Secret Service 54a/SSERVCD_54A.bin/UTILS/PATCHES/ACPTCH11.ZIP/README.11

Text File | 1997-10-15 | 12KB | 263 lines

This patch file will patch Advanced Civilization Version 1.00 or 1.01 to
Version 1.1.

The version number appears on the introductory banner when the game starts and
at the bottom of the main options screen.


Copy all the files contained in this archive to your AVALON directory.  If you
changed the name of the directory during the INSTALL from the default put the
files in that directory.

type:

        patch ht100_11


If the patch process is successful...

    . Copy the file ACPTCH11.EXE to a spare diskette and put it in the game
      box. This way in the future if for some reason you re-install the game,
      you'll have the patch readily available.

    . Now you can delete the files:
        acptch11.exe
        patch.exe
        ht100_11.rtp
        readme.11 (if desired)



Note on saved games files: The format for saved games has not changed,
therefore any saved games you currently have will still work.

Note on PBEM games in progress: Although the format for the exchanged files
has not changed, many of the bugs, now fixed, propagate themselves through
the exchanged files.  Therefore, if you are not experiencing any difficulties
in you present game, odds are that you can continue but there is no guarantee
of a successful completion.  The only way to be sure of a clean game is to
start a new one.


Additional notes for PBEM games
-------------------------------

During the testing for 1.1, the game automatically created zip archives of the
.hst files at host consolidation time.  The decision has been made to leave
in this facility. The PREP????.ZIP files allow you to replay from any
particular point in time by restoring the .hst files and then you can preform
the host consolidation again.  This might be useful if some file corruption
occurs during any file exchange.  Starting a new PBEM game deletes all old
PREP????.ZIP files in the AVALON directory.

This archive requires that you have the pkzip program somewhere on your path
list. If you don't have pkzip, the archiving should be skipped.

If you prefer not to clutter your directory with the PREP files, include in
your command line the /nz switch.  I.e:

        advcivil /nz

This only applies to the host of a PBEM game.


PBEM filenames
--------------
The format of filenames is critical to the operation of the PBEM game.
Because of this, the true filename is stored as part of the file and it is
restored when the game executes.  Thus you could rename ITAL0512.hst to
TOM.txt and the game would change TOM.txt back to ITAL0512.hst.  This means
that if you want to keep copies of the files, you don't have to worry about
what you call them.  However, if for some reason you already had a ITAL0512.hst
and a TOM.txt, the game would want to rename TOM.txt to ITAL0512.hst and it
would fail with the message "To correct the above problem - refer to the
manual." and of course there is no such reference in the manual. You'll then
be dumped to DOS.

This inability to deal with duplicate names is why this feature was never
mentioned in Versions 1.0 or 1.01. Now I'm documenting it with the warning
that duplicate names are not handled.






Revision History


1.1
---

1) The version of Fastgraph used is now 4.04 vs 4.03 for V1.01.  A few
   additional video cards should be supported now.

2) >>>The human player can see what the computer players have really in
   >>>hand(their goods), during some phases (for example, when the game stops
   >>>after a nation's moves), just in clicking the GOODS button. Since the
   >>>game is based on commercial strategies and bluff, the interest of the
   >>>game is very reduced. This is like a cheat mode.

     This is only possible if 2 or more humans are playing.  I've added a
     requester popup so that you now have to pick a nation to look at.  The
     computer players are never on the list.  Yes, you can look at all the
     human players cards but in hot-seat play, voluntary restraint on the
     part of players is required.

3) >>>I played Babylonia. I was struck as secondary victim Epidemic. I had 4
   >>>cities, three of them built on 2 token capacity areas, one built on a 1
   >>>token capacity area. I had 10 tokens, each in a separate area. Medicine
   >>>reduces my losses from 10 to five.  But I couldn't get a "finished"
   >>>button, because I could only reduce 2 cities due to the rules (it is not
   >>>allowed to eliminate all tokens in an area due to an epidemic). But with
   >>>reducing 2 cities, I got a "-1" in the field that show the number of
   >>>tokens (units) I have to take off the board. With this "-1" I could not
   >>>end my turn. So I had to leave the game.

     Oops! This occurred because there were no spare tokens in the non-city
     territories. I've added code that will look for the correct target number,
     -1 in this case.

4) Discovered an attempt to move more tokens from a territory then occupied
   by.  Fixed.

5) Ran across another way that the Grain used to reduce famine effects was not
   being reset properly.  Fixed.

6) Exceeded valid moves in XXXXX.  This error message is generic in nature
   and will be seen when the game tries to move more tokens from a territory
   then are available. One case that generated this message was caused by
   the code that consolidated single token moves into one multiple token move.
   Under what I hope are rare conditions, the alternate AI conjectures that
   the game makes left the memory in a condition where the consolidator got
   confused and collected a token or 2 more than it should have.  This
   condition has been fixed.

7) Under some conditions, the AI in choosing the First faction in Civil War
   could think that there were not enough tokens to pick from when there
   really were.  The release version of the game did not flag this as an error
   but rather short changed the player. It is now fixed.

