--- TW2002 Release 2.03 --- 03/06/97, 11:12am o Released to full production, 3/6/97. o FighterProd planet definition field can be set to 60000 to disable fighter production on a planet type. o TW Pro disallows entry of low Ferrengi/alien move percentages. o Players in the game can only be towed while sitting at the main, computer, or team menu. This prevents a number of 2-person situations involving towing during complex activity. Players not in the game can still be towed normally. o Changed player sector movements to use real rank instead of "Commander". o Added alias check routines when choosing BBS name on entry. o Tweaked port combat routines again for more graceful destruction. o Course plots too long no longer hold up other players from plotting at the "Clear avoids?" prompt. o Port combat routines have been reworked to allow a more graceful degradation of port production over combat. This also fixes the bug allowing port production to be rolled negative during combat. ! New configuration option: BlockStealSell. This is option U under General setup in HVSTWEDT or #47 in game config with TW Pro. This option, if enabled, allows players only to steal resources that are for sale from a port. For instance, a buy/buy/sell port would only allow theft of equipment (the third resource) and not the first two. This breaks the sell/steal/sell loop, which has a MAJOR effect on game balance between good and evil. In addition, ports cannot be artificially "de-saturated" by theft once they have bought their limit of a resource. Do not change this option unless you know what you're doing or all your players agree to it! o Trade Wars repairs ports with negative inventory on the fly. o Tweaked Stardock sell-ship logic again. o HVSTWFIX really respects TW Pro changes in check ships for out of range fighters, shields, holds, etc. o Fixed TW Pro player editor to allow negative alignment entry. o Retreating from sector fighters uses the same number of turns as a warp, if available. o Exiting or hanging up after picking up items on a planet surface uses up a turn, if available. o Fixed citadel definition edits to sync up with game data. o Fixed auto-unlocking action of TW Pro. o Modified planet specs to use hardcoded list of .ANS names in order to handle TW Pro class changes. o Fixed class 1 vs class 2 twarp disparity when selling ships. --- TW2002 Release 2.01a --- 07/11/96, 08:33am o HVSTWFIX respects TW Pro changes in checking ships for out of range fighters, shields, etc. o Exchange ships in citadel cannot be used to bypass security on Corporate FlagShip or Imperial StarShip. o Exchange ships in citadel re-loads ship after password entry to prevent resource cloning situations. o Fixed fighter and shield overloading at class-zero ports. o Fixed corporate count overload trick. o Fixed cloaked while in-game bug. o Thanks to infinity@socalonramp.com for the definite, if not exhaustive, bug reports with exact steps to reproduce. o Fixed bug allowing port overwrite by being towed during port make. o Fixed Genesis torpedo launch to disallow sector 1 if player is moved during deployment. o Fixed beacons to disallow launch in FedSpace if player is moved during deployment. o Fighters cannot be deployed in FedSpace by being towed. o Ships are re-appraised immediately before sale at stardock and then all values on the ship are cleared. o Selling a ship during a corporate transfer is flushed now. --- TW2002 Release 2.01 --- 02/05/96, 9:52a ! Added TW Pro functionality. TW Pro is a full-featured game editor that is hooked into Trade Wars, allowing editing of almost all game data. For instructions on using TW Pro, read HVSTWDAT\HVSTWPRO.DOC. For ordering information, please call us at (800)572-5582. The TW Pro add-on is available for $159. ! New message option TWLADKEY: Key required to view Trade Wars logon announcement. Users without this key will not be bothered. ! New message option TWPLYKEY: Key required to play Trade Wars. Users without this key will not be able to play the game. If a user loses this key (such as through a class switch) during gameplay, he will be IMMEDIATELY ejected from the game. o Fixed planetary collision to eject all players from dead citadel. o Dead ports are no longer counted in game stat total. o Fixed output buffering in personal planet scan to prevent channel lock. o Fixed fighter deploying bug when being towed. o Fixed mine deploying bug when being towed. o Added upgradeable transwarp for transwarp towing as in door. o Attacking ports causes ports to lose stock as well as production, preventing bug with port "reloading" on assault. o Port upgrading causes a production cycle on the port before upgrading, preventing