Kingdoms History File - from then to now! 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.18 � � Public Release - October 15th, 1996 � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� Following are the changes incorporated in Kingdoms version 2.18, the previous public release being Kingdoms 2.17 Sysops - Please see readme.!!! for installation information for this release. Kingdoms 2.18 includes a full documentation update in the distribution archive, covering all features in the game up to and including this release. Changes affecting Players 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� * In the Realms>Food Production>Distribute Food (to Remote) Option : If you chose not to send food to the default realm and pressed cr without selecting an alternative realm, the game would terminate (hang) with a 'bad record number' error. Fixed. If this happens, the original value is now restored. * A D>eliver Note option has been added to the Courier Guild. This allows the player to send an online (immediate) message to another player who is in the game at the same time. If both (or more) players are in this option at the same time, they effectively enter a basic 'chat' facility. While in D>eliver note, a on a blank line will drop the player back to the Courier Guild menu. The '~' (tilde) character is special while D>elivering Notes. If used as the first character on the line, the second character will allow the player to perform special functions including : ~w - display who is in the game as well as you. ~c - choose another player to chat with. Points to note regarding this facility : - It IS a little rudimentary. This is a game, NOT a chat facility! :) - You can only chat to one other player at any one time. - Up to 99 simultaneous one-to-one conversations are supported. * A 'B>rowse Agents' option is now available in the Realms>Agent menu. This will display any Agents you currently have in the entire Kingdoms network. In addition to location and level, basic stats are provided when Browsing your Agents. You no longer have to write down and/or remember where in the Realms you created those Agents :). This information is forwarded to you from any and all Agents each time the remote realm performs it's maintenance routines, which should be once each 24 hr period. You do not have to Request an Agent status to make this happen - it occurs automatically to ensure the latest core statistics are always available to you from your Agents. The Request Status option will still provide the normal extended summary of your Agent(s) through the Courier Guild messages. * As has always been the case, an Agent cannot invade another player on the same realm as the Agent resides. Such orders were not being properly checked however and in some instances, the orders were being sent. When the orders reached the remote realm they were being detected (properly) as invalid however and the invading forces were lost. This caused some confusion, not to mention annoyance at players forces 'disappearing' after being sent, for the originating player. Kingdoms now checks all these conditions properly at the point of issuing the orders and will not permit the player/invasion to proceed. * An error in the scoring routines was resulting in some players (who may actually be quite strong) having negative scores. Fixed. Changes affecting Sysops 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 * Katnet (Zone 16) added to the domain list recognised by Kingdoms * 2.17 contained a bug that systems caused it to crash on systems using COM3 or COM4 or non standard IRQ's. I am not acutally sure which of these caused the error as I was unable to reproduce it, but the problem is fixed :-). The crash occured when a remote player entered the game, though Kingdoms would work fine on a local logon. * Fixed a bug in outbound processing that was disallowing recons requests to pass through a hub to a downlink. The result was that recons were not always being returned for certain realms, depending on the recon response dates for intervening realms. Fixed. * Improved the intelligence of the Inbound Net manager when encountering an existing player when another player tries to remotely create a castle on the Realm. KNetIn now makes the distinction between a local player and an Agent when returning the "Can't create a Castle on this Realm" message and will inform the player who tried to build the castle of which type (Local or Agent) was found. * Kingdoms uses the Julian format (ccyyddd) in all calcualtions regarding dates and displays the Julian date in several places during processing for informational purposes. Several Sysops requested an easy way to know what the current Julian date was and this has been provided. The system date and Julian day are now displayed at the bottom of the Manager screen at all times. * Hold mail was not working properly. Ie, if you had a system marked with a mail type of 'Hold' in the Manager, the .MSG files did not have the Hold attribute properly set. Fixed. Changes affecting Coordinators 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 * Realms which had been 'deleted' were still showing up in the Net Statistics option in the Manager, thus allowing recon requests to still be sent to those Realms. Fixed. End of Update Information - Kingdoms v2.18. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.17 - Public Release September 1st, 1996 � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� Changes affecting Players 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� * Transferring gold in the Vault would crash or send the gold to the wrong player on occasion. Fixed. * The istribute Food (to Remote Realms) option in the Food Production menu has been considerably improved : - When you choose to this option, figures are now displayed along with the istribute menu option showing your current settings, ie, how much you're sending and where you're sending it to. This makes it a lot easier to use as the player no longer has to do a ummary first and remember these settings before distributing food. - Some of the text in this area has been tidied up and the menu sequence changed so the player isn't thrown right back to the Food Production menu on completion of an action. This was a little confusing for some people. - When you choose to istribute food from this menu, Kingdoms used to assume you wanted to send it to your default realm. The game now asks if you want to send it to the default by pressing 'y' or . If you don't, you may now select from a list of Realms rather than having to go back and change your default just to get food distributed. - The number of Land Titles held by the player are now displayed along- side the numer of rations on the Food Production menu. Saves referring to the Summary for this basic information. - When selecting an Amount of food to send in this menu, the current amount is now provided as the default value. Pressing simply keeps that value now. Prior to this release, no default was provided and the player had to retype the current amount if no change was desired. used to set the amount to zero, which was quite annoying. * Previously, if you left a player you had killed a message, there was no pause after saving or quitting the message, so the player recieved no confirmation of the action taken. A pause is