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GALACTIC EMPIRE Version 3.2

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Congratulations on your decision to run the Galactic Empire module on your MAJOR BBS system. If you are running this as a trial or demo you will find ordering information in the file ORDER.FRM.

Included on this distribution diskette you will find the following files;

MBMGEMP.DLL - The Galactic Empire DLL file

MBMGEMP.MDF - The Galactic Empire MDF file

MBMGEMP.DOC - The Galactic Empire Users Documentation

MBMGEMSG.MSG - Text message file

MBMGEHLP.MSG - Text help file

MBMGESHP.MSG - Text Ship Configuration Table

The following are empty databases for you to use when resetting a campaign.

MBMGEPLT.NEW - Planet System Database

MBMGEUSR.NEW - Empty ship database

MBMGESHP.NEW - Empty ship database

MBMGEMAL.NEW - Empty mailbox database

MBMGETEA.NEW - Empty Team database

GEINST.DOC - The Installation Documentation

GEREADME.DOC - This file

ORDER.FRM - Order form for GE

MBMGEMAP.ZIP - GE Starmap Utility.

================================= NOTICE ======================================

Galactic Empire Utilities coming soon.

Utility: Full Screen Editor to edit all GE databases.

Change Players User Profile

Change Players Ship Configuration

Create new ships for a player

Examine Specific Planets and Sectors

Change Planets or Sector data

Insert New Planets and Sectors and WORMHOLES

Edit Team Records on screen

Detail Reports

Report on all players, scores, ships, teams, team members, etc.

Report on Galaxy with specific sector details.

Galactic Map of discovered sectors.

Summary Reports

Total Players in game, ships in play, sectors discovered, planets colonized, etc.

All these features for only $65.00.

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Attention Ship Yard Masters

We would like to begin publishing your ship configurations. If you think you have created a novel new ship class, please upload it to our support board for others to enjoy. If we select your alternate ship table for inclusion in future releases WE will make all changes required to insure compatability with the new release. This means that you won't have to keep changing your personal copy. Simply copy the alternate table over the default one and bring the system up.

Thanks!!

*** S U P P O R T ***

With your purchase of Galactic Empire Version 3 you get access to one year of free upgrades provided you return the registration card enclosed in your product package.

You may at the end of the year extend your maintenance and have access to another year of upgrades with a nominal fee of $95.00. While some will take exception to this charge it provides some reimbursement for the thousands of hours a year we put into enhancements for this product.

If you choose not to renew your maintenance you may continue to use the last version you received under the maintenance program. We are confident, however, that you will choose to continue supporting the growth and enhancement of this product.

In advance of your support we want to THANK YOU!! Without such great customers as you this product would not be possible.

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Revision notes:

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08/06/94 Release 3.2e

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Installation Notes

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In order to give you the capability of adding specific annoyance messages to each class of CYBORG player we have added a new group of messages to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. Between the messages CYBBASEM and CYBLASTM are sets of messages for each class of CYB and DROID defined. If you have added your own classes you will want to expand the table as described below.

IF THE MESSAGES CYBMASEM AND CYBLASTM ARE NOT DEFINED IN YOUR MESSAGE FILE THE GAME MAY DISPLAY AN ERROR.

There have been no changes to the default MBMGESHP.MSG configuration.

Release Notes

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The option to customize the annoyance messages displayed from the CYBORG players has been added. The messages fall in sets between the two messages CYBBASEM and CYBLASTM in the MBMGEMSG.MSG file.

Each class of CYBORG ship gets 16 messages. The first four messages are general messages displayed when the cybertron approaches another player from a distance. The next four messages are general messages displayed when the cybertron begins to brake to engage a player. The last four messages are displayed when a player is to a cybertron but the cyb chooses not to attack for any number of reasons. The next four messages are displayed when a cybertron attacks another player.

If you have created custom MBMGEMSG.MSG files please insert these new messages in the exact same spot or copy the tail end of the released MBMGEMSG.MSG file (including the new messages) to your file, replacing the same section in your file.

The "messy" high warp numbers are now correctly displayed. If a player goes to "hyper-warp" (usually only cybs do this) then the word "Hyper" will be displayed instead.

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03/06/94 Release 3.2d

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Installation Notes

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In order to give you the option to specify the prices of items, phasers, and shields, many new messages were added to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. If you have made significant changes to your configuration file please carefully compare the two as GE will not operate properly without these new options.

There have been no changes to the default MBMGESHP.MSG configuration.

Release Notes

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A bug which prevented fighters from being killed on a planet when a player attacked them with less than a 1 to 10 ratio has been fixed. The game now uses floating point to calculate the ratio and the ratio has been reduced. Players now must have at least 2% of the planets fighters in the attack to kill off some of the planets ships. Example: If the planet has 100000 fighters and a player attacks with 1000 there will be no planatary fighters killed (its considered a wimpy attack). If the player attacks with 2100 fighters they will begin to see some of the planets fighters killed.

The logic to create a random cyborg ship class from time to time has created some problems when a class of cyborg ship is non-motive and very powerful. These tended to accumulate and were hard to locate and kill do they hung around. We have modified the random function to select these less often.

A bug which allowed players to hangup without losing their ship has been fixed.

The weight of gold has been reduced to increase the amount all ships can hold.

Torps and Missiles will no longer follow a player through a wormhole.

Many sysops have complained that the phasers are too weak. They attempt to increase the strength only to find out that they get weaker still. After looking into the problem we realized that the documentation for the two options in the MBMGEMSG.MSG file was backwards. You reduce the value in HPFIRDST and PFIRDST to increase the range and power. We have also bumped up the power on both Hyper-phasers and regular phasers a bit in the standard release.

The Rotate command can now be issued while moving to instruct the ship to turn to a new heading.

The Warp command can now be issued WITHOUT the direction operand to instruct the ship to simply change speed on the current heading.

The Impulse command can now be issued WITHOUT the direction operand to instruct the ship to simply change speed on the current heading.

Two new options have been added to the MBMGEMSG file. HYPDST1 and HYPDST2 control when the cybertrons go to hyperwarp and when they drop back out. By adjusting these values you can even disable this feature completly. The first value HYPDST1 will set the distance (in sectors) from a player that the cybertron kicks into hyperwarp. If the player is more than HYPDST1 sectors away the Cyb will go to hyperwarp. HYPDST2 controls when the Cyb comes out of hyperwarp and begins slowing down to their normal speed.

A problem with shield types above 7 not draining flux has been fixed.

A new SET option has been added. SET FILTER ON will cause GE to filter out 90% of the messages coming to a user from the game. This option is usefull during battle to cut down on the message flak and improve response. I have left the most important messages (like your ship just got hit) to keep the realism. Your users should love this new feature.

The prices for items, phasers, and shields are now in the configuration options. To use these look for ITMPR01 to ITMPR25 for item prices; SHLDPR01 to SHLDPR19 for shield prices; and PHSRPR01 to PHSRPR19 for phaser prices.

The baseprice for spys was in error. It permitted players to sell spys back to Zygor for large sums and distorted the balance of play. The price has been adjusted to 100 instead of 10000 each. If your players balk and you wish to ajust it you can set it back for the current game. This does, however, create a large imbalance in the game.

Many many spelling and syntax errors were corrected in the message files.

The SCAN LO has been enhanced to distinguish between Cyb's and Humans. Human players will now show up as '=' while Cyb's will remain '+'.

Users who do not have the Galactic Empire PLAYKEY will no-longer get the logon reminder.

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12/14/93 Release 3.2c

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Installation Notes (does not pertain to patch level updates)

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!!! IMPORTANT !!!

Many of the default parameters have been adjusted to provide what we feel is a much more "playable" and balanced game. While the complexity of GE precludes finding one set of parameters that makes all users and sysops happy, we hope that the ones provided in the default game provide at least a reasonably challenging game.

In order to balance the game some changes to the scoring have been made. The value of planets has been reduced to a much fairer ratio giving players who wish to battle instead the opportunity to see their name in the high score list. This may upset some of your players and if so you can adjust the new factors ITMVL01, PLTVDIV and PLTVCASH outlined below.

Because we have had to change the physical structure of the MBMGEMAL.DAT mail file it will be necessary to replace your existing MBMGEMAL.DAT with the empty one provided with this release. This means that your users will loose any pending GEMAIL (provided you are using this option).

Some additions have been made to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. If you have made custom changes to yours you will have to merge the two. To make it easier the new messages are annotated with "** NEW in Rel 3.1c **". This is true for all but the lengthly tables added to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. You can find these between the messages ITMPL01 and PLTVCASH inclusive.

Because of a bug in the SnnSNAME size the MBMGESHP.DAT file has to be reset. Unfortunately this means the entire game needs to be reset. For this reason this release is now called 3.2c and all databases **MUST** be reset. We are sorry if this inconviences you.

Patch level 6 (3.2c.6) 2/8/94

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A GP bug in the spy logic has been fixed. This problem caused immediate Exception 13 errors.

The Cloak logic was enhanced to support an explicit CLOAK ON and CLOAK OFF command. Additionally the CLOAK ON command now takes a few seconds to charge the cloaking system. This prevents players from doing a CLOAK OFF, FIRE, and CLOAK ON in a macro without risking something.

The planet TEAM feature still had a logic bug. Players could designate their planet as a "team" planet even though they were not a member of any team. This allowed any player who was also not a member of a team to trade with the planet as if it were a team planet. Fixed.

The problem with SPY messages going to the email "black hole" has been resolved. They will now show up on in the distress message section.

The problem with the "<Invalid Pointer>" in the production report has been resolved. This was the suspected problem with the cleanup lockups also.

Patch level 5 (3.2c.5) 12/28/93

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A bug in the SPY logic was resolved. This bug caused a spy who was caught to survive and be caught again and again. The spy is now sanctioned properly.

A planet will only manufacture a small number of spy's. When the max is reached a "garbled" message was sent. This has been resolved and a clear message is now sent to the player.

