Be sure to read WHATSNEW.TXT for additional important info!!
QUICK START MANUAL
Circa 7000 is heavily strategic, turn-based war game. Each side has a squad
to small army-sized force of individual troops, mechs and vehicles doing
battle on a large, detailed field filled with rivers, swamps, forests,
buildings and the more sinister trip wires and land mines. Play occurs
in 3 powerful, yet intuitive, Phases. In the first Phase, all the forces
move with different rules for vehicles and non-vehicles. In the second,
forces aim up to three weapons each from their primary or secondary stash.
All the weapons fire in Phase III.
And that's only the beginning! Circa 7000 is delivered with all the tools
used to make the game's forces, terrains and battles! This include the Game
Maker for making your own scenarios: pick and place the armies, design the
battlefield, write up the story and specify how the game will end
(Destroying/Conquering areas or Casualties alone). And when that isn't
enough, use the Customizer to modify the existing forces or design your own
from scratch! Design and draw your own forces, weapons and terrain,
including all the stats and sound, to implement in your own scenarios, time
periods and themes! Play is literally unlimited when you start swapping
these files...
Lastly, you'll never be in want of an opponent. In addition to in-house play
against others, Circa 7000 also supports computer opponents and Play By Email!
So your opponent can be in your room or around the world!
All this together means that Circa 7000 may very well be the last strategic
war game you may ever need...
Requirements:
486SX33 (About the minimum tolerable speed)
4M of Extended Memory (3.2M must be free!)
600K of free Conventional Memory
6M of Disk Space
SVGA
Mouse
Optional:
Soundcard
Getting Started
To start Circa7000, type "C7" on the DOS command line and press enter. The
opening screens will appear followed by a screen that gives several choices
on how to play the game. If this is your first time, click the left mouse
button on the FINISHED button at the bottom of the screen. The next screen
deals mainly with army setup. The default is to play the scenario as
designed, meaning that you will use the setup defined in the scenario. For
the first time, play the scenario as designed by clicking the left mouse
button on the "X" in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. The other
choices you could have made would be to add mist, which randomly "grows" on
the field. The bottom two choices "Army A (B) familiar with battlefield"
determines if the battlefield is hidden from the army to begin with. If you
are playing the shareware version, you can set up your armies anywhere, but
you must choose the default scenario in order to actually play it.
PHASE ONE
The game starts in Phase I. The left hand side of the screen is the green
information bar. It'll provide most of the information you need throughout
the game, including who the active force is. Across the top of the screen
are four menu bars. The REPORTS and INFO menus provide valuable information
that you'll reference at least once each scenario.
The largest portion of the screen is the battlefield. To scroll the field,
you can use the slidebars to the right and bottom of the screen.
Alternately, and more easily, you can click the right mouse button on the
field at any point. That point will then be centered on the screen. The
right button can also be used to activate troops. Simply click on them with
the right button. If the force is finished for the phase, then the screen
will scroll as normal.
To move troops, click the arrow grid to indicate which direction you want
the force to go. The options are forward, backward, turn left and turn
right (as opposed to slide sideways). This means that in order to move
right, you must face right by clicking the right arrow and then click on the
up arrow to move forward. Alternately, you can use the keypad, where '8'
is forward, '2' backward, etc.
Each time a force moves, it uses up Movement Points (MPs). The total number
of MPs varies from force to force. Usually, it's one MP to move to each
adjacent square and 1.25 MPs to move along the diagonal. The exception is
moving through more difficult terrain. To find out about terrain (or
anything on the board), click it with the left mouse button. Under movement
penalty, you'll see a x1, x2, x4 or Impassable. The first means normal MPs
of 1 and 1.25 apply. The x2 (x4) means to move into the square cost double
(quadruple) the normal number of MPs. Impassable means no force can move
into that square.
Vehicles movement is handled a little differently. Unlike troops and mechs
which can pivot in place, vehicles have to be moving in order to turn.
Each turn, you have to specify how far a vehicle is going to move in MPs.
Each turn, a vehicle can increase its speed by its Acceleration Rate (AR)
to its top speed and decrease its speed by twice its acceleration rate.
For example, if a vehicle is moving 20 and has an AR of 6, its speed for
this turn could be from 8 to 26. If a vehicle is standing still, then you
can enter negative numbers to get it to go in reverse.
PHASE TWO
All the weapons are aimed in Phase II. Determining all the targets first
allows for better battlefield simulation, where everyone fires
simultaneously at their own targets instead of taking turns shooting at
one force until it's gone and then moving onto the next.
