This is the list of things that have changed in versions older than 0.990. What's GONE in SRE 0.990 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. The Special Attacks option has been removed; it is always ON now. 2. The Supply planets option has been removed; it is always ON. 3. The lottery doesn't show up in the unregistered version so that you don't have money trapped in the bank. 4. There is no "research menu" at the moment. The research that is done is not under your control. 5. Pirates no longer strike back the turn after a player attacks them; I am going to keep track of what the pirates think of each player, and they will attack players they don't like in a future version. 6. I do not have SRE STATISTICS working yet. It will be included in a future version. 7. Most of the parameters have been removed and put into a sysop menu; to get to the sysop menu, run SRE SYSOP. 8. All the support for an SRTERM program has been removed!! It was making things very complicated and I was unable to do the configurable menus with that code in there. (I never got around to writing SRTERM anyway, so it shouldn't matter much.) 9. Several Resource options are gone, and can be set only at reset-time. Planets per turn and Sysop name are the only ones I can remember. 10. The INSTRUCTIONS and DISPLAY parameters have been removed. If someone wants them back, let me know so that I can put it on my list of things to do. You can use the CREATEINSTRUCTIONS parameter to create ANSI and text instructions files for your users. 11. The "don't accept new players" date has not yet been implemented. What's NEW in SRE 0.986g +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. The Special Attacks option has been moved into the Resource file, so if you had it enabled, please edit your resource file, and put "SpecialAttacks yes" in there. 2. The Multitasker option in the Resource file now tells SRE to give up part of its time slice to Microsoft Windows or OS/2 when it is waiting for user input. I have not tried this option with DESQview, but it may work in DV also. 3. A bug that caused the system to beep at sysops who had the special attacks on in the unregistered version has been fixed. I apologize for this! What's NEW in SRE 0.986f/e +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. The players can now draft people into your military when defending against an attack; this is set in the same place the tax rate is set. See the online help (SRE HELP) for details on the drafting. 2. A bug in 0.986e, where messages and chat mode wrapped incorrectly, was fixed. What's NEW in SRE 0.986d +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. Some more bugs in the food market were fixed. 2. A bug causing the News files to have extra carriage return (ASCII 13) characters in it was fixed. What's NEW in SRE 0.986c +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. The bank investments have been fixed so that the interest rate is twice the rate for deposits. 2. Setups now operate one-way only. When a players sets up A and B, the result is that B thinks that A attacked him, but A does _not_ think that B attacked him. The results are in the news file also. 3. Players can now send messages to themselves. This may be useful when they want to remind themselves of something they have to do. 4. Error/warning messages are displayed on the bottom of the screen when they occur. They are also recorded in SYSOP.LOG. These messages should probably be reported to The Solar Realm if they look serious. 5. A couple of minor bugs in trading were fixed. 6. The pirates have a limited idea of revenge, and they will occasionally strike back after a pirate raid. What's NEW in SRE 0.986b +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. A bug with the input of numbers was fixed. 2. A bug with entering negative numbers in the Resource file was fixed. What's NEW in SRE 0.986 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. There is an ANSI news file (NEWS.ANS) as well as the text version (NEWS.TXT), and there is an Yesterday's News file in ANSI too. 2. There is a new "attack" option, "Spy on Pirates". It takes up your attack for that turn, but it displays spy info on each pirate team. (It's free, too!) 3. A new resource option, DeleteDeadPlayers, can let you prevent dead players from starting over. 4. A new resource option, InactiveTimeOut, lets you choose how long SRE waits before deleting an inactive player. This used to be a RESET option; now it is in the resource file. 5. There are new keys when doing numeric input: 'K' means 'thousand' and 'M' means million. That way, you can enter "3M" to mean 3 million. 6. There is a new System Menu option, V, which takes the player to the Advisors, who give some advice on the empire. 7. The pirate teams will produce their own military/money/agents from the planets they have captured. This will increase the rewards of defeating a pirate team. What's NEW in SRE 0.985 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. The reports are rewritten! You may notice that your REPORTS.SR file will be missing and it will replaced by RPT.SR, which is smaller. 2. When you are asked whether you want to accept a treaty, you will be shown the empire's net worth, and if you have bribed a spy from their empire, you can spy on them too. If you accept, you can send a message to your new ally. 3. When you propose a treaty, you can send a message also. In a future version, the message will appear with the treaty offer, like it should. However, until then, will appears with the other messages. 