by selecting another probe or cancelling tacLINK. For those of you who don't know how to. You can launch a probe to a space region and get data about that region though the ship is not in there. BRIDGE: Select a jump anomaly in the NID computer. Once launched, click again in the NID and select the launced probe. Then click on jump at and select a 'navigation' target, ie Mars. The target for the probe will change to the new region. Probe will start to broadcast at launch and will continue doing so from the new region. You can now actually select & view targets in that region by linking to the probe by selecting it again in the NID and selecting the tacLINK program. If the probe is going into a hostile region, you should program it for SILENT mode to avoid detection and ultimately destruction. In tacLINK mode, the TACSCAN will have a flashing dot indicating it's mode. The tacOPS computer will say tacLINK. TACOPS: Select the probe and launch it. Select it again and give it a jump anomaly. Once it jumps, put it in tacLINK mode. Experienced commanders use this method to spy in regions before actually going there. You can also move closer to the jump anomaly BEFORE launching the probe. Doing this will decrease the probe's travel time since you are closer to the selected anomaly. NOTE: A bug in the tacLINK model shows a problem where you can actually tow, dock and launch missiles at targets in the probe's region even though you're not there! 005 Launch platforms (stations) will now have supplies (weapons/personnel/ships) replenished every 30 minutes. 006 Drone menu in SC has been restructured. DEPLOY is only available if the drone is IN the ship. Target only lists drones that are deployed and EXTRACT only allows extraction of drones in the SAME region as the ship. The player MUST use the pull-right to select which drone to retrieve. Drone menu is ineffective in space. **NOTE** You can deploy/extract drones/ATVs at any altitude until the ground control model is fixed. You cannot deploy/extract personnel at this time. 007 Reduced the size of MAX so that you get a better view of the target. 008 Implemented new animations for carriers and cruisers. 009 The shuttle orders in tacOPS have been changed so there is a seperate retrieve action for each drone, ie RETRIEVE DRONE 1, RETRIEVE DRONE 2, RETRIEVE DRONE 3, and RETRIEVE DRONE 4. 010 The MOON region is now a little safer. The occasional threat will show up. Use them for target practice because they are no match for your BC. NOTE: Some transports ARE armed. If it's red, transport or not, shoot it! 011 When I did the demo for CGW, I had to disable the intro in order to keep the demo size down. I forgot to remove this restriction in C5. I've restored it. You can play the demo if you enable it in CONFIG. 012 [`] + [TAB] control "collective pitch" in VTOL flight configuration. If a throttle axis is available, it has more authority than [`] or [TAB]. For best effect with a throttle axis, use the throttle for center trim and use the keys to adjust vertical speed. Hold down the keys to build up vertical speed. When the keys are released the vertical speed will return gradually to zero. You can also use the numeric 5 key to auto-hover. NOTE: Ground vehicles or ships when in contact with the ground are currently using an unstable kinematics model. The ATV uses a turret control method (like the decoupled IOD) that has insufficient control authority to overcome slope/gravity effects, and there is no modelling of ground friction to damp these forces, so it's somewhat similar to skidding on ice. (It occurs to me that in an ice climate, this is what is wanted if the player attempts to drive the ATV too forcefully). 013 When an Interceptor pod is ejected, it will home in on the location of the Battlecruiser and automatically dock with it. A bug was discovered which caused the surviving pilots in the pod to not be moved to the medibay once the pod was auto-retrieved. This has been fixed. 014 Reduced the firing rate for turrets. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C5 Fix Pack #1 04/17/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Fixed a problem with collecting shuttles collecting cargo 002 Shuttles will now report if a cargo pod is empty or not 003 Updated the laser animations for ships 004 Upgraded the BC laser to Multi AXial, MAX type for increased firepower ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE 5 C PATCH 04/17/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Player will no longer be able to dock at hostile stations 002 Trading model bugs fixed and completed. Also includes inflation bug 003 The image of external comms party is now displayed in NID 004 Auto-arm for interceptors will now replace missing weapons from BC cargo bay if available. 005 'missile pods are empty' no longer repeated by Mother and TO when missile stores are depleted. 006 Replacing a destroyed shuttle will no longer cause a GPF. Note: Could not reproduce GPF condition for interceptor or ATV 007 FF, LF and AI modelling revised and overhauled. AI should now increase at a faster rate based on person's health (FF+LF). The FF of personnel off-station should no longer increase (caused by folks not leaving their posts to get food) as personnel will now go look for food when they are hungry thereby momentarily abandoning their post. 008 A GPF will no longer occur when an RTB order is given to a ship if the BC is in a different region. 009 You should now be able to leave NULLSPACE 010 A GPF should no longer occur when selecting CONTINUE from the main menu 011 Roster will no longer display the FF if player is in ACM mode 012 Save/Restore should no longer cause a GPF 013 The docking range has been increased to 25 clicks 014 A mouse can now be used to select a destination in Navitron. LEFT-CLICK to set destination, RIGHT-CLICK to clear current map 015 Payroll, promotions and EPs have been restored in FF mode 016 The background comms chatter on the bridge can now be turned OFF in CONFIG 017 Fixed a bug which would cause invalid objects to appear in cargo pods 018 SIGNIFICANT keyboard changes. Refer to BCKEYS.TXT 019 Some control updates: - To return to cockpit view after using hat B on combat sticks operate the same hat direction twice in succession. - Button 5&6 on supported joysticks are not yet implemented - Retros (TAB key) are no longer discontinuous near 0 speed - 0 key uses R/R or A/B as needed to halt a ship so long as it is held down. 0 has no effect while MFD modes that expect numeric input (such as the radar filter) are active. - Stick FWD/BACK in VTOL mode move the ship FWD/BACK. UP/DOWN in VTOL is controlled with the throttle (or ` and TAB although this is not yet implemented). - LEFT/RIGHT ARROW now control YAW - INS/DEL now control ROLL 020 Started work on new ACM event triggers so that players don't have to hang around once an ACM scenario is completed, i.e the next one can be triggered immediately without waiting for the current one to expire. This is work in progress so expect some strange anomalies in ACM mode. However, PLEASE report them! 021 The Navitron condition will now be updated when repaired at a station. 