A bug in the missile logic caused them to be weaker than intended. I have fixed the bug but if you have increased MDAMMAX to compensate you might want to reduce it by about 25%. If you left it as the default then no further change is required. Users might notice the increased strength in smaller ships which may not be able to withstand as many missiles now.

A bug in the math that controls the strength of shields caused the shields above 7 or 8 to be invincible. This was never the intent. We have resolve the math error. Some users may be dissappointed when they find out that the shields they now have will be less powerfull but the effect is uniform (including Cybs) and unavoidable.

We enhanced the cloaking logic a bit. If a player is cloaked and trys to move under impulse there is a chance that other players nearby might detect the ion trail the ship leaves. The slower the ship goes the less the chance. This should balance out the cloak a bit more.

A new option, UNIVWRAP, has been added. This option lets you specify if the galaxy wraps from left to right, and top to bottom. The default is NO.

I have included a sample GIF Starmap with this release. This Starmap is a product of an add-on product under development. I am interested in getting some feedback on suggested enhancements to the map to make it more usefull to your users. The map will be generated automatically each night by an offline utility.

Fixed the Roster Position function. The default game settings for SCRBONUS (the bonus awarded for killing the top player) was set to 10000. Because no player could attain roster position 1 the maximum bonus a player who killed the top player actually received was 5000. This has been fixed and the player would now receive the full bonus. HOWEVER, since I have monitored some actual play for a few weeks I believe the 10000 bonus is too large. I have reduced it to 1000 in the default game. If you wish to leave it exactly the same as in 3.2c.4 then set SCRBONUS to 5000. I recommend the lower 1000 though.

Patch level 4 (3.2c.4) 12/25/93

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Whoops! We released patch level 3 with some diagnostic code that speeds up the planetary update process. For those who got this release...SORRY! We have quickly updated it (yes I am working on Christmas to fix this problem) There is no negative effect on the game other than the load on your system.

We also enhanced the NEW SHIELD and NEW PHASER commands to give players a credit on their existing phaser and shield systems. This credit is 2/3rds the purchase price. Because of this enhancement there are several new messages in the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. If you have a custom version of this file please copy all the NEWnn messages relating to shield and phaser purchases. Make sure your custom MBMGEMSG.MSG contains the same number of messages as the standard release. (In case you err GE will also check for you when it starts up).

*** MERRY CHRISTMAS ***

Patch level 3 (3.2c.3)

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Found a condition that caused an EXCEPTION 13 error when certain data in the MBMGEPLT.DAT file became corrupted. This has been repaired. If anyone is continuing to have an EXCEPTION 13 problem after this patch please let us know.

Fixed a problem with spy's not being manufactured on planets.

Changed scoring so that when a player gets killed by a cybertron they only get penalized 10% of the amount they would have if they got killed by another player.

Changed the cybertron motion logic a bit to make the cybs a bit more interesting.

Reduced the odds that a cybertron will run off when damaged.

Patch level 2 (3.2c.2)

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Fixed a bug that caused the price of everything in sector 0 0 to be 32. Also enhanced the logic so that Sector 0 0 will have price fluctuations based upon market conditions. This will cause the pricing to be a little more interesting as some players will find better deals on some items depending upon the market price.

Patch level 1 (3.2c.1)

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Fixed a bug that caused the planets to fail to update.

Fixed a math error in the NAV function and enhanced the NAV function to give a bearing to the center of a sector instead of the upper left corner.

As Released (3.2c)

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Bugs Resolved:

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A bug which caused DEL ERR's and UPD ERR's has been fixed. This only appeared in the Beta.3 version.

A bug that caused the incorrect amount to be subtracted from a players score when they lost a battle has been fixed.

A bug which permitted players to sell 1 item to the EMPIRE and get paid a NEGATIVE amount has been fixed.

A bug which caused the Cybers and Droids number of kills to be ANYTHING has been fixed. This was a memory pointer error which may have caused all kinds of other nasty stuff. Hope this was the cause of some of the random bugs some of you reported. If not we will keep hunting.

    \|/

    [=]O<

    /|\

The Cyber logic was firing torpedoes, mines, jammers, etc, even when you specified that this class had none. This is now fixed.

A bug which allowed a team to have more members than the TEAMMAX parameter has been fixed.

A bug which permitted Cyb's and Droids to have shields up in hyperspace has been fixed.

The Ship Name in the MBMGESHP.MSG file (Option SnnSNAME) was limited to a size of 29 characters. Unfortunately if you use more than 14 characters the system would do strange things, even GP sometimes. In order to fix this one I had to expand the data area size in the MBMGESHP.DAT file. This has the unfortunate side effect mentioned above, the whole game must be reset because of the incompatable files. Sorry!

The games planet production of items was running TOO FAST due to a formula bug. This has been slowed down by a factor of 3. If this is still too fast you can adjust the ITMMH01 value (see enhamcements below). Changing this one value effects the production rate of all other items.

The SYS GOTO command could leave you still in orbit. If you then did any planet command strange things would happen. This is now fixed.

The Spy would send a message to the wrong player. Fixed!

The Spy logic caused an occasional EXCEPTION 13. Fixed! Our sincerest apology for letting this one slip past.

Spys will no longer report his spy stuff to his owner AFTER the owner takes over the planet.

When the MBMGEPLT.DAT database grew above 12 meg GE may stop updating the planets altogether. This has been resolved. BTW there are over 6300 planets in a galaxy of this size. If performance is becoming a problem you may wish to either extend the time allowed to make a complete pass of the database (increase PLANTOCK to its maximum), or decrease the size of the galaxy next time you reset the game (reduce UNIVMAX).

A few sites reported a problem with a BTRIEVE ERROR 5 in the MBMGEMAL file. We have worked for weeks to identify the problem and have been unable to conclusively identify any actual problem with GE. We suspect some sort of unusual interaction with other modules and have taken some defensive programming measures to resolve any potential conflict. If you have had this problem with version 3.1b please let me know if this release resolves your condition. Even more important, if the problem persists PLEASE CALL US!.

A bug which prevented you from reconfiguring the DROIDS as CYBORGS has been resolved. You can now change empty class to a CYBORG. I tested changing classes 17, 18, 19, and 20 to CYBORGS and played for several hours. All worked well.

Taxing the planet caused a revolt at too low a tax value. This has been softened.

Enhancements:

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A player de-cloaking nearby will be reported to you when they decloak.

Planets can now be assigned to teams. This is done by setting the trade password for a planet to TEAM. From then on players on the same team (and only players on the team) can buy from the planet.

Players can now set the price to sell items instead of the amount to mark up. This allows players who wish to give there goods away to other teammates at low prices to do so. It also lets players offer special discounted prices to other players BELOW what market values are.

A new option CHGLOSER has been added to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. This option allows you to charge a players cash when they lose a battle with another player. The amount charged is then awarded to the winning player. This is similar to an older method used many versions ago with the enhanced option to now let you specify the percent to charge.

The ship size function has been adjusted to reflect what we feel is more reasonable sizes. I will update the HELP CLASS nn function accordingly. If you have created your own classes of ships this will effect them also.

The Roster function has been enhanced to display planet populations in the thousands.

Five new options have been added to the MBMGEMSG file to allow you to control the planetary attack ratios. These options are PLATTRF1 to PLATTRT2 in the message file. With these new options you can adjust the balance of the offensive and defensive in an attack. Please see the complete descriptions in the message file for a comprehensive description of these options.

A new option has been added to each class of ship in the MBMGESHP.MSG file. This new option replaces the SnnRES1 reserved option with a SnnDAMF parameter. This parameter allows you to specify the effect of damage on this class of ship. Damage effect is no longer a function of size but of this value. This way you can specify a large ship which is very fragile, or a small ship that is very tough.

We have added several new classes of ships to the standard release to make the game more interesting. Among them are a CYBER BASE STAR, a Sarten Attack Drone, and a Sarten Obliterator. I leave it up to your users to discover the attributes of these ships.

We have reduced the standard released galaxy size to 600x600 and increased the frequency of planets and wormholes. This will force players into closer proximity with each other and make for a more interesting game.

We have enhanced the logic so that droids will all be centered within 20 sectors of sector 0 0. This will allow players more opportunity to interact with droids who make easy targets.

A new command JETTISON has been added. This command lets you jettison all or a specific number of an item to free load space for other items.

Phasers can now be fired in impulse without specifying the spread. A default spread of 1 is assumed. This way a player does not need to change how they use the command depending upon whether they are in warp or impulse.

The size of the Freight Barge has been reduced and its offensive weapons removed. It was never intended to be the invunerable offensive platform it became.

Players will now get only the first message when a planets production reaches maximum. This way they are not inundated with repeated messages.

Planet update cycles specified in the message PLANTOCK have been changed from seconds to minutes. You can now specify 12 hour (720 minute) update cycles if you wish to lighten the load on your disk.

A new option MISENGFC has been added to the MSG file. This option lets you specify the amount of energy to charge against the Flux Pile each time a missile is fired. The default setting is 10 indicating a 1/10 charge. If the player fires a missile with 50000 (MIS x 50000) it will deduct 5000 from the flux pile. Setting this option to 1 will cause the same command to deduct 50000 from the flux.

A new option PHATOWRP has been added to the MSG file. This option specifies the lowest phaser class which has the capability of firing from impulse to hyperspace. The default setting is 3 meaning that Mark-1, and Mark-2 Phasers DO NOT have this capability. MARK-3 and above do. You can disable this feature by setting this option to 20 or make it universal by setting it to 1.

A new option SCRBONUS has been added to the MSG file. This option specifies the maximum bonus for killing the top player in the roster. The bonus is devided by the players roster position so that the bonus for killing the number two player is 1/2 this value, third is 1/3rd this value, etc. This gives a huge incentive to go after the top players. Disable this feature by setting the value to 1.