upgrades from carrying 100% inventory over. o "Phantom" credit buglet fixed that can cause players to be stuck with a fraction of a credit and be unable to get rid of it. o Scorpion creation before game age over 30 has been fixed. o Bathroom wall failure past Feb, 1996 has been fixed. o ANSI index is properly regenerated when upgrading from pre-2.01. o Hangup reference-patch tweaked to prevent erroneous deletion of players during hangup. --- TW2002 Release 2.00q (beta) --- 01/06/96, 12:19p ! Spurious rtkick() call was inserting extra calls to Ferrengi background timer. This caused two main effects: incredibly fast Ferrengi raids on players, and system slowdown. ! Reference "safety-net" has been installed. The damage to the game caused by players' internal numbers being set to zero should be reduced or eliminated by this. I am still unable to reliably reproduce this problem, but this patch will help things out in the interim. ! Trade Wars Pro is coming. o Fixed TriCron to ante up each round. o Negotiating planetary trade agreements accepts planet numbers above 3 digits, as well as unit counts above 3 digits. o Escape pods no longer inherit their parent ships' mines (!). o Fighter manipulation in a sector is serialized to prevent overloading of ships w/fighters beyond spec. --- TW2002 Release 2.00p --- 3/14/95, 10:14p ! HVSTWFIX accepts a new argument, "/LOG:" which logs all output to a readable ASCII text file. For example, "HVSTWFIX /LOG:TWFIX.LOG" would cause all output to be written to "TWFIX.LOG". If the file exists, it will be appended. ! The last 128 keystrokes of each user is tracked and logged during a crash. This should help isolate the patterns to the ship and player zero failures. o HVSTWFIX checks for existance of empty placeholder records in player, port, and planet data files. Missing records are replaced. o Ferrengi don't survive their own corbomite reactions. (!) o Disbanding corporations doesn't create reference failures between team members and their ships. o Blocked multiple ship exchanges at once in a citadel. Thanks to Knight@BUI for detailing this one out; it caused major confusion. o Fixed various tavern announcements to display carriage returns ok. o Colonists cannot be taken from planets without turns. o Ferrengi can't raid you to 65,535 holds. o Planetary t-warp and transport can't jump to sectors out of plot range. --- TW2002 Release 2.00o --- 12/16/94, 1:12p ! When Trade Wars crashes with a catastro message, it will write a file called TWCRASH.TXT. This file is full of game status information and should be uploaded to us to help find the cause of the problem. o Port reports no longer cause zero-value ports to be constructed. o Double animation on entry removed. (Oops) o Added last day/minute production editability from TEDIT for ports. o Port update detects day/minute problem and re-starts production. o Planetary production on change ownership removed. o Ferrengi ships can be destroyed properly by overkill. o Players cannot be evicted from citadels while on-line. o Planetary collisions during cleanup will continue to occur as long as there are too many planets in the sector. o Players in citadels destroyed by planetary collisions will be properly killed with no catastro, as will the planets. o Occasional "UNABLE TO READ SECTOR #0" catastro when players are killed by Ferrengi has been fixed. o Players deleted from cleanup and in HVSTWEDT stay deleted. o Corporations with no captain are disbanded at cleanup. o Planet display no longer shows N/A for 9999 colonists or production. --- TW2002 Release 2.00n --- 11/21/94, 10:00a o Adjusted CIM output to properly format ports with 4-digit production. o Ferrengi ships can now be destroyed instead of always being captured. o Ferrengi no longer stockpile enormous amounts of corbomite when raiding players. o Intermittent GP when checking Ferrengi interdictor collisions fixed. o Planetary transwarp animation moved to prevent resource production. o Game maxed-out in traders and/or ships properly handles situation. o Message notification on shield indication moved to kill infamous "shield bug". o Players may not hang up at the planet name prompt to get another free attempt at the planet type they want. o Fixed another tiny "Attempted to grant 0 exp!" warning in alien handling. o Fixed rarely-triggered GP when sending corporate messages in background. o TriCron jackpot capped to prevent rollover. o Quasar cannon overflow of 32K (!) per shot fixed. o Fixed "invalid fed" warning when Feds destroy pirates. o Destroyed ports are no longer counted in game stats. o Planetary transporter to avoided sector warns with correct sector number. o Extermination of