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Text File
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1989-08-12
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11KB
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251 lines
GLOBAL WAR
Edited by PARASITE.
NOTE: A strategic multi-user warfare online game By Janne Paakkonen
CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT:
Announcement ....................................... 1
About Global War ................................... 2
This archive ....................................... 3
Installing ......................................... 4
How the program works .............................. 5
Sysop's menu ....................................... 6
Message files ...................................... 7
News option ........................................ 8
Score file ......................................... 9
Ansi graphics ...................................... 10
Earlier versions ................................... 11
Contact ............................................ 12
1. ANNOUNCEMENT
This is a FREEWARE product, meaning that YOU are allowed to copy all the
files in this archive as much as you like. And use the game, for free.
Please, spread this program! I'm sure there are others who would like to
get this game. But please, don't CHANGE anything in the files, except
the GW.con file (more about that below). Thank you.
2. ABOUT GLOBAL WAR
Global war was originally written for the IBM PC machines by Joel Bergen.
Looking around I discovered that there was no similar game for the Amiga,
quite sad in fact, so I decided to make this one for us who likes online
games and especially the Paragon BBS.
So, I wrote this game during July-October 1990. I have not been in touch
with the author of PC's Global War, which means I haven't seen the ori-
ginal source code. But the game is the same, and even larger than PC's
Global War. I added the possibility to play mission games and to choose
between different types of commendation sets. Currently the only thing
that is not implemented is the GWterm, a special terminal program that
communicates with Global War and lets the user make his moves with the
mouse. It also draws all graphics on a custom screen, making the game
much faster and convenient to play. There are plans to make the GWterm
for Amiga, and of course, compatible with PC's GWterm.
Amiga's Global War can be run in two ways; as a Paragon door, or in the
CLI provided that your workbench screen size is at least 655x200 pixels.
If the program can't find Paragon in memory, and if it can't open a big
enough window, it will print out a short about-text and quit.
3. THIS ARCHIVE
You should now have the following six files:
README - What you are reading right now
Globalwar - The executable
GW.con - The GW config file
GW.doc - Complete document about the online game Global War
GWpoints.doc - How the points are given
GWteam.doc - How team play works
Don't spread this archive if it doesn't have all these files in it!
If the program doesn't find the file it is looking for, it will inform
the user what's wrong, and in worst cases quit and return to the bbs.
4. INSTALLING
Make a directory in your Paragon DOORS-directory called Globalwar and
copy all files from this archive into the directory.
The most important file besides the executable is the GW.con config file.
Sysops can modify the data lines as much as they want, to make Global War
fit their system. Read the GW.con file to learn about the data lines and
how to configure the game.
The Ranking list file and the All Times Highest list file do not exist
at the beginning, they will be created later by the program. The files
will be saved with the filenames you have written in GW.con. A good idea
is to save the Ranking list file as PARAGON:Bulletines/Bul?.txt, so that
you may view the file from the bulletins menu.
You may change the default pathnames in GW.con as much as you like, just
make sure the pathnames are correct. When you're done with the file, save
it in the DOORS:Globalwar/ directory.
If you have done something wrong, the program will tell you about it when
you run it. It will NOT crash your system if there is an error in GW.con.
After that, edit the DOORS.DAT file (you Paragon sysops know what I mean)
to make Global War run as a door.
You are now ready to play Global War in your bbs.
5. HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS
Global War uses about 130 KB when running, including the program itself.
I made the program to work with Paragon and it does. If you are a sysop
you should be pleased - I have worked really hard to make sure that the
program won't get locked because of a user logoff.
As soon as the carrier is lost, the program will save all its files and
give back the memory it has allocated. If you play the game in CLI,
you can try out how the program behaves if the carrier really is lost.
You simulate the effect with the escape key. Just press the key, and
the program will save everything and quit.
If there ever (never, I hope) is a more serious failure somewhere, like
the system has run out of memory, then the program will first inform the
user about what's happening, if the user is still online, thereafter it
will create an error log file called err.txt in the DOORS:globalwar/
directory. So to see why the program behaved like it did that night at 3
am, check out the err.txt file, if it has been created.
If there is very little memory left in the system, like about 50 KB, the
program will run in the "low-capacity mode" which means that the maps
are not being drawn, only the armies and menus will be displayed.
To display a map the program must allocate 20 KB extra memory for the
operation, and as the program uses the RAM: disk as a temporary buffer,
it could cause the "Ram disk full" request to appear, locking the entire
bbs (you can't cancel system requests if you're calling remote).