A new option SCRFACT has been added to the MSG file. This option specifies the ratio of the points awarded to the winning player to deduct from the loser. The default is 10 which will cause 1/10th of the points awarded to the winner to be deducted from the looser. This allows you to penalize the loser for losing a battle.

A new Table ITMPL01 to ITMPL25 has been added. This table specifies the maximum amount of each type of item a planet can sustain. The actual amount is calculated from this value depending upon numerous factors. It could be more or less. This value gives you the option of configuring the maximums all planets can produce. Please note that all production is a function of the population (and other factors). By simply limiting the amount of men on a planet you also slow down the rate of production of other items.

A new Table ITMWT01 to ITMWT25 has been added. This table specifies the base weight of each type of item. Adjusting these values controls how many of an item a ship can hold.

A new Table ITMVAL01 to ITMVAL25 has been added. This table specifies the point value of each item. The item quantity is divided by the value of PLTVDIV prior to multiplying by the ITMVALnn number. This gives you complete control over the points and weight of planet populations. The default setting only specifies a value for MEN, other items have no point value. Decrease this value to diminish the value of planets in the scoring system or adjust the PLTVDIV divisor.

A new Table ITMMH01 to ITMMH25  has been added. This table specifies the amount of items produced by 10000 manweeks of work. It is factored down in the code and applied to each planet production update. Keep in mind that all items production is a function of the number of men. You can slow everything down simply by reducing the rate of production of MEN and adjusting no other value.

A new option PLTVDIV has been added. This option adjusts the divisor used in calculating the point value of each item on a planet. The specific formula is as follows;

points = (item count/PLTVDIV)*ITMVLnn

This gives you the option of increasing or decreasing uniformly the value of all the items in the value table.

A new option PLTVCASH has been added. This option specifies the point value of cash and taxes on a players planets. The specific formula for scoring is; points = (cash+taxes)/(1000000/PLTVCASH)

We have reduced significantly the speed at wich ION Cannons are produced. There were entirely too many being produced in the game to keep a balance of power.

In order to prevent a single user from "hogging" all the mine slots a new option USRMINES has been added to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. This option will limit the number of mines a single user can have out at the same time. The default setting is 3.

7/4/93 Release 3.1b

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Installation Notes:

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This release REQUIRES the installation of new, empty databases. This is due to some additional team features which required additional key fields.

This release also requires a new Registration code. Please call for your new code (813) 545-8050. Have your invoice number handy to speed up the process.

Bugs Resolved:

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The problem where SCAN RA would list cloaked ships has been resolved. Also a cloaked ship entering the game will not be announced.

The problem where sneeky players could orbit and admin a planet they did not own (causing a GE:Plt Upd Err) has been resolved.

The problem where a player could transfer goods then hangup and get the goods on his ship without depleating the planet has been resolved.

The problem which prevented systems with more than 128 users from running GE error free has been resolved. The problem was that the data structures for this many users exceeded 64k. To fix this the whole memory allocation and access had to be rewritten to use the Phar Lap Protected memory allocation routines.

The DATA command DATA pppppp SCAN is now blocked by jammers also.

Enhancements:

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The Standard ship configuration has a new ship, the FREIGHT BARGE. This ship has the hugh capacity required to stage an invasion of a very well defended planet.

The ship table (MBMGESHP.MSG) has been enhanced. Many of the maximums have been raised substantially. This will allow those sysops who are creating their own ship classes much wider latitude.

We have added to the ship table a new message "SnnHELP". This is a fuller discription of the specific class of ship.

The HELP CLASS command has a better column index. Also the additional ship help information is accessable with the HELP CLASS nn command.

Players no longer get mail messages when another player makes a nusance attack with less than 2% of the planets defenses.

Planets no longer lose items unless the attack is at least 1% of the planets defenses. This resolves the tactic of "stripping" a planet by repeatedly attacking with 1 fighter.

The Warp Drives may now be pushed up to 50% beyond their rated maximum speed. The longer and faster the player does this the greater the chance of damage.

The ROTATE command now supports an absolute direction letting you rotate to 90 degrees without having to do the math. The format is ROT @90.

The Neutral Zone (sector 0 0) now has three wormholes to expand the area immediately accessable to players and to give new players an easy way to escape from "Zone Raiders".

Planets can now broadcast "beacon messages" to nearby ships. This feature has been added to the ADMIN menu. Beacon messages are only sent to a player once they have scanned the planet for lots of performance related reasons (don't want to hit that hard drive constantly).

Spy's have been added to the game. You can buy a spy as you would troops and deposit them on an opponents planet. Once there the spy will send in occassional reports to you on tid bits of information he receives on the planet. The more spy's the Planet has the more likely your spy will get caught and executed. Spy's also sometimes dissappear for no reason...gone... never to be heard from again.

Spy's will report on major attacks on a planet (sometimes).

Planet status messages, reports, and distress messages are now sent to each players personal mailbox instead of the GE mail system as the default. If you prefer to use the "old" GE mail system, then set the Level 4 option USEGEMSG to YES.

The droids are now more attractive to fight. The Trans Gal ships hold a cache of weapons and supplies that a player may get if they win a battle.

All offensive weapons damage logic has been enhanced to make allowances for the size of the ship. The damage caused is now relative to the size of the ship. I have also enhanced the phasers and hyper-phasers to have more power on similar sized ships. To aid the user in assessing the ship size I have added the size to the scan ship function. Note that the size is caculated from the TONS specified in the ship configuration table in the MBMGESHP.MSG file.

PLEASE NOTE: This change may affect the play of the game. I request some immediate feedback in order to assess its impact. THANKS!

Due to popular demand (and general concensus) I have enhanced the scan logic further so that the letter of the ship does not change. As long as a ship is within the players scan range they will maintain the same letter.

In order to limit the pauses caused when a sector is created and happens to have 9 planets (and maybe a wormhole) a new option has been added. This process could result in up to 10 (and if a wormhole up to 20) disk

writes. We have now given you the option to limit this with the new CNF option MAXPLSE. This option specifies the maximum number of planets that will get created in a new sector at the same time. We have set it to 5

to start with which should significantly reduce the pauses. This value can be changed at anytime with no adverse impact on datafiles.

The ship tables have been moved to their own .MSG file. This is both to reduce the size of the MBMGEMSG.MSG file and to support multiple alternative ship table configurations. The new file is MBMGESHP.MSG.

The entire memory management system has been rewritten to support systems with more than 128 users as mentioned above.

Teams have now been implemented. The team commands are as follows;

The Team command allows you to perform a number of functions related to teams. It allows you to join a team, create a new team, leave a team, and get team scores. Additionally the team founder (or anyone with the founder password) can expell a team member, change the Team Password, or change the team name.

Teams are identified by a 5 digit team code created by the founder when they started the team. This code never changes even though the team name may be changed.

Team Founder commands are;

team start nnnnn ssssssssss pppppppppp <team name>

starts a new team with code nnnnn, Founder Password ssssssssss, Member Password pppppppppp, and with the team name <team name>.

team kick ssssssssss <user name>

permits a team member with the Founder Password to kick another team member off the team. Note: if you don't also change the password the kicked player can simply rejoin.

team newpass ssssssssss pppppppppp

permits a team member with the Founder Passowrd to assign a new Member Password pppppppppp.

team newname ssssssssss <team name>

permits a team member with the Founder Password to change the team name to <team name>

Team Member commands are;

team join nnnnn pppppppppp

permits a player to join the team nnnnn provided they have the correct member password pppppppppp

team unjoin

permits the player to leave the current team they are a member of.

team score

displays a list of the current teams and their scores.

team members

displays a list of the members of the players current team.

The team names and scores are maintained in an external text file that you can manipulate if required. I did this to ensure that you could fix and strangness (ie. bugs) that may result easily, and to allow you to extract the team score for display elsewhere on your system.

The team file name is MBMGETEA.DAT and its structure is as follows;

TEAM|aaaaa|bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb|ccccc|dddddddddd|eeeeeeeeee|ffffffffff|

where; aaaaa is the team id code

bbb..bb is the team name

ccccc is the number of team members

ddd..dd is the team score

eee..ee is the player password (it is changable)

fff..ff is the founders password (it is not changable)

Scoring is performed during the cleanup and is as follows;

TEAM SCORE = (A/B)+(C*B)

where; A is the sum of all team members individual scores

B is the number of team members

C is the Bonus amount for each member (set in the msg file)

The Bonus amount can be set by adjusting the value of TEAMBONU in the .MSG file.

An additional option TEAMMAX has been added to allow you to specify the maximum members in a team. I suggest you keep this number small to incent team members to be selective on who they admit to the team.

There can be up to fifty teams in a game. This is currently fixed. If you have need to exceed this please contact us.

Since this is the first time we have allowed this capability I am extremely interested in feedback on its use, good, bad, or indifferent.

A new SYSOP command was added due to popular demand. SYS HELP will list all the sysop specific commands currently supported.

The damage level now goes down as repairs are effected. If you try to repair while being hostile (firing weapons) the repairs will be stopped.

The com frequencies are now displayed in the REP SYS command.

The Cybertrons propensity to launch a jammer when severly damaged has been reduced to increase the "kill-ability" and decrease the frustration.

NOTES:

------

2/5/93 Release 3.0p

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

Installation Notes:

-------------------

No conversion of datafiles required.

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

There was a nasty GP problem which might occur in one of eight times a planet revolts. We have fixed this problem.

Gold weighed too much. This limited the amount you could have on a ship.

Cybertrons never carried more than 4 gold. They should have occasionally carried more. Now you can specify the amount of gold they can have by changing the option CYBGOLD. The current default is 25.

Enhancements:

-------------

Seven empty planet definitions have been added to the MBMGEMSG.MSG file. These are turned off in the default version. If you wish to add more planets you simply increase the S00PLNUM value, and turn on the next planet in the list. You cannot skip over a planet, they must be used in sequence.