Forces can carry Primary weapons (on green buttons) and Secondary weapons
(gray buttons). A force can shoot primary OR secondary weapons each turn
but not both in the same turn. To aim a weapon, simply choose which one
you want to fire by clicking on it with the left mouse button and then click
on the battlefield where you want it to shoot. A red bead will appear where
you aimed, then fade.
There are, of course, a few more factors of which to be mindful. The first
is the fire arc of the weapon. In the info bar, your force will be drawn
with a number of arcs surrounding it. These arcs are the fire arcs and can
be matched to the appropriate weapon by color - the color of the arc will
match the color behind the weapon picture on the face of the buttons.
The other thing you need to be mindful of is the range of the weapon. To
obtain weapon info, click the weapon button with the right mouse button.
PHASE THREE
Phase III is rather simple. On the bottom of the info bar, a FIRE button
will appear. For each weapon that you aimed, you have to press the fire
button in order to make it fire. ALL weapons that have been aimed must
fire. As in Phases II, you can switch the order of the weapons by
activating other forces with a right mouse click and by picking other
weapons with a left mouse click.
STATS
There's an appreciable number of stats in Circa 7000 associated with
terrain, weapons and forces. Here's a highlight of them:
Forces
Movement - Number of squares a force can move per turn.
Vehicle - Means that a force has special rules for movement.
Acceleration Rate - the amount a vehicle can increase its speed each
turn. A vehicle can decelerate at twice this rate.
Turn Ratio - The maximum number of times a vehicle can change direction
movement phase. The turns are evenly spaced with the minimum space
needed to travel before turning increasing as the speed of the vehicle
does.
Rammer - A vehicle defined as a Rammer does double damage when colliding
with anything.
Hoverer - All movement penalties are halved.
Boat - Must stay completely in terrain defined as water.
Hits - Once Hits reaches zero, the force is out of commission for the
remainder of the battle.
Stealth - The maximum distance an enemy force can see you from. If a force
has a stealth factor of 10, then an enemy force must be within 10
squares to see it. This can be reduced further if Visibility is
reduced (See Visibility Diminished By below).
Shooting Skill - Percent chance a force will hit what it has targeted.
Armor Level/Toughness - The higher this is, the harder it is to be damaged.
Save - Percent chance that you won't be able to shrug off a hit.
If you have a Save factor of 3, then only 30% of the hits will cause
damage to that force.
Weapons
Range - Distance a weapon can shoot.
Strength - Measure this against the Armor Level of a force. If they are
equal, there a 50/50 chance it'll cause damage. The higher the
strength factor, the better chance of causing damage.
Damage - The maximum amount of damage the weapon can do per square
(Explosions can cover more than one square.)
Save - Add this number to the Force's Save factor as a modifier.
The higher the number, the better the armor piercing ability.
Terrain
Hits - Once this reaches zero, the terrain is considered destroyed. If it
says Inf(inite), then the terrain does not take damage (such as water.)
Movement Penalty - The number of Movement Points it takes to enter this
terrain. If it says Impassable, nothing can enter this square. The
only exception is boats on impassable water. In this case, the
Impassable refers to ground troops.
Dangerous - Means that the terrain has a chance of inflicting damage
to a force that walks across it. The terrain is actually defined as a
weapon, including such stats as Strength, Damage and Save. Terrain can
have variable chances of blowing depending on the size of the force
entering it. This is indicated by the red bar graphs on the terrain
description.
Visibility Diminished By - 0% means nothing blocks vision, 100% means you
can't see past it. When looking at an object, add up this stat for
all the intervening terrain. If it totals 100% or more, then
visibility is blocked and you won't see what's on that square. This
may also be listed as simply Visibility, in which case the numbers
are switched (0% can't see past it, 100% nothing blocks vision).
Firepower Diminished By - Same as for Visibility, but refers to how far
weapons can shoot through intervening terrain.
That's everything you need to know to get started with Circa 7000!! For
lots more details, check out CIR7000.MAN.
Questions we're often asked:
How come I've never heard of Boku Strategy Games?
Boku is a new start-up company dedicated to provided high quality, strategic
computer games. Boku sets out to challenge its users intellectually and
creatively by providing tools to allow its games to be totally overhauled
by the users.
What does Circa 7000 provide that let's me change the game?
The registered version of Circa 7000 provides the two utilities we used in
creating all the artwork and stats for the game. The first is called The
Game Maker. This allows you to change and create all the scenarios,
including drawing the battlefield, picking and placing armies, writing the
story and defining how the battle ends (Occupy/Destroy an Area or by
Casualties). The second major utility is called The Customizer. It allows
you to work with the building blocks of Circa 7000 (C7). This includes
drawing the forces/terrain/weapons and assigning all the stats. You can
change the ones that come with the game or build your own from scratch!