022 A manual in Word 7.0 and Adobe Acrobat format is now available and can be downloaded at the same site where this patch was acquired. Readers are available at the following sites. 3000AD will NOT provide tech support for these readers. An ascii version of the manual is also available but does not contain any graphics. Word - http://www.microsoft.com/word/Internet/Viewer/default.htm Adobe - http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html 023 Illegal items pricing bug fixed. 024 Docking at a GALCOM facility with illegal items will result in a violation being logged on your record. All illegal items will now be confiscated. 025 New Navitron graphics. - Courtesy of Cmdr. Aaron 'Taliesin' Leiby 026 Salaries are now 50% higher in ACM mode 027 The PTA target array has been increased allowing ships with turrets, as well as stations to track up to 24 targets at a time. 028 If a missile with video logic is launched, the CVD will now activate to display the missile's video feed. This was in but Take2 disabled it for some reason. 029 Missile camera mode can now be selected using ctrl+m 030 Support Unit Locator, SUL, in TACSCAN implemented. Players were complaining about losing their units on the planet surface. The SUL mode solves this problem. Once activated using normal TACSCAN mode switch keys, the radar filter will display color coded dots representing the player's units only. This works in space, air and ground modes. You can then select a unit and fly to it using the TTD. Color codes: BC (blue), IC (cyan), ATV (green), Drone (grey), Shuttle (yellow), Probe (white), Personnel (red). This filter is also operational in tacOPS so that you can track your units when observing the surface from orbit. 031 TTD declutter mode implemented. This allows you to select the type of TTD information that is displayed. Use shift+t to toggle. full (default), TTD box only, box+apha info, box+numeric info. 032 It now takes 1 hr for a mining drone to completely fill up after being deployed. Previously it was 24 hrs. 033 The current capacity of a deployed mining drone is now displayed in Tactical. You can now figure out whether to extract the drone or not. 034 Corrected bug in Xtreme Message 'death' message 035 Revised Xtreme Carnage to conform to new advanced ACM directives. The next level is now only executed when all the hostiles in the current level are cleared. Previously, it was time driven. 036 Various anomalies in Xtreme Carnage fixed. These include menu restrictions, docking & SOS requests, logistix, navitron, roster, miscon, and tacops etc. The only available computer system is COMMLINK. 037 Personnel Scan, PerSCAN computer implemented. Activated with shift+p, this computer lets you monitor the status, location and assignment of everyone on the BC, right from the bridge. No more guessing where people are. It runs in real time so you should see the stats change. Press any key to remove it. This mode is NOT available in low res. 038 There is now a greater chance of intruders boarding the BC if a hostile transport, cruiser or carrier is in the vicinity. 039 All TACOPS object menus now have a ZOOM BACK choice (which is the default). Selecting this option will revert the view to previous one (position/orientation/zoom factor). Zooming out fully will also reset orientation to the default. In general, zoom out (right click etc) reverts to the previous view. I am not sure if this is desirable 100% of the time, but it is a lot faster and more intuitive for wide area use. The only drawback seems to be that you can't use the mouse to back out by 2 to widen the display view arc. To do this you have to use the HOME/END keys, which are actually far more precise than zoom by two. Of course, if you zoom in by 2 multiple times then zoom out will effectively zoom you out by 2. (The zoom is implemented with a stack). 040 IC bridge pullright now has explicit DEFEND BATTLECRUISER order 041 Launched interceptors should now go into SAD mode if launched without a waypoint or target. 042 You will now only have access to expanded Navigation option in tacOPS if you have the Hyperion Subspace Device artifact. Using this, you will be able to peek into regions your BC or one of your probes is NOT in. 043 Probe launch changed to ALT+p. This activates the CVD and NID if they are off. If the current NID mode is NOT Probe Relay System, PRS, ALT+p then (1) switches NID to probe view mode (2) switches CVD to target view mode (3) switches TACSCAN to space scan (3) sets NID as the current selected system (4) finds the first ready probe and makes that the current one. otherwise it launches the currently selected probe. 044 Ship launched *IN* NULLSPACE now inherit the launched platforms last charted region. This allows you to be able to leave NULLSPACE in an a ship that was launched from the BC while IN NULLSPACE. 045 Bridge ATV menus are functional and include SWITCH TO if the ATV is deployed. 046 ATV menu in SC has been restructured. DEPLOY is only available if the ATV is in the ship. SWITCH TO only lists ATV that are deployed and RETRIEVE only allows retreival of ATVs in the same region, and the player must use the pull-right to select which ATV to retrieve. ATV menu is ineffective in space. Note: A problem has been discovered when Flight Engineers or medics are on board the ATV when it is retrieved. Investigating. 047 Shuttle orders in TACOPS have been changed so there is a separate retrieve action for each ATV, ie RETRIEVE ATV1, RETRIEVE ATV2, RETRIEVE ATV3, and RETRIEVE ATV4. 