*************************************************************************** |\ | \ / | \ | \ / | \|EW \/\/ORLD A game of exploration, trade, and conquest... by Kevin Roll (kar5@po.cwru.edu) *************************************************************************** REQUIREMENTS New World requires OS 2.04 and at least 1 meg of contiguous memory. The game may not function on 512K/512K split systems. AGA is not necessary, but recommended. Also, a 68020 or higher processor is recommended; the game runs pretty slow using a 68000. The game may be installed on a hard disk by simply copying all files and subdirectories and assigning NewWorld: to the hard disk directory. You may save about 360K of memory by running the game without sound effects; to do this, run it as "nw NOSOUND". Those with faster machines will want to use the nice texture-mapped graphics; run the game with the TEXTURE keyword for this effect. Please send all comments and bug reports to kar5@po.cwru.edu. Be sure to include your exact system configuration and as detailed report of the circumstances as you can manage. New World uses the ReqTools requester toolkit contained in reqtools.library. ReqTools is Copyright (c) Nico François. New World is Copyright (c) Kevin Roll 1993. INTRODUCTION In New World, you play the role of an early explorer, setting out from Europe to face the unknown. Armed with a loan from the crown, you must equip an expedition and sail west in search of the New World. Once you find it, you must deal with the natives there. Whether you will trade peacefully or attempt a conquest is up to you, but you must live with the consequences of your actions! USING THE WORLD CREATOR The World Creator is used to create random worlds for use with New World. Before playing your first game, you must create at least one map file. You may create as many as you want, but beware, they take up a lot of space! The World Creator is invoked from the CLI as follows: cw The process of world creation takes around 5 minutes (on my A4000/040 :) ). First, the land is generated using a fractal technique. Next, rivers are run over the landscape. Finally, villages and other neat stuff are created. GETTING STARTED To begin, run the game from the Workbench or CLI. You will be prompted to select a map file. You may have as many map files as you have space for, with separate games going on each. Note that for technical reasons, once a game is begun on a map file there is no way to reset it. So, if you think you might like several tries, make a copy of the map file before starting the game. Once the game is up and running, you will find yourself in Europe, staring at a blank map. The game supports four command line options, as follows: NOSOUND Disable sound effects (saves ~360K) LOG Enable map log files SCRMODE Bring up screen mode requester FONT Bring up font requester TEXTURE Use texture-mapped graphics IN EUROPE The game begins by showing you the total map, which will be blank since you haven't discovered anything yet. The map appears every time you return to Europe. Note that the stats window is draggable. To continue, click the close box in the upper-left corner. The first time you play a map, you will be asked to select a difficulty level. 0 is the easiest, 99 is the hardest. The difficulty level affects the visibility of villages, economic factors involved in trading, and the rate at which men die and accidents occur. Level 0 is a cakewalk; on the higher levels you will find it increasingly difficult to make a profit. Next, you proceed to the outfitters. Here, you must purchase the things you will need for your expedition. The first time out, the crown lends you enough money to get a rudimentary expedition. The number of ships, men, food, and goods you are taking can be adjusted using the slider bars. Note that food is bought for in terms of weeks, which is relative to the number of men in your expedition. A little forethought here will be necessary for success. A large fleet of ships will give you more carrying capacity, but they are expensive. More men can carry more things, but require more food. The Indians will trade food and gold for your goods; or you can attempt conquest, at the expense of your army. When you are ready to set sail, click on the button at the bottom of the window. AT SEA Control of your expedition is accomplished using a joystick in port 2. Simply steer in the four cardinal directions; pushing diagonally will cause you to zig-zag. Pressing and releasing the button will cause your ships to hold their present course; press the button with the joystick centered to stop them. Your goal at first will be simply to find land; after you know your way around, you will want to guide your fleet to the mouths of large rivers, or near big settlements. The dangers at sea include thunderstorms in open water, and shipwrecks in the shallows. When you have found a suitable place to land, maneuver your ships so they are directly adjacent to the shore. You will then be ready to disembark. WARNING: Attemping to move onto the land will result in one or more of your ships being wrecked, so be extremely cautious! DISEMBARKING THE EXPEDITION Selecting Disembark from the Options menu (or pressing Right Amiga-D) allows you to unload a land-going expedition from the ship. You must offload men, supply them with food, and take along however many goods you think you will need. Once you are on shore, you are free to roam across the land, exploring the terrain. Make sure, however, that any men left on the ships have an adequate food supply, or your fleet may not be there when you return! You may bring up the Disembark menu by returning to the ship, allowing you to transfer supplies. When you are ready to depart, simply place all of your men on the ships. Note that any supplies not placed on the ships at this point will be dumped and lost forever. This is sometimes useful as an emergency measure when out of room, but normally should be avoided. MOVING ACROSS LAND Control of the expedition is identical on land; simply push the joystick in the cardinal