8) Computer AI handling of Military losses in Civil War was hosed.  It is now
   fixed.

9) During the Ship Maintenance AI phase, if a nation could not support all of
   it's ships due to lack of treasury, the game was restoring certain variables
   at inappropriate times and in general botched it's attempt to figure things
   out.  Occasionally a token error would be generated.  This is now fixed.

10)If you attempted to Start A New Game from within a running game more than a
   certain number of times, how many depends on the amount of memory your
   machine has, the game would crash.  This is now fixed.

11)Fixed another "Exceeded valid moves in XXXXX" caused by the overpopulation
   reduction code.

12)Ran across an internal AI flag concerning roadbuilding that was not getting
   set immediately after a Restore Game.  Effect - AI was unaware of anyone
   having roadbuilding for one round.  FIXED.

13)Scoring bug - The Final Standings score did not properly reflect that the
   winner had moved onto the Finished marker on the AST chart. FIXED.

14)If the AI had 2 ships in one territory, it might want to ship all of the
   tokens out on the first ship then it would ship out again all the tokens on
   the second ship resulting in a Token Error.  FIXED.

1.1 PBEM Fixes
--------------

1) PBEM Ship Movement bug FIXED.  Caused by player moving a ship with 1 MP
   left, thus having no MP's left after moving, into a territory with ships
   that have MP's left. When the player pressed the NEXT SHIP button to move
   the ships with MPs left, the ship change was not recorded and the PBEM
   playback code attempted to move the first ship causing the movement error.

2) Re: Phantom Italy Civ buys.  If you started a PBEM game immediately
   executing advcivil.bat, this cannot happen.  However it might be possible
   for this to occur if you started a PBEM game after stopping a game in
   progress at the point where a nation had bought some civ tools.  The
   variable AcquiredCnt was not reset at the start of a new game and this
   scenario is the only one that I can think of to explain how the variable
   could have non-zero data in it.  I now reset AcquiredCnt at the start of
   any game.

3) If someone bought a trade good, the treasury never was updated to reflect
   this. FIXED.

4) If some, not all, nations acquired Civ Tools, the stopping point to send
   files was different for acquire vs non-acquire nations.  This could cause
   all sorts of problems.  FIXED.

5) PBEM Tax Revolt problem.  If a nation with coinage could avoid a tax revolt
   by lowering its tax rate, the other nations would assume that it did not
   and a tax revolt was reported to them.  This would result in the gray
   screen of death - City Token Error.  This is now FIXED.

6) On the Tool Acquisition Wrapup screen, calamities might show up on the
   Goods Used side.  A temp variable wasn't being cleared before use.  The
   effect is actually benign.  FIXED.

7) If trading was possible(everyone had enough goods) AND no one decided to
   make any offers AND the previous round trading did occur, the game would
   put up a fictitious Trade Wrapup screen. FIXED.



1.01
----

1)  Win 95 & building cities resulted in negative tokens.  Surprisingly this
    bug only manifested itself when the game is run in a DOS box under Win 95
    or Win 3.1.

2)  If the game detected that you had moved all of your tokens and ships,
    the code would tell you to press the FINISHED button.  If you had
    tokens on board ships at that time, they would vanish from the game.
    This bug has been fixed.  You will no longer get the direction to
    press FINISHED until all ships are also empty.

3)  The cost of Roadbuilding was erroneously coded as 160 instead of 140.
    (I'll blame this one on a misprint on the back cover of the original
    Advanced Civilization manual).

4)  If the beneficiary of a civil war could not completely takeover all
    of the tokens of the remaining faction, the game could lockup.  This
    is now fixed.

5)  Grain cards used for Famine relief were not being properly released
    for use in the next round.

6)  A spinner has been added to the Barbarian Ravaging and Plundering
    Committee display to reassure folks that the game hasn't locked up.

7)  Fixed a bug when ships were not maintained.  Under certain circumstances
    a Ship Error could be generated.

8)  Reported bug with link to/from North Aquitania was erroneous.  The problem
    is that the hot spot for North Aquitania is on the small side.  I have
    modified the map so that the hot spots for all the dual coasted territories
    are delineated by light gray dotted lines.

9)  During a Computer buy of Tools, if there were more credits available then
    were needed to buy a tool, the excess credits would be improperly used
    to buy other tools.  This is now fixed.

10) During Civil War, if the second faction was wiped out by military losses,
    the game still required you to take additional losses and you were
    essentially hung at that point.  This has been fixed.

11) On the Monotheism Conversion screen, the nation buttons would only
    momentarily show other nations inventory.  This has been fixed.

12) The appearance of the Barbarian Ravaging and Plundering Committee would
    cause future calamity sounds to loop. Fixed.

13) During conflict resolution, if 2 or more humans are playing, the GOODS
    button will now be disabled.  In this phase of the game it is impossible
    to know whose goods should be displayed.

14) Under certain conditions, during Famine, Epidemic or Flood, the AI might
    decide to reduce more cities than it has available to reduce. Fixed.