Note: Sector 0 0 is built only once when the first player scans it after you have reset the MBMGEPLT.DAT database. Adding additional planets later will not have any effect until you again reset the database.

NOTES:

------

Some users have complained about the gold on a planet dissappearing. This is natural. The planet converts the gold into cash and then uses the cash to increase the infrastructure development. Populated planets are not banks, the population will put gold to good use if you leave it.

If your players havn't figured this out yet, they can use any unclaimed planet as a stash. Other players scanning the planet cannot see the goods unless they first claim the planet. This can also be used by other players in a team as depots.

01/15/93 Release 3.0o

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

Installation Notes:

-------------------

No conversion of datafiles required.

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

Many background processing routines have been optimized to decrease CPU load. GE should only add 1% or 2% to your CPU load under idle conditions, and less than 10% under heavy use.

The Cybertrons would sometimes not attack until a Cyberquad showed up. This has now been resolved.

The spurious production reports from the Neutral Zone have been resolved.

The problem with rotations of multiples of 20 not reporting when they have rotated full cycle has been resolved.

The spurious plarti message has been corrected.

Enhancements:

-------------

In order to enhance the play of the game I have added a new item, GOLD. Players can transfer gold to and from a planet, and buy and sell gold at Zygor-3. There is a Transfer Tax on each transaction at Zygor-3 to prevent the overuse. Also other goods can be sold back to Zygor-3 for cash.

The concept of cash has been changed a bit. Cash is the amount on deposit at the Galactic Bank. It is not carried on a players ship, so when a ship gets killed it no-longer can be captured. Gold on the otherhand is a transferable item. It can be captured. A player who converts all his cash to gold then looses his ship has played a foolish strategy.

This capability also lets players give to each other gold (or any other items) by transfering the item to a planet. The second player can then go to the same planet and transfer the gold up. The second player can then travel back to Zygor and cash in the gold.

CAUTION: This capability dramatically changes the game rules and players may find new and inovative ways to exploit it. Please let me know if there are any side-effects or loop holes that your players discover given this new feature.

The REP SYS command no longer shows the inventory also. The new command REP INV will list just those items on board the ship. This is so I can implement items in the game without telling all players that they exist. The same is now true of the SCAN PL function when you have claimed the planet. It will only show those items that exist.

Under Security Options (CNF #3) a new option has been added to allow you to designate a specific key for GE's Sysop commands. This allows you to assign the key to another player without giving him MBBS Sysop privileges. The new option is called SYSKEY and is set to SYSOP as default. You can change it to something like GEOP and then assign the key as you like.

The database filenames are now specified in the .MSG file. This permits you to place the databases on any drive or directory you like by adding drive and path information to the file name. The new options are GEUSER, GESHIP, GEMAIL, and GEPLNT.

The new option TOOCLOSE was added permitting you to specify the distance where cybertrons consider a player approach a provocation. If the player gets closer than this distance the cyb may attack at will even if the player is in a ship which has the "cybertrons can attack" option set to NO.

The player ship class table has been enhanced greatly. We have added additional undefined ships to the table which you can define as you like. Additionally we have added many new options to the table allowing you to specify if a class of ships has phasers, shields, zippers, mines, jammers, or decoys. The HELP CLASS command has been enhanced to reflect these changes. You can now specify specifically if this class of ship is "attackable" by cybertrons, and specify how many cybs will hunt down this class. I bit more explanation on this hunt logic follows;

A cybertron when newly created, or after killing another player, goes into an idle state. While in this state they look around for any players to go after. To prevent them from swamping a player they look at how many other cybs are chasing the player, and then decide if this is less than you have specified in the class table. If less they select the player and begin to hunt them down. If more they go on to the next player.

The SYS KILL command has been enhanced to allow you to specify an abbreviation of a players name to kill. That way your don't have to spell out SYS KILL ROBERT A. JONES III, but only SYS KILL ROB. It will kill all players matching this sub-string so be carefull. You can also kill Cybertrons by typing SYS KILL @Cybrg-nn where nn is the ship number out of the SYS LIST command. The same goes for droids as SYS KILL @Droid-nn. You can kill all droids with the SYS KILL @D command and all automatons with the SYS KILL @ command.

A new Sysop command SYS CLASSLIST was added. Because of the enhancements to the ship class table it is now a bit harder to figure out what the SYSOPIAN DEATH STAR class is. Use this command to tell you.

The maximum number of ION CANNONS, FIGHTERS, and TROOPS a planet can have has been increased. When a player transfers down more goods than the planet can support they number of items on the planet was reduced to the maximum number, but no message was given to the player. The player will now get mail informing him that the quantity was reduced.

TROOPS had little or no value. With this release the planet logic has been enhanced to use troops in the following manner. A player cannot capture a player without attcking with troops. The best strategy is to first attack with fighters until the fighters are no longer challenged, then attack with troops.

Once a planet is won troops MUST be maintained on the planet or the population may revolt. The levels that must be maintained are proportional to the taxation level. The more you tax the planet the more troops are required to maintain a civil population. HINT: make sure there is at least the same perportion of troops to men as 2 times the tax rate.

Cybertrons now can have gold.

If you attack a planet you are held in the game for a period of time, the same way you are if you attack another ship.

The GE MENU has a new item added "Whats New!" which is a user version of the information provided here. No SYSOP information will be included in the new menu option. For those of you who wish to weave the enhancements into a story line you can simply change the text file MBMGEMNU.TXT.

NOTES

-----

If the player approaches closer than 2000 to any Cyb there is a good chance that the Cyb will take this as hostile provication and attack without further warning.

11/21/92 Release 3.0n

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

Installation Notes:

-------------------

Because of the re-write of the background planet processing routines the MBMGEPLT.DAT database had to be enhanced. I know you are getting tired of resetting the databases so I took the time to develop a conversion utility. The MBMGECVT.BAT and MBMGECV.EXE program are provided to convert a 3.0m MBMGEPLT.DAT to a 3.0n MBMGEPLT.DAT.

Before you run it make sure you have the size of the MBMGEPLT.DAT file free on the disk. The MBMGECVT.BAT makes a backup copy of the MBMGEPLT.DAT to MBMGEPLT.SAV. Once the conversion is finished and you have run the BBS for a few days with no problems you can delete this file (MBMGEPLT.SAV).

To run simply type;

MBMGECVT

While I have thouroughly tested this utility on our own system, since this is the first time we have released it, I recomend you carefully inspect (or have your players do so) your galaxy when it is done. The possibility of inforseen side effects exists. Please let me know if you have any problems.

Also it may take some time to process a large database. If the dots are "ticking" its working, be patient.

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

I planet processing routine which would consume excess CPU time has been completely re-written. I hope this resolves the problem. Please let me know!

A problem with the database getting the wrong records was resolved. This problem showed up as planets appearing and disappearing, and incorrect data on planets.

The REP NAV command now shows the correct planet number when in orbit.

Enhancements:

-------------

Several sysops have asked to be able to add a text page of their choosing to the GE menu. The use of this might be to add tips & hints, team rosters, or additional story lines. We have added this capability to this release. To use set the OPTMENU option to YES, add the menu text to the option OPTMENU, and set the OPTCHR to the letter selection. You need to also add the letter to the text message REPRMT. Once a user selects this menu character the file MBMGEMNU.TXT will be displayed. A dummy file was included with this release. Replace this file with the text you want displayed.

In order to help you and I debug strange problems I have added a new tracing feature. This feature when turned on will cause detailed internal trace messages to be output to the file GEOUT.LOG. Please only use this feature to assist us with debugging problems. Do not leave it set on during normal operation as the file will grow quite large.

11/11/92 Release 3.0m

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

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

Enhancements:

-------------

The Destruct Command now will cause damage to another ship. As fair warning the other ship will get told that an explosion is likely. This message is sent to all ships within THEIR scanning range. If they cannot see the ship about to explode they get no message. The amount of damage is porportional to the size (class) of the ship. Shields can defend from the shock wave but not completly. If the player starts a self destruct sequence and then goes into the neutral zone (trying to get another player where they cannot fire) the destruct sequence is aborted. If the other ship is in the neutral zone and the ship about to destruct is not, the defensive shields around the neutral zone protect the players within the zone.

This enhancement took me 1200 miles (air travel) to complete, I hope you enjoy it.

The undocumented command DATA has been added. This command is specifically for terminal programs and gives important data on the current ship. Currently implemented is..

DATA REPORT and

DATA SCAN

The SCAN DATA_1 command has now been replaced by the DATA SCAN command.

A new CNF option has been added, STRTCASH. This specifies the starting cash given to a player when they first enter the game.

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

11/01/92 Release 3.0l (General Release - NOT BETA!!)

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

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

There was a bug with the Cybs "seeing" through a cloak. This has been fixed.

A problem with the SYSOP shield (20) displaying repeatedly "shields at full charge" (or something like that) has been fixed.

Enhancements:

-------------

The Flux autoreload was set to reload at 5000, this will cause a flux to reload before the cloak runs out.

A new parameter was added to the .MSG CNF options. CLENGUSE allows you to specify the energy use by the cloak each tick cycle.

All the documentation has been updated.

The Mine explosions are decreased if you have shields up.

Cybertron logic has been enhanced so that if a player is in a Interceptor the cybertron will not attack so long at the player maintains his distance. If the player approaches (like to lay mines) the cybertron the cyb may take that as an aggressive act and premptively strike.

*** NOTICE***

YOU -MUST- RESET YOUR MBMGE*.DAT FILES WITH THIS RELEASE. IF YOU DO NOT YOU MAY GET BTRIEVE ERRORS. PLEASE INSTALL THIS RELEASE COMPLETELY.

10/22/92 Release 3.0j

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

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

A bug which permitted players in Interceptors to fire upon a CYB and the CYB would not retaliate has been fixed. This fix should come as a surprize to your players who have been exploiting this bug.