now in place to confirm a message save or cancel after doing so. * Prior to this release, Kingdoms wasn't very smart when encountering missing files for display such as news, menus and recon scoreboards. If an expected file did not exist, Kingdoms just crashed and left the player hanging. With v2.17, it now verifies the existence of any file it tries to display, informing the player with a descriptive "'Filename.ext' not found, please inform the Sysop.' message and allowing the player to continue without trying to display the file and crashing. * A bug a lot of people got to enjoy for a while. If a player used the Vault to transfer gold to another player and entered a negative amount, the player would actually be given that amount of gold as a positive amount and the recipient would recieve a debt of that amount. Obviously, this is an undesirable outcome for the recipient as an amount of 99 million is the transfer limit. :-) Fixed. * At the request of numerous players, the tastics option has been removed from the fight options and a statistics line is now displayed along with the options and fight text. This applies both in the Proving Grounds and in the Colloseum. * I have removed low intensity blue from several display points and made them high intensity instead. Some people with old and/or dim monitors couldn't see the text displayed in that color without getting about 2cm away from the screen :-) * Please note * This version was also to include the facility for players to display the realms on which their agents reside for ease of reference and communication with those agents. Due to the problem described below regarding outbound processing however, I wanted to get this release out asap. As the agent realm display is going to take a bit of work, I have put off that facility for the next release, 2.18. Apologies to those who were hanging out for it in 2.17! Changes affecting Sysops 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 * The information created by Outbound processing (KNetOut) was very verbose. Particularly for Realms which exchanged mail with a lot of other systems, this meant very long KNET.LOG files. You might, for example, be used to seeing something like ... Transit Destination 1:23/5 - Fractured Files. Updating existing outbound F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001005.01Y Transit Destination 1:23/6 - Astro's World. Updating existing outbound F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001006.01M ... in your KNET.LOG, each set of two lines repeated over and over if there were many transits going out. By default, KNetOut now produces only summary information in KNET.LOG. It will list, for each outbound file, the number of transits tossed to it, rather than chew up two log lines for every transit. A long KNetOut run might therefore produce ... ��� KNETOUT v2.17 ��� LogDate 08-21-1996 at 01:06:06. (Parms - None) Redirected 0 messages from the local message base. Outbounds Updated this run : F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001007.01M : 4 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001004.01C : 2 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001006.01M : 35 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001005.01Y : 79 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001003.01B : 0 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001008.01J : 2 time(s). F:\DOORS\KING\OUT\KN001002.01G : 2 time(s). ; ��� KNETOUT ended normally - 08-21-1996 at 01:06:19. ... that, rather than the 252 lines it would generate in previous releases. This also has the advantage of drastically speeding up outbound processing overall as all this log information is no longer written. Please note also the (Parms - None) at the end of the log start line. Parameters used when running KNetOut are now included in the log for informational purposes. If, for example, KNetOut was running in a Squish/Blinkey environment, that line would look like ... ��� KNETOUT v2.17 ��� LogDate 08-21-1996 at 01:06:06. (Parms - /SB) The long log format can still be produced through use of the /F parameter when running KNetOut. (F stands for Full Log). This format is still available for the Sysop to see in detail what is going where, to see what redirections are taking place for informational purposes or to assist if required for network problem resolution. * /F has been added to the help screen for KNetOut and a prompt added when KNetOut exits as a reminder that a help screen is available. * Improved the recon salvaging process. It is now quite unlikely that cannot corrent a recon file that has become corrupt during transfer for some reason. * When sorting the Realm Scoreboards a spinning line is now used to indicate activity rather than progressive dots. This just saves some screen space so more fits on the page rather than scrolling off. * Found a major problem with outbound processing thanks Peter Connerty of MAX in SA, Australia. It was related to processing outbounds on a system with over 10 outbound files waiting in the outbound directory when it (KNetOut) ran. This casued quite an interesting display of ANSI graphic characters to appear on the console which would scroll off to oblivion for a while then hang the task or, if you tried it another time or two (probably to enjoy the effect :-)), hang the entire machine and require a hardware reset to recover from. I believe this is also the likely reason the Battlenet League (69) was experiencing the occasional corrupt recon to float through the system and cause chaos, though I have been unable to duplicate that error. Fixed. Kingdoms now supports up to and including 200 outbound nodes/files defined/existing on any realm(s) in a network. * Thanks to Stewart Gay on the Warehouse BBS in San Antonio, Tx, a bug regarding the QMail tosser in a Blinkey environment has been fixed. QMail is quite careful when examining what mail it's going to toss and was identifying Kingdoms .MSG files as 'grunged', or invalid. Investigation revealed the date format in Kingdoms .MSG files was indeed not according to expected standard, though the vast majority of mail systems (eg, FrontDoor) didn't seem to mind the variation. Fixed & tested fine under QMail now. Changes affecting Coordinators 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 * Fixed a nasty bug in the bowels of redirection processing. Thanks Rob Wilson on Restless BBS in NSW, Australia, for the files that let me track THIS one down! It occured if a coordinator deleted a node & reactivated it in the same Manager session and that node was greater than the 10th relative record in the Index file. Yeah - it took me a while to work this one out!. If all these conditions were satisfied, knetout out would do some really weird things. Garbage would be written to a large proportion of the KNET.LOG file and would occasionally scroll across the screen as well. Fixed. End of Update Information - Kingdoms v2.17. