Die Speccy' 97/Die Speccy' 97.iso/amiga_system/the_aminet/comm/bbs/maxsgames.lha/MaxGames/Globalwar118.lha/CHANGES

Text File | 1991-11-26 | 22KB | 476 lines

================     THE GLOBAL WAR PROGRAMMING HISTORY     ================

                      GLOBAL WAR CHANGES 1.0 ==> 1.18d

============================================================================


        I wrote this file, because I know you like to read stuff like this!

        Most of the changes that have been made are not of the 'visual'
        type. I have corrected all reported bugs, and added some nice
        things to the game that I think you will like.
        I have also improved the code a lot and rewritten some routines.
        Despite all the changes and things added the program hasn't grown
    more than about 15 Kbytes.

        I have received bug reports and suggestions from a lot of people.
        Thank you all for your help!
        See the about text in the program for special credits.



        WHAT'S NEW IN GLOBAL WAR 1.10?
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


  1     GWterm support (PC compatible).

        The original GW for the IBM PC has an option to let the player use
        a special terminal program to display the graphics. Instead of
        receiving the data for the maps from the bbs, the terminal draws
        the maps directly on the user's screen.
        This method has several advantages compared to the gimme-maps-
        from-the-bbs method. First of all, it is a *lot*áfaster.
        In the second place, the player can use the mouse to select countries
        and move armies.

        I was asked to program GWterm support in the Amiga Global War (Hi
    Marc!) so I hope this is what you wanted.
        The GWterm settings will be saved in the GW.dat data file (but the
        file will not grow larger because of this!).

        There is currently no GWterm for the Amiga, but people have been
        asking me to create one, so mabe it's just what I'm going to do after
        I have released this program.



  2     Unlimited fortifications.

        Players can now choose to play with limited (only 1 fort. per turn)
    or unlimited fortifications.
        This option exists in the latest version of the PC's Global War,
        so I thought - why not...



  3     World map mode.

        This option will only effect the output of the world map (map #1).
        If you switch this mode on, all armies will be printed on the world
        map, instead of just showing the owner's sign (!,#,$,% etc).
        The armies are printed in the owner's colors. Players that use a
        black and white screen should select mode 1, which is the old mode
        (no armies printed, only the owner's sign).
        This one is also in the latest PC version...
        The world map mode you choose to use is saved in the GW.dat data
        file (the file does not grow larger because of this!).



  4     Custom screen in Cli.

        If you run Global War from the Cli, it will put up a custom screen
        with 8 colors and attach the console.device to it, giving it full
        ANSI control. Version 1.0 used a lot of CPU time when it waited for
        keypresses. This version is different - it's *very* nice to the OS,
    and it uses 0.0% of the CPU when it is waiting for action.
        You can simulate a log off (or loss of carrier) by hitting the ESC
        key or clicking on the screen's close box. When the program detects
        this it will save everything and quit.
        It will also search in FONTS: for a font called pc.font (size 8).
        If you don't have this font, it will use any font that fits (but
        it won't look nice on your screen with just a topaz font).
        If you don't have a pc.font, you can create your own. Just duplicate
        a non-proportional font with size 8 and rename it as pc.font.
        After that, edit the IBM PC characters with a font editor.
    Or download a PC font from a local bbs.


  5     Multiple Global Wars.

    You can now execute as many copies of Global War as you want.
    They will all use the same data structures in memory. This should
    satisfy you who have several lines in your bbs.


  6     Join Global War.

        New users don't necessarily have to register themselves when they
        run Global War for the first time. Now they can take a close look
        at the game to see if it's worth to spend time on before they make
        up their mind. To register, simply press 'J' in the main menu.

        This nice idea was brought to me by Tommy Green (thanks!).


  7    You can now Deploy and Fortify armies on partner's countries in
    a team game.


  8    If the game is a team game with 'unlimited fortifications', you
    can give away a whole continent, occupied by you, to your team
    partner!


  9    Options-menu added. Check it out to see how it works (it's quite
    self-explanating).




        MINOR CHANGES
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~


  1     When you want to quit the game (by pressing 'Q' in the main menu),
        the program will ask for "Y/n" instead of "y/N".
        This means that if you just press Enter the program will take it as
        an "Yes".