048 Cheats implemented for testers and only in DEBUG mode CTRL-ALT-SHIFT 1-6: 1 - Restore all personnel to full health 2 - Restore all BC and IC systems to repaired status 3 - Maximum upgrades for reactor, shield, engine, armor 4 - Promotes to Supreme Commander 5 - Infinite weapons, full loadouts for BC and all IC's 6 - Gives all ACM artifacts 049 Earth's moon now linked to a new space region and free of hostiles. Can be used by new players for training scenarios. Use MOON jump point to jump to region. This region is the proposed training ground for creating training scenarios for the player. Savvy players can use it as a resting area as well. There is now a research station in orbit around the moon. A 'test' asteroid field is now in the region. You cannot destroy these asteroids - yet. 050 All regions with more than 5 moons have now been split up into smaller regions to speed up processing. A jump point will lead to the new regions which only contain moons. These regions include Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn etc 051 All violations are now recorded in COMMLINK 052 Game transitions revised and tested (additional testing may be required) - BC Evacuation (auto/manual) When the evacuate sequence is initiated, you can use either auto or manual evacuation and an option MUST be selected before the timer expires or it will default to auto. Auto puts all personnel and cargo in shuttles, interceptors and launches them. After the ship self destructs IF the player's alter-ego survived, ie, was NOT on the BC when it self destructed, COMMLINK is displayed and lists surviving crew members. On exit from COMMLINK, you are then taken to GHQ or the next GALCOM starstation where you are given a new ship. Only surviving crew members and cargo are transfered over. You can get a new ship up to 3 times before you are retired from active duty. There is an internal cheat which ensures that the alter-ego is always off the ship, if for some reason this fails, ie, you don't have any ships* (shuttles etc) to evac the crew, the game will enter a normal 'destroyed' state since the alter-ego will perish. If you lose your ship using this method 3 times, the next time it happens, you will be retired from active duty even if you survive. If you evacuate the ship under court-martial orders, the trial will proceed when you arrive at GHQ. If you perish, you will be listed as KIA. *In a future update, the system will beam personnel to the surface of a planet/moon in the region if there are not enough support ships on the BC to evac the whole crew. Once this happens, you will be able to get your new ship. - BC SOS tow request A tow can be requested at anytime. This takes you to GHQ or the nearest starstation for a fee since it is handled by subcontractors. Prices may vary. If you request a tow ship when under court-martial orders, the trial will proceed when the tow ship docks at a GALCOM station. If there are no functional friendly starstations available or if you don't have the funds, the SOS request will fail. You will have to keep trying until an active station is found. There is no limit on the number of times you can request a tow ship. If you call for a tow and don't have the funds (500,000), you will get a violation You will be listed as MIA until a station is found. - BC Destroyed If the BC is destroyed during combat before the evac procedure is activated, the rules for 'evac' apply. Therefore, IF the alter-ego is NOT on the ship when it is destroyed, you'll get another ship. If you survive when under court-martial orders, the trial will proceed when you arrive at GHQ. The BC or any ship is destroyed if it enters a blackhole or supernova and this can happen only from a flux-field. If you perish, you will be listed as KIA. - IC/ATV/SH destroyed If the IC is destroyed, both pilots will be killed. If the pod is ejected (under ai or manual control) first, it will seek the BC in space and dock with it. If on a planet, it will drop to the ground. On impact, 3D objects representing the pilots will be created at the crash site so that they can be rescued. Only surviving pilots will be created. If a shuttle or ATV is destroyed, all personnel on board will be killed. Evacuating the shuttle or ATV will only work on the planet and this ejects all personnel to the surface where 3D objects for them are created. Only surviving personnel are created as those without jetpacks will certainly die if you evac a shuttle in mid-air. You cannot evac a shuttle in space. - Player alter-ego states (ACT/MIA/KIA/CMA) Active - alter-ego alive and on active duty Missing In Action - no stations found after SOS call Game continues Killed In Action - alter-ego perished after BC destroyed Game ends when this happens. Courtmartialed - found guilty of GALCOM violations. Games ends if player docks at a GALCOM station once the courtmartial finds him guilty. 053 In the interest of gameplay, the rebuild time of all objects has been reduced. Surface factories will rebuild and replace installations between 30-60 mins after they are destroyed. Starstations will now be rebuilt after 8 hrs. The anti-matter reconstruction unit owned by these governments allow them to reconstruct matter from stored profiles. This allows, for instance, a station to be replaced from a stored profile. Personnel, weapons and stores are then shipped to it since these are not part of the stored profile. This is a similar process to DNA cloning used for personnel. Please don't ask how it works. I don't have a clue. All I know is, I wanted to find a way to explain why that station you destroyed an hour ago came from. Without the BC3K regeneration technology, you and other ai entities could destroy the _entire_ game world before long, leaving nothing to interact with. This technology is part of what allows BC3K to live and grow regardless of what you and your kid brother do in the BC3K world. 054 Added probes support to selectable TACOPS objects, see below for menu command capabilities. 055 Added probe launch ops to tacOPS. You can now launch probes from tacOPS and monitor progress without having to switch back/forth from the bridge. The probes are color coded as follows: RED : missing/destroyed GREEN : ready to launch YELLOW : deployed and in transit to destination WHITE : at destination MENU pullright allows: LAUNCH - Launch if ready. Once it's launched, select the probe again from the tacOPS map and give it nav orders as you would from the bridge. TARGET - Select jump anomaly launch target. You have to select one of the jump anomalies in the region and the probe will use it to jump to that region. You can repeat this and have the probe jump from region to region. If you have the HSD, you can select a jump anomaly in any region and have the probe plot it's course and navigate to the region. NORMAL - Normal ops mode. Full data Broadcast allows the probe to relay information to COMMLINK as it travels to it's destination. It will continue to broadcast until it is destroyed or programmed for silent operation. A probe in hostile territory broadcasting to your ship is like a beacon to your ship. It may get destroyed and/or cause hostile ships to vector to your location since they simply hack into the probes downlink channel and trace the transmission to your ship. TACLINK - Tactical ops mode. Link target data to TACSCAN. Once this happens, you should be able to select targets IN the probe's current region since the TACSCAN is now programmed to 'peek' into that region. You can also use the CVD to view the target. To cancel, select one of the other modes. Selecting targets in another region in this fashion allows you to launch interceptors to the target as you would if the target were in the current region. This mode can also cause the probe to be detected. SILENT - Silent ops mode. Suppresses probe's broadcast link. TACLINK will still work. VIEW PROBE REGION - Allows you to view the region the probe is in VIEW LOCAL REGION - Allows you to switch TACOPS back to your region after using the above. If probe is destroyed, the switch is automatic. 