This program also lets you change the sounds and even the colors. C7 is
made to be changed - whether you want to sail the high seas fighting pirates
or grub around the tunnels of a post-apocalyptic world!
Why are the game files so large?
All the game files are plain text. It could have been encoded and made into
small nice packets, but in keeping with the Open Architecture theme,
everything is laid out to make it easy to change using any text editor.
The files may be large, but compress upwards of 96% using any compress (such
as PKZIP). So transporting these files isn't an issue.
What about the explosions and other pictures in the game. Do you provide
tools to change those?
No, we don't. That's because we wanted to leave some hacking up to the
user. All the pictures and explosions are labeled in 7000pics.dat. Using
that and the palette file, you should be able to figure out how to change
these.
Where can I find more scenarios and game files?
The registered C7 includes another 10 ready-to-be-played scenarios. In
addition, everyone is encouraged to upload their new forces to their favorite
BBS's and FTP sites. The "Official" FTP site of C7 is ftp.indirect.com in
the /pub/rpg/Circa7000 directory. Please upload all your latest creations
there and feel free to download what you can find!
What kind of variety does C7 offer?
Circa 7000 allows you to define up to 320 different terrain squares,
50 different forces employing 32 different color schemes and 40 different
weapons. All of which can be replaced and changed as you like.
How come I can't get the sound to work?
Circa 7000 works with Sound Blasters and compatibles. C7 first reads the
BLASTER= setting in your CONFIG.SYS. If that isn't set, it'll read the
SOUND.CFG in your C7 directory. EDIT this file and change the numbers to
match your system (it's very self-explanatory).
C7 loads in the CT-VOICE.DRV driver to play the sound. If you still can't
get the sound to work, replace this file with the one that came with your
sound card (it may go by a different name.)
On some computers, I get "Video Card Not Recognized". Which cards are?
There is no industry-wide standard on implementing SVGA yet. Circa 7000
will work on the following twenty Super VGA cards: Acumos, Ahead,
ATI Technologies, Avance, Chips and Technologies, Cirrus Logic, Everex,
Genoa, MXIC, NCR, Oak Technologies, Paradise/Western Digital, Primus,
Realtek, Trident, Tseng Labs, Video 7 and the VESA standard. If your video
card doesn't fit into one of these, please tell me what kind of card you
have so I can look into supporting that as well.
Does it work under Windows 95?
Yep.
Why am I able to beat the computer? After all it can process...
There's a reason all our Generals are human! The shear amount of data that
the computer has to enormous! Especially when you consider all the
different situations that have to be considered with the Customizer and
Game Maker in people's hands. If C7 came with a limited number of scenarios
that nobody could change, then the AI could be set up to whip you every time. Instead, we took the general approach to battlefield and designed the AI to fight on any battlefield that could be dreamed up, but not designed to fight on any one type of battlefield. Ask me about Email games.
What about Email games?
Circa 7000 was designed to be play against other people! Realizing that you
don't always have someone in-house ready to play, we implemented Play By
Email. At the end of the turn, you're prompted for a file name. The game
then compresses and text-encodes this file before quitting. Send this file
to your opponent anyway you want - 3.5" disk, via modem or send it off
through Email. Since the file is already text-encoded, there's no need to
modify the file. The compression will save time (and money if you pay for
E-mail by the K). Bottom line is that Circa 7000 can be played with anyone
around the world!
I can't seem to get the Email option to work.
That's because you have the shareware version. When you register Circa 7000,
you are able to Play By Email, save games and play scenarios other than
those included. In addition, you get the Customizer and Game Maker and
small ripper program that disassembles scenarios, allowing you to reuse the
various parts.
Lastly, how do I order a registered copy of Circa 7000?
Good question. Without the past support of people who registered, Boku
wouldn't be around today. Circa 7000 can be registered for $35US. This
include all postage, handling and taxes. Fill out the order form located
in ORDER.TXT and send it to:
Boku Strategy Games
PO Box 2181
El Segundo, CA 90245-1281
For faster response, fax the order form to Boku Strategy Games at:
(310) 376-9368 or
(800) 535-7068
If you neither of these are good for you and you live in North America, call
one of the above numbers and leave your name, number and a time you can be
reached. Your call will be returned to take your order by credit card.
All orders are shipped within two days. Boku accepts checks, Money Orders,
Mastercard and Visa. For more details, see ORDER.TXT.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line! I'm
always happy to talk about Circa 7000! You can write to me at the above
address or, more quickly, send me E-mail at cooney@ix.netcom.com. I'm
looking forward to hearing from you! In the meantime, enjoy Circa 7000
and please upload this shareware version to all your favorite BBS's and
