Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!reed!odlin From: odlin@reed.UUCP (Iain Odlin) Newsgroups: comp.sources.games.bugs Subject: GALACTIC BLOODSHED Summary: The author speaks. Message-ID: <12663@reed.UUCP> Date: 5 May 89 22:46:48 GMT References: <3887@tekred.CNA.TEK.COM> <1784@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> <4968@bunker.UUCP> <12607@reed.UUCP> Reply-To: odlin@reed.UUCP (Iain Odlin) Organization: Atreides' House of Exotic Architecture Lines: 148 Keywords: *** IMPORTANT NOTE: I HAVE POSTED THIS FOR smq@ssyx.ucsc.edu, DO NOT REPLY *** *** Instead, mail to him. Thank you. Unless you want to talk to me! :-) *** *** ANOTHER NOTE: I have slightly cleaned up the message to make it easier *** *** to read. No damage or misrepresentation was intended. *** *** INCLUDED MESSAGE since I cant seem to post to this newsgroup, I will mail this less-than-informative reply to some of the people who posted to comp.sources.games recently. Hopefully _one_ of these nice people would be kind enough to post this author's reply: >From: odlin@reed.UUCP (Iain Odlin) > (various compiler problems deleted) > -The load command now displays the wrong numbers when you use the ? option. I will look into this. > -The game starts you out with zero population now. "Boy, what a growth > vector!" well, gee. the sector it gives you as a starting point has the right population; the population listed on the planet is updated every turn, and when you first enroll it hasnt done a turn on that planet yet. This corrects itself next turn. > -The help command now locks the game up some of the time with a "sh -c" I have no idea what this is doing. > How would one use the unpatched version of land.c for landing and > use the patched version for docking? > > To explain: the old version of land.c worked fine for landing on planets. > It simply didn't have the docking section completed. However, once the > patch was installed, the ships stopped being able to land on planets but > they could dock with each other. Hell, they can dock with themselves! I have fixed all this (I hope.) the new version was put in the usual place (anonymous ftp to ssyx.ucsc.edu [128.114.133.1]) the night before last. In article <12624@reed.UUCP> odlin@reed.UUCP (Iain Odlin) writes: > -The file order.c now contains two lines which cause the compiler to choke > on the ASCII value of a null character. > The null character turned out to be a machine dependent idea of what the > octal value of the ESC key was. Just put \033 (for ESC) between the > quotes and you're set. (Actually, I used \041, which is the '!' key!) I will put this in.. > -Every command which depends on rst.c no longer works. > This, upon further mucking with, turns out not to be the case. They just > don't work in both the way they used to and the way the docs say they do > anymore. You *MUST* be 'cs'ed into the ship's scope for the commands to > work. This is certainly a "fix" I don't care much for... they all work fine for me. when youre on a star scope and use report tactical stock ship or object, it should include all the ships in orbit around that star + each planet. If from the top scope, it should report on all ships you own everywhere. Tactical does some neat things now. I dont know what version you are complaining about, but it works for me. again,try getting the new version.. > BTW, the power command displays an inaccurate value for population. > That, and there is no documentation for the power command. Come on, are Docs *REALLY* *THAT* important??? >From: brazil@pawl.rpi.edu >What I want to know is, why does my original version of GB, which I compiled >on a Sun 3/50 with SunOS 4.0.1 under BSD 4.3, I've had none of the problems >you all are having. :) guess what machine this game was developed on. The only other machine I've made it on, is a PDP-11 (ucscb) running a tweaked version of 4.2. Any other machines have to take their chances, as I dont have access to them and therefore dont know what doesnt work on them. >From: mike@cs.keele.ac.uk (Michael A. Green) > In article <4968@bunker.UUCP> elliott@clunker.UUCP (Elliott Kleinrock) writes: >>While making GB I got: >> >>cc -DVER_4.3 -pipe -g -c makeplanet.c >>"makeplanet.c", line 289: compiler error: expression causes compiler loop: try simplifying >>*** Exit 1 >> > >Just a few comments. I tried making GB under Ultrix 2.2. After getting many >errors I finally cludged the header files to remove the size limitations on >the structure components, ie changed all the 1..17 bit ones to int. This >will get rid of any segmentation violation errors you have. It compiled after >that, right up to this loop. I cannot remember what I changed but it went away. YUCK. And to think I thought I was saving all this space by using bit fields, only to cause dumb compiler errors. Please tell me just what you did here, and perhaps I can come up with something that works for the standard machine (though, I had thought bitfields WERE standard C; guess I was wrong.) >On of my major gripes is the way that things like the data files are defined >in a .h file... and then used with explicit paths in half the files!!. huh? I dont know what the problem here is.. if youre porting it to another machine, dont you have to remake all the files anyway? If there is something I'm not getting here mail me and I can easily make the filenames into an indexed array or something. >There is also a bug in the planet.list file... it creates a universe with 3 >systems... not 30 as per the README... it is simple to fix. it's just sortof a sample... I tend to use it all the time for testing. sorry. >It looks promising but is too "young" to play yet. Post it again when it is >finished and a lot more people might play it. ah, but Empire was young too once, was it not? It seems to me that most of the problems everyone is having come from temperamental compilers and such. As I have said I dont know an easy way to fix this up except by relying on various enthusiasts trying their hands at putting up GB. Rest assured I am working on all (most) of the bugs that I know about, and unless I get a social life or something real soon, I will be fixing them up to the best of my abilities. Thanks for all your comments, and I am keeping my eye on comp.sources.games.bugs and will be responding (probably in this same manner). - Robert Chansky smq@ssyx.ucsc.edu ..!ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!smq -- ----------------------------------Iain Odlin---------------------------------- Box 1014, Reed College, Portland OR, 97202 odlin@reed -or- {ogccse, tektronix}!reed!odlin "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Fickle, fickle Lord."