The Ultimate House of Games 2000

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Text File | 1998-08-17 | 22KB | 446 lines

Entrepreneur 1.3 (c) 1997-1998 Stardock Systems, Inc. Some History ------------ Changes in 1.3 over 1.2 + Each market has its own set of cards in a .DIM files + New Demographic: Sales. You can see where people are making their money + The graphs screen can be access from double clicking on your central office on the site screen + The "rank" demographic now is more accurate by taking in the time it takes to get full market penetration and updates itself weekly + Cards can be disabled in the .DIM file by making their rarity = 0 + Site screen has region information in it + Production Screen gives a detail profit/loss report + Production Screen now has an accurate time to build report + Updated graphics for the Direct Action Cards + Updated graphics on the main screen + Sites are cheaper to build + Buildings are cheaper but can't hold as many people. + Direct Action Cards are cheaper to use + Sales building limited to ONE building. + Game now compares markets on drive of all players and creates a common list. + Compatible with the Expansion pack > Fixed High score overflow, maximum scores now chopped in half. (stardock.net will only accept 1.3 or later for high scores) > Fixed AI getting too much money on start up. + By default, the demographic buttons are ON instead of off. + Cards have their own sound effects which are defined in the .DIM file > Fixed a bug on research screen where changing an attribute could make a little red bar show up across the screen. > Modified marketing graphics to be transparent. > Modified research screen so that markets that have no space will not show the space graph. + Cola Market now part of Entrepreneur 1.3. + Changed the site screen so that the scroll bars show a "hire" and "fire" button to make it more intuitive. > Changed beginning text to be more instructive on moving sales units (idea thanks to Jon-Mark Schneider) > Changed the spectral bars to go through the spectrum regardless of the length of the bar graph. > Changed the width of the bar graphs when you display your units. + Markets can have inventory/no inventory in .DIM file (not fully implemented) > Fixed a bug on the research screen where the space graph could go off the screen. > Made the Unit button somewhat useful when pressed. > Fixed bug where market reference price would get messed up if over 32000 (this meant the AI couldn't adjust price properly on auto market) + SDS/AI updated to v1.3 > Changed it so that prestige is zeroed out each game. This fixes a bug where if play a second game the prestige is messed up. Now the prestige will start at 0 and move up in the opening weeks. + Prestige is now recalculated for those who aren't #1 technologically. #1 guy gets full prestige, #2 guy gets HALF that best case scenario. + End of year status report (hit F3 to get it anytime) now displays how much money you need to get another sales executive. + Status report will also tell you what % of the market you need to win. Changes in 1.2 over 1.1 > Multiplayer didn't work reliably in new markets + "Faster" is as fast as you can go in Multiplayer games now. > AI was hard coded to change prices by an integer amount. Now it is flexible based on the market. + Music settings saved between games. + Maximum start up funds set to 50 million + Several new Direct Actions (these are pretty significant) + AI can use new Direct Actions > End of year status report mislabeled > "Economy" resource renamed to underworld > crime resources = underworld resources + Stardock.Net will show your rank if you're using 1.2 (or a + if you are unranked) > Stardock.Net will now ONLY let you get a high score if you are using 1.2 or later. > Saved games of automobile market didn't save correctly. Fixed in 1.1b over 1.1a (all these are OS/2 only issues) > Floating point problem on some machines, notably non-Intel machines > Game tended to hang on exiting on some machines on OS/2 Fixed in 1.1A over 1.1 + On some systems, loading a saved game or continuing your last game could result in Entrepreneur closing if you had not already played a game that session. Changed in 1.1 over 1.0 + Completely new set of graphics (this is a major set of enhancements) + F3 key will bring up yearly stats + Will let you know if a new sales executive came + After 70 or so years, regions will begin standardizing on the the leader's products. + Fixed a bug where the game could crash the longer you play. + Made it easy for people to create their own markets + Fixed the AI but where the AI got a ton of money starting out. We weren't initializing a variable. + SDS/AI enhanced so that each computer player has markedly different strategies. AI much smarter. + Fixed bug where second level marketing campaigns were no more effective than first level. + Tweaked some of the cost values to make the game pace a little faster. + Enhanced the networking to be yet more effective on high latency systems. Now can handle lag times of over 10 seconds! Some last minute notes ---------------------- OS/2 USERS: IF YOU HAVE INSTALLED THE DEMO VERSION, YOU MUST REMOVE IT BEFORE INSTALLING THE FULL VERSION! Copy