056 Allowing objects with FLYTO orders to jump at jump gates causes some problems with ai objects jumping out of region when close to a jump anomaly. Therefore, an additional JUMP menu has been added which is equivalent to FLYTO except that a jump will be performed on arrival at the jump anomaly. 057 If incoming comms with a video feed is received and the NID is off, it will be activated to show the speaker's video image. 058 10 marines are now automatically on 'prep for combat' status when a new game is started. 059 Intruders and escaped prisoners will no longer head for Medibay when they take injury from marines in 'combat kill' ai mode. They will attempt to make a run for it or stand and die like men. Previously, as soon as they got wounded, they would retreat and head for the Medibay with marines in hot pursuit. Marines usually get to Medibay first and ambush them as they enter Medibay! 060 Intruders are no longer stupid enough to beam into the troop qtrs where marines are just waiting to kick their butts. Talk about breaking into a police station. 062 Flight Engineers will now return to the Flight Deck after they finish prepping or running diagnostics on an interceptor. 063 The weapons bay and cargo bay bugs are now fixed. You will no longer be able to remove missiles from the weapons pod if you do not have space in the weapons bay to return them to. 064 A weapons bay capacity meter is now in the weapons loadout section of Tactical. 065 If an intruder makes it to the bridge and kills the alter-ego, the game will end and you will be listed as Killed In Action. 066 Increased interceptor's firing rate 067 The initial power setting for the Solar Reactor is now 5 units and the Cloaking System is 10. This means that you can now activate your Cloaking System when the game starts without going into Logistix first. 068 Reduced the cloning time for personnel from 4 hours to 15 minutes 070 The moon region link from Earth containing the Genesis training station is now free from high ai threats. This is a safe area for players to practice and 'get into the game'. The occasional auto-generated fighter threat will show up every now and again but it's nothing Genesis can't handle. You can dock with this station and do what you want. 071 "<wrong craft> AWAITING ORDERS" in tacOPS bug fixed 072 TACSCAN Support Unit Locator, SUL mode turns off in IC pilot seat if NID is made the active system. Previously this would disable all NID targets. 073 IC Profile menu pullright removed. The ability to change an IC orders is now targeted for a future release. All interceptors will now launch in Search & Destroy mode. 074 The PerScan computer has been added to the bridge systems menu. PerScan can also be removed by pressing the left mouse button. 075 The probe orders menu pullright in tacOPS now works 076 A FATAL target will no longer be designated until a weapon is assigned. 077 FPD controls changed. <f> key simply assigns Flight Path, FP, to the current target and this is shown above the heading indicator. If <f> is pressed again the FP is cleared. <shift+f> is now obsolete. The FPD is shown if there is a FP target and the weapons systems are inactive. The FPD MUST be visible to perform a region jump, this means that weapon systems *must be disarmed* in order to jump. 078 The flight path is displayed above heading in all ships (not turrets) shows the FP irrespective of the FPD display status. 079 Removed static asteroids from moon region in preparation for dynamic asteroid generation module. 080 Interceptor replacement bug fixed 081 Flight engineers will no longer go off station when they've completed the analysis of a craft 082 Marines search logic modified. They can now locate intruders and escaped prisoners more accurately. 083 Marines combat logic modified. They will now switch into combat mode if an intruder or escaped prisoner shows up at their location whether they are in search mode or not 084 An interceptor will no longer be allowed to launch if it is not READY. 085 New Battlecruiser & Interceptor laser animation. - Courtesy Cmdr. Gary 'Buzz' Eastman 086 Added a message log menu to bridge COMMLINK computer which stores the last 15 messages to be generated. 087 Added the ability to control the message delay rate in the bridge COMMLINK 088 Added a hot area for the bridge COMMLINK computer. Moving the mouse and clicking in this area allows you to (a) change the message delay rate and (b) view the last 15 messages. Works in all cockpits and turrets. 089 Added a hot area to the bridge so that the IOD settings by clicking on the IOD indicator. 090 Added a hot area to the bridge so that the cloaking system can be activated by clicking on the CLOAK indicator. 091 Fixed a bug which caused Flight Engineers to arm interceptors with missiles with AUTOARM ON even though there were no missiles on the BC 092 The fix in #091 now allows you to change the mission profile loadout for the interceptors from the CVD. By using the shift+. and shift+, commands when viewing an interceptor in the CVD, you can alter it's mission loadout profile (SAD, INTERCEPT etc) and the Flight Engineers will load the appropriate weapons on it. Refer to the manual for info on which missiles are loaded based on the profile selected. 093 Fixed a bug which made the FATAL system autolaunch a missile without a valid FATAL target if you used the <shift+w> command to select weapons 094 Fixed a bug (again) which prevented you from returning from nullspace if you jumped to the moon region. The jump point was too close to the edge of the moon region. 095 Removed invalid 'zoom back' menu option from bridge menu 096 The Research Engineer will now send a message (ai based) when dangerous minerals such as Uranium, Strontium, Kryptonium etc, are found in the cargo bay. If a combination of such minerals are present in the cargo bay (ie Strontium+Kryptonium+Uranium present), it will (a) cause a radiation leak spreading from that deck throughout the ship and (b) in large amounts, will cause an explosion large enough to cause a hull breach. 097 Xtreme Carnage stream lined 098 The Battlecruiser turrets now have Mk1 (lower firepower than Mk2) IOD laser rails. The main IOD now has dual Mk2 rails. 099 GALCOM HQ has been fitted with Mk1 IOD laser systems The defense systems, target acquisition range and lock range has been increased for all starstations. 