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.16 - Public Release August 3rd, 1996. � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Changes affecting Players 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� - Indexed Player Documentation is now available online from the isc menu. - The dates displayed in Kingdoms itself (ie, in the game, not those in the various utilities which support Kingdoms) were being shown as one day in the future - eg, the 'Soldiers last fed' date. Fixed. - In the Miscellaneous menu, there is now an option for upport and contact information. Amongst other things, this will give you the address of the Kingdoms support page on the Internet! - If a player WIMPed out while raiding and encountering a monster in a Castle room, both that player and the player being raided would effectively be locked out of the game as the 'In Combat' flag was not being reset in this particular situation. Fixed. - If a player has exceeded WIMPouts, they are (and were) no longer permitted to Prove in the game. A message wasn't being provided however - the player was just being put back to the main menu which was a little confusing. An appropriate message is now issued if this happens. - When soldiers attacked from a remote realm, the strength of the force was not given, only the originator of the attack in a message from the Castle defensives. The number of enemy soldiers are now also included in the message information. - In some of the fight options, ANSI bleeds were still evident if the person being attacked had background colors set in their handle. I _think_ I have them all fixed now! - In the same way as monster levels are retained between fights in the colloseum, Player names are now retained between Proves and Raids in the game. As always, typing any character will erase the old name to make way for a new, so there is no need for the player to backspace over the name provided if he/she wants to attack/select someone else. - If a player on one realm happened to have the same name as a player on another realm, it was possible for either player to use the Agent options to request the complete status of the other player. It would work for both. Knetin now checks castle type (local or agent) after a user name is verified against a remote request to ensure an agent is being reported, not a local user. - Gold earned when defeating monsters has doubled for all monsters. - Special attack damage by high level monsters has doubled for all monsters. - UNDERCOVER (Covert) OPERATIONS are now provided for Agents. This is a really great new feature for Players! In the Agent menu, there is now the option for 'Undercover Operations'. Selecting this option will allow you to send an undercover operative to spy on any other player on the Agent's Realm. Several operatives can be chosen from the Thieves Guild, the cost of each being a good indication of their chance of success. In addition to the skill of the operative hired, the following aspects of the player who is the target for the operation will affect the operatives chances for success : 1. The number and strength of Monsters defending castle rooms. It is quite possible for an Operative to be eaten! 2. The number of Soldiers owned by the target player. The more soldiers there are, the harder it will be to get into the Castle undetected. 3. The level of the target player him or her self. A high level player is assumed to be that much more 'on the ball!'. 4. When it comes down to it, some luck is required to make it as well :-). Should an operative be caught, he will be eaten or hung, depending on who or what it is that captures him! In this case, the target player WILL be informed by Castle Security of the attempted infiltration. If an operative is successful however, it means he has escaped completely undetected and no indication will be available to the target to show that the operative has 'visited' at all. The report returned by a successful operative is a complete listing of statistics of the target player showing strengths, weaknesses, holdings etc. It is the same data that is provided by an Agent Query Status report, thus it is quite comprehensive! This facility adds quite a dimension to the game, particularly to the use and value of Agents. If a player plans to attack another Realm, it is advisable first (though not, of course, necessary!) to have an Agent on that Realm to supply Intelligence reports on the other players there. As an example, it would be exceedingly handy to know the troop deployment (and strengths) of soldiers on an enemy Kingdom before deciding where best to attack that person, would it not? :-) - Page pausing is now honored properly in Recon player lists/displays. - Until now, selecting a local player from a list was done by string and/or name, whereas selecting a player from a remote (recon) list was done by number. This was confusing and worse, annoying, as players had to remember where they were to respond properly to the prompt provided. ALL selections are now based on a name, or a string within a name, for both local and remote player selection. - Player lists, both local and realm based, no longer show the player numbers. Numbers are not used anymore as all searches are now standardised on string based selection making the number display redundant (and confusing for some!). - If you selected the Coordinator Realm as your default Kingdom for InterBBS options, your default would be ignored and you'd have to keep selecting it when you choose Realm options in future. Fixed. - Score calculation ratified. Land, Food, Soldier weapons and armor are now taken into the calculation. Personal weapons and armor have more weight when calculating scores and gold in hand/vault less as it is a far more 'risky', and thus less valuable, asset. - In a player selection list, the name of the player online (ie, the one viewing the list) is in low intensity to differentiate it from the other names. This makes it easier to pick yourself out of a list. Changes affecting Sysops 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 - Pending nodes weren't being reported correctly in verify information. Fixed. - Compression is now supported on and and all packets to outbound nodes. To set this for any outbound, simply enter the Manager, Network, Preferences option (which is new in this release) and select the archiver you wish to use for any outbound nodes. To work, the archiver you select must be available to Kingdoms in the current directory or somewhere on the path. ZIP, ARJ and RAR compression formats are supported. It is NOT necessary for two nodes who are communicating with compressed packets to specify the same archiver. During INBOUND processing, Kingdoms scans and will detect the compression type being used in a Kingdoms game packet directly from the archived file. KNetin will decompress the archive accordingly then check it to see if it is to be processed. If not (eg, it is an inbound but for another netid) it will simply restore the original archive and continue on to the next, assuming it finds another inbound. During OUTBOUND processing, Kingdoms identifies the desination for each outbound file and will pack it according to the Manager specified compression type. Compression type can also be changed on the fly, regardless of whether there is a compressed outbound file already waiting to be sent in the outbound directory. In the same fashion as knetin, knetout will detect the compression type in existing outbound files and use that type when decompressing them for addition of data in a later run of knetout. Should the type change midstream, Kingdoms will therefore make the change on the fly without a difficulty. Systems using 2.16 can