protection: Entrepreneur requires you to have the CD-ROM in the drive to play a single player game, however a single CD-ROM can host up to two other players in a multiplayer game. - Included on your Entrepreneur CD: readme.txt - this file! walk.txt - a walkthrough for getting started playing Entrepreneur. You will also find help in the game by pressing F1 or F2 on the various game screens setup.exe - this is the install program for Window95 or NT, run this if you have autorun disabled. install.exe - this is the install program for OS/2 users - run to get entrepreneur installed on your system. entdemo.exe - demo version of entrepreneur that does not require the CD to play - give this away to your friends! Windows users can also install the demo from the main install program. Introduction ------------ Thank you for buying Entrepreneur! With all the other games out there these days, there's plenty of choices to spend your time and money on, and we are honored that you have chosen to buy and play our game! In a nutshell, here is what Entrepreneur is about: Start a company and try to conquer the world as a monopoly. Entrepreneur is already played by the CEOs at companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Sun, General Motors, and Nabisco. That is, they are doing the same sorts of things that appear in Entrepreneur - making product, crushing competitors and trying to control perception. Why should only CEO's at multi-billion dollar corporations get to play this game? Now you too can play it! There is a full Adobe Acrobat version of the manual (that goes into a lot more detail than this does) available at http://www.stardock.com. There is also a walk through includes in this archive called "walk.txt". Object of the game ------------------ The object of the game is to get a monopoly level market share in a market that starts out with considerable competition. To win: If there are 2 players remaining: 70% of the market If there are 3 players remaining: 65% of the market If there are 4 players remaining: 60% of the market If there are 5-8 players remaining: 55% of the market The winning conditions go into play after the 5th year and is evaluated on the last day of the year. So having 90% of the market in June means nothing, it's how much you have at the end of the year that counts. Your market share resets itself at the beginning of the year. How to play ----------- You start out the game with a single office (or "campus") and a single sales executive (the little guy who says "Yes?" when you click on him). You gain more sales executives at the beginning of the year if your company has grown significantly the year before. <Sales Executives> Your sales executives make sure your product is available in the region it is in and for a radius of 2 regions outwards. The more sales executives you have in the area, the more market penetration your stuff has. There is a limit to this of course so eventually your products are everywhere and putting more sales executives in a region won't do much good. Just remember, being there is half the battle, spread them out early on. Your office site can also sell products to the region it is in and if you build sales offices, they can sell them in greater radius's out (the more you upgrade the sales office the further away it can sell). To move a sales executive, you left click to select it and then right click on an investigated region to send it there. <Regions> You can't sell to any region you want. You have to do some market investigation on it. To do that, select the region and the click on the "investigate region" button. The further away the region is from one of your offices, the more expensive it is to investigate it. You can build more offices by clicking on the "build" button but each new office costs more than the last one. The key thing to know about regions is to know what their desires are and try to make sure your product is strong in those traits. Example: You research Great Britain and click on the "region" button on the bottom. If it has a long green bar by any of its traits, that means they really care about that trait. Winning the game usually depends on staying ahead of your competitors in the traits that people care about. Each game is different and different parts of the world will care about different things. <Your Office Site: Factories> When you click on your site, you'll see different buildings. To begin manufacturing, you have to hire employees. Do that by clicking on the building and then moving the slider over. At first, you'll only want to hire a few people until you match demand. Double click on the buildings to go inside of them. On the factory screen, you can see what the demand for your product is and how many you are building each week. You'll want to make your supply (your build rate) be pretty close to demand unless you have enough inventory to cover the supply for awhile. When your demand begins to exceed supply and you can't hire anymore people, you can raise the price which will lower demand but bring in more money per unit (similarly, you can lower the price and increase demand). Once you have enough money, you can build factories and later manufacturing plants which will