4. The events are rewritten! EVENT.SR replaces EVENTS.SR, and it should be much smaller! 5. Covert op results, battle results, investment/miscellaneous results, and soon, treaty messages, will be displayed separately in their own colors. 6. Events are processed each turn instead of each day. This way, bank investments get back sooner. 7. A bug in bank loans was fixed. 8. The "bug" where users in protection can get attacked is "fixed". 9. SRE ENEMY works in unregistered versions now. 10. Supply planets (including SRE SUPPLY) works in unregistered versions. What's NEW in SRE 0.984 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. 50 Generals can fit on one government planet instead of 40. 2. Diplomacy option was added to the System Menu. 3. Coverts or generals will kill each other if they don't have enough space on the government planets to survive. 4. "Supply planets" are an option at reset-time; (used to be REGISTERED only) these planets supply all military units rather than only soldiers. You can also toggle them with SRE SUPPLY. 5. Fixed bug where the galactic coordinator gives too much money. 6. Fixed bug that let users put spaces after the empire name. 7. Installed new optimized ANSI routines. 8. New message system, with longer word-wrapping messages. One nice side effect is that even though the messages are longer, LESS space is taken up on disk!!! 9. New message option: SRE MESSAGE lets the sysop post a message (public or private) to the players 10. Problems with pirates having too much stuff when raided have been fixed. 11. Pirate teams will live past resets. If you wish to delete the pirates, erase the file ENEMY.SR (at any time). 12. The amount the galactic coordinator gives to you depends on how nice you have been (with respect to chemical/nuclear attacks, galactic tax donations, and how many anti-pollution planets you have). 13. New option: SRE SUPPLY will let you select supply/soldier (REGISTERED) 14. New option: SRE GAMESTATUS will show you some information about the game. 15. New option: SRE MSGREAD will let you read all the messages and see who they are from, even if the message was marked "anonymous" by the sender. 16. "Show Relations" on the diplomacy section will show the net worths of the other empires. 17. There are now TWO help files for SRE: SREHELP.DAT is the standard one that comes with the game; HELP.DAT is one that you can create for your own customization. See SREHELP.DAT for details on how to customize the help file. 18. Bug that caused lockups (actually a loop that took a minute to complete on a 16mhz system, but gave no indication that it was running) in trading was fixed. 19. Nuclear weapons are now 30,000,000 credits instead of 50,000,000. What's NEW in SRE 0.983c +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. The bank investments are for a certain number of turns rather than a certain number of hours. This is better when the number of turns each day is high, since you don't have to wait as long to get the investments back. 2. Support added for an SRTERM that might be written in the future. 3. Fixed bug with petroleum prices not being accurate if ^C was pressed during play. What's NEW in SRE 0.983b +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 1. SRE MSGPACK will pack the messages. Normally, this is done automatically each day, so you don't have to worry about it. 2. New resource options Trading and Messages. (explained in RESOURCE.HLP) 3. Message bug with duplicating messages was fixed. What's NEW in SRE 0.983 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Chat mode fixed up so that it'll work better with locked baud rates. 2. SRE ENEMY allows you to edit the pirate names. (used to be REGISTERED only) 3. Numeric input has been made better. 4. F3 during chat turns the user's keyboard on and off. 5. F1 during play displays a help window. 6. F2 during play displays a status window to spy on your users. 7. F7 and F8 decrease and increase user's time left, respectively. 8. SRE.RC (Resource file from 0.982b) is OBSOLETE. This means you have to redo all your changes. (Sorry!) The new resource file is RESOURCE.DAT. The format is different as well. It's all explained in RESOURCE.HLP. The reason there's no RESOURCE.DAT included is so that when you upgrade, and unzip the new stuff into your directory, it won't delete the setup you have! 9. A new option, SRE TURNS, allows you to change the number of turns granted per day. (REGISTERED) 10. The INSTRUCTIONS, DISPLAY, and SCORES parameters work over the modem if you don't use the /LOCAL switch. If you use /LOCAL, then it'll display to the screen instead of the modem. 11. ALT-J jumps (shells) to DOS if you have enough memory. SRE doesn't swap to disk when shelling. :( 12. GAMEFULL.ANS or GAMEFULL.TXT is displayed when the game is full and a user tries to start a new empire. (If the .ANS file exists AND the user has ANSI, it is displayed; otherwise it displays the .TXT file.) That way, if you have two or three games running, you can tell the user to try another game. 13. Pirate Raids let you know what you've lost fighting the pirates. 14. Treaties can be individually enabled/disabled from RESOURCE.DAT. 15. SRE STATISTICS displays statistics about your game. 16. The LOCKOUT.USR file can have names of users that you want to lock out of a game. Just create the file and list the users, one on each line, that should not be allowed to play. (The user name should be listed the same way that it would appear on the status bar when that user plays.) Also, the LOCKOUT.ANS or LOCKOUT.TXT files are displayed when that user attempts to play. 17. The help system is even easier to use, and there are options in the resource file to select which type of help input you'd like. 18. There are resource options to selectively turn off nuclear and/or chemical attacks. (REGISTERED) 19. You (the sysop) can add your own ANSI screens to SRE. See SRE.DOC for info on where these ANSI screens are displayed. 