┌────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ You can only upgrade from an older version │ │ SOLAR REALMS ELITE │ if that version is 0.990 or NEWER! │ │ ├─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬┘ │ What's NEW!! │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └────────────────────────┘ Version 0.994b ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. You can now type in "50%" or other percentage values for numeric input. It will take that much of the maximum as your input. For example, if the maximum is 100,000, then typing 35% would enter 35,000. 2. The major crash at the end of the game was fixed. This happens if you have a resource option name on the left with no value on the right, for the two scorefile resources. Version 0.994a ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A minor bug in the bonds was fixed. If the user used 0 for the length in turns and 0 for the length in hours, the game would exit with a divide by zero error. It would not let anyone else into the game for several hours. 2. There are some cosmetic changes in numeric input. Instead of displaying, "Your people need XXXX tons of food. How much do you wish to give them? [XXXX]" it omits the default value, in brackets. Also, the default value is `typed in' for the user instead of implicitly being used whenever the user presses Enter. This allows you to make minor adjustments by backspacing over part of the default value to change it. 3. There are similar changes in textual input. The only place the player sees this is in configuring bond names. However, the sysop should see this in editing pirate, empire, and player names. 4. The status screen of an empire now displays whether it has a mothership, or nuclear/chemical/psionic bombs. This information also shows up in a spy report. 5. A new unit, light cruisers, are like heavy cruisers, except that they can only be built by research planets. They have the same strength as heavy cruisers, but they get to a battle earlier and get 5 bonus rounds in which they fight the opponent's light cruisers or heavy cruisers. During these bonus rounds, heavy cruisers cannot fight back. Light cruisers do not contribute to defense for treaties. Version 0.993c ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. In order to abdicate, the player must type in the name of their empire. This keeps them from accidentally abdicating due to line noise. Version 0.993b ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A bug in the bank giving too much in loans was fixed. 2. The attack menu doesn't show up during the turn; instead, the game asks the user whether they want to do attacks, trading, or messages at the end of each turn. 3. There is a new option on the startout menu, "Rankings", that sorts empires by score, planets, and net worth. In tournament mode, this also shows the rankings for tournament points, which are used to determine the winner of a tournament. 4. Research planets can produce a "mothership", which can transport 100,000 fighters into battle. It is a rare event to get one of these. 5. Users can toggle the ANSI and IBM Characters flags from the Preferences menu. The new settings remain in effect only for the current session. 6. NEWS*.{ANS,TXT} are no longer created. You can delete the ones you have from before; the batch file will have to be changed so that it does not copy these (if you used them as bulletins). Now, the news files can be set up from the resource file, so you don't have to copy them every time the batch file is run. If you do not have settings, no ANSI/text news files will be created for you. However, users will still be able to see the news from the game. 7. The installation program, which occasionally locked up, has been fixed. (I hope) 8. There is a new resource option to turn off the ability to buy military at the spending menu. This might give a new twist on the game, with players forced to use Supply planets to build up a military rather than being able to hide with a low networth and then suddenly buy a huge military with a large amount of money. 9. Fixed a small bug with flavors, where if the translation file has spaces after the second item, it would complain. Version 0.993a ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. Ten days of news files are kept, in NEWS.{TXT,ANS} for today's news and NEWSx.{TXT,ANS} for news from x days ago (x = 1 to 9). ** If your batch file copies YESTNEWS.* for bulletins, you must ** ** change the batch file to copy NEWS1.* instead ** 2. The pirates do less damage to empires than in 0.992, but they have varying strengths -- pirate 9 is stronger than pirate 1. 3. In tournament play, there is an additional column on the score listing for 'points', which are given for being a Master for a day. The person who has the most points at the end of the tournament is the winner. 4. A new resource, Messages.Anonymous, lets you control whether users can write anonymous messages. 5. Flavors can be controlled through a resource option, Flavor, that points to a subdirectory under Flavors\ that should be read for flavor files. In this subdirectory can be Resource.DAT, Translat.DAT, and any ANSI/Text files that normally would go in Screens\. This will allow flavor writers to further customize by adding ANSI files. 