vastly increase your ability to build large quantities of product. <Your Office Site: Research Labs> The Research Lab is where you enhance the attributes of your product so it will be more competitive in the market. When you have enough money, you can click on the blank space on the upper right hand side of the site screen and upgrade to a research lab (for $8 million). The Engineering screen is easily the most complex of the screens in Entrepreneur. There is a lot of data to digest on this screen. You can return to the office site by double clicking on the engineer points button on the top right of this screen. The basic concept of the engineering screen is to improve the traits of your product. Your product is made up of different components with each of them adding different levels of quality to your product. For example, in the computer market, the CPU is the most important factor in determining the performance of a computer while the video card adds some but not nearly as much to the overall performance of your computer. To improve a trait, first make sure you've hired engineers, next move the sliders on the bottom to the right. The more you move the slider, the better that trait will become but the longer it will take to get there. There is considerable overhead in starting up a project so the longer the bigger the improvement, the greater the efficiency. Of course, keep in mind that a 5 year project won't do you any good until the 5 years are up by which time you could have the best product but be out of business. The Sliders As you move the sliders, you'll see a red color grow behind that slider and others. This represents where research is occurring. Different traits are related to other traits in different ways. It was decided that instead of having the related sliders move to the left as you moved the one you were on to the right, we would assume you would want to try to keep the traits of the others the same. However, if you move the other sliders to the left which have red on them, your research time will decrease. Normally, it is the price of the component that will tend to want to increase. If you increase the cost to manufacture, you usually can bring down the time to research. Similarly, in the computer market, you can improve ease of use on your OS by decreasing the performance requirement on it. The Research Queue No one wants to have to keep coming back to the screen every few minutes so a research queue was created. As you improve your product, you add it to the research queue. You can remove products from the queue as well as move them up or down in the queue. Space In most markets, there is a limit of how much stuff you can cram into the container. Sure, you'd like the make the world's most powerful computer and stuff it into a laptop sized container but in reality you can't because of the size of the components. The bar across the middle of the screen represents the space of your product. There are 3 colors (actually 4 if your components use up too much space) to keep in mind. The red color on the left is how much space that particular component is using (if any). The yellow is how much space the components together are using. The green is how much space the product's container (the case in the PC market) has available. If you want to decrease the size of your container, you'll need to put some research into minimizing the space of your components. Other Traits In some industries, you can also modify the actual container the product is in by clicking on the actual product. In the computer industry, for example, you can click on the computer itself to change what type of case it uses. The smaller the case, the higher the aesthetics value is. Look on the left side of the screen to see how your product is doing overall. <Your Office Site: Marketing> With marketing, you can enhance the perception of your products or, in the case of the full version of Entrepreneur, damage the perception of your competitor's product. The way the print advertising campaign unit works is that you hire marketers on the site screen and then you can create marketing campaigns. When it is done, a little newspaper unit will appear at your home site. If you left click to select it and then right click on a destination, it will move there and improve the perception of a trait that you chose when you created it. Make sure your product is available in the regions you send your marketing campaign to! In the full version, marketing gets a lot more interesting because you also have negative marketing campaigns in which you select a specific opponent to trash. It makes for very interesting gameplay! Direct Action Cards ------------------- The point of Direct Action Cards is to try to bring in dynamic elements without increasing the complexity of the game play. No game or simulation can simulate 100% what the real world behaves like. Entrepreneur is a corporate conquest game that tries to favor action over having too many "realistic features". For example, in the real world companies routinely try to lure away key executives from their competitors. This has a devastating effect on the competitor since "brain drain" is major reason for a company to lose its competitive