Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac 1993 September/clonecd/September 93.img/Archives/Games/Shareware Specials/Empire Master/EM Demo Docs/EM Demo Docs.rsrc/TEXT_136_aText.txt

Text File | 1992-09-04 | 12KB | 222 lines

The Options Menu

The options item in the File menu invokes a multi-panel dialog.  Radio buttons on the left side of the dialog control which panel you are looking at.  Everything else depends upon which panel is actually selected.  There is also a hierarchical menu attached to the options item which allows you to select a panel directly.

One caution: switching panels makes the choice permanent.  It is as if you had hit OK and then entered the options dialog selecting a different panel.  In fact, internally the different panels are distinct dialogs.

General  









When auto save is set to a positive number the game will do a Save command at the end of the indicated turns. For example, with Auto Save set to 5 the current game will be saved after turns 35, 40, 45 etc. The current file name is used, if the game has been saved before. Otherwise this is equivalent to the Save As… command. In that case Cancel will cause the game not to be saved until the next time the auto save interval expires.

The Idle After time helps in case you must leave your computer while playing a game. When the idle time has expired and you have not done anything then the map windows will be hidden. When auto save is set to zero or more then the game will also be saved as it goes idle. This will also happen after you switch to another program under system 7 or multifinder. Take advantage of this when the boss walks in.

If you are running system 7 or later, then you can also select an animated wait cursor in this dialog.  Experts can add new ‘acur’ resources to the EM Settings file or a rules file.

Display
 














Brings up a dialog to control how the map and units are displayed.

You may set the peek or view whole map but to lower values only.

The Track Movement option ensures that every moving unit is visible, even if the unit is moving automatically.  (For example an Exploring unit.)

The track enemy movement makes sure that some map window is scrolled to show any visible enemy units when they move.

The four popup menus surrounding the army icon and the three next to the city icon control how units and cities are labeled on the map.  When the map size is 10 or more these labels will be shown in the corresponding position for units and cities.  In other words you can choose a label for each corner of a unit, and the top bottom and right of cities.  The label “none” indicates that you want no label in the corresponding position.
 
  






The unit labels always describe the topmost (visible) unit in the square, except count which shows the total count of all units in the square, even those on transports.  The Naval ID label shows  a unique ID number for every sea unit.

City labels are only shown for friendly cities.  You cannot find out what enemy cities are producing.  The production label will show what type of unit each friendly is producing.  The [Date] Production label will show the type and the turn in which it will be completed.

Empire Master will display a graph showing how your cities are connected.  This is used internally to determine paths for air units.  The display will draw a line connecting all cities within a certain distance of each other.  The Graph pop-up menu allows you to select any distance corresponding to the fuel range of some air unit.  Selecting Graph:Never disables this display entirely.  Selecting Graph:Current makes the display show graph lines only when the current unit is an air unit with  a fuel limit.  If so the lines show which cities are close enough for that unit to move directly between.

To keep this legible short and redundant lines are not shown.  (While non-air units with fuel limits are not fully supported, the graph lines showing legitimate paths do work correctly for land and sea units.)

The Combat Animation makes battles happen faster or slower.  Selecting “None” makes battles happen instantly.

Sound…
 





Controls which ‘SND ’ resource to play when each event happens.  The resources can be in your system file, in your EMSettings file or in  a file called EMSounds in the system folder.  (The Preferences folder will be used instead in a future version.)  Sounds can be turned off one at a time or all sounds can be disabled by clicking in the appropriate check boxes.  The asynchronous check box does nothing currently, but eventually the new sound manager capability for playing sounds asynchronously will be used when this box is checked.

 Color…

This dialog allows you to set the colors for different types of terrain, each player and several other graphic effects. If you have more than one monitor the ‘monitors’ button will be enabled, and you can indicate which monitor to use for the map, messages, data window and dialogs.

Empire Master now understands color and multiple monitors much better.  You can keep the “Use Color” option checked all of the time.  It will automatically determine what kind of monitor a map window is on, drawing it in color if possible.

Map Parameters.

 














The parameters which control the map can be modified in this dialog.  The x and y define the width and height.  Land density controls how much of the map is land and how much is water.  City density controls how many land squares have cities.  Island sizes controls how large islands will be while island ‘roundness’ controls  their shape (roughly).

Map Size (x, y)

Controls the size of the world.  Both parameters must be smaller than 255.  Larger maps take longer to play and use more memory.  The largest maps require several megabytes.  Using very small maps it should be possible to play on a 512K machine.  Larger maps will also use more disk space for saved games.

On a one megabyte machine values of over 100 X 250 will work, if multifinder is not used and the ram cache is not too big.  If there is not enough memory to allocate the map the program will say so and require you to choose a smaller map size. An estimate of the memory needed for the map is X times Y divided by 100 kilobytes.  This does not include the program and other data that will require more memory.

