Tradewars Solace, a freeware helper created by Caxis, is now in Wide Beta testing. It doesn’t offer support for SLIP/PPP conections, but if your using Turbocom, it’ll work fine. Oh yea, and did I mention it’s freeware?

New bug in v3.09

A new money bug has been found in v3.09 of Tradewars Door. If 2 players are on a planet and keep hitting D, (Display Planet) the money in the citadel and the fighters being made increase every time the key is hit. Eleqtrizi’T did some testing with this bug, and found that it is a VERY slow proccess. Even with 20 million in the citadel, the credits seemed to only increase about 4 or 5 per press, so even with 5 players, it would take an incredibly long time. This is a lot diffrent than the supposed “one player making 167,000,000 credits in a couple hours.”
Thanks to The Home Sector

TW2002.com Down

As many of you know, tw2002.com’s Internet tradewars game has been down for a few weeks. However, now tw2002.com’s Webpage has gone down. I talked to CWizard on ICQ about this, and told me he didn’t know what was wrong.

John Pritchett recently made a Post concerning the upcoming TradeWars Game Server (aka TWGS) which has been in beta tests with sites such as tw2002.com. According to John’s post, the TWGS server will be available VERY shortly, and he’ll also have an on-line ordering form for both TWGS and Tradewars v3.09! Go to John’s Post

Indeed, the apocalypse has already hit Pirate’s Cove. Dominance Enterprises, (Consisting on myself, Eleq, Retaliator and Maelene) defeated all opposing forces on Pirate’s Cove and blockaded off StarDock, effectively winning the game which took place in about one week. If you REALLY want to know why we won, head over to The Home Sector. Eleq has a conversation that one of our rivals had. (Monitored by yours truly.) It was pretty funny being called a dupe because my ship’s name was “The Merchant Marines.”

Outlaw Resets

The Outlaw banged a new game today. Outlaw’s fourth game offers 10k sectors, 750 turns and modified ships. The Home Sector just put up a review of Outlaw.

Evilcommander goes back online

After a long, long, long, long, long, … wait,Evilcommander.com has gone back online. My brower’s Java is messed up, so I haven’t been able to see what’s new yet.

v3.09 or TWWU v3.1?

Forget Clinton, here’s a real question you guys should be pondering: What’s going to happen first, Tradewars v3.09’s release, or an overhaul of TWWU’s graphics? Ponder these questions.

TWAR Version G up!

TWAR For Windows version G is now up! If your wondering what happened to F, I didn’t even bother posting it:

“Version F(lop) was a mess so ditch it and install G. Some files were lost and some source files dated wrong when I moved to a new machine. This caused a bad compile and a loss of some code. All is fine now. -Doug”

https://webhome.idirect.com/~twar/screens.htm
What’s new in Version G:

Fixed the outgoing messages from Large message window. It was not sending messages immediately as in chat window.

Fixed the Planet Transporter in the Colonizer for MBBS players. It was putting a “M” to initiate the move due to calling the generic MoveToSector() routine.

Added a real-time Status Bar that will display “Cash”, “Turns Left”, “Experience”, “Alignment”, “Profit from the last Trade (Selling – Purchase price)”, and “Time Online”. The status bar follows Office97 type toolbars and can be moved around the screen to the left, right, top, bottom or float. It can be also be enabled or disabled.

Added Gypsy’s Big Dummy’s Guide to Tradewars 2002 for any dummies out there (Kidding) or players who want to brush up on playing strategies. Thanks Gypsy.

Wormhole Logo will now spin when connected to a BBS and stop spinning when offline or a loss of connection.

Fixed a problem in the Blind warp not consistently working all the time.

Fixed a TWarp script bug where both the Twarp protection and the Twarp script were issuing a “Y” to fire TWARP drive. Thanks Jim Conway for his detailed description.

Found an interesting bug where I track the incoming sectors to any given sector (CIM memory Database). Turns out any sector can have 6 outgoing and more than six incoming sectors. This was punching holes in memory and giving “Access violation errors”

On the MBBS send message it now shows the “ME:” info so you have feedback that your message was sent and generates a history of your outgoing Messages.

Found a way to increase TWAR’s performance by changing the way I handle incoming data.

Pir8 Resets Oct 31st, my return to TW.

It’s official, I’m returning to Tradewars for yet one more game. This time, it’ll be on pir8.net, alongside Retaliator, Eleqtrizi’t, Saluki, and Maelene. You can get a list of the modifications and settings at The Homesector. Just ask the sysop, and he’ll give you 4 hours day FREE for this game! Don’t be afraid to play this game just because we (seem like) we’re good. If there’s ever a game to learn, this is it.

Pure Energy Resets November 1st

Pure Energy BBS will be rebanging it’s game on November 1st. This game will offer 5000 sectors, 3 day port regeneration, and unlimited turns.

More news tommorrow….

Alas, too much news to catch up on after my “vacation” with Metal Gear! More tommorrow!

Metal Gear Solid comes out tommorrow. If you don’t see me online, or wonder why they’re no updates here during the next few days, this is why.

