BBS_Stuff_Variant_Collection_Years/twmis085.arj/WHATS-UP.DOC

Text File | 1993-05-27 | 19.5 KB | 283 lines

This is the TW Missions history file. Pardon the title; it just sort of popped
out of my head. Like Mazda, it "just felt right".

─Version History─
  v0.50 to v0.80
    Beta test versions; not released.
  v0.81 -- 04/15/92
    Initial public release. Knockem dead! :)
  v0.82 -- 04/21/92
    MANY new features. There was a minor bug in the CheckMis routine that
    resulted in a few bytes being written to the TWSMF.DAT (TradeWars Small
    Message File) file. While insignificant, and not affecting TradeWars
    itself (which is smarter than Missions), it was still screwing up some
    message pointers and needed to be corrected.
    New in this version is the Mission Editor. Now the SysOp can define a
    set percentage chance for missions to occur, set the base value by
    which the strength of the fighters and resulting XP/Creds/Align values
    are randomized. Registered SysOps can view and edit any mission, and
    even create new ones on the fly. No longer does the Registration Code
    need be put in the MISREG.DAT file, now it is simply appended to a 51st
    record at the end of the Missions.Dat file, along with some other data.
    You now enter your Reg Code in MISEDIT.
    Finally, there is now one Commandline Parameter--FORCE. Using the
    commandline MISSIONS FORCE will "FORCE" TW Missions to create a random
    mission, as if the generation percentage chance was set for 100%.
    Intended as the first of a three-part release, v0.82 fixed many annoying bugs
    in 0.81, and created more than a few. Put simply, it wasn't SUPPOSED to be
    released yet. However, shortly after it was (out of a panic over the bugs in
    0.81), I was kicked out of the house by my father in early June. I left on
    the condition that he cash checks and send out registrations. He cashed all
    checks that came in (which kept me alive much of the time I was hitch hiking
    cross country), but never sent out a single registration unless someone
    called him voice and asked for it (which I'd told him *not* to do, because
    anyone could have called and said they were registered). In addition, many
    of the reg forms which accompanied these letters and checks were lost.
    In September of '92, as I was passing through Virginia, I stopped in to visit
    some relatives, logged onto their computer, and found out exactly how badly
    my father was FUBARing my career. I then reversed course and began hitching
    back towards Seattle, and told my father point blank NOT to handle any more
    registrations, but to send them all to my support SysOp, Beverly Crowley, who
    had graciously offered to help by putting me up for a few weeks and assisting
    in sending out reg codes.
    The net result is this: many people have mistaken the problems which befell
    me to be a deliberate attempt to rip them off. This is *not* so. In the past
    few weeks, I have received two legal threats and one person requesting their
    money back (very rudely, I might add). I have been taking care of pending
    registrations as soon as I have the money for stamps and envelopes,
    manunfacturing reg codes by hand with a calculator, and often foregoing
    groceries for the week to have the money to send out people's registrations.
    Nearly all of my records were lost, except for my checking account
    statements. Therefore, if you have not received your registration code by
    now, and have been waiting longer than one or two months (my stack of back
    registrations is several inches thick), then I advise you to send me a letter
    with the check number, check date, or money order ID--or anything of that
    nature. If you sent cash, there isn't a lot I can do for you unless I
    remember your name from the list my father showed me.
    My advice for registrations is this: if you send a SASE, I will send you your
    code the very next day--otherwise, it gets shuffled to the back with the rest
    of the new registrations. My next payday is the 22nd of April, and I will be
    spending the bulk of my free time that week eliminating the last of the back
    registrations. After that point, things should return to a normal turnaround
    time--although registrations with SASE's will *always* be sent out
    immediately, so if you want your code fast, that's your best bet, since I
    don't have a telephone at the moment.
    All in all, I ask you for patience. I rarely make a profit from this--I
    program because I enjoy it, and most registrations go directly into making my
    computer work (which it doesn't, half the time), or paying a household bill.