The SYS LIST command was cleaned up.

The Planet Attack GP bug has been resolved.

I think we have resolved the BTRIEVE 4 on MBMGEPLT.DAT problem. If you still get this error let me know ASAP.

Enhancements:

-------------

We have added a new sysop command, SYS UNJAM, which will clear the jammers effect from your ship. This is usefull to allow you to see what everyone else is doing while they are being jammed.

We added damage to the ship when it passes through a wormhole. If the user does not go through with ehough speed they cannot escape the terminal wormhole and will begin to oscillate between the two wormholes. Each time they do they collect a little more damage.

We added code to autodetect the number of user ships. This should allow you to add more user ships to the table. Make sure you add it BEFORE the Cybertron. I have not thoroughly tested this yet so let me know how it goes.

10/11/92 Release 3.0i

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

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

The BTRIEVE failure bugs should be resolved. If not please let me know ASAP. Because this bug was in the indexing of the databases it is necessary that you reset your databases again. I apologize for this but it was unavoidable.

A problem with the scan command was resolved.

Several minor problems have been fixed.

Enhancements:

-------------

Wormholes are now TWO WAY. Players will pass through one and emerge through another. If their velocity is not enough they will not escape the wormhole and will occilate between sectors.

A couple new SYSOP commands have been added.

SYS MAINT will maintenance the ship where ever its at.

SYS LIST will list all the players in the game and where they are.

The SYS PHASERTYPE and SYS SHIELDTYPE commands are no longer limited. While you can get a shieldtype 255 I don't recommend it. Try values like 20-30 for very strong shields and phasers.

A special SYSOP ship class ship has been added. This ship is the toughest class yet. To get it use the SYS CLASS 13 command.

09/28/92 Release 3.0h

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

Bugs Resolved:

--------------

There still was a problem of players getting the wrong ship name. Resolved now...we hope!

Roster function no longer displays any auotmatic players (Cybs and Droids)

A big problem with the command function not allowing non-sysops certain commands was resolved.

The SYSOP GOTO function now takes you to the proper sector.

Enhancements:

-------------

MANY MANY more options have been added to the CNF options. See the CNF editor for more specifics.

Some changes have been made to the battle logic to try and make the games more balanced. Please let me know how it goes in the real world.

The MAIL system was enhanced to support automatic production reports from planets, and to seperate distress messages from production messages.

The PLANET command has been enhanced to give an immediate report of planets owned. No more waiting till the cleanup. A side benefit is that the XREF database (MBMGEXRF.*) has been done away with totally.

The PLAYKEY option was moved to SECURITY OPTIONS (Level 3) where it belongs.

The REGNO option was also moved to SECURITY OPTIONS.

The SET command has been changed. The ability to change the SEND command frequencies is now controlled with the FREQ command. It functions exactly like the SET command did previously. The SET command now permits a player to set some preference options specific to them. New options with this release are;

SCANHOME -  Causes the SCAN displays to HOME in the top left using ANSI control sequences. This is much easier on the eyes if a player is using the SCAN command repeatedly.

SCANNAMES - Causes ship owner name to be displayed in the right hand information in a SCAN RA.

SCANFULL -  Causes FULL range scans to be on or off, giving additional information on the right hand side of a SCAN RA.

Note: with the new SCANFULL feature the SCAN RA n FULL command is no-longer supported.

You can now specify the NAMES and OWNERS of planets in sector 0,0. This permits you to change the Theme of the game if you like creating an Earth/SOL scenerio. Additionally you can add up to 9 planets in sector 0,0 by changing the S00PLNUM parameter and adding table elements for the additional planets similar to the ones for P1 through P3.

By permitting you to specify the owner, a SYSOP can then make changes to the planet if they like.

NOTE: Sector 0,0 is created when the FIRST player enters the game. You cannot change these options AFTER that point without resetting the MBMGEPLT.DAT database with a new empty one.

You can now change the names of the Cybertron and Droid ships. This is to support sysops who want to create another theme (such as Star Trek type) and want to call Cybertrons Romulans etc.

The FREEBIES option has no effect in the Release 6.0 compatable version.

09/22/92 Release 3.0f

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

Bugs Resolved:

A problem where a player seemed to be occupying another players ship has been resolved.

An extra LOG message was displayed when a sector was created. Now fixed.

Enhancements:

New MSG options added.

REPAIRRT - This option controls the rate at which spontaneous repairs occur to a damaged ship. The value is specified in percent of damage reduced each cycle.

HPFIRDST - This option controls the effective distance of the Hyperphasers. Increase to extend their range, decrease to shorten.

HPDAMMAX - This option controls the amount of damage a hyperphaser does. Increase to cause more damage per shot, decrease to reduce. Because this is factored down by range and phaser type you can set the value to numbers greater than 100.

PFIRDST - This option controls the effective distance of the Hyperphasers. Increase to extend their range, decrease to shorten.

PDAMMAX - This option controls the amount of damage a phaser does. Increase to cause more damage per shot, decrease to reduce. Because this is factored down by range and phaser type you can set the value to numbers greater than 100.

JAMTIME - This option controls the duration of a jammer. It is factored in the game by the distance from the ship that launches it.

MAILDAYS - This option controls how many days mail messages are queued before deletion.

09/11/92  Release 3.0d (BETA to go)

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

Bug Fixes:

SCAN SH caused a GP under some circumstances - Fixed

Enhancements:

Registration Protection Logic added so that this version can be generally released.

09/09/92  Release 3.0c (More BETA)

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

Some more bug fixes.

Enhancements:

The SHIELD command has been changed to support an explicit SHIELD UP and SHIELD DOWN function. This was changed to avoid some confusion users expressed when they thought they were raising the shields and actually lowered it. The other advantage is for support of terminal programs.

The Droid Ships have been activated.

Users can now ABANDON a planet they previously claimed. This is usefull if they have reached the maximum planets they are permitted.

08/30/92  Release 3.0b (STILL BETA)

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

This sub-release has full support for MBBS version 6.0 DLL format. Additionally some minor bugs and a few major ones were squashed.

07/15/92  Release 3.0a (BETA RELEASE)

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

With this release the third MAJOR version of Galactic Empire "evolves". This game has trully grown well beyond what I had invisioned in its humble beginnings. Most of the credit for its success goes you you the sysop's of MajorBBS's Worldwide - THANK YOU. With your support (both praise and $) this game will continue to grow.

Version 3.0 represents a major change to the basic game structure. You will find below listed the numerous enhancement and changes listed. While all the changes were added to create a better and more enjoyable game, it is possible that we have changed the balance of the game in some way that has a detrimental effect on the playability of it. If this is the case we need to hear from you ASAP!!

Version 3.0 also changes several underlying archetecture problems that prevented us from making some VERY significant enhancements. With these changes I hope to bring to you some very interesting game enhancements in the future.

Version 3.0 also has some built in support for TERMINAL PROGRAMS. If you are an author of such an animal please leave me mail on our support system NETWORX (813-551-5876) and I will get you details.

Bugs Resolved:

The Cybertrons were sometimes not responding properly. Hopefully this major re-design of the cybertron logic fixes that.

Enhancements:

Probably the biggest change is the elimination of the GALMAKE code and the implementation of the "Virtual Galaxy". The Virtual Galaxy works by creating the sector and planets when-ever a player first goes into them. If a player never looks at a sector the sector database entry is never created. This permits us to give the perception of a huge galaxy (up to 65535 X 65535) while maintaining a realistic database size. The Neutral Zone is now the center of the Galaxy (sector 0 0). This is not truly the center but the quadrant to the upper right of the center. Because of this there are fewer sectors (by one) on the right side than the left. The Parameter UNIVMAX is now in the message file GEMSG.MSG.

Many of the parameters have been moved to the GEMSG.MSG file. With more to come.

The GEMSG.MSG file is now compliant with Galacticomm's CONFIG utility.

All the code has been cleaned up to remove all the warning messages.

BETA TESTERS NOTE: There is currently no limiter on the growth of the GEPLANET.DAT database. Insure that you have ample disk space for this version and monitor your disk usage daily.

The "edge of the universe" code has been changed. When a player hits the edge they are simply "bounced back" a couple sectors and the engines shut down. The Universe no-longer "wraps" but is flat and square. With up to 65000 X 65000 sectors I don't think this will be a problem.

A new "LOCK" command has been added to permit a player to lock the fire control systems onto another ship. The player doesn't need to worry about what the opponents ship letter is anymore, or what it changes to. As long as it is within scanner range the fire control systems remain locked on. See the HELP LOCK information in the GEHLP.MSG file for more info.

A new NAVIGATE command has been added. This command gives the player a bearing and distance to any sector they select. The purpose of this is to aid in navigating. If a player knows that a planet he wants to find is in sector 234 567 but is having trouble figuring out the direction to it, the navigate command will give him specific heading and distance to go. It WILL NOT take the ship there under computer control, some advances in technology still remain elusive (kinda like cold fusion eh?!).

Cybertrons are somewhat generic. In order to give users the feeling that there are thousands of them, cybertron names have been changed. While for filing purposes they still are named Cyborg-xx (in place of the userid) the player will only be told that the ship is captained by "a Cybertron" and not which specific one. While this seems a trivial change I hope that in conjunction with the Cybertrons new "hyper-warp" capability this will give the impression of many more cybertrons and make the game more enjoyable.

Planet Clusters: Ge3.0 now has more planets per sector and fewer sectors with planets. This more closely replicates the real universe where there are great gaps of nothing between star systems with clusters of planets.

Wormholes: Some planet clusters may have a wormhole within them. If a player carefully navigates his ship into the wormhole he will be transported to another section of the galaxy. The same wormhole will always take him to the same place allowing players to map the wormholes to gain access to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Ship Letters No longer are ships assigned a fixed letter cooresponding to their channel. Ships are now identified based upon proximity. The closest ship is 'A', next 'B', and so on. Now you can have as many Ship's in the game as your CPU power supports, and never have to worry about those pesky ']' ships.