directions. As you move about, note the terrain you are crossing. Higher terrain will take more time to traverse, with mountains being the worst of all. Moving along rivers as much as possible will save you considerable travel time. VIEWING THE MAP To view the map, select it from the Options menu or press Right Amiga-M. The map window will pop up. The window will display your immediate surroundings, and your approximate latitude. The cross in the center marks your current location. Note that the map window is draggable. CACHES Sometimes you may find it necessary to leave some of your supplies behind. By selecting Cache from the Options menu (or pressing Right Amiga-C) you may leave behind a cache of food, goods, and gold. Any food left here will quickly decay, but the other commodities will be unharmed. FINDING VILLAGES As you move over the landscape, you must try to locate native settlements. These appear in several forms; tipis in the temperate zones, pueblos in the desert, and wigwams in the hills. On level 0, all villages will be visible; as the level is increased, only the larger ones will appear. See the section on consulting bearers below for more information on finding villages. TRADING WITH VILLAGES Upon entering a village, you will be told how the natives view your presence. This is also apparent from the tempo of the native drums; faster drums indicate displeasure. The more angry the natives are, the less likely they are to trade. Your options are trade, conquest, or to leave the village. Your first, and more sensible option, is to trade with the village. You are asked how many goods you wish to give as goods. The natives are notoriously greedy in most cases and it is to your advantage to give as much as you can spare. If the chief decides to trade, and you have been generous, he will send along bearers. These are extremely useful for several reasons. One, they help carry your burden, allowing you to bring along more stuff. However, the bearers will find their own food and not eat up all of yours! Secondly, the bearers will direct you to other settlements, as explained below. When the chief decides to trade, the village trading window will pop up. As you take food and gold, goods will be subtracted in trade. Greedier tribes will demand more goods for the same amount of food and gold; you will have to watch closely and "shop around" for the best deal. Also, as the difficulty level increases, trade becomes costlier and costlier. ATTACKING Your second, and far riskier option is to attack the village. A certain number of your men will die in the attack; the more warlike tribes will extract a much higher cost in men. Indeed, a larger village may completely wipe out your party, ending your expedition rather quickly. If you succeed in your conquest, a certain number of natives will be forcefully recruited as bearers. The stocks of food and gold in the village will be yours to take. Naturally, the tribe will now hate you on sight. At the higher levels, the native anger toward you will begin to negatively affect your score. So, conquest is not a good option for maximum points. CONSULTING WITH BEARERS Native bearers are doubly useful because they can reveal to you the location of other settlements and things such as gold mines. To consult with the bearers, move into an unknown area and select Consult Bearers from the Options menu (or press Right Amiga-B). The bearers will mutter amongst themselves, and Voila! Any settlement or object of a tribe from which you have bearers will appear on the map. When moving through unkown lands, you will want to frequently consult the bearers in order to locate all villages. FORTS If you are exceptionally generous to a tribe as a whole, and to a certain village in particular, the chief will ask you to build a fort. You will be given the honor of naming the new edifice. A certain number of natives will remain and become part of the garrison, and the fort will be stocked with food and whatever gold was in the village. A fort is an extremely useful thing to have. It will gradually attract new men to join your army. The men there will be at work keeping the food supply up, and collecting gold in their spare time. By leaving most of your men at a fort, you can save space in your ships and return to Europe on a smaller food supply. RETURNING TO EUROPE After each trip to the New World, you may return to Europe by sailing directly east. Here you are given the options of continuing, loading a new map, saving and quitting, or just quitting. You can also instantly bring up this requester by selecting "Quit" from the options menu (which also returns you to Europe). If you choose to load a new map, the current one is NOT saved! Continuing on, you may view the map of the explored territory, and the cycle begins anew. You may use the vast amounts (?) of gold you acquired to purchase a larger expedition. Your score is calculated from many factors. The basic factor is the amount of land you have explored. The establishment of forts greatly increases your score, depending on their size. Conversely, poor relations with the natives will decrease your score. Note that wealth does not affect your score in any way. DEATH If you ever run out of men while on land, or ships while at sea, your expedition is lost. You will be returned to Europe minus a year of your time, and will have to begin anew. LOG FILES As you move about the map, a log file may be saved of all of your significant actions. This file is named .log, where is the name of your map. The log file is straight ASCII and can be used as a record of your explorations. To activate this feature, use the LOG keyword. OBJECTIVES Your objectives fall into two parts; explore the new world and become filthy rich. As noted above, your accumulated wealth does not affect your score either way, so the two goals are separate. There is no set end to the game; you may continue to explore and establish settlements for as long as you wish. Competitive play may be achieved by several players starting out with copies of the same map file.