fighters sends message to owner before clearing owner fields. This caused spurious messages when Ferrengi fighters were slain. o Optimized character-skimmer input routines. This significantly reduces Trade Wars' loading impact when multiple players are in the game at once. o Standard planet update routine fixes shields out of range. o Space mine detonation reports proper fighter losses if you lose all of your shields from the explosion. o Ether probes honor your avoids when plotting courses. o Ether probes tag visited sectors as "known". o Resource duplication with claim ownership on a planet is fixed. o If starting fighters is more than ship can carry, it is lowered to the ship's capacity when a player enters the game. o Ports are updated prior to display when dumping from CIM. o Fighter deployment can't double maximum fighters on a ship. o TEDIT handles moving of class 0 ports/Stardock properly now. o TWFIX checks for planetary shields out of range and fixes them. o TWFIX detects out-of-range Ferrengi and alien move chances. --- TW2002 Release 2.00m --- 7/11/94, 2:47p o Super port-upgrade doesn't roll over with 0 cost. o The list of transportable ships can be aborted by pressing Return. o Killing a Ferrengi ship counts as a "kill" for your ship stats. o Port editor lets you specify negative values for production/on-hand. o Spurious 0 exp grant when killing a player between 4 and 10 exp. o CIM displays port report exactly as door. (It better!) o CIM course-plotting noise removed. o CIM temporarily disables ANSI to speed displays. --- TW2002 Release 2.00l --- 6/21/94, 1:47p o Over-upgrading ports no longer provides experience points. o Killing all colonists on a planet with one wave of fighters properly zeroes the population. o Transwarp plotting to a sector out of range no longer allows a free jump. o CIM output format has been changed to match door for port list. o Very high experience values don't imbalance trades/theft. o Unpredictable corruption when updating users who have recently logged off fixed. This was likely causing "phantom" transfers that are very hard to reproduce. o Positive alignment is now given when attacking an evil player, regardless of attacker's alignment. Same for negative/good. o HVSTWFIX clears unused player slots with non-zero experience. (They cause the high score list to truncate) o Ferrengi are now active! Ferrengi ships now act on their grudges and demand tributes. o Ferrengi editor in HVSTWEDT updated to reflect new Ferrengi. o Cloning fighters with a large team and two players has been fixed. o Disbanding a corporation now tags all corporate planets as owned by the former CEO. o Simultaneous transport to a single ship from different distances no longer produces a "ghost" ship. --- TW2002 Release 2.00k --- 4/27/94, 10:22a o Port production can no longer be upgraded out of range. Similarly, port production cannot be upgraded high enough to cause a port's inventory to roll over into negative values. o Fighters deployed in a sector in offensive mode are correctly depleted when killing a player. o Trading with more than 150,000 experience points does not cause the haggling routines to act strangely. o The "Press any key to continue" has been moved from HVSTWFXX.EXE to HVSTWFIX.BAT. If you wish to use this program unattended, you can either directly call the EXE from a batch file or remove the "pause" from HVSTWFIX.BAT. o Large lists of ships appear correctly in the transporter display. o All evil aliens no longer appear as "Annoyance" in sector displays. o The daily log routines have been fixed to not overwrite or fragment the log. If your log is damaged, you can clear it by erasing the file \BBSV6\HVSTWDAT\HVSTWUSR.LOG. o Resource "production" using two players and a planet has been corrected. o Negative fighter/mine/port worth should no longer appear in the game statistics. o A BTRIEVE QUERY-NP ERROR 7 ON HVSTWSHP.DAT when using the transporter was corrected. o The "Incoming message from Federation HQ" banner has been properly moved to the injection handler. Injections from the game now appear correctly in the FSE and other modules that handle injections manually. o Players cannot re-apply for a Federal Commission if their alignment drops below 1000 until they reach 0. A player can still raise his alignment over 1000 via the normal means and regain the status. o The UNABLE TO READ SHIP #0 (xxxx:xxxx/#x) catastro was tied to destroying manned ships while towing them. This has been corrected. o Ship name changes and initial names are logged to HVSTW.LOG. o The HVSTWFXX and HVSTWEXT no longer print stray ANSI codes on machines without ANSI.SYS. The color changes are now internal. o A number