100 In the interest of gameplay and the fact that there is no backward save compatibility (until game is finished), 15 of the ACM missions have been removed, leaving 10. They are being re-written, streamlined and tested. This means that in C5, all the artifacts are gone. I expect to have the rest of the ACM scenarios (15) back in by the next patch (D level). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE 4 C PATCH 02/04/97 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 001 Launching weapons no longer results in negative weapons bay 002 Weapons bay no longer overflows if full and a missile is removed 003 IC weapons loadout changed if waypoint assignment in tacOPS is changed though the ship is deployed and NOT on the BC. 004 Activating PTA will no longer cause missile type to change 005 XC data files are no longer saved since scenario is not saved 006 Delivery of tractored ship will now succeed at non-hostile stations (previously only Terran stations). Will not ask player for delivery instructions if the delivery is invalid. 007 If the player opts not to deliver a tractored ship, the ship is not released but remains tractored when the player leaves the station. 008 Tractored ships will now not vanish if they were fleeing and are released in a region that is not the same as the prior flee region. In this case the tractored object attempts to flee using a new escape-item in the current region. 009 AI/TACTICAL is now disabled for an object that is being tractored. Fixes problem where a disabled/tractored object "escapes" when the tractoring ship conveys it to the jump point it was trying to escape to. 010 Target TTD color is immediately restored if tractor link is lost 011 Tractored ships have additional protection from being attacked by hostiles, which will now break off if their target becomes tractored. If the attacker had STRIKE orders, orders revert to SAD. 012 TACOPS 'zoom to' list only shown in view state (otherwise it interferes with waypoint setting). 013 TACOPS 'zoom to' list is now shown after removing command palette 014 Ships will now auto-egress surface at 200,000 ft msl 015 Jump delay timer for AI ships re-enabled. Prevents ships jumping unless their jump engine has been recharged. Disabled AI ships cannot re-charge their jump engines. The lower the engine integrity, the longer it takes to recharge the jump engine. 016 Personnel image will no longer obscure tacOPS command palette 017 Mother and TO will no longer repeat weapons depleted messages 018 The game will no longer crash if the BC is destroyed due to hull breach 019 Starting XC after playing FF or ACM no longer causes lockup 020 Tradecom screen no longer corrupted when displaying cargo bay capacity 021 Joystick calibration can be dismissed using the ESC key. This forces keyboard control for the remainder of the session 022 Fixed problems with object rebuild code 023 Implemented Combat Alert Status, CAS for external threat monitoring and Ship Alert Status, SAS for internal ship alert monitoring.SAS monitors in-ship problems such as intruder alerts, escaped prisoners, reactor core breaches, radiation etc CAS is purely a tactical monitor which signals the presence of hostile forces in the space region. 024 System updates are not performed when game is frozen in tacOPS or by activating a menu choice. 025 CDROM check disabled in debug mode 026 Save game from bridge causing return to main menu modified so that calling it is not destructive (does not invalidate the current 3D world), but may cause the game to be saved multiple times if it is called more than once. Testing required. This will not not save the game if none has been loaded, but will always save the most recently loaded game. 027 BC tacOPS orders menu added to bridge menu. 028 tacOPS current Target orders menu added to bridge menu. Equivalent to entering TACOPS and clicking on a target, except it works from the BC bridge and uses the current CVD target, ie target selected in TACSCAN and identified in CVD. 029 Nullspace fluxfields programmed to work first time. Like normal jump anomalies, the target anomaly must be an FPD target using shift+f, in order for the jump to occur. 030 Can now dock at starstations Sarien and Majoris 031 Starstation Adonis correctly relocated to Pravis. 032 Updated BCKEYS.TXT 033 Fixed Fatigue Factor/Life Factor exceeding 100 (max value) 034 Fragmentation animation now being played when object hit IF it's shields are already breached and not recharging. 035 Menus are now shifted up so that all items can be accessed when pointer near base of screen. 036 Launching from station no longer raises shields. Shield state is set to it's pre-dock state. 037 You can no longer jump if the jump engines aren't fully charged. This is relaxed in debug mode for testing purposes. 038 ESC can now be used to exit to DOS during the cd-rom check screen. 039 Shuttle orders in tacOPS fixed 040 Docking range increased to 25 clicks 041 Fixed some save/load anomalies 042 Experiments on new/faster laser shots (feedback required) 042 Can now dock at starstation Parix 043 Modified AI autogeneration logic 044 Player's ship no longer subject to 'ignore' AI script command 045 More work done on save/restore model 046 Turret mappings fixed. FORE=CTRL+F1, MID=CTRL+F2, AFT=CTRL+F3 047 Update weapons specs and stats in ai script 048 Update weapon stats in Tactical database 049 Fixed interceptor docking bug (Protected Mode Error 35) 050 Interceptor will now combat in ai mode even if player IN the ship. This is a TEST and _may_ fail. I need to research it some more. You should be able to see what the ic does when it's in combat by switching to it, putting in ai mode. Make _sure_ weapon systems are armed! 051 Maximum storage (crew,cargo,personnel) updates: Cargo Cargo Weapons Weapons Personnel Reactor Shield Cloak Bay1 Bay2 Bay1 Bay2 Max Radine Plutonium Iridium ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BC 7500 7500 250 250 237 25000 10000 1000 Shuttle 2000 - - - 20 - - - ATV 500 - 10 - 4 - - - Drone 1000 - - - - - - - The drone and ATV each take up 750 units of cargo space which will reduce the cargo capacity of the shuttle they are loaded in. Radine max reduced to 25000 Iridium max increased to 1000 Shuttle capacity increased to 2000 052 An atv and drone are now loaded into all shuttles at startup 053 MIDI support removed from BC3K globally. That's the end of that. 054 Switching from a turret to a ship that is NOT ready to launch will no longer cause a GPF 055 Reduced repetition of some pilot voice messages 056 The interceptor, shuttle and ATV can now be destroyed in DIRECT mode if the integrity of the hull or reactor falls to zero at any time. 057 The interceptor pod will no longer auto-eject when the ship is destroyed when in DIRECT mode. 058 You can no longer tow invalid items such as asteroids 059 AI entities will no longer attack hazards such as asteroids etc 060 Dynamic auto-generation of ai entities will no longer occur in regions the player is not in. 061 The proper distance cued explosion soundfx is now played when an object is destroyed. 