edge. But in a game or simulator, how does one go about simulating this? Do you have a game screen that takes you to a special "Trip to Seattle on the corporate jet?" or a list box listing all the different gifts and signing bonus's you could give to a potential executive to get him or her to leave your competitor? And if you did put all this into a game, would you not then open the door to others features that many would consider just as relevant such as buying up other companies, government grants, lawsuits, patents, etc.? Entrepreneur's answer to all this comes in the form of Direct Action Cards. In a nutshell, here's how they work: Each card allows you to do a specific task in the game. To use that card, you must be the market leader in regions that have special resources (the regions with the resource icons on them). At the top of the card, you can see what resources this card specifically needs. The types resources the card requires to use will depend on what type of action the card does. For example, exploiting child labor would require you to be the market leader in a red $ region which signifies that it is a very poor region of the world. You begin the game with 3 Direct Action Cards. At the beginning of each year you will receive a new direct action card up until you obtain 7 (after which you won't get any more until you have used some). At the beginning of each year, the regions with special resources that you are the market leader in go into your resource pool. When you have enough resources to use a card, it will light up and allow you to use it. Be careful how you use the card, however. If you're in the lead, for example, you probably don't want to use cards that your opponents will get afterwards. If you're losing, your best bet is to try to pick on the winner if possible. Multiplayer play ---------------- <STARDOCK.NET> Many games will boast that they can play on the Internet but most of them require you to jump through a lot of hoops to get an Internet game going. Entrepreneur has Stardock.net which is probably about as easy as you can get to find Internet games. Just log on to the Internet, start Entrepreneur, and click on "Stardock.net". From there, you will be able to talk to other players and join games. You cannot join games in progress. Games that are grayed out are games that are in progress. The left side of the screen shows all the people in your particular channel. If you are very new at Entrepreneur and the "Lobby" channel is relatively full, you might want to go to the "Beginner's channel". Please keep in mind that it's no fun to be creamed by an expert. Many Internet games have become "un-fun" because experts will pretend to be new at the game and slaughter a newcomer. If you've become an expert, you'll be able to find other experts in the other channel. Dealing with Latency Lag time or "latency" is the amount of time it takes for your computer to send data to another computer and get a signal back. If you are using a modem, a typical ping time is about 300ms. But sometimes, the Internet will just "Freeze" up for a few seconds. A few seconds is an eternity in an Internet game. If things get bad enough, the music might start to skip or things may slow down to a crawl (or even freeze). Don't worry, your computer is not "crashed". Just hit the Pause key to stop the game and let it catch up for a second and then continue. The further someone is away from you physically, the higher the chances of lag time. So before you begin to play people who are on another continent, be aware of these things. You can greatly reduce these affects by playing the game at "Normal" or "Fast". Do not play at higher speeds than that unless you are very comfortable with your connection speed. Also note that Computer players tend to actually send out more data that human players. This is because, well, humans are a lot slower than computers at making moves. The computer players are thinking and acting all the time. They don't forget to hire those workers to keep up with demand or to keep researching regions. So if you have 3 or 4 human players, get rid of the AI players if you can (again, unless you are pretty comfortable with your connection). Please keep in mind that Stardock.net is a public forum where people from many parts of the world are on at the same time and are of different ages. Please keep in mind that there are real people behind those names. The anonymous nature of the Internet tends to make people forget that courtesy and kindness are still important traits. Keyboard help ------------- Key Function Esc. Options Screen F1 Help Screen F2 Context Sensitive Tutorial F5 or Ctrl-W World Map Screen (main) F6 or Ctrl-S Site Screen F7 or Ctrl-P Production Screen F8 or Ctrl-M Marketing Screen F9 or Ctrl-R Research Screen Tab Send message to other players. Pause Pause the game + Speed up game - Slow down game Technical Support ----------------- Stardock offers free technical support for Entrepreneur. The best way to contact Technical Support is to send email to support@stardock.com Voice Technical Support is also available from 9AM-4PM EST at (734) 762-0687 Please be sure to have include all system information with any problem report.