  2     The Newest news didn't work. I rewrote that part, and it seems to
        be alright now.
        Note: If a user that is not playing the game wants to see the Newest
        news the program will show the last 4 users in the news list.
        Normally it shows everything that happened since the user played the
        last time.

  3     Systems with very little memory (about 50 Kb left when Paragon and
        Global War was running) had trouble with the "RAM DISK FULL"
        requester. The problem could occur when Global War was about to
        display one of the maps, the about text or even the title screen.
        The problem has been eliminated now.

  4     The hidden names option did not work fully. Bugs in the Standings
        menu and in the game itself has been removed.

  5     The autodeploy did not work. In fact, some people used a bug in the
        routines to cheat! They began the game normally (Take turn) and
        deployed all armies but 1, and after that they logged off and called
        the bbs again. The bug made Global War to reset the user's date to
        what it was before the user logged off. When the user logged on again
        he could Take his turn again and start deploying with new armies
        and the armies from the last time were already deployed!
        Anyway, this has been fixed and autodeploy works ok now.

  6     When a player destroyed another player and received new commendations,
        the event wasn't saved in the news file.

  7     If you logged off in the middle of the creation of a new game, you
        could crash the machine ("memory list corrupt").
        I never received a report of this bug, so you had probably never
        trouble by this... Anyway, it works okay now.

  8     When you select a game that has been finished, the winner of the game
        will be shown to you. In some cases the program did write another
        text on top of the winner's name, which was quite annoying.
        That shouldn't happen any more.

  9     "October" was mis-spelt in the ranking list - with a 'k'.
        I took the source code that calculates the dates from a Swedish
        program that I had written some time ago (we spell it "Oktober" in
        Sweden).

 10     BOLD text can now be chosen on or off from the Options menu.
    Some people wanted bold text, others didn't - so I made this
    compromise that should make everyone happy.

 11    Version 1.0: If a game had spent enough time waiting for more
    players, the game was deleted irrespective of how many players had
    joined the game.

    Corrected in 1.10: Instead of just deleting the game, the program
    now checks if there are enough players (=the minimum) in the waiting
    game, and if there are the game will begin immediately.

    Note: This concerns only non-team games. Team-games must have six
    players to start.

 12    If the system clock ever goes "crazy" (like showing 1978...), then
    Global War will refuse to run. So you who have problems (?) with the
    internal clock don't have to worry that this program will mess up
    things because of a strange clock.

 13     New score-table. This looks nicer than the one in 1.0.

 14     Finally - *lots* of small 'adjustments' here and there!!



============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.11 - Bugfixes!!!
============================================================================

 Some bugs managed to slip away with the 1.10 version, despite all testing.
 Below is a short list of what's been changed.


 1. Only a small bug fix:
    The News routines recorded a false date stamp (=1 day after the game had
    started!) for a news event, and the real date stamp was stored on top of
    the date of the first news in the event-list. The result was a *lot* of
    news events that started with "DAY 1: ...", while the first news showed
    something like "DAY 14: ...".
    Bug found and corrected - the News stuff works fine now.

 2. Added to the sysop's menu I:nfo item:
    If there is no default log-in name at line 12 in the config file GW.con,
    the info screen in the sysop's menu will tell you that the name buffer
    is "<Empty>".

 3. The total number of armies received (when choosing T:ake turn) was
    misplaced (1 step too much to the right). Don't ask me how these bugs
    are born... ;-)

 4. When a player fortified one of his own countries in a team game, the
    armies of the fortified country were colored with the partner's color.
    The wrong color was only a 'visual bug' - the owner id (=color) never
    changed in memory, only on the screen.

 5. Added a nice feature to the function that searches for a country given
    by the player. If the program finds more than one country that matches
    the string entered by the player when Global asks for a country name,
    it will pick the country differently, depending on what the player is
    up to.
    For example, Siberia is before Siam in the list. Earlier the program
    always picked Siberia when you typed "si" at the gimmecountry-prompt,
    without doing any calculating whether it is the country you really want.
    Now the program compares the countries it finds, and picks the right
    country depending on the game phase:
     Attack  - by checking the neighbour countries
     Deploy  - searches the countries owned by you
     Fortify - checks both neighbours and your countries, depending on
           if you Fortify, Give or Exchange countries.

