GLOBAL WAR 2 - PROGRAM HISTORY Version updates since v1.18d - List is in reverse chronological order (latest version first) - Version 2.20 (25-Aug-95) Timer bug fixed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At last, the timer bug that caused all those "-65432.1098 days ago" errors has been corrected. It was a 'pure' coding mistake in a very innocent looking function (wrong C pointer in wrong place) that caused all those corrupted games. It took some time to browse the 410+ Kb Global War source code to find it. And my apologies to everyone... Fortfify bug fixed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Players could sometimes not fortify from countries; if the number of fortified armies plus the number of armies in the 'from' country exceeded 255 the fortify order was cancelled without a notice. Obviously the from/to countries had been exchanged in the code. New option in GW.con ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sysops can now control the maximum number of armies each player get from countries during the Take turn phase. Line 14 in GW.con must be a positive number between 1 - 255. Game info ~~~~~~~~~ Rewrote the game info screen in sysop's menu (press 'I' to view). (please also read the 2.19a beta changes below) o o o Version 2.19a beta (23-Aug-95) (This version was not a public release; only for beta testers) Safe saving bug fixed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The program did not create a new gw.dat save file unless there already existed one before. Rejoin bug in Conquest game fixed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Due to a bug in the Planetary conquest game players could remove them- selves from a game and then rejoining it. This way they could have more than one country and a great number of armies already from the beginning. Adjusted balance in Conquest games ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Planetary Conquest game was a bit unbalanced. Players received too many armies in their first turn; 7 + 3 armies for the country + 3 bonus armies, totally 13 armies which was enough to destroy one of the other players right from start. This has now been changed to the following: 6 parachute troops to invade a country +3 more armies for the country the first turn (no bonus armies!) = only 9 armies from start o o o Version 2.19 (14-Aug-95) New game mode: Planetary conquest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This version presents a new game mode called the Planetary conquest, exploration of a prehistoric Earth populated by primitive and hostile tribes. Before the game begins each player decides a starting position. They will get 7 armies (plus 3 more the first turn) and only one country, otherwise it is just like a normal game. However, the native activity may increase in future versions. Idea suggested by Dean 'TFM' Husby. Stability ! ~~~~~~~~~~~ Several nasty bugs were discovered and fixed with the aid of Simon P Bullen's great shell for memory allocations called Fortify (!). The bugs were extremly tricky to find with conventional tracking methods, since they didn't cause any Enforcer hits or other 'clues', but Fortify tracked them down easily. Global War is now completely free from so called illegal block writes and memory leaks, which should please all sysops out there. Safe saving ~~~~~~~~~~~ The program uses from now on safe saving; all results are first saved to a temporary file called "GW.dat.new" in the Global War directory. If the saving is successful the old "GW.dat" file is deleted and the new save file "GW.dat.new" is renamed as "GW.dat". The major advantage of all this is that the "GW.dat" save file will never become corrupt incase saving fails. Safe saving was requested by Kyle Chow. Tactical briefing ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A new screen is presented to each player when they select a game and are participating in it. It is the Tactical briefing screen which informs the player about the most important events, from the player's point of view, that has happened since the player's last turn. Note; the briefing does not give any tactical advice. It only scans everything that has happened and, based on carefully designed complex calculations, decides which information the player is most interested in at the moment. This naturally also includes situations where the team partner is involved if the game is a team game, or situations which directly will affect player's mission if it is a mission game. Improved news ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Added a 'player x does no longer occupy continent x' news report which will be displayed whenever appropriate. Off the record; this report was a side-effect of the construction of the Tactical briefing. The game start date is always displayed first in the news list. Cosmetic bugs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Give commendations fixed; the fields were switched. Greenland minefields towards Yukon and Quebec had been switched. In mission games, the word "A:ttack" was not erased when player quit attack phase. Hall of Fame fix; sometimes a string such as "Today" was used instead of the normal date string. The reason was an uninitialized flags byte. The Congratulations screen does not say "Mr" anymore. Requested by Kyle Chow and his female