still (obviously!) communicate with systems running a prior release but if you are doing so, you shoud NOT turn compression on for a system which is running a prior release. A system running earlier than release 2.16 will simply not understand the compressed file and will not process the data in it unless the Sysop manually decompresses the inbound files. - Created the 'Preferences' option under 'Network' in the Manager. This brings together all the options available for outbound nodes into one screen making the whole process of choosing how you want to communicate with outbound nodes a lot clearer. When on this panel, the mail type, crash status and compression formats for each outbound can be specified using the appropriate function keys to toggle through the options. As crashmail is now selectable on this screen for any outbound, the toggle has been removed from the 'Your Routing' panel. - Crash status set on nodes sometimes lost any values entered by the Sysop previously. Fixed. Moved to Preferences panel. - Some problems have been experienced in the Battlenet League (netid 69) with a bad recon record getting into the system and floating around. When maintenance processed it to generate the Realm Scoreboards, it crashed or hung on some systems. Maintenance now verifies the contents of Recon files being processed and, if it finds problems or errors in them, will attempt to salvage the other (correct) data in them. If it cannot (though it should ... I have tested it using a few examples of a bad recon from the Bnet League and it completely resolves the error and salvages the valid recon data perfectly in each instance), it will simply mark the realm as having 'No Players' and request another recon update in due course. - The routine that generates the Realm Scoreboards has been completely re-written. They are now much more efficient and will sort the scoreboard in about 1/2 the time. Progressive dots are now provided during the processing to ensure the Sysop that 'something' is happening rather than have the machine just 'sit' there while sorting takes place. Several hundred players can still take a short while to sort on disk. - The format of .MSG files created as file attaches has been changed. Prior to this release, .MSG files were a standard 250 chars. This files are now created as variable length depending on the information in them. Before, extra characters were being set to nulls which I believe was causing the pmail processor on some sites to have problems with them. In this file, dates are now set without the century and a full 6 digit time field is supplied, whereas only hh:mm was recorded before. I've made these changes after examining the .MSG files created by three other InterBBS game systems and comparing the differences between those and the ones created by Kingdoms. Kingdoms now follows the other formats which seem to be standard amongst themselves, even though I created the Kingdoms .MSG formats directly from the Fidonet Technical Standards Committee definition I obtained. Sigh. I am hoping the date/time being supplied in the new format will fix the date problems being experienced on some systems as I have been completely unable to duplicate the problem even though I've gone to the extent of configuring complete machines now (Yeah - Win 95 & all (sigh :-)) to have a test environment as close as possible to a site where the problem is reported to be happening. If someone could let me know if the problem of the date being greater than it should be is solved (or not), I'd greatly appreciate it! - The Squish/Blinkey code to mark a kill/sent message wasn't being set properly when the /SB parm was used. Fixed. - A new parameter is available in the Manager, Other options : Days to keep log data. If set to a value above zero, the default being 10, Maintenance will automatically remove data from the logs which is older than that number of days, keeping the logs a manageable size. A zero value will never trim the log files. The logs affected include KNET.LOG, KMNT.LOG, KERR.LOG and KDOM.LOG. The Coordinator log, KCOORD.LOG is never trimmed automatically. - Considerable (and unnecessary) network traffic was being generated due to multiple recon requests arriving at any given node. Particularly for those who call STD or International to exchange Kingdoms data, this was very undesirable. I have done a lot of work to see this fixed! Both Kingdoms Inbound and Outbound processing now maintain a complete record of past Recon requests and responses and will refer to that data when processing inbound or outbound Recon requests from this point on. Should Knetout come across a recon request for forwarding to a realm who has already had a recon sent on the same day, Knetout will ignore that (and all subsequent) request until the date changes. This applies whether or not the previous request was made in the same or a different processing run on Knetout - only the day is pertinent. Should Knetin recieve a request from a realm for a recon it has already responded to on the same day, it will not send another response on that day, regardless of how many requests it recieves. This will also solve recon request 'build-ups' if a link goes down somewhere for a few days and requests pile up. Only one will be acknowledged by Kingdoms. As a side-benefit, removing duplicate recons from the network should also get rid of the annoying repeats in the news files for players telling them that 'A new recon has arrived from RealmName'. The 'Zero Net Times' option in the Manager will reset these data should you wish to have all recons honored in the next processing runs of Knetin and Knetout. - To support many of the features above, file format changes and updates were required. A conversion utility, 215to216.exe, is provided with the distribution archive to do the necessary updates. By using the conversion utility a game reset is NOT required to install Kingdoms v2.16. End of Update Information - Kingdoms v2.16. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.15 - Public Release July 3rd, 1996. � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Changes affecting Players 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� - Color wasn't resetting properly in the scoreboard (local and realm) displays if a player had a background color set in their name. Fixed. - Kingdoms wasn't honoring the 'n' in response to a page length pause with (y/n) to continue. It does now. - If a player dropped carrier at the logon screen to Kingdoms, the game would abnormally terminate with a 'Bad Record Number' error and lock out the player. Fixed. This would also happen if a user entered Kingdoms without enough time left to play - 3 mins minimum. - Agent experience training changed : - now requires a five day period between each level gain. additional exp transferred will be lost - the Agent can't absorb it. - Previously, only character experience was limited in unregistered versions of Kingdoms. Now Agents are also restricted in the same manner. An Agent is no longer permitted to achieve a level greater than level 10, if the Player's BBS (NOT the Agents' BBS!) is running an unregistered version of Kingdoms. - When in their Vaults, players now have the option to Transfer Gold to any other player on the local Realm. To effect a transfer, you must withdraw Gold