6. The popular Star Trek flavor is included with SRE. Also, a new flavor, the Dune flavor, is included. 7. There are more color options to configure -- see Resource.Doc and look for Output.xxxxx.Color. 8. If you are having trouble with your board as a result of SRE allowing users to go a little over their time limit, you can use the StrictTime resource option. 9. High-ascii characters are now allowed in empire names and messages. 10. The new installation program supports local-only play, for people who do not have a BBS but want to experiment with strategies. Version 0.992b ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. Pirates keep track of which empires have attacked and how much they were hurt. (This gives them a "personality".) 2. A new resource, News.CivilWar, lets you choose whether you want major civil wars to be listed in the news file. 3. The Flavors feature is faster (2-5 times as fast as before), and the way translations are done is a little better. (If you had "A" turning into "B" and "B" turning into "A" in version 0.991, "A" would turn into "B", which would then turn into "A"; now, it will just turn into "B", but "B" will not be further translated.) 4. News files are a little more varied. 5. Pirate names and colors can be set in the resource file. These will take effect during Reset if you choose 'New Pirate Names'. 6. A bug with lost bank investments was fixed. 7. A new type of special weapon, the Psionic Bomb, was added; this weapon creates anarchy in your opponent's empire, and totally demoralizes the troops. It is available in the registered version, and it can be bought in the same way that the nuclear and chemical weapons can be bought. Version 0.992a ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A bug with petroleum accidents occuring too often has been fixed. 2. New random events have been added (mostly good ones), and many have been changed. 3. The bank interest rate fluctuates (during daily maintenance). The interest rate affects the duration of an investment. 4. A bug with being able to learn who wrote an anonymous message has been fixed. 5. SRE USERLIST now puts a list of users in Text\UserList.TXT 6. FOSSIL support has been added! To use it, enable the System.Fossil resource in Resource.dat. 7. A bug with empires being able to abdicate and still receive trade deals from a 'previous life' has been fixed. 8. A bug allowing players not to pay for their military has been fixed! 9. The '/' key can be used to search at any prompt where an empire letter is required. The player can type in part of an empire name to select it, rather than having to remember the empire letter. Version 0.991a ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. "Translation files" are now supported; they allow you to substitute one piece of text for another in the output of SRE; for example, you can ask SRE to write "shark" instead of "soldier". The documentation is in Docs\Resource.DOC. Three sample translations are given in Flavors\*.*, along with resource files that convert your game into another "flavor" of SRE. (BRE, Medieval, and Wild West flavors are included, and you can create your own.) 2. A bug in trading, where you could not demand money, was fixed. 3. If another player is playing, SRE wrote a message to the screen but not to the remote side; it now writes to the remote side. 4. The player editor has been revised to work better; it allows you to edit user and player names. 5. New resource options Attacks.Conventional, Attacks.Guerilla, Attacks.PirateRaid, and Attacks.PirateSpy allow you to select which attacks are allowed at the attacks menu. 6. At reset-time, the sysop can choose the amount of food in the food market. 7. Players can sell bonds (investments in their own empires) to other players. There is a resource option that controls whether this new feature is enabled, Bank.PlayerInvestments. Also, there are shortcut keys at the Bank prompt: $ makes a normal (Galactic Coordinator) investment, and S shows a list of investments. 8. The resource option `Attacks.Maximum' now works properly. 9. When displaying scores, the Solar Master, Planet Master, and Weapons Master are shown. Version 0.990e ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. Another bug, this time with new users being deleted immediately, has been fixed. Version 0.990d ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A very BIG bug with the modem output routines not working was fixed! Version 0.990c ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A (somewhat major) bug with allies sending forces during an attack was fixed. 2. Custom treaties were added: these treaties allow the players to choose the percentage of forces sent during an attack, instead of using preset defense treaty types. 3. The "Setup" covert operation is now harder to spot; the agent waits until that empire plays its turns before writing the results to the news file, so that it appears at the right date and time. 4. Pirate maintenance is run hourly so that they can constantly resupply rather than rebuilding only at midnight. 5. Chat mode now has word-wrap again. (bug fix) 6. A bug with the resource option Attacks.Maximum only working for one or two days was fixed. 