062 Race/caste alliance modifications. An object can ignore defualt race/caste relationships and treat another object as hostile. Objects launched from a platform inherit the override relationships of their platform. Example: carrier object A attacking station object B. Causes A to attack B and B to retaliate. If A then launches fighter C, then C is then hostile to B and B is additionaly hostile to C. A platform does NOT inherit the hostile relationships of its subordinates, nor do any objects attacked by a subordinate then become hostile to the platform that launched it. Hostile Override between two objects is discarded if one of the objects is destroyed or docks. Note: Hostile override as a result of friendly fire is not yet implemented. 063 Messages pertaining to events the player is not witnessing in ACM will no longer be transmitted. eg a player is sent to a region where an ACM script is running. If he's not there, messages directed at him will not be transmitted. 064 The BC will no longer be destroyed when it enters a planet. Note: Some restrictions will apply once the orbital model is in place. 065 A GPF will no longer occur when a probe is sent to a planet. Instead it will linger in the general vicinity of the planet. Once the orbital model is in, you will need a probe or the BC in orbit to do a planetary scan in tacOPS. Broadcasting for a probe on surface activities will not be supported as planned because there would be too many messages since the surface is always more densely populated than space. If it is implemented broadcasting may be restricted to the player's own ships and personnel. 066 Missiles should now hit their targets. This is work in progress as we have identified an issue where the missile will miss slow flying targets. We don't know why yet. 067 You can no longer deliver a tractored object to itself 068 You can no longer deliver an object without a positive tractor lock on 069 The aspect angle needed for ai ships to launch missiles has been increased which will increase the launch rate of ai ships. 071 The aspect angle needed for ai ships to fire lasers has been increased which will increase the firing rate of ai ships. 072 You can now select Navitron from a starstation. The menu is now fixed 073 A successful auto-evac with a surviving alter-ego will no longer call COMMLINK with an invalid parameter. Note: some additional code is required which will check for the existence of GALCOM hq _before_ attempting to relocate the player there. The system will scan for a valid GALCOM station and take the player to the nearest one. If none exist, the SOS call will fail. The player will have to hang around until one becomes available, ie repaired or rebuilt. This code will be implemented when the transitions (SEC-5 009) is being done. 074 Promotions are now disabled in Free Flight. This is going to cause a stir but in FF, you're not doing anything to get promoted for. If you want to be promoted, sign-up in ACM. 075 Payroll is now disabled in Free Flight. This is going to cause a stir but since you're out trading in FF, why should GALCOM fund your activities? Want a steady income stream, sign-up in ACM. GALCOM is a military organization and trading was included so that you could get the best of both worlds. 076 The number of digitized sound channels has been increased to minimize the likelihood of sounds not being played if there are no channels available. This is work in progress as the sound system will be overhauled for v1.1 077 All ACM scripts modified to conform to new race/alliance and other script related updates. 078 Changed interceptor laser sound to smaller version 2/5/97 - update - 079 Removed BC bridge menu from shuttle cockpit 080 Fixed problem with ship losing tractor lock. Tractor lock messages will now only play when the lock is acquired or broken. Note: If you lose power at any time when tractor beam is engaged the lock will break. 081 Increased probablity of an ai cargo pod containing objects to minimize liklihood of an empty pod being created. Note: The 'collect cargo' order for shuttles when a pod is selected will not be available if the pod is empty. 082 Removed experience point penalties in ACM for leaving a theatre before the mission time expired. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGED IN RELEASE 3 C PATCH 12/25/96 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Prisoners will no longer end up in medibay when they should be in detention 2. People will no longer leave detention when they are tired or hungry. Food is now supplied directly to the detention hold. 3. Speed at which personnel move about the ship increased. 4. Marines will now follow 'searching' orders killing any detected intruders or escapees (based on ai and other factors) 5. You can now assign anyone to the detention hold. 6. The Fatigue Factor of people in detention hold will no longer increase. 7. It is no longer possible to launch an interceptor if the pilots are not physically 'located' in it. An 'assignment' does NOT mean that the pilot in actually in the ship since he may be assigned to it but in transit. 8. A shuttle now requires at least one person to be in it in order to launch 9. Retrieving interceptors no longer causes a crash. 10. Changes (general) personnel eat 1 nutripak per day 1 medpak increases a person's LF by 25% personnel will go off-station if LF >= 90 or FF >= 10 personnel will go to medibay if LF <= 15 11. Changes (rank) Salaries are now paid every 7 days instead of 15 Rank Salary Experience Points required ------------------------------------------------------ Supreme Cmdr 500,000 200,000 Tacops Cmdr 300,000 100,000 Strategic Cmdr 200,000 50,000 Fleet Cmdr 125,000 25,000 Commander 75,000 0 12. Changes (HUD) The FTOL/VTOL modes in the HUD have been changed FTOL - when airborne and in normal flight mode VTOL - when airborne and in vtol flight mode BRAKE - when stationary on planet surface TAXI - flashing when touching the planet surface and moving XXXX - when engine is shutdown ORBIT - when in orbit 13. The BC will now be destroyed if hull integrity falls to 0 14. Experience points and finances are now awarded for delivering various types of ships to friendly stations. Gammulan ships have the highest price, next to insurgents, then any hostile ship. Delivering friendly disabled ships gives higher experience points than finances. 