Land Density

Controls how many islands are generated.  Several small islands may merge to form a larger continent.  If this parameter is large, or the island size is large then it is possible to get huge conglomerate continents.

City Density

Controls the density of cities.  Cities are placed randomly, except that an attempt is made to prevent two cities from being in adjacent squares.  Basically this parameter is ten times the percentage likelihood that a given land square will be a city.

Island Sizes

Roughly controls the radius of islands.  Larger values cause larger islands to be generated.

Roundness

Controls the contour of the islands.  Large values cause islands to have smoother edges, like circles or ovals.  Smaller values make spikes or peninsulas more likely, giving islands more of a snowflake appearance.

Simultaneous

The game scans the map once per segment.  Normally it asks for orders when it reaches one of the current player’s units and skips enemy units.  All of your units move before any of the enemy units.  Segments only affect the order in which you choose the moves.  In simultaneous mode both players move at the same time.  Every unit that can move in the current segment is given a chance to move, before units that move in later segments.  For example, fighters normally move in segment one so both players fighters start moving before either players bombers.

Wrap Horizontal, Wrap Vertical

The edges of the map can be “off limits” or can wrap around. Selecting horizontal wrap alone is interesting.  Selecting both horizontal and virtical wrap is almost mind boggling.

Require Cities

Requires that every island must have at least one city.

Require Ports

Requires that every island must have at least one port city.

Forbid Lakes

A lake is defined to be any body of water that only touches one island.  Lake squares are shown differently than sea squares.  If this option is checked then lakes will be filled in with land.

Simultaneous

The game scans the map once per segment. Normally it asks for orders when it reaches one of the current player’s units and skips enemy units. All of your units move before any of the enemy units. Segments only affect the order in which you choose the moves. In simultaneous mode both players move at the same time. Every unit that can move in the current segment is given a chance to move, before units that move in later segments. For example, fighters normally move in segment one so both players fighters start moving before either players bombers. This option is not recommended when two people are playing against each other.

Game Parameters

 












This dialog is for controlling options affecting the next game you start.

You cannot change these options while a game is being played.


Appletalk

Forces the game to operate over an appletalk connection. In Person vs. Person mode this option is unnecessary, since you will be asked which type of connection you want. By choosing this option you can set up a machine vs. machine demo using two machines.

Play For Real

Only show squares that you have moved a unit next to or on top of.

See Whole Map

Show all squares in the map, regardless of where your units have been. This only affects the display. Path computations and machine strategy still assume that the normal view is being seen.

Peek at Enemy

Show squares that you or the enemy have moved a unit next to. This only affects the display. Path computations and machine strategy still assume that the normal view is being seen.

Spies

When checked both sides will try to put spies in the other side’s units. When a spy infiltrates the enemy he (or she!) will be part of an enemy unit. All terrain adjacent to that unit will become visible to the side the spy is friendly to. In addition, all units in the same square as the spy (not adjacent) will also become visible. Of course a spy runs a risk of being discovered, and will be “prevented” from passing on secrets after that. Spies cannot cause any damage and you can’t determine their placement or protect them from discovery. You just get some secret information from them. But, remember that if you have spies then the enemy may also have some!.

Unexplored World, Known World

In an unexplored world you don’t know anything about a square until you have moved a unit there. The known world option lets you (and the enemy) see the entire map right from the start. You will see which cities belong to the enemy, but you still must explore to find enemy units.

Rules

The rules button brings up a list of all installed rule sets. Double click on one to select it. The label above the button shows the name of the currently selected rule set. Rules can be installed into the game or kept in separate files. When the game is run it will look in the application folder for up to 64 rules files.

See the documentation on the rule editor for more information about rule sets.

Ugly vs. Sinful

Allows you to specify who controls player 1 and player 2. It is possible to choose, neutral, person or mac for either player. ‘Neutral’ players do not participate. ‘Mac’ players are controlled by the machine. If a player is controlled by a person then the unit commands will be read from the keyboard and mouse. If both players are controlled by Mac then the game will repeat indefinitely when it is finished. If both players are controlled by people then the screen will be cleared between turns and a dialog will ask if the player is ready.


Fairness
 














In order to balance the skill level you may want to change some of the fairness settings.  You may set the number of initial cities, armies and free turns for each player independently with this dialog.

Each player can be given one or more cities to start the game.  Obviously the player who starts with more cities has an advantage.  Each initial city may have some armies in it initially.  Each initial city will have the same number of armies in it when the game begins.

The free turns and combat advantage are fair in the middle position indicated by a small black bar.  Moving the scroll box left gives an advantage to player one (Ugly) while moving it right gives the advantage to player two.