Virtual Channels: Cybertrons no-longer share data space with user ships. Your quarry will not 'dissappear' from you just because another player came into the game on that channel. You can now specify the number of Artificial Players in the game in the GEMSG.MSG file. No need for all those memory hogging emulation channels.

The ship configuration table has been expanded and is now in the GEMSG.MSG file. You can change ship attributes, names, etc. In the future you will be able to add your own types of ships to the table easily.

Different scan ranges: The bigger ships can 'see' further than the smaller ones due to more powerful scanning equipment. This lets you see an Interceptor from a Star Cruiser before they see you.

Improved scan command with ship data display of all ships in scanning range. This lets you see at a glance who is out there and where they are.

Missile and Torpedo commands have been enhanced to support the new LOCK command. By typing "TOR @" instead of "TOR A" the torpedo will be fired at whoever the LOCK command was set to.

Missile command now uses 1/10th the energy it did before. This should improve the playability of the game.

The ship will automatically reload the FLUX when it gets low. This will aid in preventing those unexpected shield drops at the worst time.

Cybertrons have ZIPPERS. Lookout you mining maniacs.

Cybertrons are much more diverse. Some are slow and stupid, some are really nasty. You never know. I will be working on much more diverse attack stratagies for them in the future.

Player ship selection has been enhanced. If you only have one ship...thats the one you get. If you have more than one then they are always listed as 1 through 8. No more huge numbers reminding you how many ships you have gone through....how embarrasing.

DRONE SHIPS: To add another diverse challenge to the game we have added a new type of Artificial Player class called DRONES. Drones are sometimes manned with a crew, and depending upon the type of drone ship they may react to an attack or not. Sometimes these drones will have cargo that you may not be able to purchase anywhere in the game. While we are only offering a few drones in this release we anticipate many more types in the future.

An API for 3rd party ship "engines" has been defined. With this API in place and a bit more testing it will open up a standard for user created drone ships. Many of these may be more tenacious than the cybertrons. More on this in the future.

02/08/92  Release 2.3g

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

Bugs resolved:

The NEW SHIP bug where a player could get a "cybertron" has been fixed. It was thouroughly researched and attributed to "stupid programmer error"!

Several minor problems have been resolved and included.

Enhancements added:

ZIPPERS now work! They are used to force all mines in the immediate vicinity to detonate. This can be both good and bad. Please let me know how this seems to effect the strategy of the game and I will make any adjustments if necessary.

Sector Number is now displayed in the ship list to assist players in selecting ships.

Notation:

12/19/91  Release 2.3f

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

Bugs resolved:

  While unable to duplicate it, there have been some reports of GP's in the "killem" routine. We could not find any code directly responsible for it but did add some additional bounds checking to the outprfge() function to see if this fixes the problem.

  The problem of users getting points for killing themselves with mines has been resolved.

Enhancements added:

  The scoring has been changed and while I know this will cause alot of "flak" it cannot be helped. I did not intend for the scores to mount up so quickly, but this has been the outcome of Cybertrons playing 24hrs a day 7 days a week. The change to scoreing is to modify the "bonus" score which is added to the base score for a class of ship when it gets killed.

The bonus was a percent (.001) of the killed players score. The intent was to make players at the top of the roster worth more. Well it didn't work as I expected so I have added a new bonus method described below;

The players position in the roster at nightly cleanup is used to divide into SCORE_BONUS (a new define statement currently set to 500). The result is the bonus added to the base points for the class of ship. SCORE_F1 is no longer used.

I hope this makes the game more interesting but you will probably get complaints from users who can no longer make up the huge scoring gap, and you may have to reset the game. I am sorry if this causes any difficulty but I felt it was needed.

Cybertron processing has been enhanced to spread the processing out more evenly over time. To do this the "ticker" function now process only so many cybertrons and cyberquads each tick which now happen much more often. This also means that the cybertrons can have one speed while the cyberquads have another. To control these there are now two new defines that you can adjust to your system needs. Remember changing these three values affects the CPU usage and you will want to consider the load on your system if you are speeding up the cybertrons.

The cybertron processing is now controlled by these three defines;

CYBTICKTIME which controls how often (in seconds) the cybertron processing loop (cybrti) is called. Keep this value fairly small (1, 2, or 3).

CYBMAXPERTICK which controls how many cybertrons get processed in each call to cybrti. Adjust this value up to decrease the reaction time of cybertrons.

QUADMAXPERTICK which controls how many cyberquads get processed in each call to cybrti. Adjust this value up to decrease the reaction time of cybertrons.

  A good rule of thumb is to adjust these so that all Cybertrons get processed once each 10 to 15 seconds, and all Cyberquads get processed each 3 to 6 seconds. This will make the quads much tougher than before.

  If you find your system load is too much (delays in keystrokes being echoed to players) increase these factors slowly until you find a combination that works best for you. Remember the faster the cybs react the more challenging they are for you players.

 

Notation:

12/2/91  Release 2.3e

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

This is the first "releasable" version of 2.3. BETA sites have had it for about two months now and with the exception of a couple of trivial bugs the release is pretty stable.

Bugs resolved:

The transfer command has been fixed. Note the change in the format of the command also; TRANSER [UP/DOWN] [number] [item name]

The abandon command will now remember that you abandened the planet and will decrement the number of planets you own properly.

The problem of Mines having zero weight has been fixed.

Note that the need to use a specific case to SCAN SH X is deliberate to solve a problem for those systems with more than 26 ports.

Enhancements added:

Several additional GALEMP.H options have been added to allow those of you who choose to "tweek" the game to do so.

CYB_SCANRANGE defines the distance a Cybertron can see another player at and attack at.

CYB_BREAKOFF defines the odds that a Cybertron will break off an attack. The odds are calculated as a 1 in N chance that the cyb will break off the attack each time the cyb "ticks".

CYB_MINDAM defines the percent of damage that a cyb will take at which point they will jam and drop mines and try to escape.

CYBS_FIGHT if set to TRUE will cause Cybertrons to fight each other. This can give the Cybertrons higher scores as they are busy all night and day. ** CAUTION ** this can generate alot more disk activity as more cybs will be dying and getting re-born.

CYB_BADBAD if set to TRUE if Cybertrons get mad at everyone when they have been attacked. Set to FALSE if they only get hostile with their attacker.

JAMTIME defines the length of time the jammers last. Note that this is factored with a players distance from the jammer also, the further away you are the less the time.

NUM_MINES defines the maximum number of mines that the game can have "launched" at any one time. Each mine takes a certain amount of processing time and this number is to limit the maximum overhead taken to process mines.

MINEDAMMAX defines the maximum damage a single mine can do. This is factored with distance from mine at the time of explosion to calculate actual damage.

 

Notation:

07/23/91  Release 2.3a

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This is a fairly major release into which we have added a number of enhancements we hope will make the game much more enjoyable. We have also started a concerted effort to incorporate many of the user configurable options in the GEMSG.MSG file. Please note these changes and the documentation below on their usage. As this is a new "point" release I expect several more "letter" releases to follow with minor bug fixes.

Bugs resolved:

  A bug which caused all the Cybertrons to start at the same sector each time the system came up was resolved. This will spread them out more, which can be a problem in larger galaxies.

Enhancements added:

  A new option was added to the GEMSG.MSG file called TRANSOPT. This option will permit (or dis-allow) players to transfer goods down to planets that they do not own. This means that they can move goods off to un-claimed planets or to planets that other players might own. This option will open up the possibility of creating un-claimed caches of goods that any other players can also use without the need to purchase them. Should create some interesting changes in the way the game is played.

In addition to the TRANSOPT the new command ABANDON was added permitting a player to abandon a planet they no longer wish to own. This ommand does not move any goods from the planet but simply mark the planet as un-claimed.

A new option was added to the GEMSG.MSG file called MAXPLNTS. This option permits you to specify the maximum number of planets a single player can own. With this option you can spur more competion for the choicest planets as a player can only own a limited number. If you wish to disable this feature set this value to a high number (32000).

The sysop commands are now configurable in the GEMSG.MSG file. The option SYSCMDS selects if sysop commands are enabled or disabled. The SYSONLY option selects if the command can be used by a player other than the sysop. It is recommended that you not set SYSONLY to "NO", unless for a short period while you log on as another player to grant some cash, or items. Then reset the option to "YES" shortly after. Failure to do so will soon result in other players trying the SYS command and discovering they can grant themselves cash and goods. NOTE: the command name may still be changed if you like in the GALEMP.C file but the need to do so is less compelling with these options.

We have added several new items to the game. Ships can now deploy MINES to ward off persuers. The player can set the time till detonation on the mine when they launch them. Neutron Mines are very powerfull, and if skillfully deployed can destroy a ship in a single explosion. If detonated too close they will also cause damage to the ship launching them. Mines will display on sector scans as a single period ".". Note that mines are managed as actual space objects and can dramatically increase the number of calculations the game is doing. To help manage this load you can set the maximum number of mines which can be deployed at one time by ALL players in the game. This value is in the GALEMP.H file and called NUM_MINES.

An additional defensive weapon JAMMERS have been added. Jammers can be deployed to try and block the opponents ability to see. Once activated a jammer causes a tempory distortion which causes scanners to be  inoperative. This effect goes away after a period of time which is relative to the distance the player was to the jammer. Since the ship doing the jamming is always the closest the effect lasts the longest on them. This means that ships on the fringes of the effect may have operable scanners long before the ship that launched the jammer. The duration of the effect is set by the parameter JAMTIME in GALEMP.H.

The cybertrons now also have the ability to launch jammers, and mines. They will tend to do this as a defensive measure when they are in danger of being destroyed.

A new class of cybertron called the Cyberquad has been added to the game. This ship is four times the power of an ordinary cybertron and extremely dangerous. When encountered it will not show mercy, and will not run. This should add alot of excitement to the battling game.

