HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: fstancl@email.tuwien.ac.at (Franz STANCL)
Subject: Re: Problem with racegen ....
Organization: Technical University of Vienna
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 11:16:42 GMT

In article <30JUL199211342469@yin.irisa.fr> cedelle@yin.irisa.fr (Alain Cedelle) writes:
[...]
>  But, alas, when i run racegen, i only get  ( after some printed messages ...)
>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
> This happens on Sun4 and Decstations machines.
> Fortunately, i managed to find a Sun3 where i was able to run the prog.
> Cannot racegen run on other machine than Sun3 ??

I compiled racegen on a Risc6000 and it works fine there..
I only discovered a minor bug: if you load a saved race and save 
it again and then try to re-load it you will get an error-message:
	load racefile
	save racefile
	load racefile : "Error:premature end of file"
or if you try that:
	load racefile
	save
	load          : "Unable to open file '^->o v'"
and after that the save-file is a bit messed up but it is possible
to repair it manually..

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Franz Stancl				Technical University Vienna
				    Institute for General Chemistry
e-mail: fstancl@email.tuwien.ac.at                    A-1060 Vienna
-------------------------------------------------------------------
From: rlewis@isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: ISI game announcement repeated
Date: 29 Jul 92 06:51:36 GMT
Reply-To: rlewis@venera.isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Distribution: alt
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute


OK.  I'm repeating this announcement since so many readers missed it.
(Apparently, if you send something on Thursday, it won't reach many 
sites till Friday night and many sites flush articles after as few as
2 days.  So when people come in after a weekend off, they've missed
the message.)

Anyway, here's the message:

I'm starting a GB game.  Below are the schedules and details.  
It will be a Standard game (as FTP'd from scam.berkeley.edu).

Schedule:  (All times are Pacific time)
--------
Races must be received by Saturday 1-Aug-92 06:00 PST.
(I've extended the deadline, I'll be entering the races that reach me
by the original deadline (Thursday 30-Jul-92 14:00) on Thursday night.
I'm off on Friday and probably won't get a chance to do anything that
day.  I'll enter the last minute races on Saturday before the game.

Send races to rlewis@venera.isi.edu, you'll need access to a racegen
program.  To find an FTP site with racegen read the FAQ for this newsgroup.
(My racegen was bundled with the server on scam.berkeley.edu).
You can just type up the stats (or even a description of the kind of race
you want to run, and I'll design one for you) if you'd like.

I will try to have the universe open Thursday night so that players can
do psmap, design macros, etc.  I will also have the universe up
before then for the same reasons and enter the earlybird races and
a guest race.

There will be 15 updates on Sat. 1-Aug-92.
The first update will be on Sat. 1-Aug-92 14:30 and we'll blitz
through the boring part.  (I *will* try to go slow enough for any 
races that are podding).

On Sunday 2-Aug-92 there will be updates at 14:30, 15:30, 16:30,
17:30, 18:30, 19:30, 20:30, 21:30.

On Monday 3-Aug-92 there will be updates at 14:30, 16:30, 18:30,
and 20:30.

On Tuesday 4-Aug-92 and each day thereafter an update will be
scheduled for 17:00 each day.

The host will be venera.isi.edu      port 2010

rlewis@venera.isi.edu
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
From: sbaker@eng.auburn.edu (Samuel Baker)
Subject: GB games
Organization: Auburn University Engineering
Distribution: alt
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:15:07 GMT

Mr .VanCleef,
	I would like to know if you could start your upcoming pooh game on
a weekday rather than weekend.  I know of several people who would like to
play in an upcoming game (including myself).  Unfortunately,  the game Roger 
Lewis is diety-ing is starting on a weekend.  I for one already have previous
engagements (sigh).  This excludes others also.
	Pooh sounds cool.  I've always wanted to do it.  A Monday sounds good.
Whatd'ya think?
					Thanks,
					Link Baker
From: rlewis@isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: GB Game announcement
Date: 23 Jul 92 22:28:58 GMT
Reply-To: rlewis@venera.isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Distribution: alt
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute


I'm starting a GB game.  Below are the schedules and details.  
It will be a Standard game (as FTP'd from scam.berkeley.edu).

Schedule:  (All times are Pacific time)
--------
Races must be received by Thurs. 30-Jul-92 14:00 PST.
Send them to rlewis@venera.isi.edu, you'll need access to a racegen
program.  To find an FTP site with racegen read the FAQ for this newsgroup.
You can just type up the stats (or even a description of the kind of race
you want to run, and I'll design one for you) if you'd like.