7. During message reply, players can now add or delete destinations for both private and public replies. By pressing '*', the player can set the message to be public. 8. A bug in the trading menu that didn't allow trading of carriers has been fixed. Version 0.990b ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. The cost of maintaining your empire and your current amount of money are displayed before paying to maintain your empire. 2. Added Display.Border -- a resource option that lets you change the border color in VGA-effects mode to one different from the default. 3. Added new status bars (accessible by pressing F2); pressing F2 will cycle through 4 status bars instead of 2, showing the military and planet distribution in addition to the information shown before. 4. Added the Output.InternationalYesNo resource option for sysops in countries where "Y" and "N" are not universally known as "yes" and "no". 5. Added the /? command line option for viewing command line parameters. 6. Added the CREATEINSTRUCTIONS command line parameter for creating Text/Player.ANS and Text/Player.TXT files, which are ANSI and text player instruction files. Version 0.990a ──══════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 0. This version is NOT COMPATIBLE with older versions! You will not be able to keep your old game running, so if this is a problem, do not run this version until you are ready for a reset, or run two SRE games, one old and one new. I would suggest re-reading the documentation, because many things have changed. 1. All prices have been slashed! 10 old credits are worth 1 new credit; this will seem strange for a while, but BRE has done the same thing, so perhaps having both games do the same thing will make it easier. 2. New non-inflationary pricing system! Prices will remain low for the entire game rather than increasing whenever the empire becomes larger. The empires must pay to maintain the bureaucracy that will accompany a large empire. There is an option at reset-time to keep the old inflationary pricing. 3. Players can enter the game without creating an empire; they can see the scores, the game parameters, public messages, and bulletins. This will allow them to see the game without being in it, and also to send messages to those who are playing. 4. The civil war system has been redone. If you don't pay or don't feed your people, the severity of your actions will dictate the casualties in the civil war. In the past, any lack of food would cause 1/2 of your planets to revolt --- in the new version, it depends on how much you fed your people (the less you feed, the worse the civil war.) 5. Treaties can be sent to multiple targets instead of sending to one at a time. 6. The food scale has been changed by a factor of 100: your people require 1/100th as much food as they used to; the prices in the food market are now more sensitive, and vary more often than in the old versions. 7. There are more research options now. You can edit them also: edit Text/Research.LST, a text file with various research planet advances. I will have an explanation of the fields in a later version; I am still working on it. 8. Players can list bank investments with the "S" key from the bank menu. 9. Users can list the covert agents that are still out on missions and what missions they are performing by pressing "S" from the covert operations menu. 10. From most menus, the user can press "V" to visit the bank. This will make it more convenient to get to the money for covert ops, attacks, and spending. 11. There are a few more ANSI files that can be displayed to the user. The title screen can now be changed, and the exit screen is available in unregistered versions. Also, _all_ of the ANSI screens go in the Screens/ subdirectory, instead of some of them going there and others going in the main SRE directory. 12. There is a tournament mode now! When you decide to reset the game, you can set up a tournament instead of a normal game. In Tournament mode, you can set the first and last day of the tournament, and after the last day, SRE will rank empires based on their performance. Each empire will receive points for being Solar, Planet, or Weapons Master. (You can assign the point values in the Resource.dat file.) The one with the most points at the end of the tournament will be the winner. The number of points an empire has is not displayed to the user until the tournament is over, so empires can't gang up on the current leader. 13. A new Advisor tells the player the efficiency of his empire. The efficiency is calculated by taking earnings, subtracting costs, and dividing by the number of planets. (It is the profit per planet.) 14. The menus are configurable! You can change the menu text and the menu colors in the Resource.DAT file. For more information, see Resource.DOC. There are over 150 text strings and 500 colors that you can set! (This will make it possible to make translate part of the game [the menus and help files] into another language.) 15. The LOG option has been changed --- you can now set a filename for the LOG file; instead of being LOG: Boolean = yes | no, it's Game.LOG: String (a filename) 16. Planets get created continuously while a player is logged on. This means that someone could be playing, buy up all the planets, and a few minutes later, find that another planet is available in the market. 