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- ____________________________________
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- | History of Arena Warrior (C)1991 |
- |____________________________________|
-
-
- Arena Warrior original development as seen from Trevor Parks:
-
- I started to play a game called Warrior on Teleplay in San Jose, California in
- June of 90'. The game was run by Solo (Mark Barrow) which he wrote based on
- another game played on Teleplay. These games which I played and others played
- were all message based games on a MULTI-LINE board, not a door game. I wanted
- to play this game at home with my friends but couldn't because I was calling
- long distance and none of my friends could afford it. So I then tried to
- obtain a copy of the program that Solo was using in this play-by-mail game. He
- said 'NO'. I was bummed, so I then tried to get formulas, routines, ideas, and
- just anything I could get, so I could play among my friends here in Texas.
- Then my friend on Teleplay (Speaker) knew what I wanted and offered to write up
- a quick BASIC game. So we gathered all the information that we could get a
- hold of, put it together and WHAMMO! Speaker wrote a quick and simple Warrior
- game so I could use it here with my friends. It worked like a charm, but I
- wanted more, so I asked Speaker to further develop the existing game he wrote
- for me. Being the nice guy he is, he agreed and wrote more. About this time I
- consulted Greg Hartle about this game and ideas. He seemed to like the idea
- and was fairly eager to write it. He wasn't familar with the game, but I told
- him what I could and showed him Speaker's BASIC version. He went from there
- and started his own Pascal code and used ideas I gave him that I got from
- Teleplay. About this time Solo set up the Warrior Realm BBS, which consisted
- of the play-by-mail version which was in play on Teleplay. It was door game
- using the info from Teleplay, but was just for fun, no records were kept. It
- was set up as if every user that played was the referee and just did what
- he/she wanted. Then I showed Greg this door version of Warrior which Solo
- wrote and he got a better idea of what the game was and how it was to run.
- Then finally Greg finished Arena Warrior beta 1, door game. Greg and I had
- loads of fun playing by ourself, but we wanted to distribute the game. So he
- put what he had up on his board and we were in business. Things progressed as
- follows after this point.
-
- Please note, Chaz Pearson did originally write a BASIC program of Warrior for
- use on teleplay. Solo then got a hold of this BASIC program and converted it
- into Solo-code, which was the game I played.
-
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- History of development from the programmer's (Greg's) point of view:
-
- 31 Dec 1990
- Arena Warrior is born.
-
- 1 Jan 1991 - 23 Feb 1991
- Stuff happens. Many things added, many bugs fixed.
-
- ?? Jan 1991
- I/O routines are finished and Arena Warrior is online on Twilight Zone III
- for selected users to help find and squash bugs, give suggestions, etc.
-
- ?? Jan 1991
- Arena is now available to all users on TZ-III for their pleasure/disgust.
-
- ?? Feb 1991
- First beta site run by Solo gets it running and available to veteran
- Warrior (*) players.
-
- 24 Feb 1991
- Team results added. This allows players to see only those fights
- involving warriors on their team since their last entry. This is useful
- for games with a large number of players (less to read) and for those who
- miss several turns.
- New referee command added - NPC team fight results. Same as above, but
- lets the ref see how well the NPCs are doing and if they're even being
- challenged.
-
- 25 Feb 1991
- Fixed bug that would add a space at the end of single-word user names.
- No big deal, but if you wanted to have a ref with a one-word name, you had
- to put a space after his name in REFS.TXT. Run UPDNAME.EXE to fix.
-
- 27 Feb 1991
- Challenge menu put in. You don't have to specify each active warrior's
- defending weapon each time you use the challenge command. And if you want
- them all to use the same weapons they did last time, just don't change
- them. You can now see who your warriors have challenged and undo all your
- challenges.
- Slightly different format for CHAR.DAT and FIGHT.DAT. Run UPDCHAR.EXE to
- fix.
- Fixed small bug where if someone challenged one person then another, the
- first would still be marked as having been challenged. It wouldn't keep
- anyone from challenging him, but would make people think he was already
- challenged, anyway.
-
- 28 Feb 1991 - 9 July 91
- Who knows? I lost the history file current to this point, so...
-
- 10 July 1991
- Added check for inactivity. On a remote call, no I/O for 4.5 minutes
- warns the user; none for 30 seconds more causes Arena to exit.
- Local 500 line scrollback put in! My personal favorite...
-
- 12 July 1991
- The way skills are determined were changed a little. It's not quite so
- generous now.
- The first warrior of each team is considered the "team captain" and is
- usually better than average.
- New users are given a chance to get out right after reading the
- instructions as well as just [Q]uitting from the main menu before any
- warriors are on the team. There will be fewer empty teams now.
-
- 18 July 1991
- Ref commands to suspend/unsuspend team added.
- Win adjustment for beltholders put in.
- (CW <= BWW + BL to challenge belted warriors)
- Ref command to change above added.
- CONFIG.DAT, CHAR.DAT, and TEAM.DAT expanded for version 1.0ß2 stuff to fit
- with a little room to grow some more.
- Version 1.0ß2 complete! Hopefully it'll be the public release version...
-
- 22 Aug 1991
- No major problems with 1.0ß2 (aMAZing)
- Last minute bug fix - the initialization routine would get a fatal error
- if it couldn't find certain files that it tried to delete. It wasn't
- causing any problems, just confusion.
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- (*) Warrior, a game developed by Solo, is not to be confused with Arena
- Warrior, written by Greg Hartle, developed by Trevor Parks and Greg Hartle.
- While Warrior is played through messages, with the referee posting results,
- Arena Warrior is a bulletin board door and standalone program with many
- game play differences.
-