I will try to have the universe open Thursday night so that players can
do psmap, design macros, etc.  I will also have the universe up
before then for the same reasons and enter the earlybird races and
a guest race.

There will be 15 updates on Sat. 1-Aug-92.
The first update will be on Sat. 1-Aug-92 14:30 and we'll blitz
through the boring part.  (I *will* try to go slow enough for any 
races that are podding).

On Sunday 2-Aug-92 there will be updates at 14:30, 15:30, 16:30,
17:30, 18:30, 19:30, 20:30, 21:30.

On Monday 3-Aug-92 there will be updates at 14:30, 16:30, 18:30,
and 20:30.

On Tuesday 4-Aug-92 and each day thereafter an update will be
scheduled for 17:00 each day.

The host will be venera.isi.edu      port 2010

rlewis@venera.isi.edu
From: liu@cs.umd.edu (Yuan Liu)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: GB for general public
Date: 29 Jul 92 21:04:31 GMT
Reply-To: liu@cs.umd.edu
Distribution: alt
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742

This may be old news to some people.  But this month's feature selection of the
Science Fiction Book Club is Greg Bear's 'Anvil of Stars'.  It's about these
robots sent by a distant civilization destroying Earth and the Benefactors
helping the surviving humans to revenge.

And get this: the Law espoused by the Benefactors is:  Civilizations that make
and dispatch self-replicating killer machines must be exterminated. And their
victims, with the Benefactors' aid, must carry out the execution.

You think maybe Greg Bear has been playing GB under some assumed name?

Yuan Liu
liu@cs.umd.edu
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
From: boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell)
Subject: Is GB Dead?
Originator: boutell@athena
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 21:30:28 GMT

Sure looks it. I tried every game in the FAQ that mentioned guest accounts;
none are running, at least not in the US, to the best of my ability to
determine anyway. Has the game lost popularity for some reason?

-- 
My return address now works!
Believe it or not there is life after college. At least if you live
near NYC.
From: vancleef@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Is GB Dead?
Date: 27 Jul 92 03:57:26 EDT

In article <36184@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, cfodor@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Hi.) writes:
> In article <1992Jul26.213028.25825@cshl.org> boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell) writes:
>>Sure looks it. I tried every game in the FAQ that mentioned guest accounts;
>>none are running, at least not in the US, to the best of my ability to
>>determine anyway. Has the game lost popularity for some reason?
>>
> Well, that certainly can happen over the summer.  Garrett is less
> visible now as well... I don't know what his internet access 
> is right now.  The big problem for me is that I don't have the time
> anymore, I actually want to graduate.  Besides, it ceased to have
> any relevance to actual space battles of epic proportion in the 
> last game I played.  I merely colonized with Ts, kicked butt and
> held my stuff with my grounder meso, and accumulated wealth until I
> won.  Not much of a challenge.  The main problem I see right now is
> that it got to the point where I had literally tens of thousands of
> resources at my disposal.  It is hard to be strategic with that much
> r.  I fancy a good game of chess any day is more exciting. :(

Expect *significant reduction* in resource production in the next Poh
game. People used to whine and moan over this for a long time. I told
them this would happen. In the next Pooh game, resources will be
very low in availability (or I will probably increase costs actually :),
so each resource point will mean something... It is about time to
consolodate this. If it done across the board for everyone it is fair.

If you don't want to play by these rules, then *don't play*  :)

-Garrett



> 
> Any ideas on how to bring some strategy back in?  Where are the fine
> lines we must walk?  Where is the fear of failure? How can we
> make every bit of resource important?  How can we make the 
> awe-inspiring, space-jumping, all-powerful *T* a mere nightmare of
> the past?  
> 
>>-- 
>>My return address now works!
>>Believe it or not there is life after college. At least if you live
>>near NYC.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Chris Fodor    aka Feepness
> Disclaimer:  If life stops after college does that mean I can 
>              abort my parents?
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
From: ddickey@aspen04.cray.com (Dan A. Dickey)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Problem with racegen ....
Date: 30 Jul 92 14:56:56 GMT
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Originator: ddickey@aspen04


In article <30JUL199211342469@yin.irisa.fr>, cedelle@yin.irisa.fr (Alain Cedelle) writes:
> 
>  I got the racegen from scam.berkeley.edu , it is pretty well packed and i had
>  no problem to extract files and making the exec ..
>  Then, as says the info file :
> 
> Now you are ready to go! 
> 
>   But, alas, when i run racegen, i only get  ( after some printed messages ...)
> 
> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
> 
>  This happens on Sun4 and Decstations machines.
> 
>  Fortunately, i managed to find a Sun3 where i was able to run the prog.
> 
>  Cannot racegen run on other machine than Sun3 ??