of "dead-ends" in HVSTWEDT were fixed, including the port editor. --- TW2002 Release 2.00j --- 03/25/94, 9:39a o The display for the number of colonists on Terra properly reflects the actual population instead of a random number. o Transwarping to sector numbers 2560 through 2815 no longer "bounces" to the destination sector minus 2560. This bug was only reproducible with animation and ANSI turned on. o Players must pay for the ante in Tri-Cron before the game begins, preventing them from dropping carrier to avoid loss. o Strange behavior when choosing a planet for a trade agreement has been repaired. o Simultaneous corporate transfer and fighter/mine deployment cannot be used to create resources. o A player only receives 10% of the experience of another player on a kill. The victim loses the same amount, making "production" of experience impossible. o Sending a message to a player from the computer menu beeps the destination of the message when it's sent. o The animation is shown properly for class 0 ports away from Stardock. --- TW2002 Release 2.00i --- 03/09/94, 2:01p A GP condition was fixed in the single-user edition of 2.00i. This could be easily by putting a number of users on the waiting list for the game and having all but the first and last disconnect while the current player is in the game. When the current player exits, the system crashes with a GP error or sends a spurious message to another user. Other, smaller, changes include: o HVSTWEXT (cleanup handler) still had an incompatibility with a rare (2 reported) number of systems, causing it to seize or corrupt memory when returning control to DOS. This has been corrected. o The general announcement feature from the computer menu caused insertion of stray characters into the game. This would make partial ANSI sequences appear when displaying the log, such as "[1;34m". o The log displaying routine was improperly reading the log, causing partial ANSI sequences to appear, even when the above bug was not used. The log has been repaired and should display no partial ANSI sequences, except for the ones created with older versions' (2.00h) announcement feature. o Multiple players accessing Terra concurrently cannot "create" colonists by unloading them at the same time. o Aborting a trade with a neglected port cannot be used to net unlimited experience points. o The (S)can option from the citadel menu properly shows the current sector instead of invoking your ship's long-range scanner. o Moving via the (M)ove command instead of directly entering a sector number works properly now in the demo version of Trade Wars 2002. o Users may not join a corporation if they are flying a corporate flagship. o Users now have a key that logs a notice to the sysop's log. If you are experiencing the "ghost" ships problem, instruct your users to press "/" (forward slash) and then notify you. We will need the part of your HVSTW.LOG (sysop's log) shortly before the "***" that the sysop alert key adds. --- TW2002 Release 2.00h --- 02/21/94, 12:23p Version 2.00h fixes numerous tiny gameplay bugs. In addition, a serious bug handling deleted players at cleanup was corrected. Deleted players are now handled exclusively by HVSTWEXT.EXE, the external cleanup program for Trade Wars 2002. Under some circumstances (particularly with 0 death delay), players being killed on the Stardock could still generate an "TW: UNABLE TO READ PLANET #xxxx" error, where xxxx is your maximum number of planets plus one. This has been corrected. The changes from 2.00g to 2.00h are relatively minor. If you are experiencing no problems with 2.00g, then you do not need to upgrade to 2.00h. The critical bug fixes in 2.00h are rarely-triggered and require special circumstances to be problematic. --- TW2002 Release 2.00g --- 02/14/94, 12:15p Version 2.00g fixes a number of annoying gameplay bugs. Two system crashing errors were also corrected: o BTRIEVE GET-ABSOLUTE ERROR 82 ON FILE "HVSTWMES.DAT" - This was caused by multiple users sending a message to the same user while that user was exiting the game. This condition was VERY uncommon, but it was reproducible and has been fixed. o TW: UNABLE TO READ SHIP #0 (xxxx:xxxx) - One condition for causing this bug was having two players simultaneously destroy a third person's escape pod. The timing to create this error has to be nearly perfect. A number of sysops have reported this error, with one report of the double-kill described above. It is possible that this catastro can be set off from another event, but the underlying combat routines have had some more interlocks added to prevent concurrent access from confusing the system. Some of the gameplay changes listed below