MechForce News This file will be used to keep a running list of improvements and bug fixes in the MechForce series of programs. February 18, 1990 Reworked the swivel and spin routines. Changed jump routines to allow computer mechs to jump up hill at you. February 17, 1990 Added a preview mode to the MechForce load requestor to give a brief view of mech status before the mech is loaded. Works by clicking on the desired mech with the RIGHT mouse button. Put same thing in Warrior for picking your starting mech. Now when you get the list of mechs you can see what each one is before you pick. Put in a message to display the total amount of experience earned for a firing sequence. February 11, 1990 Added side firing arcs for arm mounted weapons. Changed computer routines to use side firing arcs. February 10, 1990 Changed line-of-sight routines so that woods are more effective in blocking sight if both mechs are on level plains. Basically the same as the rule book. Changed global experience so you don't get experience for damage to a mech that is already dead. Added experience bonus in Scout mission for getting half way across screen. Changed computer self-destruct to make it a little more likely. Changed maximum jump time so that it doesn't change with weight. That means you can jump further as you get lighter. Added a tiebreaker routine for those rare occasions when you take out the last mech just as you go down. February 3, 1990 Fixed bug in MechForce that sometimes screwed up the movement if you canceled a jump. February 2, 1990 Fixed bug in Factory that bombed the program if you tried to add jump with a zero movement. January 27, 1990 Changed Factory to use the new jump for creation, repair, damage and unit stores. Added "Drop Ammo" for the computer. Changed the sound loading routines to allow them to load any sound file with the right name. Put in global damage so that you get experience for damage caused when a mech blows up. Changed all file requestors to linked list, UNLIMITED files. Fixed a few reported bugs. Worked on autoload of an NPC unit. Was working, but would drop through if not enough mechs for an even fight. Now it loads the unit and then adds generic mechs to balance the fight. January 21, 1990 Fixed bug in Factory that didn't save Unit C-Bills after a purchase or sale. Fixed bug that let you ESCAPE between mountains on right side during Arena mode. Fixed but that kept characters with a survival less than 3 from getting a capture roll. Put checks on all memory allocations, file Opens and Window opens to make sure there is enough memory. Put check in the directory read routine to check for maximum number of files. Increased the maximum number of files to 250. December 10, 1989 Changed "Aimed Shots" again to make it more proportional to how fast each side was moving. Changed game to make it independant of which side the computer plays. If the player is side B it now gets the goals of side B and the computer plays side A. Added config defaults to Save Game. Changed the computer self-destruct routine to reduce the chance of self-destruct. November 20, 1989 Changed "Aimed Shots" so that you can only get an aimed head shot if the target mech is unconscious, or showdown. Changed critical hits so that a critical hit in an empty or destroyed area transfer inward. November 18, 1989 Fixed bug in MechForce that would allow a mech to blowup due to heat even if the engines were already destroyed. Fixed bug in Hold Position that didn't check win criteria correctly of holding team died AFTER the time. November 16, 1989 Fixed bug in Warrior that kept you from saving a new character. Fixed bug in Factory Damage routines that lost track of the number of heat sinks. November 11, 1989 Changed all program references to BattleForce to the new name of MechForce. Changed the default names for all house affiliations. Changed Warrior and MechForce to load a player defined list of house names. Removed the University option from Warrior. Made up a complete NEW set of mechs for MechForce that does not include mechs with the FASA copyrighted names. Fixed bug in MechForce that recalculated the weight of ammo incorrectly. Caused mechs to slow down drastically when the got hit. Fixed bug in save game that didn't redraw the object on the screen when you loaded the old game. Fixed bug that had the player always start on the right side in Arena mode. November 6, 1989 Fixed bug in Warrior that I think is causing it to occasionally bomb when you add a character to a unit. Fixed bug in BattleForce that caused it to bomb if it couldn't find the orders directory. November 5, 1989 Fixed bug in setup that set the wrong side for the computer if its mission was move/carry across (convoy). Fixed bug in weapons that kept you from firing at a hex if you were carrying an object. November 2, 1989 Fixed bug in routine to place a hidden object that would sometimes cause the program to lock up during the setup phase. Changed Factory to allow you to deliberately damage mechs. This will be more useful for a possible campaign addition. October 22, 1989 Fixed bug in new routine to have mechs hid in a scout mission. Invisible mechs would wait 1000 seconds instead of activating when they became visible. October 20, 1989 Fixed bug in escape routine for roll to be captured if you escape of top or bottom of screen. Fixed minor bug in shove routine. Changed