    If you bear with me, you will all get your registrations very soon.
  v0.83 - April 1, 1993
    The first release in almost a year! This is primarily a maintenance
    release--there is very little new here, and I've tracked down most of the
    annoying bugs. One thing of note is that MisEdit is no longer a separate
    executable--there were so many routines common to both MISEDIT and MISSIONS,
    I merged them into one and now MisEdit is available by calling MISSIONS with
    the parameter of EDITOR.
    Also new is the calling--Missions will now ONLY check Missions after TW2002
    is run--it will not create any. This is done in the daily Maintenance for
    your BBS, and the call of MISSIONS DAILY should be placed right after
    EXTERN. This makes for a lot less Missions, and speeds up the process.
    Speaking of speed--the speed at which Missions are checked has been sped up
    DRASTICALLY--almost 600%. Some new routines of mine are responsible for
    this, in addition to a little knowledge you should have: When checking a
    Mission, MISSIONS is effectively doing a string matching search in the daily
    log file (TWOPENG.DAT). The speed at which this goes is dependent on your
    Disk Access Speed more than your computer speed, so if you have a fast hard
    drive this will go like lightning. I have a 286 with an RLL HD, (a fairly
    average computer and speed) and it now takes only fifteen to twenty seconds
    to check 30 Missions, with a Daily Log length set at 400 lines. I don't
    recommend higher than this--in fact, I recommend you set your line length in
    TEDIT to about 80. This scrolls old data off after about a week--a few
    days, in an active game. Those of you who took Missions out of your TW batch
    file because of the speed, may now put it back the way it was without fear
    of a significant slowdown. Fifteen seconds is the longest I've seen it
    delay, and that was in a game with quite a few Missions. Note that Search
    and Destroy Missions are what causes the real slowdown--Rescue Missions
    and S&D's that are keyed to fighters, take a fraction of a second, and
    are not significant.
    Bugs: besides the fact that it was SLOW, there were a few bugs in 0.82. I
    forgot to close a file in one place, so a File Already Open error would
    often occur, and lock Missions up. Invoking DOS SHARE.EXE would cure this
    problem well, but I fixed it anyway in this version. A real bad one was the
    fact that the Mission Editor functioned solely as a viewer--the editing part
    was not fully implemented in 0.82. This has been fixed, so all you
    registered users may now have fun with it! Note that if you change the
    Mission Type or Mission SubType, Missions will assume a number of
    defaults for the new Mission. This was necessary, as many of the data
    from each Mission Type are not compatible with each other. You shouldn't
    need to worry about this, it's technodrek.
    "Open" Missions--Missions assigned to the whole universe--have been
    eliminated. In layman's terms, it didn't work worth drek. Planetary Rescue
    Missions have been disabled in this version until I figure out what's wrong
    with them--but they will be back next version.
    I've ceased using PKLite to compress my files with--it's too easily hacked.
    Finally, I am shipping this version using PKWare's new PKZip v2.04G. The
    reason for this is simple--it compresses just as well as ARJ, and is more
    well-known and flexible. Since version 2.04 Zips cannot be unzipped by
    version 1.10, I am shipping this version ONLY in a self-executable format. I
    strongly encourage everyone to locate and download PKZ204G.EXE if they have
    not already, because starting next version I *will* be shipping it in ZIP
    format.
  v0.84 - May 11, 1993
    Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!
    Hehehe. Sorry about that... but those were my first words spoken in the
    last nine hours, barring the constant stream of euphemisms and invectives
    being directed at my computer.
    What you hold in your hands in the most complete, most bug-free version
    of Missions yet. As I've said in previous releases, v0.82 was intended as
    the first of a three-part release, and wasn't actually supposed to see
    the public itself. However, it did get released, and it was almost a year
    before I had the means to create a new version : 0.83. Version 0.83 fixed
    quite a few of the bugs in 0.82, but not all of them. There were things
    in 0.83 which couldn't properly be called bugs--simply oversights and
    deactivated features which I hadn't quite gotten to yet.
      Version 0.84 WORKS!
    I just spent the entire morning, day, and afternoon programming this
    release, and it's been a living hell. BUT... I fixed the mistakes that
    have been haunting my conscience for some time (the idea of people paying
    for buggy code doesn't sit well with me), and did it well. I've spent the
    last hour or two just playtesting this thing to make sure it works.