correct side effects (such as ghost ships) that may have been responsible for other system failures. Among the changes are: o Planetary transwarp correctly moves traders in the citadel. o Toggling the planetary interdictor control works now. (!) o HVSTWINI removes the game statistics when creating a new universe. o [T]aking resources from a planet requires at least one turn. o Transfer has been extended a digit to allow 9,999,999 per xfer. o Transferring negative amounts of material between teammates is no longer allowed. o Extended values (Greater than 32,767) transfer properly between teammates. o Empty input while bidding is equivalent to entering "0" if the default bid is more credits than you have (buying only). o Feds cleaning out mines and limpets from the Major Space Lanes send valid messages to corp members of item owners. o Attacking (but failing to kill) a port does not roll the production values over to exorbitant percentages. o Days-til-complete is properly displayed when editing a planet off-line via HVSTWEDT. A minor change in the game logic was introduced to keep the game concurrent with the door version. Defended planets deployed in the Major Space Lanes are now towed to a random sector instead of having the citadel stripped. The towing algorithm is the same as for towing a trader from FedSpace (random sector that has a clear path from the location of the offending planet). --- TW2002 Release 2.00f --- 02/07/94, 2:13p Version 2.00f fixes two serious catastro() errors that have been plaguing the game for a long time. The unable to read sector #5005 and btrieve update error 10 on HVSTWPLN.DAT were both corrected in this release. On the minor side, the hit list in the underground was changed to display better at 80 columns. Some other minor problems with the lists were fixed, including active limpets appearing in sector zero and other teams' planets appearing on corp planet scans. Planet fighter control has been tightened down to prevent a hole that players could exploit to create fighters. --- TW2002 Release 2.00e --- 02/02/94, 10:53a 2.00e fixes a lot of tiny glitches, including: allowing "SYSOP" in trader aliases, players getting caught robbing when stealing small values, and clearing avoided sectors at game entry mis-displaying the cleared sector. A bug was fixed in the single-user edition of the game with handling the waiting list when players on the list hang up. In addition, there is a serious bug in prior versions when the game is configured to not allow aliases in the game. If you intend to turn off aliases, make sure you have this version. 2.00e has optimized logging routines for handling the sysop's and user's log file, causing the game to use eat less processor time. --- TW2002 Release 2.00d --- 1/31/94, 2:10p Minor release handling deleted players, level 5 citadels, and surrendering to deployed fighters. Mine detonation by Ferrengi craft properly sends notification to mine owners. --- TW2002 Release 2.00c --- 1/28/94, 10:11a Minor release for bug fixes regarding level 3 citadels and new players hanging up when entering the game. --- TW2002 Release 2.00b --- 1/27/94, 2:37p Unfortunately, there is a problem with 2.00a and this quick-fix was released. If you were running 2.00a, erase *.IDX from the HVSTWDAT subdirectory prior to setting up this version. --- TW2002 Release 2.00a --- 1/26/94, 1:47p A minor bug handling the ANSI picture displays when entering the game or using the Cineplex were corrected. Creation of the indexed ANSI file was optimized to only create the file when one of the ANSI files has changed. This optimization will cause Trade Wars to initialize significantly faster at bring-up. If you were running release 2.00 prior to this version, erase the file HVSTWDAT.IDX from your HVSTWDAT subdirectory when your system is down. This will force a re-build and fix the problem with continuous ANSI display. --- TW2002 Release 2.00 --- 1/25/94, 7:14am This is the first release of Trade Wars. A late feature addition was not inserted into the documentation. Under HVSTWEDT, option G (General), there is a new option that allows Trade Wars to consume less memory on coprocessor-equipped (and 486DX or greater) systems. Turning this on will cause Trade Wars to consume approximately 6k LESS per user that is actively playing the game. If this option is enabled and you have no math coprocessor, (such as a 486SX) your system will crash or otherwise behave unpredictably. By default, this option is disabled. After you create your universe with HVSTWINI, you can change this option with HVSTWEDT. Note that this option only affects the RAM requirements of the game and does not increase system performance.