 6. When I moved the Toggle GWterm on/off option from the main menu to the
    Options menu, I forgot to remove all code - players could still toggle
    GWterm on or off in the main menu (looked very ugly!).

 7. If player deploys over 255 armies on a country, the program will inform
    about the limit (which is 255 armies/country) and won't let the player
    to deploy more than the limit.
    However, if the player has 255 armies in all his countries, the program
    will clear all left undeployed armies (a player with that many armies
    doesn't need more armies anyway ;-)).


============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.12 - released 5. April 1991
============================================================================

  1. Players could change their votes (Wait for more players/Start game ASAP)
     in team game - this should only be possible in single games; fixed.

  2. The password in a (waiting) team game can only be changed by player 1
     and only if there is no 2nd player. In version <=1.11, due to a bug
     player 1 could change the password when the team was full, causing
     player 2 to be removed.


============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.13 - released 13. April 1991
============================================================================

  1. The 'Give continent to partner' stuff didn't work ok - corrected.

  2. When inactive players were deleted from the roster of registered players,
     the score table wasn't always updated correctly; the first player in the
     roster was sometimes listed twice or more times, depending on how many
     'empty' accounts was left after the deletions, and what scores the
     other players had at the time. Fixed.

  3. When displaying a graphic file (the ansi maps, for example), the '@'
     character is now printed out only if the XenolinkManagerPort is found
     in the system messageport list. The '@'  character disables the "More
     Y/N..." prompt in Xenolink's doorfunction #19 ('@' is _not_ used if GW
     was executed from Cli or Paragon).


============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.15 - never released public.
============================================================================

  1. Improved the time-check routines. The program will now quit immediately
     when the user runs out of time, no matter what the user is doing at the
     time. Earlier this only worked if the user was in the main menu, or the
     game menu. When a user runs out of time in the middle of a game, it is
     stored by the News as a 'Player ran out of time' event.
     If running the program from Cli, you can simulate a no-time-left situa-
     tion by pressing Left-ALT and Q simultaneously.

  2. New feature, team game only; players can give commendations to team
     partner. This is done in the Fortification phase, by pressing 'G'.
     Only one commendation/turn can be given to partner.

  3. New feature in team game; if a player hasn't played for 2 days, the
     team partner can take the player's turn instead. All actions, like
     Deploy, Attack and Fortify can be done as usually. This is registered
     as a 'Player A began campaign, played by team partner Player B' event
     by the News.

  4. Improved the Auto-deploy routine, team game only:
     Now avoids deploying armies on countries that are surrounded by own
     AND partner's countries. Earlier it only avoided countries surrounded
     by own troops, meaning the auto-deploy could add armies to a country
     that already was protected by partner.

============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.16 - released May 5th 1991
============================================================================

  Added a memory available-option, that can be toggled on/off in the options
  menu.

  Found a bug in the Play Partner's turn-stuff. If the player who was doing
  partner's turn logged off, the partner's current date and time wasn't
  updated, which means that after the Autodeploy routine had deployed all
  undeployed armies, the player could log in and play partner again
  - several times a day (gaining new armies every time)!

============================================================================
                       GLOBAL WAR 1.17, released Jun 2nd 1991
============================================================================

  1. The lowest access level to enter the sysop's menu can now be defined
     in the gw.con file. Suggested by Andy Smith, UK. (Thanks!)
     This solves the problem with different sysop-levels in different bbs-
     systems (it was 'hard coded' as level 15 in earlier GW-versions).

  2. Correced a bug; the date wasn't updated if a player ran out of time.
     If the player ran out of time during, say, the Attack phase, and
     called back after some days, the player was still Attacking
     (_should_ have gotten a new turn instead) - thus missing lots of new
     bonus armies. For clearance, this is what happens if a player runs
     out of time, or logs off during a turn:

       Deploy - game will wait for user to call back in 2 hours. After that,
                all undeployed armies are handled by the Autodeploy routine,
                and the player's date is updated, and player status in that
                game is set to "has already played today".
                The player will be informed of the Autodeploy actions next
                time he enters the game.