      Let's run over the "bugs" prior to this version:
    - Duplicate Names in Log
      If a Ferrengi or Alien--let's say Napi Tochiez--was targeted for
      termination, and a player succeeded--then later, an Alien with the same
      name was targeted--the following would happen. Missions would search
      TWOPENG.DAT, find the first time he was blown up, and assume the second
      Mission was completed. Not good. So I've taken the following steps:
        Last Log Read Date : this variable records the last date Missions
          read from the daily log, and will skip anything before that.
        Named Textfiles : Missions now picks all Ferrengi and Alien
          Names/Ship Names from four textfiles; FERRNAME.MDF, FERRSHIP.MDF,
          ALNNAME.MDF, and ALNSHIP.MDF. These must exist, and the format is
          very simple. See MISSIONS.DOC for more info.
    - Overwriting last records
      I hated like hell making Missions assume the last records in each
      datafile, but at the time I hadn't yet written the routines to detect
      existing records. Put simply, Missions would ALWAYS use Planet Record
      #150, Ferrengi #40, and Alien #50. This created obvious and nasty
      problems when two or more players were assigned the same type of
      Mission--only one of them could complete their Mission, because the
      most recent one had overwritten the last one's target! Not good in the
      least.
      Never fear. In this version, Missions will use the first available
      record, and will abort out if it can't find any open records. In
      addition, I have disabled Rescue Planet Missions--they'll be back,
      along with S&D Port/Planet Missions for the badguys in the next
      version. The problems of 0.82 are problems no more.
    - Open Missions
      Are now completely disabled. Had to be done.
    - Giving Missions to everyone
      Many people complained that it didn't seem quite fair (or realistic, or
      believable, or correct, etc) that the Federation would give Missions to
      bad guys. I agreed, with some reservations that will show up in later
      versions. (hehe) So... you can now define the minimum alignment and
      experience a player must have to receive a Mission.
    In addition, I have once again sped up Missions a bit due to improved
    coding. Many new parameters are evident in the SetMisParms section of the
    editor, including the option to remove objects after a Mission or not,
    the difficulty factors of the Missions (which also affects the rewards),
    and a few other interesting ones. With a Daily Log Length of 200 lines,
    each Mission now takes almost exactly one second to check on my 286. With
    a Daily Log Length of 800 lines, it takes approximately five seconds
    each. I recommend the former, possibly even 100 lines--if you wish to
    preserve the game log, it can be copied to a backup at maint.
    To make up for the necessary removal of Open and Planet Rescue Missions,
    I've added a new Mission: Mines. The Ferrengi are being little buggers
    and dropping mines, and the player must eliminate the mines (and possibly
    deal with the Ferrengi doing it if he isn't quick).
    In the editor, you can now Resend the notification message to a player,
    if, say, you've changed the Mission or added a new one. Actually, you
    could do this in 0.83, but it didn't work quite right (IE, the sector was
    always shown as 0).
    Some people have repeatedly told me that there's a bug that Missions will
    give a player credits for destroying fighters even though it's
    unregistered. It will NOT. What they are referring to is that TW2002 does
    this--when you destroy Rogue or Ferrengi fighters, you always get a few
    creds from the Federation, and it's never enough to replenish a fraction
    of your fighters. This is in TW2002, and is completely separate from
    Missions.
    There are so many things added and fixed in this version that I can't
    possibly list them all off the top of my head. For instance, Missions
    would always tell a player to register the game, even when it was. A new
    annoying plug at the Tavern has been added... this should be a real
    strong incentive to register; players hate being nagged. :)
    I'm now back to a normal registration schedule. If you haven't gotten
    yours by now, I didn't get it, just got it, or just sent it out.
    I encourage people STRONGLY to use the Registration Form included in this
    archive, as well as to fill out the SURVEY.TXT file and send it my way.
    I no longer send diskettes through the mail free under any circumstances,
    unless I really feel like it. If you send me a diskette, I will consider
    it a donation unless you include an extra $5 to cover it--in which case I
    will send you the latest versions of any  of my software I can fit on the
    disk. BTW, I only have a 1.44M 3.5" disk drive--I do not possess or have
    access to a 5.25" drive.