users. o o o Version 2.18 (21-Jun-95) On popular demand; special weapons can be stored for later use! Note; the specials are now launched during the Attack phase, and not before the Deploy phase. New specials are reported during the Take turn phase, before the Deploy phase, as usual. Each player have a storage capacity of maximum 3 specials of each type. Removed some (obsolete) control routines in the minefield code; program will no longer warn if there are over 10 minefields on a single border. Enforcer hits removed (harmless, but anyway...) Thanks to Kyle for reporting. Maybe I'll get a MMU some day... ;-) Added a new feature; the status of mission games can now be one of two things: o All players have the same mission o Each player has a unique mission (the old way) The type of mission is asked during the game creation phase. Thanks to Dean 'The Funmaster' for the idea. The ranking list has been modified, all information did not fit into the old list. The supreme commander bug has been fixed; whenever a new player became S.C, the game sometimes gave the honorary title to a wrong player. Thanks to Dean for reporting. Improved the appearance of specials; players are now guaranteed to get a special at least every 5th turn, if not sooner. Thanks to Dean for the comment that lead to this change. Fixed a 'cosmetic' bug; when a player did Fortify in a team game, the game displayed "Country not found" even if the input was correct. Thanks to Kyle for reporting. o o o Version 2.17 (28-Mar-95) Corrected a timer routine; the program didn't calculate next day correctly. (The timer stuff was rewritten in v2.16, but it was very poorly tested). Also, the C code was compiled with full optimization; program got 13 Kb smaller. o o o Version 2.16 (23-Mar-95) The cli door version. (Or what the #%& happened to 1994, no updates? Studies, work, studies!!) Special thanks to Grant Robinson, he gave me the necessary boost to finish this thing. Check out the about menu, there are two pages now. o o o Version 2.15 (07-Dec-93) Smarter input analyzer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Global War is smarter when it tries to find a match for a country name; the final choice depends on the current turn and the actual map. Thanks to Per Careberg for this brilliant idea. o o o Version 2.14 (04-Dec-93) 3rd public release of GW 2, tested and ready! o o o Version 2.13 (03-Dec-93) (Only for testing) Improved input ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now accepts all characters, including Scandinavian chars. Uppercase/lowercase routines (if activated) converts all characters correctly (handles ASCII-7/ISO). Changed BBS title ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The " presents" text on the presentation screen is converted to uppercase before displaying. Banner ~~~~~~ Added a "Running on " banner to the World map. Give continent ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This option was "out of order" in earlier versions. Fixed. Page length ~~~~~~~~~~~ GW gets the actual page length from the BBS. (Default 25 lines is used when running from CLI/Shell) Thanks to Lars Siden for suggestion. Save game ~~~~~~~~~ Global War games are now saved after each turn. Some boards run unfortunately faulty programs that sometimes crashes the computer, and when it happens the current and not-yet saved GW turns will be lost. This option will reduce this risk. Requested by Rasmus Pedersen. Thanks! Minefields more dangerous ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The minefields cause slightly more damage now. Nuke gives no bonus score ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Special Events give no bonus score anymore, it gives enough advantage as it is - without the extra score. Thanks to Rasmus Pedersen for suggestion. Improved Rankinglist ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Added some code to make the rankinglist look better. Alltimes Highest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Total rewrite of alltimes highest. As soon as somebody becomes Supreme Commander, all the other players will be notified and they may watch all possible information on current player standings. o o o Version 2.12 (24-Nov-93) Reported bugs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I expected that some bugs would be "discovered", and how right I was... Fixed - Negative values input bug ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As you know, -1 can be read as 65535, it's one and the same to the computer. Some players found out that they could fortify thousands of armies thanks to this bug! Not anymore; it's practically impossible to fool the computer with values below zero now. Thanks to Tom De Ruyter for bug report. Fixed - Join team game bug ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Another GW 1.18d -> GW 2 conversion bug. Caused strange effects on the game standings screen. Thanks to Ed Dukeshire for bug report. Harder to score with Specials ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It's harder to get more than 2 from Special events. 1 and 2 points are normal values, 3 is very good and more than that is superb! Added feature! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Players may now choose whether they want to see the game listed in compact or expanded mode in the main menu. The expanded mode is the old way Global War listed games. To toggle list mode, go to Options and press 'L'. Thanks to Rasmus Pedersen for this nice suggestion. o o o Version 2.11 (22-Nov-93) (Only for testing) Fixed ~~~~~ Interesting; two minor bugs were found shortly after the release. Despite all testing at the local test BBS. Well, this was fixed: Fix 1 - always redraw map when needed: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The selected map wasn't redrawn after a player had destoyed another player's empire and had exchanged any new commendations, and was about to continue the game. Incase you didn't understand that looong meaning above, it simply says; map gets drawn always when it's supposed to now! Fix 2: tell'em they can't always give it away: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When a player was giving away a continent (lots of countries), but there wasn't enough fortifications left to do this, there should have been a message telling this. The message was there, in the code, but it never got displayed (only a weird prompt). More fortifying! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also fixed; fortify can now be done across team partner's countries in team games as well as own countries. Version numbers checked ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Oops, the version number checker was out of order in v2.1. Works a lot better now, I guarantee. Incase any of you ran GW2 without converting data files from 1.18d -> 2.1 and got their games trashed, I'm very very sorry. This won't ever happen again, the version checker makes sure of that. Reduced chance for Special Events ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Specials did occur too often, I noticed. Chance reduced from 20% to 15% per player and turn. o o o Version 2.1 (18-Nov-93) First public release of Global War 2. o o o Version 2.00r (17-Nov-93) Dummy game ~~~~~~~~~~ If a player pressed the escape key after B:egin game, a dummy game with zero players was created. Lots of documentation finished. o o o Version 2.00q (15-Nov-93) Player can now see team partner's commendations in the Give commendations menu. Suggested by Tomas Matuschek. Rankinglist gets updated right after a special event has occured, just to avoid confusion. It used to get updated only after the Attack phase. Some minor color adjustments made. o o o Version 2.00p (12-Nov-93) (A month later - version 2.00o never released) Another break ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots of late evenings at work, I can't do much about it... The special event ansi pictures didn't look good - I had forgotten to put carriage returns at the end of each line! Multi-run bug ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finally smashed that stupid (and very fatal!) multi-run bug. Each time a game was deleted from the roster, for eg. a waiting game that had been waiting for more players for too long, the program did delete the game - but only locally for the actual node! The other nodes didn't know about the deletion. When it was time to save the game, the whole thing went to nirvana, taking the system with it. Sorry about the nuisance (only occured on the beta test site, phew!)... o o o Version 2.00n (26-Sep-93) Improved input part 2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Added some more code to the Select game routine, it's even smarter now. (See previous version history for more about this feature) Specials ~~~~~~~~ Chance of Special Events to occur has once again been raised. It's now 20 % each turn per player! Game standings ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Made several adjustments to the Game standings menu, where I thought it was necessary. Anything to get that better feeling... o o o Version 2.00m (19-Sep-93) Improved input ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Made the "Select game" input routine in the main menu a bit smarter; previously when a game number was entered that was more than 10, the game always asked for more input. Quite irritating in fact - but not anymore. When a game number is entered, the program checks for any games that could begin with that particular number. If it only finds one game it assumes it's the one the player wants, otherwise it asks for more input. Old gets new ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Replaced some old ugly looking code (written years ago) with better and faster routines. For instance the code that reads the configuration file (GW.con) was totally rewritten. The New Game notice ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some people complained about the New Game notice that was display when a player selected 'B' to begin a new game in the main menu. The text will from now on only be displayed to new players and to those that have been away for some while (and need a remainder). The veteran players will NEVER have to see the text anymore. Erase minefields... NOT! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Minefield data was not erased from finished games, which caused some funny (harmless) effects; a new game could by chance get a "forgotten" minefield data list and - voila! - it had already loads of minefields all over the world, even before the game had begun! Special Events ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Testing what will happen to game strategy if special events occur more often. Chance is now 10 % per player each turn. o o o Version 2.00l (18-Sep-93) The Special Events ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So what's this - something new stuff added? Surprise surprise, I'm not going to tell you! But I can guarantee that you'll all like it. I have spent many hours to make it look n' feel good, as you are used to in GW! The only thing I can reveal for you is that the new stuff will add some VERY powerful weapons to the game! It certainly brings some new aspects to the game strategy. The chance to trigger a special event is 5 % each turn (so if there are six players in a game, it's a pretty good chance that at least one special event will occur each day!). To find out if something special has happened - just read the news!! There will be more special events added later, but they are all up to you to discover... o o o Version 2.00k (14-Sep-93) News ~~~~ Corrected a few bugs in the News module : Mission descriptions ended sometimes with "1 turn) 1 turn." which didn't look good. When a single game had finished, the News told that it was a team game which of course was totally wrong. Improved some News-messages. Attack any country bug ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I cleaned up some code, I accidentally changed a routine in a wrong way; players could attack all countries from any other country! That's what I call GLOBAL war!! ;-) Strange MF text removed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Removed the "Can't display MF on world map" message which came up when a player deployed minefields on the world map. The players didn't understand the text! (Mines can still be deployed on ALL maps) GW gets a new timer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Totally revamped the date-time routine. The (very) old one was such a mess. o o o Version 2.00j (06-Sep-93) We want messages! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Found another 1.18->2.0 conversion bug; players couldn't send messages during a game anymore. Beware of mines ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finally found the Minefield bug!! It caused some very strange (mis)behaviour and was quite tricky to find out. Had to do with multitasking (ports, GW-nodes etc). o o o Version 2.00i (05-Sep-93) Bart for president (the vote bug!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Change vote bug fixed; when the player selected "wait for more players", the game said that the player "wants to start asap". This was a GW 1.18-> GW 2.00 conversion bug, hopefully the only one. GW Loses weight ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All code optimized with compiler, gained some kbytes. Added some debug- routines to help me track any "unwanted features"... o o o Version 2.00h (29-Aug-93) After the summer break, let's get some code done... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots of debug code added, several minor changes made in code. Improved multi-gw support (possibility to run several GWs simulta- neously, taking advantage of OS multi-tasking). Scores.txt looks a bit nicer. o o o Version 2.00g (May-93) Another one of those bug-fix versions. Here we go... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When a player logged off, Autodeploy didn't deploy minefields if the player was in DEPLOY phase. Now it checks both armies and minefields. Players couldn't change between "Waiting for more players" and "Start as soon as possible" in a waiting game. Minefields didn't work when somebody attacked - players could simply walk over the fields! It didn't look nice when more than 3 commendations of the same type were displayed on the screen when taking a new turn. From now on, it will only display max 3 commendations of each type, and if there are more than 3 commendations there's a brief note explaining that. I made a little but funny mistake when I polished the attack code; if a player destroyed another player the game told that the attacking player had killed himself (a suicide!!). Another change to the minefields. From now on, minefields can be deployed on ALL maps - even when the world map is displayed. Just one thing; the minefields are not displayed on the world map, but they do get deployed. Minefields removed from Reality level 1 games. Level 1 is 'The Original Global War' with no extra features. So if you want minefields, choose one of level 2-5! Thanks for these bug-reports, to Per Careberg and Christian Lizell. o o o Version 2.00f (23-May-93) A bugfix version - nothing new added ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following things were fixed : - No minefields printed on the world map (there's no room for that!). Actually, MF deploy can only be done when one of map 2-6 is selected. - A fatal memory bug in the minefield loading routine corrected. Could crash the machine. This is the main reason for this quick release. - Corrected a 'layout bug' in Show player info. o o o Version 2.00e (18-May-93) Minefields ~~~~~~~~~~ Added a new game feature - the minefields. A very powerful defensive weapon that can cause severe casualties amongst the enemy. Made the Autodeploy to work with minefields, just incase a player accidentally hangs up. There's a message in the News every time the Autodeploy has done something with a player's minefields. And bugs, bugs.... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fixed several small, mostly 'visual' bugs that doesn't need to be mentioned here. Rewrote the view-text-file routine, it was a mess (C code from the good ol' days when I didn't know better). Fixed a bug in date/time calculations; sometimes it produced a negative time. o o o Version 2.00a (July/Aug '92) The BIG update from old Global War game format to new, better 2.0 format. The new features are underlined, bugs and less important things are not. Use GWconvert to update your old 1.xx GW.dat file to the new format. Because of the complexity of the new Global War, the data file will expand about 1.5 KB per game. First: Global War is now a pure XENOLINK DOOR. It will not work with any other BBS software. The reason to this is that the ParagonDoor protocol, which GW used before, doesn't support all the necessary functions that the game will need in its new format. The program can still be executed from the CLI. And this is what has been done since the last version, 1.18d: Games can be selected by entering just a number instead of 'S': ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For eg. to select game 15, press '1'. The program will prompt you for the rest of the number - simply press '5' and hit enter. Fortifications can now be: Unlimited OR range from 1-65535. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New feature in the Fortification phase: fortify across countries: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Players can now move their armies easily from one part of the world to another thru a chain of connected countries, owned by the player. If the game uses a limited number of fortifications, the program will compute the shortest path between the starting and destination countries, and thereafter inform the player about the number of fortifications the movement would take. The player may thereafter proceed or cancel the operation. This feature has been HEAVILY requested by a lot of people! The input routine has been improved. Cursor can be moved by pressing arrow keys left or right when running in Xenolink (local or remote). The entire input text can be erased by pressing control-X. Fixed the bug in the routine that checks if a player has reached the rank of Supreme Commander. Because of the bug, SYSOPS could almost never become S.C's ! (All sysops out there, you can continue breathing now!) Global War now records all scores and ranks in a better way: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Players that have become Supreme Commanders will have a special title in the ranking list called "Class x S.C.", where the 'x' is the number of times the player has reached the rank of Supreme Commander. Fixed a tricky bug in the routine that deletes inactive players that *could* have caused some random gurus sometimes. Fixed a bug in the GW-MultiRunDoor routines: when the GW node that created the MultiRunDoor port finished, the name of the port disappeared (it's memory was released). Other GW nodes that tried to access the port started to behave strangely, displaying garbage instead of player names and so on. Swap empires with team partner: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This new option is only available in Team games with Unlimited fortifications. Expert players should have discovered the swap empire technique ages ago (if you don't know the power of this strategy, don't expect me to tell it here!). This option was added just to make life easier for YOU. You will find the S:wap empires option when you are going to F:ortify. Also, please note: this event is stored in the news file. Rewrote the 'Begin new game' procedure. Looks better, more colors. Rewrote parts of the Game standings menu. Added some ansi gfx. Reality levels ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a new, advanced option for Global War. Each game has a special reality level, where 1 is the same as the good ol' original Global War, that is; battles are not particularly realistic. Lots of things depend on luck etc. You can play more realistic games by selecting levels 2-5, where 5 is the utmost reality level, only recommended for expert players. As this part of the game will expand very soon, I'm not going to tell you more about it here. The lists of games on the main menu are displayed in a more efficient format. Instead of displaying '1 2 3 5 9 10 11 12' etc, the numbers will now be displayed as '1-3 5 9-12', notice the difference. I managed to compress the Global War maps with several hundred bytes (totally), which means that the output of maps is now a bit faster. Improved the ranking list, added some ansi gfx. Rewrote the Alltimes Highest routine (that's the routine that creates the GWalltime.txt file, which contains all Supreme Commanders). It now uses more ansi gfx and looks better (I hope!). Sysop cannot see what players do anymore: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When a user plays Global War remote, the output the the local screen is closed. Instead, a status text is displayed and maintained as long as the user is playing. (This feature will work as soon as Xenolink supports it - currently not!) Thanks for reading me! -janne ========================= End of document =============================