FEN to reset in November

Family Entertainment will be reseting it’s Tradewars game on November 7th. Since you guys have about 1/2 a month to send in your checks for access, there should be no excuse why you shouldn’t play! Unfortunatelly, I won’t be playing, but that’s beside the point!

Wow, I actually got a piece of mail today. =) It concerns what’s been going on at Rippers:

From: Wade Massey

Rippers has been tarnished yes. The old TW moderators have all been bannes from Rippers. We have a new game. Just re-banged about a week ago. There is only one person with access to the setup at this time. Please recognize the change on your site. It would be very much appriciated

While it’s nice to see a good effort from them, I don’t forsee Rippers leaving the Hall of Shame anytime soon. But they do have my wishes that their past incident doesn’t happen again.

ATTAC Not dead

Looks like TWAR isn’t the only news for today. Taken from Hekate’s Website:

Nik and Earth will still be involved with [ATTAC] As part of the development team, but “Mr. X” will assume all project management duties and the role of technical lead. As a first step in the process, “Mr. X” will be looking over the code to see what can be retained, but he is looking towards at least a very significant re-write.

For the whole story, visit Hekate’s site.

Zathras finds how to get Best Port Pairs working.

Zarathos has found a way to get the Best Port Pairs finder in TWAR for Windows working properly. From Zarathos:

It appears that Best Port Pairs requires IDBAT32.DLL file to run properly. This is part of the Borland installation files.

Copy … ‘IDBAT32.DLL’ to one of the following subdirectories:

1 – c:Program FilesBorlandCommon FilesBde
2 – c:Program FilesTWAR for Windows
3 – C:WindowsSystem
4 – C:Windows

Again, you need to put IDBAT32.DLL in only ONE directory! (Your best bet is probably your Home directory for TWAR) Thanks Zarathos!
Get IDBAT32.DLL
Alternate site

What’s new:
# Fixed MBBS Evil scripts. Some differences between Gold & MBBS were causing some scripts to fail. The “Q” after a transport needed the Carriage return. Thanks out to Hekate for her assistance.
# Ripped out Trigger handling routines and re-wrote to solve the “Out of Trigger Slots” error. All triggers are destroyed after any Script ends and re-initialized for the next Script.
# Found I/O Error #103 bug. A Queue in the SectorDistance Finder was set for a maximum of 3000. Way too small for a 20,000 Sector CIM.
# Using the Chat window in MBBS will now send the message immediately when “Send” button is hit while not running a script. Before the Chat windows was only working while scripts were running in MBBS mode.
# Added a check to see if the Best port file is open before Best Port reports and using the Navigator button. Some people are getting errors on “Closed Table”.
# Added a Busted Port List to the Evil Menu.
# Added a Save Size/Position to each of the forms and dialogs in TWAR. Sizes and positions are now saved.
# Fixed Zero map to use the “^” when in Gold. Cim can be run from anywhere now.
# Fixed the “List out of Bounds” error with Bookmarks. It was caused after “Reset Game” creating an Empty List.
# Fixed a bug that created an endless loop if Sectors set to 5000 and you read a sector greater than 5000 if you were in a 20,000 sector game.
# Did some Socket house keeping to close a socket before connecting to a new game. John Pritchett noticed Sockets were left open when leaving a Game using TWAR.
# Fix for Incoming Global messages on MBBS.
# Fixed the “robbed” indicator in the CIM database to display when port was last robbed. It was saving Robbed status as “Visited”. Noticed by Hekate.
# Added an “Online” indicator on status bar. Temporary for now. It will eventually display time that you are online and the Wormhole will spin when online, stop when offline.
# Fixed up the Tab control for Evil Custom dialog.
# Added Quick Trade if you are moving and at the “Stop at This Sector” prompt.

Revision D is out. Get it!

What’s new:
ONLINE Ordering is finally up
quantity bug is now fixed.
Fixed the Alias for Best Port Reports
TAPI Modem Setup problems for Local BBSes
The Screen Maximize settings are now working.
Tw2002 Version 3.08 and up will now access CIM via the “^” character instead of the older Computer Prompt CIM Access.
Gold Users can access CIM from any point in the Game now.
Resource mover wouldn’t allow planets over 1000 and Sectors larger than 20,000. It is now fixed.

Hekate has put up a list of TWAR mirror sites. I would suggest going to any of those sites instead of the twar site for a faster download. (Since TW2002 is located in Texas, there’s no point of me putting up a mirror since I live only a few hours from there.)

Alien AI and Ship Export/Import not in v3.09

Looks like the Alien AI modules and Ship Import/Export utilites that were slated for v3.09 of Tradewars Door is delayed until v3.10. John Pritchett has said, “I have been focusing on getting a nearly flawless v3.09 out the door and have put [Import/Export] and the AI module dev kit on hold until v3.10”

TWAR for Windows is out now! Go Get it!

*NOTE* If you have TwarWin100A.zip, you’ll need to download the link above (Revision C) since it doesn’t install correctly. I will have an alternate server from which to download TWAR for you people living in the southern US tommorrow.

Hall of Shame Updated

Unfortunatelly, there’s been a new inductee into the Hall of Shame. I’ve also re-done the layout of HOS to a more palatable format. Tell me what you think!