20. You can specify a date to stop accepting new players into a game, and when a user tries to play after that, SRE will display NOMORE.TXT (or NOMORE.ANS if it exists). (REGISTERED) What's NEW in SRE 0.982 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Two status bars. (Wow.) 2. A resource file - SRE.RC - that lets you change the COM port parameters and the length of timeout before the keyboard times out. (And others) 3. Bug with short prompts and petroleum planets not giving money has been fixed. 4. Number of turns of protection bug has been fixed; previously, it gave one extra turn of protection. 5. Parameters such as /ANSI=0 didn't work with the DISPLAY or INSTRUCTIONS parameters; now they do. 6. FINALLY! SRE Checks time left on the board. On some door types, I was not able to figure out how much time was left, so SRE lets you play for an unlimited amount of time. Also, if the time left doesn't work for you (SRE expects minutes and your door type gives seconds or hours), you can disable the time-limit feature by using the command line option /NOTIMELIMIT. You can also edit SRE.RC to add the "No Time Limit" option. If you do want the time limit, use /TIMELIMIT [the resource file option is "Time Limit"]. The default is unspecified, and may change in future versions, so I strongly advise you edit SRE.RC and set your preference. 7. Bug with reports (bank investments and covert operation results) not showing up has been corrected. 8. Bug that made results of battles with over 3000 soldiers/fighters/ cruisers has been fixed. Battle formulas are all-new (maybe not better). 9. Help is now context-sensitive. You can type "just enough" for SRE to fill in the rest, and press TAB to complete the word or just press RETURN if it's finished. (This also applies to bulletins.) 10. Running "SRE /?" will list all the parameters & switches. 11. Pressing ">" on a prompt will fill in the "max" value. This is very useful in the bank, to Withdraw All or Deposit All. 12. Bug with entering long registration codes has been fixed. (It said "Thanks for registering" after you type in the numbers, but it didn't actually register the game.) 13. Some support (?) for COM3-8. You can edit [RESOURCE.DAT] to define your COM ports. (Untested) This -should- work for IRQ levels 3 and 4. What's NEW in SRE 0.981 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Problem with attacking is fixed. In 0.980, attacking did too much damage. 2. Problem that caused enemy players not to appear has been fixed. 3. Problem that prevented a player from *completely* destroying another with conventional attacks has been corrected. 4. F5 key returns the user to the BBS. 5. Scores won't show up locally when writing to SRESCORES.TXT/SRESCORES.ANS. What's NEW in SRE 0.980 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Both Short and Long instruction files. This is to encourage users to read the short one if they're intimidated by the long one. 2. A new user message in NEWUSER.ANS/NEWUSER.TXT that is (REGISTERED) displayed when a new player joins the game. 3. Reset in the unregistered version gives more options (Pirate Raid) What's NEW in SRE 0.979 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 0. Since there never was a 0.979, there isn't anything new here. What's NEW in SRE 0.977 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. IMPORTANT!! Use the NEW "RESEARCH.DAT" file from the ARJ/ZIP 2. Major bug in Pirate Raids fixed. (REGISTERED) 3. Many options in RESET: date to start game, number of days before maintenance is run, whether the name of a defender in an attack is shown in the news file, whether failed covert ops are shown in the news file, and whether special attacks are allows. (REGISTERED) 4. The /BIOS switch is temporarily set to be default. /FASTWRITE forces the direct screen writes. 5. Much internal `cleaning up'. The code size decreased by about 15k. What's NEW in SRE 0.976 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Bug involving too high Galactic Coordinator taxes is fixed. If you had urban planets, the GC would charge you too much, usually more than you have. 2. Nuclear bombs have a maximum planet capacity of 300. This varies during play. This also overrides "What's NEW in SRE 0.974", #3. 3. Having government planets now reduces the severity of a civil war caused by not paying the planets. The civil war caused by not feeding the people is not affected. 4. IMPORTANT!!! Delete REPORT.SR What's NEW in SRE 0.975 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Bulletins available at the main menu. Edit SREHELP.DAT and add bulletins in the form: #key bulletin-«name» «text» #end The text is word wrapped unless there is a \n in the file; the "\n" forces movement to the next line. The '\' character at the end of a line is a place keeper. Some editors erase spaces at the end of a line. The \ is ignored by SRE, but allows you to have a space at the end of a line. 2. Customizable help topics. Help topics are available from the system menu. They are in the form #key help-«name». See #1 for more details. 3. Editable hints. These are also in SREHELP.DAT, with the same format as #1 and #2 above. 