This happens because of the way the subroutine Dialogue()
was written.  (I could make many many interesting and humorous
comments on the programming abilities of the twit that came up
with this little ditty, but I'll refrain myself).

Here is the "proper" routine, make sure you define VARARGS somewhere.
(And, most likely, include <varargs.h>)
	-Hydra

----------cut here-------------
#ifdef VARARGS
int Dialogue(va_alist)
va_dcl
#else
int Dialogue(prompt)
     char *prompt ;
#endif
{
#ifdef VARARGS
  va_list	vl;
  char		*prompt;
#endif
  char input[128] ;
  int len, i, argc = 0 ;
#ifndef VARARGS
  char **argvp = (&prompt) + 1 ;
#endif
#if defined(PECULIAR_ARGUMENT_PASSING) || defined(VARARGS)
  char *argv[16] ;
#endif

#ifdef VARARGS
  va_start(vl);
  prompt = va_arg(vl, char *);
  printf(prompt);
  while ((argv[argc] = va_arg(vl, char *)) != (char *)0) {
    if (argc == 0)
      printf(" [%s", argv[argc++]);
    else
      printf("/%s", argv[argc++]);
  }
  argc++;
  va_end(vl);
#else
# ifdef PECULIAR_ARGUMENT_PASSING
  printf(prompt) ;
  if (*argvp) {
    printf(" [%s", *argvp) ;
    argv[argc++] = argvp++ ;
    }
  while (*argvp) {
    printf("/%s", *argvp)
    argv[argc++] = argvp++ ;
    }
# else
  char **argv = argvp ;
  printf(prompt) ;
  if (*argvp)
    printf(" [%s", *argvp++) ;
  while (*argvp)
    printf("/%s", *argvp++) ;
  argc = argvp - argv ;
# endif  /* PECULIAR_ARGUMENT_PASSING */
#endif

  if (argc)
    printf("]") ;
  printf("> ") ;
  while (1) {
    fgets(input, 128, stdin) ;
    if (argc == 0)
      return -1 ;
    len = strlen(input) - 1 ;
    
    for (i = 0; i < argc; i++)
      if (! strncasecmp(argv[i], input, len))
	return i ;
    /*
     * The input did not match any of the valid responses: */
    printf("Please enter ") ;
    for (i = 0; i < argc-1; i++)
      printf("\"%s\", ", argv[i]) ;
    printf("or \"%s\"> ", argv[i]) ;
    }
  }
-- 
---------
Dan A. Dickey      ddickey@cray.com
From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Game ideas.
Date: 28 Jul 92 12:40:32 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology


|> The main thing is:  more ships is always better, and more is too damn
|> time intensive to create.  The "survivability" attribute of a ship
|> needs to be increased as a linear function of the resources
|> invested.  Right now, five 15d missiles can and will damage/destroy most
|> ships (besides, of course, @s)  Armor is not a good option because
|> one or two shots could get through and cause criticals leaving you
|> with an expensive dead ship.   Maybe a new option?
|> Survivability... direct damage divider on a scale .01:10, where
|> .01 gained you points, and 10 cost about 2000 res on a somewhat 
|> linear scale.

Why don't we just make sheilds which use up fuel when they get hit and let
a certain amount of damage through. A strength N shield protecting against
D damage could allow D*2^(N/-10) damage through, and cost N*D fuel. Of
course it would be really heavy and expensive and to survive large hits would
take huge amounts of fuel. The result is fewer, larger, slower ships.
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Chewberet?
From: jbatka@desire.wright.edu
Date: 27 Jul 92 08:11:21 EST
Organization: Wright State University 

Garrett,

Where is Chewbert available?

Thanks,
-- 

   Jim Batka  | Always remember ...                        | Buckaroo
   Modemman   |    No matter where you go, there you are!  |   Bonzai
--------------+--------------------------------------------+--------------
   Ruler of   | Work Email:  BATKAJ@CCMAIL.DAYTON.SAIC.COM | Elvis is
  Gaultheria  | Home Email:  JBATKA@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU      |   DEAD!
--------------+--------------------------------------------+--------------
   Jim Batka  | 64 years is 33,638,400 minutes ...         | Beatles:
  The Shadow  |    and a minute is a long time.            |   Yellow Submarine
From: macko@pilot.njin.net (Peter C. Macko)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Need test site
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:00:04 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


  Keesh writes:

>Hello all again. Any oldies still alive? Feepie? Aesir? Tribbles?