       Attack - Player's date is updated, and player status is immediately
                set to "has already played today".

       Fortify - see Attack.

     To see if these things have occured, check out the News of the actual
     game (can be viewed by all).


============================================================================
                  GLOBAL WAR 1.17b - just a quick update, Jun 4th 1991
============================================================================

     Check out the S:how info part in a game after a player has been
     killed! There is more info about the destroyed player (like who killed
     the player, and how many days ago after game the start it happened).

     Hadn't changed the 'visual' version number in the About in v1.17
     - updated it to 1.17b in this version (however, the *real* version
     number used in gw.dat data file was correct in 1.17).

     Recompiled and optimized everything (210 Kb source code in 21 modules),
     program size shrunk with 4 Kb!


============================================================================
                  GLOBAL WAR 1.18b, Sep 7th 1991 (never released public)
============================================================================

  1. The title ranks can now be modified! The number of ranks is unlimited
     -  limits except the amount of free memory (each rank takes 40 bytes).

     The title of a rank can be 20 characters long (if the name is longer,
     the rest is cut off). To enter a new rank in the list, simply add a
     line in the 'GWranks.txt' file (NEW IN THIS RELEASE), where the two
     first numbers are the from-to score range and the rest of the line
     (20 chars) is the title of the rank. Note; tabs and spaces are filtered
     out by the routine that reads the ranks, so you don't have to worry
     about entering too many spaces. Just make sure there is at least one
     space or tab between the two numbers and the title.
       For example, here are some examples, all of them will work fine:

        -2    8    My little hero
        -5    -5    The dark beast (note; only if -5 p)
        31    40    Strong GW-general
        0    10000    Some range, eh? ;-)

                (From)  (To)    (Title of the Rank)

     According to the above... if you had, say 4 points, then you would have
     the rank of "My little hero".

     The range values can be negative or positive (as shown above).
     Read the GWranks.txt file that was included with this package to see
     how a complete list of ranks could look like (it's the original list,
     used in all earlier GW versions).
       The program always controls the ranking list before it continues,
     and warns you if it finds anything strange about it. If the main menu
     comes up and the program hasn't warned about anything, it means your
     ranking-list is correct. You can verify this by selecting 'R' in the
     Sysop Menu, where the complete list of Global War ranks can be viewed.

  2. When you T:ake your turn, the game now informs the number of
     fortifications that are allowed (either "single" or "unlimited").

  3. Output greatly sped up, by hiding the cursor before printing anything
     to the screen (or modem). The escape code that hides the cursor will
     only work on the Amiga (the cursor won't turn invisible on other
     machines).
                  Thanks to Vibbe & Tom Sandfeld for this nice suggestion!


============================================================================
                  GLOBAL WAR 1.18c, Sep 9th 1991 (never released public)
============================================================================

  1. The ansi escape code for hiding the cursor is apparently not supported
     by all terminal programs (or any?). The speed-up code works very well
     locally, but it looks only ugly when running the game remote.

     You may all test whether your terminal program supports the speed-up
     code or not by turning the 'hide cursor' flag to ON in the options menu.
     The default is OFF.

     In case you wonder what escape codes I'm talking about, they are:

         <27> <91> <32> <112>          to show the cursor, and
         <27> <91> <48> <32> <112>     to hide the cursor.

  2. The ranking list wasn't updated correctly when a new player joined
     Global War. This bug has been there since the beginning. Finally solved.


============================================================================
                  GLOBAL WAR 1.18d, Nov 25th 1991 - I'm still alive!
============================================================================

  1. This is not a major update. The only thing that I've fixed was a small
     bug that made the cursor disappear when quitting Global War, if the
     cursor hide on option was used.

     Also, I updated the documents and created this (complete) distribution
     archive. If you have the 1.18c archive - which by the way never was
     meant to be released public - then please delete it. Use these files
     instead.

============================================================================





 If you find a bug in Global War, then please write to me about it.
 My netmail number and adress are written in the README textfile that was
 included in the Global War archive.



  -Enjoy!                                        Janne Paakkonen, the author

============================================================================