2024-10-01: ge-next 0.1.1 for 16-bit MajorBBS is now available. Eventually I'll make a website for it.
ge-next RELEASE NOTES
ge-next is an updated and expanded version of the classic Galactic Empire by Mike Murdock.
https://manicpop.org/ge-next https://github.com/manicpop/ge-next
https://discord.gg/SqhYmZvWsn anthony@manicpop.org
Please contact with me thoughts and suggestions.
Some silly bugs involving the sell command, wrong degrees showing, absolute rotation not working with warp command, and a few other things fixed.
printmap and printmapfull use color codes more efficiently.
Welcome to the first release of ge-next built from source.
ge-next 0.1 WILL REQUIRE A GAME RESET.
* All ships can now attack with troops. Attacking with fighters remains limited to certain classes of ships only.
* Men now eat every planetary cycle as troops do, which didn't happen in GE classic although it was apparently the intended behavior. This obviously changes the amount of food that planet owners need to grow. You can set MENEAT in MBMGEMS.MSG to NO to revert to the Galactic Empire 3.2e behavior.
* Default rate of food production raised by 1.5x since men are eating now.
* If you reach the planetary maximum on an item, you will stop getting messages that you've reached the maximum once you set production for that item to 0.
* Planetary cash and tax are capped at 4,294,967,295 and can no longer overflow.
* When ADMINing a planet for the first time, all items automatically have their price set to base prices.
* When ADMINing a planet that has been previously owned and abandoned, the exisiting settings are kept.
* When editing an item on the admin screen, it will show you the existing value and you can now press enter to keep the current value.
* The BUY, SELL, and TRANSFER commands now take "ALL" and "MAX" as arguments in addition to numerical amounts. "ALL" is for all onboard or on a planet, whereas "MAX" will fill your ship.
* The TRANSFER command now lets you specify "u" or "d" instead of typing out "up" or "down."
* The PRICE command now properly shows the base price of an item when you own the planet.
* The PRICE command will tell you the price of the specified amount of items even if you can't hold that many.
* Several checks and improvements to how large amounts of items and weights are handled and displayed.
* You can now use absolute rotation (@) with the WARP and IMPULSE commands.
* If your ship is in the process of rotating, and you enter a warp or impulse command without a heading change, the rotation in process will continue.
* The acceleration routine has been modified to work with ships with acceleration rates under 1000 (e.g. Planetary Transport).
* Helm will announce the new sector when you go through a wormhole or use SYS GOTO.
* Bug that showed "helm is damaged" (when it's not) if entering an invalid degree value with the WARP command fixed.
* Orbit planet message will not try to display the name of an unnamed planet.
* Your ship name will now display in messages such as the "entering hyperspace" message.
* If you try to rotate to a heading that you are already heading, the helm will report you're already heading that heading.
* All reports have been cleaned up with proper spacing and alignment.
* Ships without phasers or shields don't list them in reports.
* Warp engine damage, fire control damage, and phaser damage now listed in REP SYS.
* For planets, the population for planets you don't own is now represented as thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, etc.
* Mine stockpile size is shown instead of food.
* If you are orbiting an unowned planet, the scan will show the entire inventory just like it does when you own it.
* The amounts that are considered moderate and large stockpiles were raised.
* No registration number required, feel free to enter any eight-digit number for the REGNO. All registration/security checks removed.
* New sysop command: SYS MULTIPLY -- run planetary cycle for planet you are orbiting, up to 50 times.
* New sysop command: SYS ORBIT -- orbit planet in current sector even if you're not next to it.
* New sysop command: SYS MIDNIGHT -- run midnight routine, for debugging only.
* The option to use BBS e-mail as opposed to the in-game message system has been removed.
* The default for option MAXPLSE, the maximum amount of planets in a sector, was 5 but only created four planets maximum. This has been fixed, and the default lowered to 4 to make it effectively what it was before.
* Cleaned up the sysop commands and moved the messages from them into the MSG files. You still can't view the help for them if you don't have access.
* Streamlined the messages in the MSG files and remove unused and redundant messages.
* If phasers are damaged, hyperphasers are also inoperable.
* If phasers are damaged and you try to use them, a message will now be displayed indicating they are damaged instead of just saying they have insufficient power.
* If you have enough torpedoes, mines, etc. deployed that you can't deploy any more, the error message will now tell you what the maximum is.
* A brand new, much more readable, HELP CLASS screen.
* SCANNAMES and SCANFULL settings are now ON by default when a new player enters. They can still be turned off.
* Cash is now displayed as unsigned, meaning cash can be a value of up to 4,294,967,295. The SELL command, NEW command, cash awarded after user kill, and tax collection from a planet now all have checks to make sure you don't exceed this amount.
* If you've been traveling over the recommended warp speed long enough that your top speed has been lowered, and you change speed, you're now only lowered to the new top speed if you choose a speed over the new top speed.
* Roster cleaned up and re-spaced so huge population values won't explode the columns. "ROS ALL" now also shows users with 0 score.
* You can now enter "x" at the ship selection screen to go back to the main menu in case you decide you don't want to play after all.
* Cleaned up how the galactic perimeter is established. You can now travel all the way to (default) 300 300, you are only bounced back after trying to pass that. If you have wraparound on, it now wraps to the correct sector (e.g. 300 to -300).
* Changed the CYBNEW and DROIDNEW announcments to show the sector of the newly created ship, as opposed to the (fake) bearing.
* Changed "spy" to be "spies" so it's plural like all other items. Also changed the amount of letters you have to use to buy/sell/ transfer spies to two, so you can now enter or "spy" or "spies."
* If you are damaged by the enforcer planet or the galactic boundary, the message will display the actual level of damage applied.
* New bad guys and improved behavior
* Refinements to planetary attack
* Refinements to planetary item production
* Refinements to combat
* New capabilities for owned planets that can be purchased with planet cash (e.g. remote administration)
* Lots of item balancing to keep long running games competitive
* Much, much more
Version 0.09 is not for release and is the initial publication of source code to Github. The release version will be 0.1.
Version 0.02 released. This fixes some color bugs in the admin screen. This will probably be the last release before 0.1, which will be the first version compiled from source.
As of now, ge-next is simply a drop-in replacement of configuration files that run on a standard installation of Galactic Empire 3.2e. Future versions will be compiled from source and contain bugfixes, optimizations, quality of life improvements, and new features.
Please take a look at what's new and share your feedback.
What's new:
A brand new collection of user ships, 16 in total. I've tried to make each ship unique and useful, and to have interesting options for both players who are starting out and players that have accumulated loads of cash. (I have not reworked the Cybertrons yet, but that's coming.)
A complete reworking of the game messages and color codes for a more uniform appearance. All messages have explicitly set color codes which will prevent the text fading and other color bugs in the original. Spelling and punctuation fixes. Messages from the ship are labeled "ERROR," "CAUTION," and "WARNING!" as appropriate. (The helm officer has retired.)
A new game instruction screen and backstory, setting this game 30 years beyond the original. Future versions of ge-next will expand the backstory a bit.
Reformatted and updated all the help screens, including the HELP CLASS xx screens for each user ship type. A lot of the help screens in 3.2e had outdated information that changed during the game's development, so I did a bit of rewriting but tried not to stray too much from the original.
Slightly lowered shield and phaser prices so they would all fit under the 200m limit, and updated HELP NEWPRICE to match.
Other little tweaks ;)