Almathera Ten Pack 3: CDPD 3/Almathera Ten on Ten - Disc 3: CDPD3.iso/scope/101-125/scopedisk113/empire/doc/communication

Text File | 1995-03-19 | 9KB | 168 lines

        Amiga Empire by Chris Gray - Communication


Communication among the countries in an Amiga Empire game can add greatly
to the enjoyment of the game. Communication outside the framework of the
game program itself will vary greatly from player group to player group. It
may be desireable that the players not know who is running which country. A
deity should know this, so that the appropriate people can be contacted if
problems arise. Other information, such as "have you found any neighbours
yet?" and "how far do you extend around that mountain range that's between
us?" can be of great interest. It is suggested that some kind of loose
policy be established for such out-of-game communication, so that everyone
has fair access to the sources of information. This can be important if
some players are not in the same social group as others. In general, each
group of players, and each individual player, will settle on the amount of
communicativeness that is appropriate for the moment.

Within the game program, there are 4 means of communication. The first, is
that of telegrams. Telegrams can be sent from one player to one or more
other players. Such telegrams will be noted in the newspaper. Players are
notified of telegrams awaiting them when they log in, or if multiple
players are active at once, notification can happen as soon as the telegram
arrives. Telegrams are sent with the 'telegram' command, and read with the
'read' command. When sending a telegram, you will be put into the Empire
editor, a simple line-oriented text editor. You will see the prompt:

    Enter text of telegram (max 989 chars). End with . :
    1:

The character limit is a result of the way telegrams are implemented via
messages to the Amiga Empire server program. Initially, you will be just
adding lines to the telegram. The prompt will be the number of the line
that is to be typed. Blank lines are allowed. To end the input phase,
simply type a line consisting only of a period ('.'). At that point, you
will be presented with the prompt:

    Send, List, Replace, Delete, Insert, Cancel?

Hitting a return is equivalent to 'Send'. Only the first letter of the
option is needed. Option 'Send' will transmit the telegram as is to the
recipient. Option 'List' will list out the body of the telegram, complete
with line numbers. Option 'Replace' allows you to replace a single
occurrence of a string in any line of the telegram. For example, if the
telegram contains (via the 'List' option):

    1: Hello there god!
    2:
    3: Could you be nice to a poor fool and guve me some more mobility
    4: in my capital?
    5:
    6: Thanks.

and you want to change the 'guve' in line 3 to a 'give', you could type:

    replace 3 /guve/give/

to make the change. You will get the prompt again, and must do another
'List' to see the changed telegram. You could also enter the above as:

    r3*guve*give*

since 'r' is sufficent for 'replace', the spaces are not needed, and any
string separator character can be used.

The 'Delete' command allows you to delete any of the lines in the telegram.
Simply type 'delete' (or just a 'd'), followed by the number of the line to
be deleted. The 'Insert' command allows you to insert new lines into the
telegram. Type 'insert' or 'i', followed by the number of the line to
insert after. If you want to insert before the first line, use line number
0. Whatever text you type after the 'insert' command is added as the new
line. The final option, 'Cancel', allows you to choose to not send the
telegram at all.

Many telegrams to you are not sent by other players or a deity, but are
generated by the Empire program itself. This is done for many different
situations, such as when a sector you own is attacked, when a ship is
attacked, when actions by others cause hurricane damage to a ship or
sector, etc. Such telegrams are quite short (usually 1 line), and will be
shown as "anonymous telegrams" when you 'read' them. There is a per-country
option which you can set, which controls whether such actions, if they
occur when you are currently logged in, are sent as direct messages (see
later), telegrams, or both. This option is changed with the 'change'
command. The default is that you will get a direct message only.

When you read telegrams with the 'read' command, you will be shown each
telegram in turn. If it is not anonymous, you will be asked if you want to
reply to it. If you say yes, then you will be put into the Empire editor to
compose the reply, just as if you did a 'telegram' command directly. When
all telegrams have been shown, you are asked if you want to delete them. If
you choose to delete them, then they are completely deleted, and cannot be
recovered. If you choose to keep them, they will become "old telegrams",
and you will only be told about them when you log in. You will, however,
be shown them again whenever you use the 'read' command. There is no
facility for selectively deleting telegrams. It is suggested that you
normally delete your telegrams to save time when reading new ones, and to
keep your telegram file from growing too large.


The second major communication mechanism in Amiga Empire is that of the
newspaper. The newspaper has 4 "pages", into which the various news items
are classified. All items except those on page 4 are automatically
generated by the Empire program. They indicate such things as countries
taking over new sectors, countries attacking each other, countries selling
things, countries making loans, countries sending telegrams, countries
suffering from the plague, etc. At the top of page 1 there can be a few
headlines which summarize the state of the world. For the most part they
will be a very boring "Relative calm prevails", but during periods of
intense fighting, they will be a very brief summary of military activities.
Items in the newspaper are partially summarized, in that if the same event
happens multiple times with no different intervening events, the event will
be listed only once with a count.

Page 1 of the newspaper covers mostly military activities. Page 2 covers
miscellaneous things like telegrams and expansion. Page 3 is the financial
page and reports sales and loans. Page four covers the areas of want ads
and personals - it consists of propaganda messages inserted by the various
countries. Such messages, along with all other forms of communication
within the Empire program, are not forgeable.

Reading the newspaper is done with the 'newspaper' command. It can be given
the number of "days" (periods of 48 Empire Time Units) worth of news that
is desired. Adding items to page 4 can be done with the 'propaganda'
command, which uses the same Empire editor as the 'telegram' command.
Command 'headlines' provides only the headlines from the newspaper - it is
useful in larger games where the amount of information in the main body of
the newspaper is overwhelming, or just not of interest. It too can be given
a "day" count.


The third communication mechanism within Amiga Empire is the 'message'
command. It allows players to send direct messages to other players who are
currently playing. The message will appear, along with a header saying who
it is from, after the player completes his/her next command. You can give
the body of the message directly on the command line as in:

    message god Help! I have no BTUs and my capital is 0%

or you can leave off the text and enter it using the standard Empire
editor. If the country you are trying to send the message to is not logged
in (countries can come and go quite quickly sometimes), you will be asked
if you want to send the message as a telegram instead.


The final communication mechanism is that of the 'chat' command. This is
much like the "chat" or "CB-radio" modes on many bulletin board systems.
When you give the 'chat' command, you will be told which countries are
currently chatting (and they will be told of your entry). While chatting,
each country will receive a copy of the messages typed by each other
country. The editor is not available for chatting, since each line is
distributed individually. You exit chat mode by typing a line consisting of
a single period ('.'). If you want to chat with someone, you normally
request that he/she enter the chat mode by sending a message to them first.
A busy player may choose to ignore your request, however. Be warned that
chatting is public - pay attention to who is there!


A couple of Empire commands can be thought of as forms of communication.
The 'lookout' command, usable from land sectors or from ships, is like a
man looking out with binoculars, seeing what is around. In good weather, a
land lookout can see all of the sectors around it. The lookout will report
the type of the sector along with who owns it. Lookout can also sometimes
see ships, especially the larger ones (battleships and aircraft carriers).
The 'spy' command is targeted against a specific sector belonging to
another country. Your spy has a chance of being captured, and, if the other
country is at war with you, of being shot. A successful spy will report the
efficiency of the sector and the number of civilians, military, shells,
planes and guns in it, to the nearest 10% or so.