4. User Preferences menu. If users are pressed for time, they can turn off some of the verboseness of SRE, at the expense of making the game look ugly. 5. Fast files. The files are MUCH faster than those of 0.970. However, on some computers (386/33), you may not notice. 6. Main Menu now contains 9 options instead of 6. The new ones: Status, See Bulletins, and Diplomacy. What's NEW in SRE 0.974 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Computer-controlled enemies can be attacked with Pirate Raid. There are 9 computer enemies that steal things from players. The players can attack back and take back their items. (REGISTERED) 2. Guerilla attacks work now! (REGISTERED} 3. Nuclear attacks kill 25% of the opponent's planets. (REGISTERED) 4. Chemical attacks kill 50% of the opponent's population. (REGISTERED) 5. Saves in a turn. If the user hangs up during play, it saves the place and starts there again next time. 6. New covert op: Treaty Spy, #7. 7. Investments. At the bank, you may invest money and it will return in 36 real hours. What's NEW in SRE 0.973 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Planet prices in protection are much lower than they used to be. This will allow the empires to grow much faster. 2. Main Menu available by editing the batch file. Change SRE to SRE /MENU 3. News files NEWS.TXT and YESTNEWS.TXT list major events of the day. What's NEW in SRE 0.972 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Some covert operations now include a risk factor displayed before the player is certain that he/she/it wants to perform the covert op. 2. New covert operation: Bombing, #6 3. F10 = chat. Chat finally works acceptably. Control-R + a number changes colors. What's NEW in SRE 0.971 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Bug fix: the Abdicate option didn't work. It caused a "divide error" and sometimes locked up the system. 2. Scores files generated automatically --- SRE produces SRESCORES.ANS and SRESCORES.TXT every time its run instead of the batch file running SRE SCORES. 3. The batch file needs to be created again. Re-Run SRINSTAL's Batch File Setup option. 4. The instruction file can be sent to a file with SRE INSTRUCTIONS /LOG /ANSI=1 to produce an ANSI instruction file (SRE.LOG), or SRE INSTRUCTIONS /LOG /ANSI=0 to produce a non-ANSI instruction file (also in SRE.LOG). You can then copy SRE.LOG to another file. This need only be done once. What's NEW in SRE 0.970 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Instantaneous petroleum price fluctuations. This prevents one user from taking advantage of extremely high petroleum prices. It is also more realistic for the game. 2. Guerilla Warfare Explained in the instructions to the game. 3. Several command-line options: A. /ANSI=0 Forces ANSI off. Can be used with /LOG and SCORES to produce a non-ANSI score file. B. /ANSI=1 Forces ANSI on. Can be used with /LOG and SCORES to produce an ANSI score file. C. /LOG Writes all output to a log file, SRE.LOG. (In ANSI if ANSI is on). You can also use this option to extract the instructions to a file with "SRE /LOG": play the game, and view the instructions. Then and edit the SRE.LOG file and copy the instruction part to a separate file. D. /BIOS Uses the BIOS for output instead of direct-screen writes. Use this for non-compatible computers or multi-tasking systems. You can also use this to get rid of snow on CGA systems. E. /NOSPECIALEFFECTS Turns off the special effect cursors at Yes/No prompts and at pauses. This greatly reduces the size of the LOG file. Also, some modems have bufferring that continues output even after the user has pressed a key. If so, this option will speed up remote game operation. (Ask users if PAUSE immediately goes away when they press a key or if there's a delay; if there is a delay, use this option.) F. /LOCAL For BBS door files that don't send the right message to SRDOOR that the user is local, this option forces LOCAL play. 4. Batch file setup inside of SRINSTAL. You don't have to run two programs (SRINSTAL, SETUPBAT) to install SRE --- just one. What's NEW in SRE 0.965 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. New planet types (Anti-Pollution, Petroleum) 2. System Menu (in the Government Spending Menu) A. Super Lottery - Buy tickets and the game picks a winner daily B. Scores C. Check trade deals that had to be rejected because player couldn't meet the demands D. Covert Operations E. Bank F. Show Status G. Set Tax Rate H. Toggle Expert Mode I. Abdicate J. Change Colors 3. Bank available before paying planets 4. All-new improved SETUPBAT program, that allows: A. Outputting the scores to a separate ANSI/text file B. Recording all actions of all players in a trap file 5. A nicer-looking status bar 6. Command line parameters: REGISTER Registration of the game. If you send the registration form in, we will send you three code numbers to you that you type in with this option. REREGISTER Registration of the game if it is already registered to someone else. BANK Setup of the bank: creates the bank and sets an interest rate. This is available in the registered version only. RESET Erase all players, and set options. Options are only available in the registered version. SCORES Displays only the scores. Either run "SRE SCORES" as a door program to allow the scores to be sent to the user directly or create a score file with "SRE SCORES /LOG /ANSI=1 /LOCAL" and copy SRE.LOG to another file. ("SRE SCORES /LOG /ANSI=0 /LOCAL" for a non-ANSI score file) (See the new instruction file for details)