17. The status bar's color can be set in the Resource file. The stars by the empire name in the empire status screen will match the status bar's color. 18. You can now set a path/filename for score files, so that the batch file does not have to copy them out each time SRE runs. 19. Several names of resource options have been changed. Most important are probably BIOS, VGA, Multitasker, LOG, Scores, and Treaty. If you were using one of those, please read Resource.DOC for the new names. I changed BIOS because in the future, I may be able to interface with DESQview's display routines, so the new format would leave direct video, BIOS, and DESQview output in the same resource option. 20. You can have multiple resource files for different nodes. See SYSOP.DOC for details. 21. For a list of things that have are NOT in 0.990 but WERE in 0.986, see WHATS.OLD. 22. The menus will automatically resize based on the size of the columns; if the numbers are small, the menu will not be as wide, so it will display faster. 23. LOCKOUT.USR has been moved to Text/Lockout.LST. The format is the same (one username per line); the ANSI files have been moved to Screens/. 24. The configurable help text file has been renamed from SREHELP.DAT to Text/SRTopics.HLP. You can create Text/Topics.Hlp if you wish to put your own text in there. 25. The help system now shows a menu and asks the user for a help topic number, so the players don't have to type in the entire word. The help topic colors are configurable (!), so you can individually color them through the resource file. 26. When empires trade, the net worth of the trading deal is counted in the net worth of the empire who owns the goods. 27. Messages can be attached to trade deals so that the empire can tell his trading partner why & what he's trading. 28. The prizes in the Pick-5 lottery are higher than ever! 29. The game saves MUCH less often, so it should be significantly faster in most places. 30. The news file options have been moved into the resource file. 31. The player can automatically pay for all expenses if he wishes. 32. Players can set various preferences in an expanded Preferences section. Included are options for paying all expenses, donating to the Galactic Coordinator, depositing everything into the bank at the end of each turn, non-redisplaying menus, and preventing Enter from exiting the spending menu. These preferences remain in Data/Player.II even past a reset, so that they don't have to enter everything again. 33. When the player finds a bribed spy working in his empire, he can re-bribe that spy to work for him to spy on the empire who originally bribed him. (Confusing?) 34. The system will not let players exit the "double spy" menu unless they press "Q". This will prevent them from missing the rare occasion of finding a double-spy. 35. Users can get information about the game such as the amount of planets and food available, number of turns per day, turns of protection, and tournament information if a tournament is being run. 36. The sysop empire viewer has been fixed so that the scores and planets appear in the correct color and order. 37. The pirate editor lets you change the color of the pirate team. 38. The status screen now shows the net worth and total number of planets. 39. There is a new resource option (News.PirateRaids) for controlling whether pirate raids are reported in the news files. 40. Only one bribed spy can be working for you in another empire at a time; in the past, more than one spy could be bribed, but having more did no more than having one, so it was a waste of money. 41. New empires can choose the letter (slot) they wish to play. (This is instead of always filling the first slot.) This way, players can sometimes choose the same slot after a reset. 42. During daily maintenance, "important" data files are copied to the Backups/ directory. 43. Neutrality treaties are always binding, even when their "time" has run out. This allows players to have treaties of virtually unlimited length; to break the treaty, the player must break it from the Diplomacy Menu. 44. During reset, you can choose whether you want to reset the pirate names; if you don't want to do so, the names remain, but the pirate data is set to zero. What to expect in the future ──════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────── 1. A research menu that allows the player to select areas which should be researched more than others. 2. Special weapons that can be developed by research planets. 3. Message attaches to battle results, so that the empire who attacked can put a message to the person he attacked. 4. Message attaches to treaty proposals. 5. A statistics bulletin generator, or perhaps an interface to an external bulletin generator. (If you are interested in writing an external bulletin program, please let me know!) 6. A sysop-set date for the last day a player can join the game. This will allow you to "close" a game after it has started, so that players can't start over. (It may be useful in Tournament mode.) 7. Listing all trading fleets that the player owns and are still out on their mission.