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intervene, but the current default settings are such that it only responds in small quantities, and in a random fashion - the impact of its response can of course be changed at your discretion (see the game parameter table). You may want to consider including a selling commission (which is zero as the default), so that it will cost more to sell what you have than to buy it (so to speak).
2. Damage Report
It was suggested that the damage report also state where the attack on your object came from (in terms of a direction), especially in the event that you haven't scanned the attacker. My argument was that if you haven't scanned it, you won't expect anything; so if an object hits you and you haven't been paying attention, you won't know where it came from. You can observe the type of damage done to you, and deduce what kind of object fired on you, but I am also assuming that you can't tell by the damage where it came from. This may not be a realistic assumption in general, but I also felt that it would give away too much information otherwise. It is something I will think about.
3. Acquiring Cities
I was asked to confirm that cities cannot be built - that the only way to obtain a city is to take one from an enemy. This is certainly true. During development however, I originally had settler units (formerly called city constructors) build cities. Moreover, I had each city pre-specialized (to one tech-type only) and thus could only build one object at a time. It was decided that cities were not valuable enough if they could be rebuilt usually faster than the attacker can recover the forces and time lost destroying the city (they were destroyed, not taken). It is an interesting concept however to have one build a city but then is taken over by the enemy, not destroyed. In any case, I believe the current setup provides a better power balance. Settlements are built now to collect resources only, which was perhaps the most motivating reason to build a city (where resources were found of course).
4. Game with One Player Only
It was suggested that most people will probably never play the game except in one-player mode, and so the game should be made to provide a more balanced and interesting game for just one player. I agree in some respects - I found that it was more interesting playing another human, as was the primary intent. Although, I admit that after a while when turns get longer, each player has to wait a fair bit before it's his/her turn (on average, 15 minutes per round). That is why when I play my friend, we either read a book or watch TV while we wait for each other to play. Creating a better balance to play only the computer will be difficult as the AI will have to be a lot more sophisticated to provide an interesting game. The current AI is geared towards a defensive posture, which fits in line with the intro story (which we wrote last of course!).
5. "Shouldn't hover-scouts be air units?"
By a certain logic, they could be considered aero-tech. However, no other aero-tech object can detonate a mine, which a hover-scout can do. Hover-scouts are only lifted a small distance off the ground (a few metres maybe) and are also considered terra-tech as they are primarily designed to scan the ground for resources. They can even conceivably be called hydro-tech, since they can float on water (with no fuel). One supporting argument for categorizing them as aero-tech was to fill in a "gap" in the production capability for a tech-level one aero-tech city, which can only produce bombs. I still stand by my decision to keep it terra-tech, but everything will work fine if you change it yourself to aero-tech in the game editor (they will still detonate mines though!).
6. Scenarios
Some useful comments were made with regard to scenario building and playing. The idea is to provide some pre-built scenarios that people can play, where the NP cities are pre-placed and pre-developed; the production capability is limited to certain lower-tech objects; and there could be objectives layed out in the beginning. Other scenarios are provided that get progressively more difficult and more complex.
This will guide a new player through the game concepts at a gradual pace instead of just diving in and having too much to cope with. In particular, the game parameter and object specification tables should be linked to the specific game (or scenario). This is a pretty good idea, and will be considered if a new version will be developed. In any case, it is definately a good idea to at least provide the ability for each individual game to have its own associated game parameter and object specification tables, so that changing one parameter in one table will not affect other games in progress (if any). This will also allow for one to set up different sets of tables and select which one to use when building a game, allowing levels of difficulty to be implemented as well.
7. Terrain Types and Modifications to Specs
It was suggested that the current "terrain combat modifications aren't very dramatic", and the various percentages for spotting and hitting should be adjusted more significantly for the various surface types.
We haven't put too many testing hours in since surface types were introduced, and especially haven't had many combat hours given surfaces such as mountains, swamp, and jungle. The adjustments made were relative to land, and were purely based on what seemed like a good idea at the time. This will be considered further. Of course, I am open to suggestion in terms of specific adjustments.
I am open to any comments or suggestions with respect to the above, or anything else.
20B. OTHER COMMENTS
Make sure you remind yourself to use the on-line help facility. This context-sensitive help will describe many details that are not covered in the manual. Feel free to browse through the .HLP files with a text reader to get a general idea of their content, but be sure not to overwrite them! The integrity check may fail otherwise.
If you design your own world map and are proud of it, feel free to mail it to me along with your name (to give you credit) and I may include it with the next release (if any). We could use some good maps considering how few we currently have.