  Nope.


  Feepie responds:

>I refuse to be referred to as an Oldie.  I will always be an
>annoying newbie at heart.

  Annoying maybe, I don't know about the rest.  ;-)

>As for Aesir and Tribbles, they have been taken to the training
>grounds and prospects are they will make *excellent* thralls for entry
>into the combat stadiums.  Obedience has been a problem though...

  Talk about delusions of grandeur... Last I noticed it was Feepness
fighting 9 foot tall fanatically religious mercenary Man-Eating Chickens
in our gladiator pits.  


                                             -Aes


"My Daddy is Bigger then Your Daddy."  -Feep
-- 

  Peter C. Macko                      Internet: macko@pilot.njin.net
  LCSR/Network Research                         macko@cs.rutgers.edu
  Telecommunications/Network Services     UUCP: {backbone}!rutgers!cs!macko
  Rutgers Computing Services,  Rutgers University (Piscataway, NJ)   
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
From: tmyoung@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Thomas M. Young)
Subject: Re: Is GB Dead?
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 10:27:42 EDT

In article <36184@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> cfodor@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Hi.) writes:
>
>Any ideas on how to bring some strategy back in?  Where are the fine
>lines we must walk?  Where is the fear of failure? How can we
>make every bit of resource important?  How can we make the 
>awe-inspiring, space-jumping, all-powerful *T* a mere nightmare of
>the past?  

I've only played a couple of games, so take this with a grain of salt,
but it seems like things could be done to make it more interesting.
Some (mutually incompatible) suggestions:

1) Require res to support pop.  This would make the production of res
   on over-populated planets slow down as the planet hit max pop.
   Of course, the amount of res required to support the pop should
   decline as tech increases.  Depending on the formulas applied, you
   could either create population crashes that trash planets, or just
   make res production harder to increase.
2) Further divide res into components [heavy metals, biopolymers,
   radioactives, etc..] so that you can amass big stockpiles of things
   that are common on your planets and/or you are good at producing,
   but will have to scrimp and save things that you are inefficient
   at digging. -should promote more alliances, of course, and a motive
   for trade (and theft).
3) Similarly, you can divide tech into a vector. [weapons tech, drive 
   tech, computer tech, etc] to achieve similar results. 
4) Certain aspects of the game really aught to be automated either from
   the server or client.  Experienced macro writers currently have too
   big an edge.
5) Finally, the ship design rules (which I quite enjoyed) might be
   unified a bit.  It aught to be possible to have only one kind of
   ship that you engineer into shuttles, missiles, habitats, etc.
   Then you just have to decide on a mass for 'features' like cloaking,
   sensors, proximity fuse, hyperdrive, terraforming capability, etc.
   If you then allowed folks to build ships at lower tech levels (but with
   increased cost) you would see the bigger ships built and the res used.

The final comment: I kind of enjoyed the market, but it doesn't seem to
fit the rest of the game.  I would have got a kick out of STL or FTL
cargo ships toting the goods to and from buyers.  Life as a pirate would
be interesting for a newbie - maybe he couldn't "win" but he could have
an effect on the outcome and enjoy the game.  Perhaps some way of detecting
STL ships in 'space' and having deep space combat would be possible.

Well this is enough rambling.. what do you think?
--
Tom Young                                         tmyoung@rodan.acs.syr.edu
From: hunley@macbeth.umd.edu (Joshua Hunley)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Looking for Gov's for venera game
Date: 29 Jul 92 15:51:36 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park


   I am looking for gov's for the venera gb game starting on Aug 1. New
Players are welcome.

--
Josh
aka Kythera
hunley@hamlet.umd.edu

Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
From: mcvey@mpr.ca (Iain McVey)
Subject: Re: Problem with racegen ....
Organization: MPR Teltech Ltd., Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 18:23:04 GMT

In article <30JUL199211342469@yin.irisa.fr> cedelle@yin.irisa.fr (Alain Cedelle) writes:
>
> I got the racegen from scam.berkeley.edu , it is pretty well packed and i had
> no problem to extract files and making the exec ..
> Then, as says the info file :
>
>Now you are ready to go! 
>
>  But, alas, when i run racegen, i only get  ( after some printed messages ...)
>
>Segmentation fault (core dumped)
>
> This happens on Sun4 and Decstations machines.
>
> Fortunately, i managed to find a Sun3 where i was able to run the prog.
>
> Cannot racegen run on other machine than Sun3 ??

