The Devil's Doorknob BBS Capture (1996-2003)

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Text File | 1991-07-16 | 16KB | 358 lines

Trade Wars 2002 The story continues... by Gary A. Martin and Mary Ann Martin, #1 & #2 at Many thanks also to Drew Markham, a.k.a. Videon Castle RavenLoft @9354, (913)842-0300 Metropolis, (10 lines) (913)832-0041 Welcome! Right now you're probably dying to configure this program and get it running. Before I tell about that, I just want to put a plug in here. Trade Wars 2002 is the result of over 5 years of game testing and development. The version you have in your hands is 1.00, the first *complete* release of this project. It is one of the most complex games in the BBS world at this time. You probably can guess about the amount of development time that went into this game. Install and run this game for a few weeks and if you agree that it is decent and want to keep it, you will need to register with us. The registration fee is very small, just $15. Being registered will keep you in touch with further development of the game and all subsequent releases of Trade Wars 2002 will be free of charge to you. This un-registered version is almost fully functional. There are four options that do not work: You cannot edit any values in the Trade Wars Sysop's editor, Players cannot buy any of the other shiptypes in the game, and Players cannot build or enter Citadels on planets. Photon Missiles cannot be purchased. The rest of the game works 100% Try it, I think you'll agree that our registration fee is cheap for what you get! We accept Visa, Mastercard and US funds drawn on a US bank. No foreign funds please. To register, send $15 (US) in check or money order to: Martech Software, Inc. 134 Indian Ave Lawrence, Kansas 66046 You will find an accompanying file on your harddisk called TWORDER.FRM, please use this to send in your order as it will speed things up. Please allow 3-6 weeks for your registration code to reach you by return mail. We will not transmit registration codes through the net. And we will not call with your codes. We have very little time to work on the game as it is. Also, US Postal Priority Mail doesn't seem to be any faster than regular mail! We get registrations from either cost in 3-4 days. Please include your BBS name, type and number as well as your address on the included form TWORDER.FRM. ---------------- Now on to the installation! ---------------- B E F O R E you do anything else! Copy the distribution archive 2002V100.EXE to a nice safe place. The installation process will delete the one from out of the BBS dir to save system space. It is of VITAL importance that Trade Wars can find your DOOR Interface file along the PATH of your BBS PC. Type PATH at the DOS prompt. If you do not see your Main BBS directory in the resulting display, run, don't walk and put the BBS dir in your PATH= statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT You will find that this has affected other utilities and doors without your knowing it. Putting the BBS dir in your PATH may solve problems you were having with other programs too! Step 1: ERASE ALL FILES IN THE TRADEWAR SUBDIR IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY RUNNING Trade Wars 2001! Make sure and erase every file in the TRADEWAR subdirectory (only if you have TW2001). Step 2: Run 2002V100.EXE and it will create the installation package for you. Put all three executable archives TWDATA.EXE, TWSUPP.EXE and TWPGM.EXE and the batch file TWINSTAL.BAT in your main BBS directory. Leave the TW2002.BAT, TEDIT.BAT and EXTERN.BAT files in your main BBS directory as well. These batch files are what you will call in order to run the game. Step 3: Run the batch file. (TWINSTAL.BAT) It will unzip everything into a directory it will make called TRADEWAR (or will use the old dir). If you were running Trade Wars 2001, it will get rid of any left over files from that system. If you want to run two versions of the game, make another subdirectory under your main BBS directory and copy EVERYTHING thats in your TRADEWAR subdirectory. You will then need to make copies of your TW2002.BAT file (and TEDIT and EXTERN) that use the appropriate subdirectory. ************************************************************************* U P G R A D I N G T W 2 0 0 2 Use the same procedure listed above (with the exception of Step1, do not erase your TRADEWAR subdirectory) if you only want to upgrade to a new release of TW2002. The batch file will check to see if you have TW2002 already