From: cs177wai@sdcc5.ucsd.edu (Christopher Fodor)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: I wear women's undergarments...
Date: 8 Oct 92 02:41:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

Evan are you out there?

We (Keeshans and myself) tossed around the idea of starting a GB
mailing list.  I think this would be an excellent idea.  It would
be a forum for those who work on the code (as opposed to just players)
I know of lots of bugs in the server (and fixes) that I don't know if 
Garrett knows about.  It also helps us set up and maintain client
server interfaces now that there is more than one person working
on clients.  It would also allow us to set up standards and exchange 
programming information.  I think it is better than using alt.games.gb
because it allows us to talk directly to people, and people are more
responsive when stuff shows up in their mailboxes.  I suppose it
would be composed of people who have run several GB games (HAP falls
under this I guess) and those who know the server code well.  I don't
know what 5.1 looks like and I am afraid to ask.  Sheesh, I remember
playing under 2.0!  A lot of people make mods or bug fixes at their
sites and these never get onto scam.  Anyways, I'm a callin' you out Keesh,
'cause I don't know how to go about starting up a mailing list.

Here are some bug fixes I know about:

name.c:
add "them = 0;" to initialize the variable them in insurgency ().

ship to sector assault bug:
attack strength is multiplied by 100 for some reason (perhaps trying
to compensate for compat when it is already 0-100?)

dissolve bug:
The server only *thought* all ships didn't have enough fuel to move
for one update.  After the next update, it was ok.  All ships actually
did have enough fuel.  Of course, all ships at "/" scope had dissappeared
because ships normally are killed if they run out of fuel at that.
I don't know the cause of this one.

ship to sector assault bug 2:
When you unload people from your ship, the mass of those killed (in the case
of defeat) or those that are successfully unloaded (in the case of victory)
is not deducted from the mass of the ship.  This makes for a rather heavy
ship after a few assaults.

255 aps at "/" scope:
If you have 0 aps at /scope, sometimes you will get 255 APS suddenly
for some reason.  I have seen it happen (somewhat regular,) I have 
mentioned it, but again I don't know why.

Messaging:
many telegrams and messages go all to the same governor multiple times.
Examples are bombarding and declaring off the top of my head.

Anyone got anything else to add?

A nice mod at NYU that we didn't have a chance to playtest was making 
w's buildable only by the server during updates (and only 1 per update)
via the toxicity command.  This represents the time effort involved in 
planetary cleanup, as well as making tox a very offensive weapon and
giving a skilled player a good strategy for destroying enemy civs and
taking enemy planets.  

Anothing nice thing (tm) would be allowing leaders to grant governors
"generalship" allowing them full powers as if they were in the 0 slot.
This makes things much more convenient for a good team.

Lovingly yours,

   Feepness

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Chris Fodor aka Feepness                           cfodor@UCSD.edu
Disclaimer:  If you can't beat 'em, build von-neumanns.
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