It does some borderline things that an ansi compiler such as gcc will
accept, but the standard, or even bundled sunos compiler won't.

- Iain -
-- 
Iain McVey (mcvey@mprgate.mpr.ca)   | - As you can see, I am still alive.
Software Designer                   |   Born that way, you know?
MPR Teltech Ltd.                    | - How romantic, two ships passing out
8999 Nelson Way, Burnaby, BC        |   In the night. - Hawkeye Pierce 
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
From: perrocho@inf.ethz.ch (Louis Perrochon)
Subject: Re: Is GB Dead?
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Swiss Federal Institute of technology (ETH), Zurich
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 08:15:59 GMT

In article <36184@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> cfodor@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Hi.) writes:
>In article <1992Jul26.213028.25825@cshl.org> boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell) writes:
>
>Any ideas on how to bring some strategy back in?  Where are the fine

How about different kind of r's. You can only produce one kind, the rest,
you have to buy from allies. This means slow down the market, of course.
Maybe have a couple of god planets, where you have to go and transport
ressources by yourself? Each race gets one sector on request. No fighting
allowed in that system. Of course different kind of ressources are only
needed for warships, otherwise you could never leave your planet.

>lines we must walk?  Where is the fear of failure? How can we

The further your away from an @, the bigger the chances of ships 
forgetting their orders. The more @ you have, the bigger the chances, one
of them revolts. Make planets with non-active @ very vulnerable to 
insurgency.

>make every bit of resource important?  How can we make the 
>awe-inspiring, space-jumping, all-powerful *T* a mere nightmare of

make'em really heavy, like in the Slow Blitz. I could hardly fly them to 
other planets

>the past?  



-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Louis Perrochon, Institut fuer Informationssysteme, Zurich, Switzerland |
|              voice: ++1 254 7282 email: perrochon@inf.ethz.ch           |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: rlewis@isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Is GB Dead?
Date: 27 Jul 92 02:26:50 GMT
Reply-To: rlewis@venera.isi.edu (Roger Lewis)
Organization: Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of So. California

In article <36184@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> cfodor@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Hi.) writes:
>Any ideas on how to bring some strategy back in?  Where are the fine
>lines we must walk?  Where is the fear of failure? How can we
>make every bit of resource important?  How can we make the 
>awe-inspiring, space-jumping, all-powerful *T* a mere nightmare of
>the past?  

You can provide the fix to disable hyper-T's to those of us that
would have used it in our games.

One BIG problem is the number of Newbies that someone like Feepness
could just steamroll.  Perhaps someone should hold a game for experienced 
players only.  Perhaps I will someday. :-)

The Super Bowl of Galactic Bloodshed? :-)

I'm not SURE there is a surplus of r.  There certainly aren't enough
realistic threats to make some players NEED all their res.  If people
weren't so often surrounded by ineffective newbies, maybe they'd
bother to build capital ships.

By the way, I *LIKE* newbies.  I'm just saying that there might be
a demand for a game of experienced players only;  particularly, if
we agreed that it was a championship game "for the title". :-)

rlewis@venera.isi.edu    Creepazoids
From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Planet names
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:34:14 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: Universal Export Ltd, Regent's Park, London

Roger Lewis writes:
>In the ISI game I'm hosting, I purposely did not use the planet
>names list when I did makeuniv.  Therefore the planets are numbered
>(by orbit?) instead.

If you are using GB 5.0 or beyond, you have the new improved makeuniv
and the planets will indeed be numbered by orbital distance from the
their star.  HAP, and old GB, do/did not have this feature.

I am glad to see that another fan of numbered planets besides me
exists.  It is much easier to maintain large empires when you don't
have to remember the names of all the planets, but just the stars.

-Leonard
From: vancleef@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: GB for general public
Date: 30 Jul 92 02:35:19 EDT
Distribution: alt

In article <59306@mimsy.umd.edu>, liu@cs.umd.edu (Yuan Liu) writes:
> This may be old news to some people.  But this month's feature selection of the
> Science Fiction Book Club is Greg Bear's 'Anvil of Stars'.  It's about these
> robots sent by a distant civilization destroying Earth and the Benefactors
> helping the surviving humans to revenge.
> 
> And get this: the Law espoused by the Benefactors is:  Civilizations that make
> and dispatch self-replicating killer machines must be exterminated. And their
> victims, with the Benefactors' aid, must carry out the execution.

:D

> 
> You think maybe Greg Bear has been playing GB under some assumed name?
> 
> Yuan Liu
> liu@cs.umd.edu

-Garrett


Newsgroups: alt.games.gb