    Sorry about that, but I view it as a real presumption for people to send a
    diskette and automatically expect me to do something about it. They often
    don't realize that whether I return it to them full or empty, it's still
    going to cost me money--a buck and a half for a disk mailer, 80 cents for
    postage, a variable price for the diskette, plus my time--which is
    shorter than my money lately.
    Finally, I also urge you to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope if
    you are registering--I send these out the very next day after I get them.
  v0.85 - May 28, 1993
    Okey doke. A few minor points to address regarding 0.84.
    I want you all to know that I'm *immensely* pleased with myself, in that
    there were only TWO bugs in the entire version of 0.84, and they are my
    own damn fault. When a Rescue Mission is completed successfully, the
    object of that mission sends the player a personalized note of thanks. I
    misjudged the calculations for getting the player name, so it would
    always get it from player #150. (Which was usually set to *** Player
    Records *** or something like that) Needless to say, this wouldn't hurt
    anything, but would raise some eyebrows, so I fixed it.
    NEW FEATURES! I've fixed and reenabled Planetary Rescue Missions. They
    now work flawlessly. In addition, if the planet is somehow destroyed
    (whether by another player, collision, etc), then the Mission will fail.
    This gives players TWO ways to screw up. <Grin> Note that if you set
    Remove Objects? to No, the planet will remain where Missions placed it,
    and the player can keep it if they want.
    I made these planets have a Level One citadel--this done for several
    reasons. First, it wouldn't make sense for a player to have just rescued
    this planet, and then have to fight through the fighters on the surface.
    Second, if it was given a level 4 citadel, a smart player could photon
    missile the fighters, land on the planet, and save it by TransWarping the
    planet out of there--an expense of 40kCU for a return of four times that
    much. Not good. Finally, I didn't want to just "give away" nice tasty
    citadels. If you set the Remove option to Yes, the planet will disappear
    when the Mission is ended either way.
    Those of you familiar with the Mission Definition Files from the last
    version are probably wondering if I'll use a Picklist for the planet
    names as well. Very good! And those of you with sharp eyes may have
    noticed that the format looks familiar. Yup! Identical to GENESIS.DAT.
    For those of you using my Genesis program, you can optionally tell
    Missions to just use your GENESIS.DAT file instead of the picklist for
    grabbing names and creators.
    There is another new option in SetMisParms, and that is the log length.
    This is an option which tells Extern the maximum number of lines which
    the daily log can have--anything more is trimmed. Note that this is the
    same option as in Tedit--I simply put it here for your convenience.
    NEW S&D Mission! Players can now be contracted to destroy other players!
    (Of the opposite alignment, of course) For evil players, the message will
    come from the Ferrengi instead of the Federation. And if the target
    Trader changes alignment while he has the mission on him, the player
    will be told to "never mind."
    Missions now "reminds" players as part of DAILY maint, that they are
    still on a Mission. They will be sent a follow-up message, and--to aid
    them in completing Ferrengi and Alien missions in particular--will be
    given the "last reported" position of that Ferrengi or Alien. This
    narrows it down from 1000 possible sectors to closer to 150 that they can
    immediately search. This doesn't guarantee that the player will be able
    to find the scum (or that they'll be able to handle them if they do), but
    it does help. Chances are, if they warped *directly* to that sector and
    started scanning, they'd run into him--but if they play a few turns
    first, they'll probably find that the trail is dead cold.
    I think some of these reminders are pretty funny--particlarly the Rescue
    missions, which are "from" the Port or Planet threatened, and whine to no
    end. <Grin> The whinings alone should encourage these players to get off
    their bloody duffs, eh?
    Printer! I will give a lifetime registration to all of my present and
    future products to anyone who will donate a working printer. I need one
    *badly*; right now I handwrite all of my registrations. A printer would
    definitely speed things up and make the output much neater and cleaner.
    Finally, thanks to David Lisso of Raven's Gate (Glendora, CA) for the two
    additional stamps. Donations like these always help!