ALL file requestors so you can now double click on a file to Load/Save/Delete. October 19, 1989 Changed charge damage. If charge knocks a mech down more than one level the mech takes additional damage to its legs. Changed heat routines. If a mechs temperature reaches 5000 degrees it engine blows up, even if the pilot ejected and its just salvage. Changed fall damage. The base damage is half the old value, but it is multiplied by the mechs speed divided into 100, when it fell. That means a 60 ton mech standing still will only take 3 pts of damage, but if it is running at 20 seconds/hex it will take 15 pts of damage. This gets really bad for light fast mechs. The chance of rolling is also modified by the mechs speed. Changed criticals so that destroying a side torso causes the associated shoulder actuator to be destroyed. October 18, 1989 Fixed minor bug in end game evaluation that said you failed a hold position mission if you escaped off screen after the set time. October 17, 1989 Fixed Factory so that it modified the cost of Unit Stores by the percentage of repair paid by your affiliated house. October 16, 1989 Fixed bug in Crawl routine. Fixed bug that caused object to disappear if the hex it occupied was changed (cleared, set fire, etc). October 14, 1989 Changed all routines for calculating the cost of an engine so that they are independant of the mech weight. Now if you buy an engine for one mech and sell the same engine for another mech the cost is the same. Fixed mech delete bug in Warrior. Disabled Factory menus while it is recalculating. Used PowerPacker on all programs except BattleForce. This will cause you pointer to blink for a second or so while the program is loading. Actual loading time is about the same, but it saves almost 100k on the distribution disk. October 12, 1989 Fixed minor bugs in BattleForce, such as ejecting into water. I also worked on the computer melee routines. I added routines to let computer mechs try to stand with a missing leg if the pilot is good enough. Changed Arena mode to only allow one team per side. October 9, 1989 Corrected some logic errors in the Find_High_Ground routines. This lets the computer handle mountains better. October 8, 1989 I found the bug in BattleForce that causes it to lock up on the menu line occasionally. It was part of a clipping routine that I added when I was having trouble with blitter. Whenever the menu line went longer than 80 character it went into an infinite loop. Fixed unit acceptance rolls (were reversed). Added code to clear unit contract every time you change affiliation. Changed Warrior to call file requestor if it can't find the right file to delete. Fixed bug in BattleForce that wouldn't let you drop an object once you picked it up. Fixed several initial positioning bugs. Fixed end game evaluation for Hold Position. Fixed several bugs that caused memory errors when you changed paths. October 3, 1989 Fixed minor bug in the reset routine in BattleForce that left the unit status flag for the mech marked "Out on Patrol". October 1, 1989 The big news is the BattleForce 3.60 is officially released. This is the new version with random scenarios, a new config editor and an orders generating program, HQ. The game itself has been considerably improved with Indirect Fire for LRMs, kicking while jumping, improved computer combat routines, difficulty levels, clear and reset option during the startup, etc. Make sure to send in your disk with a couple dollars for the update. September 7, 1989 Changed damage for DFA. Used to add damage if the charge knocked the victim down to a lower level. Change eliminated the extra damage, but I may go back and add in some leg damage for mechs that get dropped more than one level. After all, if you drop kick him off a cliff he ought to take some extra damage. Changed the computer mech selection routine. Under some circumstances is was picking too much weight. This didn't become obvious until I started watching the selections with the new difficulty levels. Also added the remaining fuel to the "Jump" menu. September 1, 1989 Fixed bug in BattleForce that didn't set dispossessed flag if you got an emergency ejection from a head hit and escaped. Changed the line of sight routine so that it checks in both directions. No more "he can shoot me, but I can't shoot him". Fixed bug in Factory that decrimented the wrong engine when you replaced an engine from unit stores. Fixed minor bug in Warrior that didn't reset a characters salary to zero when he left the unit. Put some more error checking in BattleForce to stop you from loading a mech with no head or the center destroyed. There were several other small bug that I fixed that I don't remember now. August 10, 1989 Fixed bug induced by Factory by the new heal routines. This kept you from loading a character that needed healing. It also triggered an old bug that left the unit file open after finding an error. August 4, 1989 Corrected minor display error in Status Display. Removed shove call if you run into a hex with a downed enemy mech. August 2, 1989 Added menu item to all programs to let you put the working screen to the back. This lets you multi-task all three and still get the the screens. Changed Factory healing routines. It has always healed unit pilots, but never charged. Now it heals all pilots, just like Warrior, AND charges. Changed the default