Readme.rob for rob.exe

ROB.EXE carries no warranties, guaranties, or even promises. if anything bad 
happens, I am not responsible.

ROB.EXE was made for evil players of tradewars 2002. It has only been tested
on tradewars version 1.03. I cannot promise it will work with other versions but try it 
and see.

The purpose of ROB.EXE is to tell evil players whether it is safe to rob a
port or not.

What you do is capture your tradewars session as a text file.

Then, with ROB.EXE in the same directory as the captured file, Type ROB  
then hit enter. You will be prompted for the name of the captured file.
or enter the name on the command line like:

ROB 10-3.CAP       (I recommend naming the files that way, by date)

the first time it runs it will create a file called LASTROB.DAT. PROTECT 
THIS FILE! If it is lost or corrupted, you will have to delete it and start 
over using your captured files for the last 2 weeks.

DO NOT Modify your captured files, except on the same day you captured them.
doing so would change the files date to current, telling ROB.EXE that's
when you got busted!

If you have forgotten to capture your TW session, and got caught, you will
be able to manually enter the info with the following switch:

ROB /M

You may do this on the same day you got caught, or any number of days later.
Entering them more than 13 days later would be a waste of time since the 
ports forget about you by then! that is what this program is based on!

If your teammates have been busted at sectors that you have been waiting on
enter:

ROB /C

Then you will be able to enter those sectors, clearing them out for you,
since, when someone else gets busted there, they forget about you. 
Have your teammates tell you whenever they get busted.

If you don't have a new captured file to scan, but want a report, enter:

ROB /R

then ROB will not scan a captured file or alter LASTROB.DAT, But only
generate a report of the information in LASTROB.DAT

If you want a report on paper, just enter  ROB /R > PRN   this just tells
DOS to redirect output to the printer. (I could have built that in to the
program but it is too easy to get DOS to do it for me!)
I recommend a print out, so you can check it while playing. It only takes
4 lines plus 1 for each port you are warned about. even if you had recently 
been caught at 100 of the ports in the game, It would only be 2 pages!

If you want a report in a disk file, just enter  ROB /R > [filename]                    
example:  ROB /R > REPORT.TXT  will send the report to REPORT.TXT

Do not use more than one argument on the command line.

ROB /R /M    or   ROB 10-3.CAP /R     or    ROB /M 10-3.cap
would all be invalid.

Until you have run ROB.EXE on your captured files for 2 weeks, The report 
is not sure to contain all the ports that are not safe. if ROB doesn't 
know about it, It can't very well remind you, can it?

How ROB.EXE works:

ROB.EXE wil load LASTROB.DAT which contains a number for each sector 
corresponding to the time ( as the number of seconds since midnight 1/1/1970) 
that you were last caught there, or a dummy number if never. ROB.EXE will 
then scan the captured file for these strings:

sector  :

followed by the sector number, making this the current sector.

You're busted!

meaning you were busted there today.

when you are busted it set the corresponding value to the time that the 
captured file was last modified (should be when you played TW)

when it is finished reading the capture file, it will write the values back to
LASTROB.DAT, then generate a report containing the numbers of all sectors 
with values less than 14 days ago (the number of days it takes the port 
to forget they caught you!) and the number of days till they forget 
(14 - days since caught)

the /r switch just skips the scanning of the captured file, and generates 
the report without rewriting LASTROB.DAT

Have fun! Rob em blind!!!