6. SYSOP'S MENU
There is a special sysop's menu, that only sysops can access, in other
words: a user with minimum access level of 15.
The sysop's menu gives you a lot of power; players and whole games can
be deleted among other things.
7. MESSAGE FILES
The program has a built-in message read/write option. The only thing I'm
saying about this is that the files are stored with the names GWmess.X.Y,
where X is the number of the game, and Y the number of the player. Now
you don't have to wonder why they are named like that...
8. NEWS OPTION
The News routines record everything a player does in a game and store
the data in a file called GWnews.X, where the X is the game number. The
news-text that the player will see online is a temporary file created in
RAM: and is deleted after the player has read it, so you can not have
these files in your bulletines - sorry. The reason for this is, that a
game might have either visible or hidden player names, and it is not
possible to support both alternatives with only one file.
The GWnews.X file grows as the game continues, but it will hardly grow
over 8 KB (the data is somewhat crunched). The file size depends on the
amount of players in the game, how many moves they make and how often.
9. SCORE FILES
About the score files: Read the GW.doc manual for information of the
GWalltime.txt and GWscore.txt file to see how they work. You decide
where these files will be saved in the GW.con config file.
10. ANSI GRAPHICS
When run from Paragon, the users that want to play Global War must set
their Graphics mode in the bbs to ANSI (mode 1), if they don't then the
program will just turn them back with a gently message.
For you tech-people out there:
How does the program output ANSI-files to the modem through Paragon?
The solution I made was to create a temporary ANSI-file in RAM: and then
give Paragon the order to type the file to the modem and screen. If you
peek into RAM: when Global War is drawing an ANSI-picture, you will
there find a file called GW_TEMP.gr1. That is the temporary file. It is
always deleted after the drawing has finished.
11. EARLIER VERSIONS
This is not the first release of the program, there are some old versions
on the market, released some time ago.
If you have one of the old versions running in your bbs and do not want
to reset the game, don't worry. This version is fully compatible with
older ones. Just replace the files in this archive with the ones in your
Global War directory and off you go.
I said fully compatible. Well, this is not the whole truth. In the 1.0
version I re-wrote the mission routines and added some new missions.
This means that the players' missions will be changed to new ones, if
there are any mission games running in your GW.
Everything else will run normally.
Every reported bug has been removed in this version and the program has
been tested a lot, but if you despite that should find a bug, please
report it to the author at the adress or bbs below, so it can be fixed.
HOW POINTS ARE AWARDED
NORMAL GAMES
3 player game : 3
4 player game : 3
5 player game : 3
6 player game : 3
TEAM GAMES
With only one surviving partner
Partner who won : 2
Dead partner : 1
With both partners surviving
Partner who won : 2
Other partner : 2
Points awarded for eliminating another player
From a Normal game : 2
From a Team game
Partner who eliminated the player : 1
Other partner : 1
Points lost when eliminated : 2
Points required to advance a rank : 5
SPECIAL RULES FOR TEAM PLAY
Team game rules are the same as normal games with the following exceptions:
1. Team games will always consist of 3 teams with 2 players on each team.
2. You may deploy armies on your partner's countries or on your own.
3. You will not be allowed to attack your partner.
4. When you have finished attacking, you may choose any one, and only one,
of the following three fortification moves:
F:ortify
If desired, you may move any number of armies from one and only one of
your countries to any one adjacent country which you or your partner
occupies. If you fortify armies to one of your partner's countries,
those armies then belong to your partner. You must leave at least 1
army behind.
E:xchange
If desired, you may exchange one and only one of your countries with
one and only one of your partner's countries provided the two
countries are adjacent. The armies on the two countries are exchanged
along with the ownership. For example:
Before the exchange:
You occupy Alaska with 2 armies
Your partner occupies Kamchatka with 7 armies
After the exchange:
You occupy Kamchatka with 2 armies
Your partner occupies Alaska with 7 armies
G:ive
If desired, you may give one of your countries, along with whatever
armies are on it, to your partner. This move may not be used to bring
your dead partner back to life, nor can you give your last country to
your partner, thus killing yourself.
5. The game ends when one player, or one team, occupies all the countries on
the globe. If only 1 partner on the winning team survives to the end of
the game, that player is awarded points. If both partners on the winning
team survive to the end of the game, they are both awarded points.
End.