Notation:

09/09/90  Release 2.2e

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Bugs resolved:

The major bug resolved was a problem where the Neutral Zone was losing its items in the update cycles. This has been resolved and a patch placed in to restore those GEPLANET.DAT databases that are already corrupted back to normal.

A few other really minor bugs were resolved.

Enhancements added:

The GEMSG.MSG file was run through a spell checker and many spelling errors corrected. Don't know why it took this long to get that done but its done just the same.

Notation:

The recent enhancements uploaded on the MEGANET support SIG will be incorporated in the NEXT release.

07/15/90  Release 2.2d

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Bugs resolved:

A couple of minor bugs were resolved and frankly I have forgotten what they were... sorry.

Enhancements added:

Notation:

07/01/90  Release 2.2c

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Bugs resolved:

One last bugs which caused GE to GP in protected mode was resolved.

Enhancements added:

Colorized screens - Many of the messages have had ANSI colors added to improve the appearance.

The scan functions were enhanced to change the color of the "+" and letters used depending on if the ship is a cybertron or not. I am considering using a different color for each class of ship but want some feedback from you the users before I make that change. CALL ME AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

The neutral zone is now in the center of the galaxy, sector 290. Some of you will have difficulty understanding why I think 290 is the center but the choices were 290 or 310 and I picked 290. If you are still confused why there are two choices get out a sheet of graph paper and work it out. I had to...

The user guide has been completed (shocked?). You can make this new copy available for downloading to your users.

Included in this release are several versions of the Galactic Empire Library.

GALEMP.LIB    - Large Model

GALEMPH.LIB   - Huge Model

GALEMPM.LIB   - Large Model with Math Coprocessor

GALEMPMH.LIB  - Huge Model with Math Coprocessor

The huge models are for use with the protected mode systems.

Also, some of the text files and link examples have been changed to make it easier to understand and install.

A whole new GALMAKE.EXE has been included in this release. This version only takes a few minutes to regenerate a galaxy, and lets you bypass the "aging" process if you like. You should not have the need to recompile it but the source is included for those of you who can't resist. Read the GALMAKE.DOC for further instructions.

Notation:

READ THIS! - If you wish to keep an existing GEPLANET.DAT which has the neutral zone in sector 100 you MUST change the define statements in the GALEMP.H file. To do this simply change the following from;

#define NEUTRAL_X 9

#define NEUTRAL_Y 10

to;

#define NEUTRAL_X 0

#define NEUTRAL_Y 0

You must then recompile GALEMP.C and relink your system.

06/16/90  Release 2.2b BETA (NOT GENERALLY RELEASED)

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

Bugs resolved:

A couple more bugs which caused GE to GP in protected mode were resolved.

The bug with a USER RECORD getting set to 255 ships and causing problems has been resolved.

The last message in the CYB_ANNOY list of messages will now be displayed.

This version is a BETA TEST version released to a limited number of BETA sites to test for other problems.

Enhancements added:

I have changed the SCAN LO function and added a SCAN HY function. The SCAN LO function now provides a long range scan of ships around your ship but will not display the ship letter. The SCAN HY function now provides the same function that the SCAN LO did with the exception that it also does not show ship letter.

While I am aware that I will probably catch some flak for these changes, I feel that they add to the game play. While a player can tell that there is a ship out there, it is too far to tell any more about it, INCLUDING the letter of the ship. When they get closer they can do a SCAN RA to see what the letter is.

Notation:

06/15/90  Release 2.2a BETA (NOT GENERALLY RELEASED)

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

Bugs resolved:

Several bugs which caused GE to GP in protected mode were resolved. This version is a BETA TEST version released to a limited number of BETA sites to test for other problems.

Enhancements added:

Some of the messages in the message file have been "colorized" for added effect. Thanks for Robert Michnick for his contributions of these changes.

Notation:

??/??/90  Release 2.1f (NOT RELEASED)

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Bugs resolved:

The captured document listing all the planets a player has was not limited in length. When a player had many (more than 70) planets the displaying of this text could overflow the output buffer and cause MBBS to hangup on the player. It is now limited to the first 20 planets only. Thanks to Karl Kirk of The Crypt BBS.

The cybertrons were able to fire on a player in Warp from Impulse speed. This is now fixed. Thanks to Karl Kirk of the Crypt BBS.

Some players have noted that ION cannons occasionally continued to fire on a player after he conquered the planet. This should be resolved now. Thanks again to Karl Kirk of the Crypt BBS.

Enhancements added:

Notation:

03/22/90  Release 2.1e

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Bugs resolved:

The TRANSFER command was fixed to permit more than 65000 items to be transfered to the planet.

Enhancements added:

The Cybertrons were enhanced to make them a bit more aggressive. They can move faster and have slightly more powerfull phasers.

Notation:

PLEASE!!!!!  MAKE SURE YOU USE THE NEW MESSAGE FILES PROVIDED WITH EACH RELEASE. IF YOU HAVE MADE CUSTOM CHANGES TO YOUR .MSG FILES THEN YOU MUST RUN A FILE COMPARE UTILITY AGAINST THE NEW VERSION AND THE STANDARD RELEASED PREVIOUS VERSION. THE FILE COMPARE UTILITY WILL IDENTIFY WHAT CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE NEW VERSION AND YOU CAN MAKE THE SAME CHANGES TO YOUR CUSTOM VERSION.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS PLEASE CALL US, OR LEAVE MAIL IN THE SUPPORT SIG ON MEGANET (813) 449-2008.

03/05/90  Release 2.1d

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Bugs resolved:

A big problem with the attack command where a planet with over 65000 fighters or troops when attacked had their troops or fighters reduced to 65000 (approx). This is an unsigned vs long problem that we thought we had resolved in 2.1a, WHOOPS! Sorry!

Enhancements added:

None

Notation:

If anyone has any additional size problems or display problems please let us know. The only way we get these fixes in is when you, our users bring it to our attention.... MANY THANKS!!!

02/28/90  Release 2.1c

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Bugs resolved:

A couple of minor bugs have been resolved and the update posted.

Enhancements added:

None

02/04/90  Release 2.1b

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Bugs resolved:

A problem with BTRIEVE version 5.0 is causing the nightly cleanup to not function. Additionally the roster scores were incorrect. The problem is that BTRIEVE seems to loose its location in the database when an UPDATE is done. In order to resolve the problem I was forced to "re-get" the same record I just updated each time. This is a silly BUG for a "NOVELL COMPANY".  Thanks guys!

A display problem with the REPORT SYS command (troops line) was resolved.

The cybertrons were modified to not pick on new players to hard until they had 50 kills in 2.0k. Some players have complained that the cybs come down too hard at that point. An additional level was added where they are tougher but not their toughest. Additionally the two kill levels that determine these levels are now set in the GALEMP.H file. They are GE_BE_NICE and GE_BE_EASY. You can change them if you like.

Enhancements added:

The scoring was fine tuned a little bit to resolve a scoring "loophole". The problem was that cash and taxes were divided by 10 and the result added to the players score. This permited a player to jump from 3000 to 100000 in one night. To resolve this problem the cash and taxes are now divided by 1000 (or .1%) then added to the score. This means that 1,000,000 in cash and tax is worth 1,000 in points.

Notation:

Release 2.1a has been extremly clean and as a result version 2.0b will be a general release version.

THANKS TO ALL WHO HELPED BETA TEST.... WE REALLY APPRECIATE IT!!!

- Mike & Jean -

01/10/90  Release 2.1a

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Bugs resolved:

The problem of hyper-phasers hitting ships at great distances has been resolved. The hyper-phaser range now terminates at 25000.

A related problem that would cause the Cybertrons to home in on a ship after a failed lock on with missles has been resolved.

Players are no longer immune from cybertron attacks when orbiting.

The problem of transfers being limited to 65535 items has been resolved.

Many minor problems were resolved.

Enhancements added:

The coding that would permit a victorious player to capture the secret document that listed the other players planets and sectors has been re-added to the game. This feature can be optionally removed by commenting out the #define SHOWDOC in GALEMP.H. Additionally the odds of the document being captured can be modified by changing the #define RNDDOC statement. Refer to the GALEMP.H file for further instructions

The scoring has been enhanced to emphasize the planets more. The items on the planet count for a portion of a players total score in addition to the points for kills. This should have the effect of giving an advantage to players who can maintain an empire of planets, the original intent of the game.

The roster now shows additionally, the number of planets a player has, and the total population of his empire. This should help other players rate the strength of the player.

Notation:

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

* ATTENTION ** ATTENTION ** ATTENTION ** ATTENTION ** ATTENTION *

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

With this release the data bases changed. DO NOT IMPLEMENT THIS VERSION WITH THE DATABASES FROM PRIOR VERSIONS AS UNPREDICTABLE PROBLEMS MAY OCCUR!!!

12/01/89  Release 2.0n

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Bugs resolved:

A bug in the BUY command which permitted players to purchase more than their ships would carry was resolved. This bug was only a problem when the player typed BUY n <item name> where n was >32767 and less than 65535. Bet you "C" programmers know what I did wrong....oops..

Since this was a rather serious bug it was rushed out and is the only change from the prior release.

Enhancements added:

Notation

11/08/89  Release 2.0m

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Bugs resolved:

Several bugs that were introduced in version 2.0l were resolved. Minor cleanup that shrinks the code size a bit were made.

Enhancements added:

Notation:

10/27/89  Release 2.0l

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

Bugs resolved:

A bug (in version 2.0k only) that causes the system to lockup was resolved. This is the only change in this release due to its critical nature.

Enhancements added:

Notation:

10/17/89  Release 2.0k

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

Bugs resolved:

A bug which cropped up when GE was combined with KYRANDIA and caused the SCAN SHIP function to scan invalid ships has been resolved.