installed and WILL NOT recreate the data base in that case. If you want to reroll the game, you will have to run BIGBANG yourself. ************************************************************************* Please NOTE!!! During a first time initialization, the BigBang Universe Creator must be run. This process can take a while on slower machines. For example: Creating the Universe on a 10mhz XT w/ 42ms drive : 30-40 minutes! " " " 20mhz 386 w/ 22ms drive: 7.5 minutes. A LARGE portion of the Trade Wars 2002 Universe is contained in the External maintenance program called EXTERN.EXE This program must be run once a day. It does NOT support the modem so it should not be run as a logon event for users. (it also gives out info that users shouldn't see). Run it in your nightly maintenance batch file. We have noticed that some other door's external maintenance files screw up the environment so that EXTERN will not function correctly. We recommend that you put EXTERN.EXE *FIRST* in your nightly batch file. Thats all there is to it. If you are in the WWIVnet and are interested, feel free to add the following message board to your system if you do not already have it: Subboard 29354, Trade Wars 2002 discussion board. We are the host at 9354. This message board is for reporting of bugs, general advice on playing the game, and for notification of new releases. Just let (me) 1@9354 know you want to add the message base. ------ Running TW2002 on Your BBS ------ The main program, TW2002 is executed with a series of command line switches that tell the program about the setup its running under. Most important is the BBS type, it tells the program what type of interface file to read to get information about the user wanting to run the game. In addition to the TW2002 executable, the editor (TEDIT.EXE) and the External, Nightly maintenance program (EXTERN.EXE) both have to be run with the command line switch to indicate the BBS type in use. For example, running the system on WWIV, you would call the programs as follows: TW2002 -WWIV (Main Game) TEDIT -WWIV (Sysop Editor) EXTERN -WWIV (Maint) ╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ Trade Wars 2002 supports many different BBS interchange file formats. ║ ║ Select one from the following list for YOUR BBS! ║ ║ ║ ║ BBS Name Interface File Name Command line switch ║ ║ ------------------- ---------------------- ------------------- ║ ║ World War IV CHAIN.TXT -WWIV ║ ║ Generic System DOOR.SYS -DOOR ║ ║ QuickBBS DORINFO1.DEF -QBBS ║ ║ PcBoard DOOR.SYS -DOOR ║ ║ R.B.B.S. DORINFO1.DEF -RBBS ║ ║ Phoenix BBS INFO.BBS -PHNX ║ ║ RyBBS CURRUSER.BBS -RYBS ║ ║ Wildcat CALLINFO.BBS -WILD ║ ║ TGP // CHAIN.TXT -WWIV ║ ║ Teleguard CHAIN.TXT -WWIV ║ ║ Spitfire DOOR.SYS -DOOR ║ ║ Local Mode, no BBS -LOCL ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Some additional command line switches are available at this time: \NOLOG or \nolog This option shuts off writing to the Sysop's Log \NOCOM or \nocom This option disables the Async com routines and makes the game run in a strictly generic I/O mode. Please note!!! TW2002 is designed to run in a small amount of memory. This system will work in 200K of RAM! WWIV Sysops do NOT need to shrink the BBS to run this system (if enough memory is available). This system is delivered in an "as-is" basis. We do not guarantee that this system will work on your BBS. Any problems with your system, lost data or corrupted files are your problems to solve. As distributed this package will work fine on a PC-compatible running WWIV or QBBS. If your dog gets sick, you lose your job or one of your users gets into a gunfight over this game with you, it is still your responsibility. We *ARE* glad to try and help if you are having problems getting this system installed on your board. Good luck trading and watch out for the Ferrengi! Gary A. Martin, #1 at 9354, and Castle RavenLoft (913)842-0300 Mary Ann Martin, #2 at 9354. AutoSysop Validation, HST 14.4 You can also reach us on our Multiine system, Metropolis - (913)832-0041 Common Technical Problems and answers: ╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ W W I V S Y S O P S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ║ ║ ║ ║ Make sure that Use_Dos_Interrupts is set to NO for ║ ║ your Chainedit entry of TW2002. YOU MUST SET THIS ║ ║ off! It's very important. Otherwise you will see ║ ║ double characters remotely and it can lock up your ║ ║ system!!!!!!!!!!! ║ ╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Q: Trade Wars seems to run fine in Local