As well, if you have any problems with a current game, just ZIP,
UUENCODE, and mail it to me. These problems may include the need of advice, something spooky happening that may be a bug, or whatever else that can't be solved using the game editor. If there is something you need to change in the game file, I may consider revealing the appropriate offsets to this data so you can fix it yourself.
If you find, as you are playing, that you are continually short of resources, you should consider increasing the number of each resource type for when you build your next game (in the game parameter table); sorry, there is no way to add resources to the world in your current game (that is, the program won't do it for you).
You may want to play around with the object specification table, but be sure to keep a backup of the original. However, you can always delete the spec file and run the editor to re-create it with default values if you get into a mess. The probabilities may be changed to anything you like; other specs may also be changed so long as these changes satisfy any restrictions that may be indicated in the manual for the object type in question. I do not recommend that you change surface compatibility for objects - some certain aspects of objects that are related to this are hard-coded, so you may want to check with me first.
20C. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
If there is enough interest, I may consider adding some more features to this game (provided I have the time). Some of which may be the following:
- Make the world wrapping in the east-west sense.
- Add spying/intelligence: able to obtain random information about the enemy, or promote insurgence; costs MegaCredits to support spies and counter-intelligence.
- Make the NP more intelligent (or change certain aspects of its behaviour) - depends on specific reactions from people.
- Add natural disasters.
- Add more object types.
- Add modem/network support
- Link data tables to individual games
- Add difficulty levels
- Add scenarios
- ... or any other suggestions.
99. CONTACT AND DISTRIBUTION INFORMATION
If there are any questions or comments, please address them via e-mail to:
ROBINS@QUCDNTRI.EE.QUEENSU.CA
This account is valid until May or June 1994 (roughly) when it is expected to expire (and I am expected to graduate!). Please feel free to send me mail if you wish to be notified of any new releases, or other pertinent information. If you are registered, you will be notified of my new contact address when available.
You may acquire this program by anonymous FTP from: archive.umich.edu (141.211.120.11):/msdos/games/strategy/rex101.zip. ftp.funet.fi (128.214.248.6):/pub/msdos/games/strategy/rex101.zip.
I will also e-mail it (uuencoded) to anyone who requests it.
Note that the size of REX101.ZIP should be 202429 bytes. If another version is released, its version number will be included in the filename as it is now (where 101 -> version 1.01). The next release will most likely either be version 1.10 or 2.00. Also note that the program will not run if it fails its own integrity check of all distribution files. It is not fail- safe, but it provides some security against tampering.
2. Damage Report
It was suggested that the damage report also state where the attack on your object came from (in terms of a direction), especially in the event that you haven't scanned the attacker. My argument was that if you haven't scanned it, you won't expect anything; so if an object hits you and you haven't been paying attention, you won't know where it came from. You can observe the type of damage done to you, and deduce what kind of object fired on you, but I am also assuming that you can't tell by the damage where it came from. This may not be a realistic assumption in general, but I also felt that it would give away too much information otherwise. It is something I will think about.
3. Acquiring Cities
I was asked to confirm that cities cannot be built - that the only way to obtain a city is to take one from an enemy. This is certainly true. During development however, I originally had settler units (formerly called city constructors) build cities. Moreover, I had each city pre-specialized (to one tech-type only) and thus could only build one object at a time. It was decided that cities were not valuable enough if they could be rebuilt usually faster than the attacker can recover the forces and time lost destroying the city (they were destroyed, not taken). It is an interesting concept however to have one build a city but then is taken over by the enemy, not destroyed. In any case, I believe the current setup provides a better power balance. Settlements are built now to collect resources only, which was perhaps the most motivating reason to build a city (where resources were found of course).
4. Game with One Player Only
It was suggested that most people will probably never play the game except in one-player mode, and so the game should be made to provide a more balanced and interesting game for just one player. I agree in some respects - I found that it was more interesting playing another human, as was the primary intent. Although, I admit that after a while when turns get longer, each player has to wait a fair bit before it's his/her turn (on average, 15 minutes per round). That is why when I play my friend, we either read a book or watch TV while we wait for each other to play. Creating a better balance to play only the computer will be difficult as the AI will have to be a lot more sophisticated to provide an interesting game. The current AI is geared towards a defensive posture, which fits in line with the intro story (which we wrote last of course!).
5. "Shouldn't hover-scouts be air units?"
By a certain logic, they could be considered aero-tech. However, no other aero-tech object can detonate a mine, which a hover-scout can do. Hover-scouts are only lifted a small distance off the ground (a few metres maybe) and are also considered terra-tech as they are primarily designed to scan the ground for resources. They can even conceivably be called hydro-tech, since they can float on water (with no fuel). One supporting argument for categorizing them as aero-tech was to fill in a "gap" in the production capability for a tech-level one aero-tech city, which can only produce bombs. I still stand by my decision to keep it terra-tech, but everything will work fine if you change it yourself to aero-tech in the game editor (they will still detonate mines though!).