from your Vault and/or have it in hand. - In the Courier Guild when a player sends a missive, several selections are required to dictate who the missive is for, and from whom (the player or a player's Agent). When message text was entered, a few players were apparently forgetting on occasion who the message was for! Immediately before giving the player the message editor, Kingdoms now displays the destination and addressee of the message as a reminder & confirmation. - Maximum missive length has been increased to 15 lines per missive as compared to 10 lines max in previous releases. - At points in Kingdoms where a player was required to identify another player, such as when sending missives, proving, raiding, etc, the means of selecting the other player was not consistent. In some options, a user number was required, in others a name. All these prompts have been standardised to accept a player's name, or string which matches some part of a player's name, upon which a search will be conducted for the desired other player. This also eliminates the problem some people were having where they got used to typing in a number for someone and finding they're suddenly sending to or attacking the wrong person if maintenance runs and compresses the user file and changes the user number(s) they're used to using. Some additional checking has been built into this selection also : - The player him or herself will be ignored when searching for a player name or string. This means the player doesn't have to keep saying o to his or her own name during selection of a name. - Deleted players (deleted by the Sysop or maintenance routines) will no longer appear as selectable players, only to be told by Kingdoms when such a player was selected that the player does not exist! That caused a little confusion! :-) - Gold in hand is now checked before ealing in the Temple of Lathander. This gets rid of the annoying loop that happens if the player doesn't have any gold in hand, ie, can't afford the healing. - Net Statistics display in the Realms options now honors page length pausing where needed. Aligned the display properly also. For player information, the network id of the game currently being played is now displayed in the heading of the Net Statistics. - The Food production summary display was not correctly displaying production status, though the correct figures were being displayed in the Increase/Decrease production option. This amounted to some confusion as it appeared to players that production increases/decreases were not being actioned by Kingdoms in the summary information. Fixed. - The opening ANSI screen wasn't displaying the shield & sword graphic properly on remote terminals. Fixed. - Added another opening ANSI display for a little variety! - Fixed a bug in Food Production orders on local and remote realms. In some instances, changes to food production orders would not be processed. Added the ability to 'auto withdraw' from your Vault if there wasn't enough gold in hand to complete a transaction while I was there. - Maximum normal bet in Acey Ducey has increased from 100 to 400gp. Maximum Big Bet in Acey Ducey has increased from 1000 to 2000gp. Maximum bet in High_low has increased from 100 to 200gp. Changes affecting Sysops 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 - Added ausnet to those Domains recognised by Kingdoms - Removed the 'Unknown Domain' displayed if Kingdoms comes across a network it doesn't know the domain name of when the Sysop is in the Manager. It caused too much confusion being there. - Fixed a problem with Maximum BBS running under OS/2 using the dorinfo type dropfile. Maximus appends a space for some reason to the com port line in it's dorinfo dropfile, making Kingdoms always assume a local logon. Any spaces there are now stripped when reading the dorinfo file before Kingdoms works out which com port a use is logged onto, or if it actually is a local logon. - Long DOOR.SYS dropfile support has been added to Kingdoms. There are four forms of DOOR.SYS I have identified - the 6 line doorway compatible version, a 32 line version created by Maximus under OS/2, a 35 line version produced by Ezycom and the 45 line+ (variable, it seems!) version produced by Wildcat BBS. Don't you just love standards?? :-). Kingdoms now supports them all and will automatically identify the format when it loads. Ie, there are no special parameters required to tell Kingdoms which type you happen to be using. Personally I recommend using the short (doorway compatible) version if you can as there is simply less system overhead (because it's smaller) for the BBS to create it and for Kingdoms to read it. If you want/need to use another however, you are now able to do so! - ANSI generation of local scoreboard in KMNT wasn't inserting a line feed after the title line, throwing the display out out whack. Fixed. - Option positioning on the primary Manager menus is now maintained when flipping between menus. If you move from a menu then return there later, the option you used most recently on that menu will still be highlighted rather than jumping back to the first option each time and having to specifically re-select the one you're after. - Maintenance now supports the /S parameter, which will perform scoreboard generation only and no other normal Maintenance functions. You can run Maintenance using this option any time, and as many times per day as desired, without using the /O(verride) option. This option has been added for those Sysops who requested the ability to generate scoreboards on the fly, particularly after inbound and outbound processing has taken place and the scoreboards may have become out of date. The only other processing that KMNT will permit when /s is used is ASCII/ANSI file creation by using /a. Thus, 'KMNT /S /A' (case and option order are not significant) will run KMNT, only generating game scoreboards and .ASC and .ANS equivalents. Just using /s will only create the .KDI game scoreboards. Only using /A will, of course, run maintenance normally (all maintenance functions) and still create ASC/ANS versions of the scoreboard and news files as per normal. - In generation of the local scoreboard, a line feed was missing on the first line after the heading in the .ASC and .ANS files, making the display skewed. Fixed. These files now also support high and low intensity display in the .ANS version, making them exact copies of the display as it is seen in the game itself. - Some (few) 'out of string space' errors were being reported in the Manager on occasion. Some things have been shuffled about to reduce string requirements in the Manager and I hope this will see this problem eliminated! - Level names and scores were being incorrectly displayed/calculated in maintenance. As a result, levels displayed on the external game score- boards didn't match those being displayed in the game itself. Fixed. Changes affecting Coordinators 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Coordinators please note. You should also read the changes affecting Sysops if you have not already! They have an impact on you too in some cases! - Default network links on the local Index weren't being updated if the Coordinator modified an address on a node with downlinks. The same link changes were also not being updated across the network. Thus, if