15. Palette problems in tacOPS and PTE surface fixed 16. Jump anomaly offset bug fixed 17. The game will end if the player's alter-ego ever dies, ie FF =< 0 18. Clicking outside the PTE surface in tacOPS will no longer create a GPF The tacOPS grid is scaled so it does not exceed a planet/moon climate limit Some planets/moons may be larger than the tacOPS coordinate system, so the grid has an upper limit. 19. Buildings and all objects can now be destroyed on the PTE surface 20. The Combat Kills attributes for pilots is now updated during combat 21. Alliances are now saved 22. The ship will no longer move backwards after jumping to a new region 23. Ships can now fly to planetary waypoints set in tacOPS. Note: A last minute bug was detected which caused the ship to drop to the surface under gravity and take damage based on altitude. Once this ship falls, it may not be able to leave the surface since it will not be able to achieve enough thrust to breach the planet's escape velocity. If this happens, you may have to manually fly the ship back to the battlecruiser. 24. Ships will no longer take damage when flying planetary waypoints since waypoints are now pegged above the surface. 25. Joystick calibration no longer has any effect if device is not a joystick 26. Weapon systems no longer disarmed during hyperjump, ie PTE remains active 27. The engine sound will no longer 'pulse' during hyperjump transitions 28. The alert condition now flashes red. If hostiles are in the region, the alert condition is set to red and the klaxxon sounds 3 times. This check is performed every 2.4 secs for the region the battlecruiser is currently in. 29. It is no longer possible to tow targets in orbit. Those of you who have been pilfering starstations had better find something else to steal. 30. Ships emitting an SOS signal will no longer be attacked by alien nations who observe the rules of engagement. 31. Personnel messages are now integrated into ACM scripts. This is a first pass test in order to see if the player can benefit from the added info that his crew has access to. However, the person must be on station. All messages are sent to the COMMLINK log. 32. The ACM mission status can now be accessed via the bridge menu 33. Pause <pause> command has been changed to <ctrl+p> 34. Debug <ctrl+alt+a> mission bypass had been disabled in distribution version 35. MTD bug which caused GPF crash in FATAL has been fixed 36. The altitude lines in tacOPS are no longer displayed if TTDs are off 37. During auto evacuation, if the alter-ego cannot make it to a shuttle, he will die when the ship self-destructs and the game will end. 38. Dead officers will no longer send messages 39. The Chief Engineer will now eject the reactor core during a severe breach regardless of his ai level 40. The Orbit To Surface acquistion count-down time in tacOPS is now fixed. Once the countdown expires, the weapon will lock. Once launched, switch to the bridge, select the missile in the TACSCAN computer, press F10 to switch to the external camera and follow the missile to the surface. If jammed or shot downit will not reach it's target. If the target acquisition reticle is too large, zoom the tacOPS view. 41. The battlecruiser 'destroyed' sequence will no longer loop 42. The cd-rom is now required to be in the drive during game execution 43. Several ACM scripts updated for playability 44. More work done in perspective correct texture mapping. Select from CONFIG menu or with <alt+shift+p>. It's a little slow and needs more optimizing. 45. Several speed related enhancements and minor bug fixes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGED IN RELEASE 2 C PATCH 11/13/96 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Expanded soundfx options in CONFIG. Audio System - turns off ALL sounds and music Midi Music - music on/off Digitized Music - sounds on/off 2. Fixed 'clear radiation' bug in Logistix. Once a deck is radiated, the 'clear radiation' option will be displayed. Click on this to clear the deck's radiation. This requires 1 Radiation Control Unit, RCU 3. Fixed interceptor docking bug (???) 4. Implemented new SOS sound library update and drivers 5. Fixed wrong colored TTDs in turrets 6. Fixed some internal bugs 7. The a/p indicator will now flash when activated 8. The ship will not longer fly backwards after a jump 9. If CONTINUE is selected and a saved game is corrupted, game will exit to main menu rather than attempt to load the .SAV file and cause a GPF 10. It is now possible to return from NULL space 11. The FLIR in the co-pilot seat is now fixed 12. The FPD scale is now increased so as not to obscure the TTD display 13. The ships sounds will now be muted when you dock 14. SCRIPTS directory will now only contain script fixes. All final scripts moved into resource file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES IN RELEASE 1 C PATCH 11/06/96 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Fixed various errors related to the surface engine not finding it's files. 2. Fixed a problem with collision detect/avoidance 3. Simplified and revised ACM Day1 scenario scripts (see below) 4. Modified VTOL (still work in progress). Left/Right slips ship in that direction. Pushing the stick forward/backward increases/decreases altitude. Later, the forward/backward motion will be modified so that they move the ship forward/backward whilst the ~ and tab keys modify the altitude. 5. Added version number in shift+capslock display 6. Fixed bugs in weapon systems. 7. Chase engine being removed (work in progress) 8. Modified BC3000AD.EXE so that extender allocates 20MB swap file when needed instead of creating it in 8MB chunks. 9. Fixed bug which prevented ships from using their jump engines 10. Fixed bug which prevented ships from launching missiles when they should 11. Fixed bug manual ctrl+d ATV->shuttle docking 12. Updated BCKEYS.TXT (note: some deployment keys are not yet active) 13. Changed from v2.01 to v1.97 of the DOS xtender 14. Locked down sound data to prevent swap to VMM 15. The Passive Target Acquisition, PTA system will now operate in DIRECT and AI modes. It may take a while for PTA to fire since it has to build a target list. The turrets, controlled by the PTA will NOT fire unless the target is in range. 16. Working on an extensive FAQ to go with v1.01c. It's not finished yet. 17. Armor & shield upgrades/repairs now updated accurately. The value displayed on the BC bridge is in armor units. The HUL value displayed is the current percentage of the max available protection. Protection max values are based on the currently installed armor or shield type. Note: when speaking of the armor and hull, they are one an the same since the hull has armor which only takes damage when the shield is breached. 