Parameters changed:

This is getting old, with the Cybertron homing code removed the Cybertrons were too easy. The Cybertrons now home again, they also play harder on players who have accumulated more than 50 kills. This lets the newer players get used to the game before the cybertrons get really nasty.

Enhancements added:

The planet update function has been enhanced to cause the update to start at a random point in the galaxy rather than sector 101 everytime. This eliminates the advantage that owners of the lower sectors had.

Notation:

06/17/89  Release 2.0j

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Bugs resolved:

A really strange bug which allowed a player with the name in the database that preceded Cyborg-1 alphabetically, to sit at the ship selection menu and watch as his channel became the Cyborg-1. He could see all the messages as if he were the captain of Cyborg-1 but could not enter any commands. This presented a chance of creating a BTRIEVE 4 ERROR if by chance both his channel, and channel 1 (presumming it had a Cyborg-1 on it also) got killed at the same time.

Shields now get repaired at the time you get maintenance.

Parameters changed:

Everyone loved the fact that Cybertrons don't home on the lower class ships, but complained about the problem on all the big ships. I removed the homing code all together. We shall see how this improves play.

Enhancements added:

Notation:

While a player with a lower class ship will not be attacked unless the cybertrons are provoked, they can be provoked by ANY other player. This means that if a cybertron is close to a Heavy Freighter hauling stuff to a planet, and another player attacks the Cybertron, the Cybertron will begin to attack both players. Some have complained that this is not fair (who said Galactic Empire was fair) and others like it this way. Let me hear from you on this subject. Leave mail to Cyclops on MEGANET, or to Mmurdock on Galacticomm.

06/15/89  Release 2.0i

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

Bugs resolved:

Several changes were made to the GEMSG.MSG file where unsigned ints were being displayed with %d designators instead of %u. This resolves display problems where some quantities of items, cash, or other values came up negative.

Several other really minor things got fixed, and frankly I don't remember what they all were.

Cybertrons were still attacking Light Freighters, Heavy Freighters, and Inteceptors. Resolved.

Parameters changed:

Cybertrons no longer home in on Freighters, and Inteceptors. This was getting to be a problem which made it difficult to get far from Sector 100 without getting blasted.

Enhancements added:

None

05/30/89  Release 2.0h

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

Bugs resolved:

The Hyper-Phasers were identical on all ship classes. This has been corrected to reflect the ships size and power. Be prepared for some flack from your users who used to kill anything with an Interceptor and who now will have a more difficult time facing larger ships. Cybertrons are a bit more difficult to kill since they are more powerfull than the smaller Inteceptor.

The hyper-phasers could fire into sector 100. This has been changed to prevent anyone in sector 100 from incuring any damage from an intentional or stray hyper-phaser fired into 100.

Cybertrons should not fire on a cloaked player anymore.

Parameters changed:

CYB_MINCLASS changed to 3 to prevent cybertrons from attacking freighters first. They will attack when provoked. They will also fire on anyone and everyone who enters into an area where a battle it in progress. The area is defined by a circle with the radius defined in SCANRANGE.

Cybertrons now have Mark-3 Phasers and Mark-2 shields to toughen them up a bit.

Enhancements added:

The parameter SCORE_F1 was added to allow you to adjust the bonus points awarded to the killer. Bonus points are calculated by taking the killed players score, dividing it by SCORE_F1, and adding the result to the ship kill points to give a total points awarded. Example: SHIP1 has 41255 points, and is flying a Dreadnought. When killed the attacking player will get 400 points for killing the dreadnought, plus 412 (41255/SCORE_F1) bonus points. This makes the players on the upper end of the top players list worth alot more and more prone to attack by other greedy players.

The parameter SCORE_F2 was added to further let you adjust how scoreing is handled. SCORE_F2 is a percentage of the awarded points to subtract from the killed players score. This means that when a player kills another player the killed players score goes down by SCORE_F2 percent of the total points awarded to the killer.

05/17/89  Release 2.0g

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Bugs resolved:

Parameters changed:

Cybertrons are now limited in how much cash they can have. This is to prevent the games economy from becoming too rich (kinda acts like the federal reserve). This amount is set by CYB_MAXCASH in GALEMP.h

Freighters (and all ships in general) could not hold enough fighters to launch any sort of successfull attack against a planet. The weight of a fighter was lowered to 15 tons, and all the ships weight capacities increased.

Enhancements added:

Several sysops (and players) have complained about the scan functions not working around the "wrap" in the galaxy. To resolve this problem I have added an option for you to select the type of galaxy you wish. The option EDGEOPT in GEMSG.MSG will let you select a "wrapping" galaxy or a flat galaxy. In the flat galaxy, a player crossing the edge, is relocated randomly in the boundries of the galaxy. While this does not specifically resolve the problem, it does eliminate the problem from occuring since you can no longer "wrap".

05/16/89  Release 2.0f

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Bugs resolved:

The cybertrons were getting updated too opten causing unnecessary disk activity.

The cybertrons would shoot at a player in sector 100.

Parameters changed:

Cybertrons accumulated a bit much cash in a day. CYB_ALLOW lowered a bit.

Hyperphasers sucked up too much energy each time they were fired. HPFIRAMT and HPMINFIR adjusted down.

Hyperphasers didnt do enough damage. HPDAMMAX adjusted to 35.

Enhancements added:

None that I can remember (its 2am).

05/12/89  Release 2.0e

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

Bugs resolved:

The strange bug which cause cybertrons to not be updated resurfaced. It should be resolved now... we hope!

Several minor nusance bugs were resolved.

Cybertrons were not getting into the roster all the time.

Parameters changed:

Cybertrons were now TOO good, we added some changes to even up the game a bit.

Cybertrons can not go faster than warp 4.0.

Since it was too difficult for new users to do much with just a light freighter, the first ship a player gets is now a Interceptor. This will allow players to start with a fighting ship and take on the cybertrons.

All ships come equiped with a Mark-1 Phaser and Shield system. This will permit players who are out of cash to still play and try to get more cash from killing another ship.

Enhancements added:

The help command HELP CYBERTRON was added to help explain the cybertrons actions.

05/09/89  Release 2.0d

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Bugs resolved:

Players could sit outside sector 100 and attack ships in the neutral zone.

Cybertrons could not fire hyper-phasers properly.

The "range=" message was removed from the SCAN RANGE function.

The debt display was removed from the REPORT ACCOUNT function.

Cybertrons will now get updated on the roster properly.

Parameters changed:

The SCAN RANGE 9 was scanning too far, SCANADJ in galemp.h increased.

Enhancements added:

The Cybertrons will now attack a player with a more powerful ship with more than one cybertron. This makes it harder for the bigger ships to cruise the universe un-challanged.

Cybertrons will now accumulate cash throughout the day makeing them more valuable when the system is less busy. The specific amount granted each "tick" is set with CYB_ALLOW in GALEMP.H.

05/07/89  Release 2.0c

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Bugs resolved:

Cybertrons would not regenerate right away after being killed.

Planetary mail would not delete when read.

Parameters changed:

Freighters could not attack planets, yet were the only ships that could hold enough fighters to launch a successfull attack. The weight of a fighter was reduced to 25 tons, tripleing the number that each ship can hold. Heavy Freighters can now launch attacks on planets.

A new parameter was added to the GEMSG.MSG file. The parameter SHOWYN will turn off the logging of informational "GE:" messages to the console when set to NO.

Enhancements added:

Several functions in the game were enhanced to permit the ships to function beyond the current sector only. These changes are;

The scan functions were changed substantally. SCAN RANGE was enhanced to permit scanning beyond the current sector. SCAN RANGE 9 will provide the longest scan, about 25000 (as defined by SCANRANGE and SCANADJ in GALEMP.H) SCAN SHIP was enhanced to scan a ship that is not in the current sector. It too uses the SCANRANGE value as a maximum. The SCAN SHIP display was enhanced to display the sector number of the ship.

The SCAN HYPERSPACE function was removed as it is duplicated by the enhanced SCAN RANGE function.

The MISSILE function was enhanced to permit missiles to lock on and be fired beyond the current sector.

The Cybertrons programming was enhanced to permit it to better track another ship. A bug in its programming prevented them from firing hyperphasers properly.

Additional notes:

The scan functions will always provide directions and distances as if the galaxy is flat. It will not take into account the "shortest route" that may be available by "wrapping" around the edge of the sector. I spent many hours working on a resolution, but the math is very complicated, and further work will be required. This problem will also account for some strange behaviour in Cybertrons when they are following a player who crosses the boundry.

05/01/89  Release 2.0b

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Resolved a major scoring bug;

Players were able to kill another player and after destroying them was awarded the cash (or a portion) that was on the other ship. The cash was not deducted from the other players user record and as a result the total cash on hand in the universe kept multiplying dramatically. The Cybertrons soon became very very rich.

Cybertrons still were too easy to kill for an experienced player. Some enhancements to their programming were made to permit them to fight better;

Resolved several minor problems

Reduced code size 2k;

04/29/89  Release 2.0a

This was the first official release of Galactic Empire Version 2.0 outside of our BETA sites. It represents a major revision of features, strategy, and scoring from release 1.4.

Major features are;

the addition of Cybertron Robot ships to the game

the addition of multiple kinds of ships from Light Freighter to Dreadnought

the ability for a player to own multiple ships in his fleet

a major change to the scoring where score is determined by the kills and not by the players wealth

many many other minor improvements and enhancements

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SUGGESTION ZONE - USER SUGGESTIONS FOR NEXT RELEASES

You comments are suggested on these enhancements... Please leave them on the NETWORX support SIG as noted below.

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Suggestions for enhancements and problem resolution can be made by leaving email on NETWORX (813) 541-5876 to the sysop, or in the MBM_GE sig on the same system.

Our office phone is (813) 545-8050 and suggestions can be left there also.

Additionally they may be mailed to us at the address below;

M. B. Murdock & Associates

P.O. Box 2194

Pinellas Park, Fl 34665-2194

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