the Coordinator made a node address change to a Realm, then the actual Index record for the Realm would be updated, but any nodes that were linked to it would still be recording the old address of the Realm that had changed. Though this was technically an error though, any transit data arriving for that node would still be directed to the right place because of the Alias records Knetin would have created when it performed the Realm address change. This was exceedingly inefficient however as the Index first needed to be searched then the Alias file then, when the Alias was found, the Index file again to pick up the correct (Aliased) Index record. In any case, the Alias records would ultimately become redundant after several (11, actually) node address changes were distributed to the network. After that point, inbound Transit data would be discarded due to an unresolvable destination or return address. That was not only very efficient, it would be exceedingly sad for any node whose address had changed to find themselves effectively deleted from all Indexes network wide in time, and quite suddenly! . On a Realm address change, Kingdoms now fully resolves network links based on the original and updated addresses and matches those changes to network address links for downlinks to that node, network wide. Should even this fail, Alias records will still get the data to the correct node based on their own routing data. In addition to this backup routing scheme, Self-Correction also fully resolves the network links in Kingdoms 2.15 in the same manner. In short, Network Link addresses now permanently maintain three levels of redundancy, each of which is capable of either compensating for and/or correcting routing errors that may arise at any time in the network. - Kingdoms now accepts '0' for Net and Node values (in zone:net/node) when the Coordinator is adding or modifying Realm network addresses in the Manager. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.10 - Public Release May 25th, 1996. � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 Changes affecting Players 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 1. When land titles were received at a remote realm, the return message wasn't being 'signed' by the agent properly. Fixed. 2. Some spurious text was being inserted into a return message from an Invasion Commander who was reporting the results of a successful agent. Fixed. 3. In the fight statistics, opponent hit points were being displayed in dark blue, which was very hard to read. (Impossible on some monitors, apparently!). This now displays in white. 4. If a player attempted to transfer experience to a realm on which they didn't have an Agent, a KNetIn error code 5 would result. Fixed. 5. Automatic food transfers from a local player to a remote agent were working fine, but the return message to the player to inform him/her that the transfer completed was not being processed due to an incorrect return address name. This error made itself known by displaying a 'User not Found' error while Knetin was processing the inbound missive. Fixed. 6. When raiding a castle and defeating an opponent, the opportunity is available to leave the 'dead' person a private message. If the person had previously left a message to someone on a remote realm, the message they posted to a player after a raiding victory would be incorrectly addressed to the right player, but on the realm to which they posted the previous message. In other circumstances, the message would be posted on the right (local) realm, but would be tagged to all players rather being private. Both problems have been corrected. 7. Found a pretty obscure error in the message editor. It takes a while to occur and requires the player entering a message to do several edits (specifically, several delete and insert lines) before it happens, but would eventually crash the editor with a 'String Space Corrupt' or 'Out of String Space' message, depending on the order in which the user did their edits. When it DID occur, it was unrecoverable and would hang both Kingdoms and the machine on which it was running. Fixed. 8. If a user had defined a background color in their handle, that color was not being reset to black for the remaining display in a scoreboard listing or at other places in the game. Fixed. 9. Bank interest rate on positive balances is now a flat 5% daily up to level 15 characters. Characters 15th level & over earn no interest on deposited funds though they do, of course, still enjoy the protections offered by placing funds in their vaults. Interest is earned during normal maintenance runs overnight. Though the Sysop can force maintenance to run more than once by an override on the command line, interest will not be accrued for players when this is done. 10. Fixed a 'feature' that was allowing players to earn unlimited gold by decreasing food production in lots less than 500gp. (Effectively, the player would just be given the gold and production would not be affected). Production increases now MUST be a multiple of 1000gp, decreases a multiple of 500gp. This affected both Local and Agent food production operations. 11. Intelligence training was not working properly for Agents. On occasion it would crash KNetin, the Kingdoms inbound mail handler, or it may not have processed the requested intelligence training at all. Fixed. 12. Fixed up some minor display inconsistencies in messages returning from remote realms. 13. Tidied up the colors in the Development Centre. 14. Changed the basis for calculating training costs. Previous to 2.10, training costed 50gp per player level to increase any statistic. Training cost is no longer dependant on level, but is based on the actual attribute being increased. It now costs 5gp for each point of an attribute a player has, to train in that attribute. Eg, it will cost 50gp for a player with 10 Strength to train (for another point) in Strength. It will cost 500gp for a player with 100 Strength to train for another Strength point. 15. Added display of gold in hand and gold in Vault to the Development Centre menu so players know how much they've got when they're considering training options. 16. Added automatic (confirmed by player) withdrawal options to the Development centre if the player doesn't have enough gold in hand to cover training, but has enough in their Vault. This saves the player having to leave the Development Centre to go to the Vault and withdraw more if they want to do more training. 17. Added Magician class character levels. At present these are only in name though the file structures are now starting to support the addition of magic and magical items in the game. These will be enabled in future releases of Kingdoms. 18. Bowing to player demand, the delay in place when training in any attribute has been decreased. Only one iteration, rather than three, of each of the activities required to train is displayed under 2.10. 