18. Breaching an object's armor will now not necessarily destroy it An AI object is destroyed if (a) its reactor reaches 0 integrity unless it doesn't have a reactor in which case (b) its engine reaches 0 integrity unless it doesn't have a reactor or engine in which case (c) its armor reaches 0 integrity. 19. Docking events for ships is now accurately detected. This means that for instance in ACM mission 1, when a diplomat ship docks, you will be advised. 20. Game save/restore now more secure. For some reason, this problem only occurs when saving from the bridge menu. If it persists, simply got to Roster and save from there. But it seems to save/restore ok now. 21. ATVs & shuttles will no longer attempt to use HyperJump engines on a planet 22. Time compression enabled using ctrl+a and ctrl+shift+a are back in. These compress and divide time ie 2x, 4x, 8x and /2, /4 and /8 23. Modified the maneuvering code so that ships can now accurately retrack waypoints if they miss on the first pass. 24. The external F10 camera will now show the current object's target if any. 25. Debug commandline options now only available in interim 'tester' versions. 26. Shuttles should should now be able to deploy/extract mining drones and ATVs 27. TACOPS now follows the players ship if it switches to another region and was previously in the currently observed region. This means that if you are in say Earth region and viewing that in tacOPS and the ship switches to Mars as a result of flight, then tacOPS will automatically be updated. It will NOT however switch to a region that the ship is NOT in. So if you're in Earth and viewing Mars in tacOPS (using probe's SCI-LINK programming) and the BC switches regions, tacOPS will not be updated. 28. You can now select planet surface mode from tacOPS by simply clicking on the planet or moon from within tacOPS. Select 'observe' and it will be loaded. Once this is active, to revert to space mode, bring up the tacOPS command palette by moving the mouse to the right side of the screen and clicking and clicking on the SPACE button. Once in space mode, the button will revert back to BRIDGE. Due to the night/day effect. IF it is night time on the planet, everything will be pitch dark. See #35 below. The old method still works though until this mode is finalized. 29. Mining drones and ATVs can no longer be deployed in space from tacOPS 30. Navigation modified. In order for the ship to fly from one region to another you no longer need to have the jump anomaly (jpoint, wormhole, fluxfield) targeted in the CVD. You should first select the target you wish to fly to in either the NID or TACSCAN, activate the Flight Path Designator, using shift+f and the ship will fly to the target. If it's a jump anomaly, it will do the jump, if not, it will stop short of the target. This method allows you to continue using other modes of the NID, TACSCAN and CVD computers without accidentally clearing the current jump target. The FPD target can be cancelled by either turning off the FPD with f or by clearing the target with x. You can now have the ship flying toward a target while doing other things such as acquiring new targets, firing at them etc. Once a nav target is set in Navitron, activating the FPD with f will cause the AutoNav system to jump to the region without relying on the current CVD target. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE AUTO-PILOT MUST BE TURNED ON FOR THIS TO WORK IN EITHER AI OR DIRECT MODES SINCE THIS ALLOWS THEM TO CALCULATE THE ROUTE. TURNING IT OFF WILL TEMPORARILY CANCEL THE AUTONAV TARGET. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the HUD is in TAC mode, ie weapons on, the FPD will _not_ appear though the route is being flown. Put the HUD in NAV mode by disabling weapon systems in order to see the FPD. The flight control is slightly offset to the left so that you can see the jump anomaly if it's obscured by the FPD 31. More modifications to VTOL. Move the stick left-right to slip in that direction. Move the stick forward-backward to slip in that direction. To increase your lift (altitude), using the throttle commands. Later, the ~ and tab keys will do the same thing. To auto-hover, reduce speed to around factor 2-4, enough to counter the effects of gravity and prevent the ship from falling. Activate VTOL and use the throttle wheel keys to find a suitable hover altitude. Use the numeric 5, auto-leveling key for a quick attitude orientation. 32. ACM will now report on mission success whenever it can. This is NOT true for most missions since ACM is not mission orientated and in some scenarios, a success is an 'abstract'. Several event triggers are now used to signal a new scenario without the need for an extended downtime. Some of you are going to start moaning now that you won't have a lot of time between assignments, especially advanced scenarios in which you are certain to take a pounding. You are a galactic cop and in most scenarios given a 'beat' in the form of a patrol zone. All you have to do in some scenarios is survive until the next assignment. This is why there is no mission success or failure in most ACM scenarios. Once you reach ACM scenario #30, these training scenarios will end and you will be required to defeat the Gammulans using whatever means necessary. See the FAQ for more on this. 33. The ship should now come to a relative complete STOP on the planet. You need to fine tune this and is dependent on the elevation and slope of the current terrain you're on. 34. You can now use ctrl+d from a shuttle to recall the targeted ATV or mining drone. This will only work if there is space in the shuttle. Once personnel flight is handled, you will be able to do the same for personnel from the shuttle and ATV. The proposed ALT+F9 menu command (NYI) is going to be used for this. The shuttle must wait for the ATV to dock. There is a strange anomaly which causes the ship to be immediately docked without actually travelling to the ship! 35. Night/day transition modified (first pass). At night, the terrain fades to COMPLETE black. This is NOT a bug. This will change later so that it's not as dark. Even the infra-red scope in the IC is not penetrating this once the planet goes completely black. 36. Docking the shuttle with an ATV or interceptor in tow will now dock both ships. Normal docking rules apply. ie, the status of the docking bay, launch bay etc. 37. CONFIG options are now saved when accessed from within the game. 38. Sound on/off support added. To disable MIDI support, run SETUP from the BC3K directory and select 'no MIDI device'. Do the same to disable digitized sound. If they are turned on and wish to disable them from within the game, simply turn SOUNDFX:OFF in CONFIG. This will disable both soundfx and MIDI support if they were enabled.