path string length from 40 to 80 characters. This gives people with hard drives and buried paths room to play with. July 30, 1989 Improved the random names routine. July 28, 1989 Fixed bug that would sometimes cause a computer mech to jump backward instead of forward on a DFA attack. Fixed bug that would sometines cause a mech no to start a DFA attack when it could. July 26, 1989 Fixed bug in BattleForce that cancelled "Wait on Visible" if a computer mech was already visible. Fixed load game so that it sets starting colors for mechs. July 22, 1989 Fixed bug in Factory that didn't save repairs on spare mechs. Fixed bug in Factory that didn't keep track of free spaces properly. Fixed bug that wouldn't let you out of Heat Sink Manual Install if you didn't have enough space left to install all heat sinks. July 16, 1989 Changed BattleForce to make the mechs of Side B, Black. They are still pink when they jump. Fixed a bug induced in the last version that might cause a mech to be saved with the dispossessed flag set true. Worked on the bug that lets your head get ripped off twice. July 11, 1989 Fixed minor bug that might cause the BattleForce program to bomb if you passed on a "Wait on Enemy". Fixed a minor bug that messed up the display in Warrior while changing mechs. July 9, 1989 Fixed minor bug in BattleForce that allowed unconscious pilot to eject. Changed pilot damage due to getting head blown off. Now based on original damage to head times 5. July 7, 1989 Fixed minor bugs in BattleForce. Bug that allowed unconscious pilot to make an Emergency Ejection roll. Fixed bug that caused a combat with two teams from the same unit to count double for wins, patrols, missions, etc. Changed the weapon selector so that if there are no visible enemy mechs you can still fire at hexes or friends. July 4, 1989 The BattleForce combat program was changed to add a "Wait On Next Visible Mech" option. This will act as a wait on call for weapons OR movement, with an interrupt any time a computer mech becomes visible. Also fixed a bug that caused multiple crashes occasionally. The Factory program had a couple of bugs fixed pertaining to keeping track of the 10 heat sinks in the engine and to automatically installing them. Also added the cost of modifying a mech to add hands. July 2, 1989 A number of new features were added to the BattleForce combat program. The amount of heat generated by Flamers was reduced from 600 to 200. This was designed counter the overwhelming advantage of Flamers and bring the game more inline with the board game. At the same time, the restriction on the number of Flamers was removed from the BattleForce and Factory programs. To keep player from having advanced knowledge of the number and size of computer mechs the pulldown list of team mechs was removed for computer teams. It was replaced with an 'Identify' option in the move and weapons menu. This option allows you to click on any VISIBLE mech image and get a readout of its type and weight. You are also given an option to get a full status display of the mech. In the same vein, the mech list in the targeting and Wait on Enemy options was also removed. It was replaced with a scrolling list of enemy mech. This menu gives the name of the mech and pilot and defaults to the last target mech. In use it seems to be as fast, if not faster than the old menu and gives you better control. I also changed the routine that names computer mech pilots. The computer now generates true random names (although some of them are pretty strange). You will now have no idea how many mechs you are fighting until they become visible. I also changed the 'Wait on Time' menu a little. The amount of change now changes dynamically. If you increase/decrease more than 10 times in one direction the program starts adding 10 seconds instead of 1. Every 10 clicks jumps it by a factor of 10. If you change direction it drops back to 1. It sounds complicated, but it works quite well. In response to several requests I changed the Factory program to put 10 of the heat sinks in the engine. The new Factory 'Heat Sink' menu item now has two submenus, 'Change' and 'Install'. 'Change' is just like the old menu item. 'Install' brings up a requestor that asks if you want to manually install the heat sinks. If you say no the computer will install all heat sinks OVER the first 10. If you say yes you will get a window with a display of all internal areas. You can click on any empty area, ".", to add a heat sink. Clicking on a heat sink, "H", will remove it. The gadget at the bottom keeps a running total of the remaining heat sinks left to install. When all heat sinks are installed it changes to "Done" and you can exit. The Factory also has a new menu item, 'Hands'. This is an optional item that allows you to remove hand and wrist actuators from the arms. This will give you two extra spaces in the arms (enough for an AC 20). However, arms without hands will have a slightly higher chance of damaging weapons when they punch, and of course, you can't pick up anything without a hand. I mention that, because the next major change will require the ability to pick up stuff. I am currently working on updating ALL of the generic mech files to remove the extra heat sinks, increase head armor to max, lower rediculous amounts of ammo and remove hands where called for. I will upload them as a file when they are done.