19. When viewing troop morale in the Food Production menu, no pause was provided before the screen cleared and the menu was redisplayed. The display now pauses allowing you to read it before it is cleared! Changes affecting Sysops 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 1. All scrollable lists containing network information in the Manager are now sorted by Realm Name rather than network address. As most Sysops remember and use a BBS name rather than an address when finding a node they're interested in, this makes it easier to get to where you want to be! 2. Prior to this v2.10, the selection bar on a scrollable list would always return to the top entry of a list when it was redisplayed after some processing was done. This was a pain as it made you lose your place in the list you're viewing and you had to scroll down to the place you were in order to view differences & changes you'd made. After processing any entry on a list, the Manager now retains current positioning and screen display to return you to where you were in the list, rather than back up to the top. 3. Crashmail is now an option on netmail messages created for any outbound (Default or Normal) node. Simply select the node in 'Your Routing' and press F3 on the entry to flip between crash (immediate send) and normal message creation. The help line at the bottom of the display reflects this new option. 4. When modifying routing on a Realm, a scrollable list used to pop up asking you to select which node you wanted another node's data routed to. That list displayed every Realm on the Index which was pretty silly, as you can only route a node's data to an outbound node. You cannot, for example, route one node's data to another routed node. The selection list displayed now only shows outbound nodes for selection to route data to making the process of routing selection a lot clearer! 5. Resized and shifted a few displays in the Manager to take account of additional data displayed and/or to make viewing background displays easier. 6. Corrected a KMNT error 55 which was generated if ASC/ANS file (/A) generation was requested and self correction was not enabled, or was not due on the day. 7. In the Manager, Agent records on the Realm were not displaying properly in the User menu. The display has been expanded and the problem fixed - Agent records are now shown with their home realm listed in place of the normal local user password. Agent passwords can be viewed by selecting the Agent record from the scrollable user list. 8. Some door converters have been found that don't uppercase user names. This was causing duplicate players in Kingdoms for the same user. Names are now uppercased automatically when read by Kingdoms, so any converter can be used to generate the door files for Kingdoms now. 9. Added door.sys (doorway compatible) support. If no override is given using the /D runtime parameter, Kingdoms will still default to using dorinfo1.def in the BBS directory you've specified in the Manager, KM.EXE. To use a DOOR.SYS dropfile, simply override the Manager default by supplying '/DC:\BBS\LINE\DOOR.SYS' on your Kingdoms command line in the same way as described in the documentation for multinode dorinfo? support. 10. Removed MSGID line from outbound file attach messages to correct problems with Blinkey mailers. 11. Added Network ID to the status line so Sysops can see what Net game a player is in at any time. 12. Previously, when a new node was being set up, Sysops would recieve a distribution index file and enter the Manager Network>Routing option. From there they could define their node to the Index, then had to define their default outbound, then had to go further, particularly in the case of a network hub, and route information to various nodes depending on the structure of the network itself. This wasn't too hard for a small network, but the complexities involved in doing this for a large network were begging for routing errors to occur on individual nodes. Quite simply, it was unreasonable to expect that every Sysop in a Kingdoms network knows every other connection in the network. This procedure has been virtually re-written to take advantage of the 'connect to' node information now contained within each Index file and distribution Indexs created by the Coordinator for new nodes. When selecting the option now, Sysops still must have the distribution Index before they enter Network>Routing. The only thing required from this point however is to identify their node to the Index. Having done this, the Manager will take the connection information it has for each node and completely configure the routing information for EVERY node automatically. The Sysop is completely freed from needing to know the network links him or her self as the Manager now handles all of it by itself. Sysops wishing to change the links specified for them by the Manager can override the default, but should not do so without first consulting the Coordinator. 13. Fixed an error in Knetin which was causing Knetin to terminate with error code 5. A formatting error occured when a status request was made and the agent owned an weapon or armor item with a description greater than 18 characters. 14. Fixed several error messages produced by the game to make them more meaningful. 15. Swapped around the domain name in the Network>Verify list against nodes. It was printing in reverse to normal zone:net/node@domain standards. 16. Added battlenet, darknet and gamenet to the domains identified by the Manager. 17. Discovered a really weird bug while working on all these changes! If the last record on an inbound transit file was a routed record (not destined for the local realm), was not a worm, and headers in that same file were previously processed, the record would not be marked as processed. It would continue to be forwarded to the node forever and would never be removed from the transit. Fixed. 18. If an node address change came in for processing and an alias needed creating, knetin would terminate with a type 63 error if the Manager Alias functions had never been entered (initialised). Fixed. 19. Added Self Correction functions to the Manager, Knetin, Knetout and KMnt. Self Correction is a powerful Kingdoms Network function which polls an uplink periodically (frequency determined by the Sysop) to verify the status and other information of nodes on their Index against the same nodes on the uplink BBS. An uplink, by definition, is (and must be, for Self Correction to work) the most direct path to the Coordinator node. The uplink for each Realm is that Realm's Default Outbound node. IF FOR SOME REASON A REALM CHANGES THEIR DEFAULT TO NO LONGER BE THE DIRECT PATH TO THE COORDINATOR NODE, SELF CORRECTION SHOULD BE DISABLED ON THAT NODE. Assuming the defaults are in place, and were you to follow the chains of uplinks to their end, you would find yourself at the Kingdoms Coordinator node. Corrections will be performed automatically if, upon analysis, Kingdoms can determine that the local index contains data which is not up-to-date with the uplink. That uplink's Self Correction will, of course, be verifying IT'S index data with IT'S uplink, right back up to the Coordinator node. This function on each Realm provides, for the first time in an InterBBS game I believe, a reliable method of ensuring network integrity without continual (and infrequently performed) manual checking and intervention by the Sysops of each Realm. Should, for example, a node addition sent by the Coordinator not reach a Realm as the BBS is down temporarily or the mail is lost in transit for some reason, Kingdoms can now AUTOMATICALLY correct the situation itself in time without the Sysop or Coordinator ever needing to be aware of