6. Scenarios
Some useful comments were made with regard to scenario building and playing. The idea is to provide some pre-built scenarios that people can play, where the NP cities are pre-placed and pre-developed; the production capability is limited to certain lower-tech objects; and there could be objectives layed out in the beginning. Other scenarios are provided that get progressively more difficult and more complex.
This will guide a new player through the game concepts at a gradual pace instead of just diving in and having too much to cope with. In particular, the game parameter and object specification tables should be linked to the specific game (or scenario). This is a pretty good idea, and will be considered if a new version will be developed. In any case, it is definately a good idea to at least provide the ability for each individual game to have its own associated game parameter and object specification tables, so that changing one parameter in one table will not affect other games in progress (if any). This will also allow for one to set up different sets of tables and select which one to use when building a game, allowing levels of difficulty to be implemented as well.
7. Terrain Types and Modifications to Specs
It was suggested that the current "terrain combat modifications aren't very dramatic", and the various percentages for spotting and hitting should be adjusted more significantly for the various surface types.
We haven't put too many testing hours in since surface types were introduced, and especially haven't had many combat hours given surfaces such as mountains, swamp, and jungle. The adjustments made were relative to land, and were purely based on what seemed like a good idea at the time. This will be considered further. Of course, I am open to suggestion in terms of specific adjustments.
I am open to any comments or suggestions with respect to the above, or anything else.
20B. OTHER COMMENTS
Make sure you remind yourself to use the on-line help facility. This context-sensitive help will describe many details that are not covered in the manual. Feel free to browse through the .HLP files with a text reader to get a general idea of their content, but be sure not to overwrite them! The integrity check may fail otherwise.
If you design your own world map and are proud of it, feel free to mail it to me along with your name (to give you credit) and I may include it with the next release (if any). We could use some good maps considering how few we currently have.
As well, if you have any problems with a current game, just ZIP,
UUENCODE, and mail it to me. These problems may include the need of advice, something spooky happening that may be a bug, or whatever else that can't be solved using the game editor. If there is something you need to change in the game file, I may consider revealing the appropriate offsets to this data so you can fix it yourself.
If you find, as you are playing, that you are continually short of resources, you should consider increasing the number of each resource type for when you build your next game (in the game parameter table); sorry, there is no way to add resources to the world in your current game (that is, the program won't do it for you).
You may want to play around with the object specification table, but be sure to keep a backup of the original. However, you can always delete the spec file and run the editor to re-create it with default values if you get into a mess. The probabilities may be changed to anything you like; other specs may also be changed so long as these changes satisfy any restrictions that may be indicated in the manual for the object type in question. I do not recommend that you change surface compatibility for objects - some certain aspects of objects that are related to this are hard-coded, so you may want to check with me first.
20C. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
If there is enough interest, I may consider adding some more features to this game (provided I have the time). Some of which may be the following:
- Make the world wrapping in the east-west sense.
- Add spying/intelligence: able to obtain random information about the enemy, or promote insurgence; costs MegaCredits to support spies and counter-intelligence.
- Make the NP more intelligent (or change certain aspects of its behaviour) - depends on specific reactions from people.
- Add natural disasters.
- Add more object types.
- Add modem/network support
- Link data tables to individual games
- Add difficulty levels
- Add scenarios
- ... or any other suggestions.
99. CONTACT AND DISTRIBUTION INFORMATION
If there are any questions or comments, please address them via e-mail to:
ROBINS@QUCDNTRI.EE.QUEENSU.CA
This account is valid until May or June 1994 (roughly) when it is expected to expire (and I am expected to graduate!). Please feel free to send me mail if you wish to be notified of any new releases, or other pertinent information. If you are registered, you will be notified of my new contact address when available.
You may acquire this program by anonymous FTP from: archive.umich.edu (141.211.120.11):/msdos/games/strategy/rex101.zip. ftp.funet.fi (128.214.248.6):/pub/msdos/games/strategy/rex101.zip.
I will also e-mail it (uuencoded) to anyone who requests it.
Note that the size of REX101.ZIP should be 202429 bytes. If another version is released, its version number will be included in the filename as it is now (where 101 -> version 1.01). The next release will most likely either be version 1.10 or 2.00. Also note that the program will not run if it fails its own integrity check of all distribution files. It is not fail- safe, but it provides some security against tampering.
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- Imperium Rex FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50