mode, but goes crazy for the remote callers? A: TW2002 handles its own I/O. Make sure that you are NOT using some other utility program or the BBS itself to handle the Modem I/O. A program such as Gateway is not needed with TW2002. Also, make sure you are using the door mode on your BBS that removes the BBS from memory. This is the safest setting. Q: No matter who runs the game, it always comes up as the same player or as me! (the sysop) what is happening? A: TW2002 looks for your Door Interface file along the PATH. If you have another copy of your Door Interface file elsewhere on your PC, it is finding THAT copy before finding the newly created one in your BBS dir. Also make sure that your BBS dir is in your PATH= statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (see DOS Manual for help on setting this up) Q: Running TW2002 on WWIV, remote callers get double characters? A: Under WWIV's Chainedit, you have Use Dos Interrupts set to "Yes". Turn that setting off as you are asking both the BBS and Trade Wars to transmit characters to the remote user. Q: When I run TW2002 I keep getting error codes 002 or 103.? Its never worked since I got it. A: You never ran the TWINSTAL.BAT file when you first got the archive. If you do not run this, then the appropriate data files were not created. Borland Turbo Pascal Error Messages you can get with TW2002: Number Meaning With regards to TW2002 ------ ----------------------- ------------------------------------------- 2 File not found You are missing a file. 3 Path not found You are not using the batch files we included. 4 Too many open files Increase your FILES= statement in your CONFIG.SYS We recommend about 25. 5 File access denied Either a file has been set to read only, a directory is full, a RENAME tried to rename to an existing file name or a file is not open. 6 Invalid File Handle Your file handles have become corrupted, DOS err. 100 Disk Read Error An attempt was made to read past the end of a file most often. Something is corrupted in the record pointers. 101 Disk Write Error Generall an indication of a full hard disk. 103 File Not Open File is closed when it shouldn't have been. 104 File Not Open for Input Text file is closed when it shouldn't have been. 105 File Not Open for Output " " " " " " " 106 Invalid Numeric Format Generally this is only caused when reading a BBS interface file (that has the user's info). It happens when TW2002 is trying to read a numeric value from an interface text file and there isn't a valid number in the file. Errors 150 through 162 indicate various HARDWARE failures. If you're getting these, then something is wrong with your PC and I can't be of much help there. Some commone ones are: 152 Drive not ready Controller problem or drive not spinning 154 CRC error in data Scrogged disk (real technical eh? (grin)) 156 Disk Seek error Head problem or bad controller 157 Unknown media type Did you just change to DOS 4.0 or 5.0??? 158 Sector not found Head problem or bad controller 159 Printer out of paper Hit Control P! Disable printer logging. 160 Device write fault Disk problem 161 Device read fault Disk problem 162 Hardware Failure "Generic" nasty, nasty problem. Fatal errors generally indicate a problem that must be fixed before you can continue to run the game. 200 Division by zero Now I hope you cannot make one of these happen as I check before every division to make sure it DOESN'T happen, but you it might. 201 Range Check Error Array index out of range. 202 Stack Overflow NOT ENOUGH MEMORY for the stack! Type @ while at the main menu in TW2002 and it will tell you how much memory you have left with the game running. If you're under 5K, then you're in trouble. 203 Heap overflow error Same as 202. 204 Invalid Pointer Op. Can be caused the same as 202. 205 Floating point overflow Most likely someone has used the editor and put an insane amount of credits in a credits field somewhere. YOU CANNOT make enough money in TW2002 to cause this with normal play. 207 Invalid Floating point You have a real thats trying to be converted to a Operation Long int and its greater than 2 billion. 209 Overlay File read error TW2002 had a problem getting an overlay from the TW2002.OVR file. If you're not using EMS, then the .OVR file is missing or is setting on a bad sector on your harddisk. If you are running EMS then you have a bad memory chip! (yak) Well this covers a large portion of the technical support for TW2002. If you have further questions, contact us at Martech Software via one of our BBSes.