the problem. To set Self Correction on, enter the 'Other' section of the Manager and specify the frequency at which you want it to occur. I recommend Daily (a value of '1') Self Correction be enabled for primary Kingdoms hubs and perhaps weekly for Realms at the far end of a network. A value of Zero disables this feature. COORDINATORS NOTE!!! The Coordinator node should NEVER enable self correction and the Coordinator node cannot select this to change. A message, "Coord - No update allowed", will appear by the option to this effect on the Coordinator node. By definition, the coordinator node's network definitions should ALWAYS be correct. If they are not, the network can never work properly! As stated, at the frequency of days specified by the Self-Correction setting, a Realm will poll it's immediate uplink (it's Default Outbound) and retrieve a full copy of the uplink's Index file. When retrieved, the local node will compare that data against it's own and : * Compare uplink Index Sysop names against the local Index. Modifications will be updated locally to reflect the uplink data. * Compare uplink Index Realm (BBS) names against the local Index. Modifications will be updated locally to reflect the uplink data. * Compare the status of each node on the uplink to that recorded locally. The following actions will take place depending on the compare results: 旼컴컴컴컴컴컫컴컴컴컴컴컴컴쩡컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � Local node � Uplink (!) � Action � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컵컴컴컴컴컴컴컴탠컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � Active � Active � No action � � Active � Pending � Set local Realm to Pending � � Active � Inactive � Set local Realm to Inactive � � Active � Deleted � Set local Realm to Inactive � � Inactive � Active � Set local Realm to Active � � Deleted � Active � Set local Realm to Active � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컨컴컴컴컴컴컴컴좔컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (!) - If the uplink is the Coordinator, it's always assumed Active. * Identify nodes on the uplink which do not exist locally. Kingdoms will add the node locally with the same status as the uplink. * Identify nodes locally which do not exist on the uplink. Kingdoms will set the local node inactive. * Identify loops in routing definitions where the local node and the uplink send data for a node to each other. Ie, data for the node in question never escapes the 'loop'. This situation can only occur when the Sysop of the local realm, or the Sysop of the uplink has changed routing definitions manually, overriding the defaults distributed in the Index by the Coordinator node. Kingdoms will not therefore alter the routing definitions to conform to the default automatically as it's presumed it has been done for a reason! The self correction routines will however inform the Sysop of the local realm of the situation (and keep informing the Sysop as long as the loop exists!) to ensure the loop is not forgotten and can be attended to, ie, corrected. 20. Added Self Correction status (enabled or disabled) to the Routing report detail. 21. Added 'Maint Flag' and 'User On Flag' to the File menu in the Manager. These options allow the Sysop to turn off the flag that indicates Maintenance is running and turn off all User Online flags respectively. 22. If Kingdoms tells a user that maintenance is running and to wait until it finishes, pressing any key will drop the user back to the BBS rather than having them unable to exit. 23. Added a 'Defaults' option to the Manager Network menu. Should you have reason at any time to change your routing to something other than the Coordinator specified defaults, this option can be used to restore the net default settings automatically. 24. Fixed a small display error on the local status line if the user had > 99 minutes remaining in the game. 25. Fixed an error introduced in v2.00 (I have _no_ idea how I managed to do this!) that sent a scrolling cursor across the remote user portion of the screen while in chat, making it impossible to read anything the remote user typed. Fixed. Changes affecting Coordinators 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Coordinators please note. You should also read the changes affecting Sysops if you have not already! They have an impact on you too in some cases! 1. Found a misnamed variable in the guts of alias processing which resulted in Knetin terminating with error code 63 in certain circumstances when the coordinator attempted to change the network address of a Realm. Fixed. 2. Found a nasty bug in the Coordinator 'Modify Node' function. When the address of a node was changed, and that node had both uplinks and downlinks, knetin would lose the plot completely when it tried to process the change and re-establish the node routing. Depending on several factors, this would cause Knetin to abend with error code 63 or Knetout to abend with error code 62. Fixed. 3. The Sysop name and BBS name were not being recorded correctly in the Coordinator log when a new Pending node was created. Fixed. The log also now shows the 'connect to' node for reference should the Coordinator need it. 4. When a Coordinator adds a new Pending node, a 'connect to' node is also required so Kingdoms can distribute routing information for the new node to all other nodes in the network. Once applied however, this data was not being saved in any place. The 'connect to' node is now kept on all index records on all nodes for each Realm on the Index. 5. Added a new Coordinator option, Network Connections. This option allows the coordinator to view current connection details and to modify (and distribute automatically) link details network wide. 6. Coordinator Change and Release node functions modified to carry direct connection information across the network in accordance to the 'connect to' changes described above. 7. Coordinator Add Node function modified to record direct connection information in the Coordinator Index file. Distribution Indexes now carry the same information. 8. Index records now carry network ID for validity checking during Index add/change/deletes. 9. Duplicate checking has been added to the Coordinator 'Add Node' function. It was previously possible to add a node whose address already existed on the index. 10. Realm change functions would waste processing if only one of sysop/bbs name were entered. KNetin now checks the original to ensure only changes that need doing are performed. 11. Added the 'Link Diagram' option to the Coordinator and Network menus in the Manager. Selecting this will generate and, optionally, display a diagram of the links of each node in the network. While primarily implemented to assist Coordinators keep control of their network, the option is also available in the Network menu for Sysops who wish to see who connects to who in their Kingdoms net. The diagram is displayed in the editor configured in the Other section of the Manager. Should you wish to quickly view links for any given node, simply select the option and view the diagram, then use your editors search functions to locate the desired node, BBS name or Sysop name. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � KINGDOMS VERSION 2.00 - First Public Release - March 31st, 1996 � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