OldOnes v2.0 README File ------------------------ Colin Frayn, Birmingham, UK, November 2006 Contents: -------- 0) Copyright Notice 1) Installation Instructions 2) Starting a New Game 3) Game Control basics 4) Battle Controls 5) Bugs 6) Credits ------------------- 0) Copyright Notice ------------------- This game is for public distribution in its unaltered format. If you wish to change the datafiles or alter the game in any way then you do so entirely at your own risk, and must acknowledge that you have done so if you decide to publish the new version in any form. You may not use this game, its source code, datafiles, or any part thereof for any commercial purposes without my specific written permission. This game is the intellectual property of Colin Frayn, and remains so even after alterations have been made to any part of it. Further redistribution, in any format, must be accompanied by this README file UNALTERED, and must acknowledge me as the original author. ---------------------------- 1) Installation Instructions ---------------------------- OldOnes is very simple to install on a standard Windows machine. Follow these steps and it should work just fine. (a) Unzip all the files, retaining the exact directory structure. The program expects a subdirectory called 'Data' where the data files reside. (b) To set up a shortcut to the program in your start menu, just right-click on the start menu button, select 'open' and then open the folder where you want the shortcut to be placed. Select 'file->new->shortcut' and follow the instructions. (c) Run the game by double-clicking on the program icon, or selecting the option from the start menu. If you have any problems with the install then feel free to drop me an email at my usual address (colin@frayn.net). ---------------------- 2) Starting a New Game ---------------------- When you run the game for the first time, you are presented with the mainmap window. The map window is the control centre for the whole program, and contains the main menu bar through which you load/save games, start new games and control the window displays. The 'File' menu contains five options. New : Start a new game. Load : Load a saved game Save : Save the current game in progress Autosave : Toggle yearly autosaves ON/OFF. Exit : Quit the game The 'Windows' menu contains toggle switches for all of the main game control windows. Selecting each of these options displays one of these windows, or turns it off if it is already open. These will be greyed out for now as there is no currently loaded game. The 'View' menu gives viewing options for the main map screen. The 'Setup' menu contains options to turn on or disable the various automation tasks. The 'Feedback' menu contains feedback switches for information on the day-to-day running of your empire. The final menu is the 'Help' menu. As yet there is no help file for this game, but this menu contains the one option to display the 'about' box, giving program information. It also contains a shortcut to this file under notepad. If you don't have notepad.exe on your system then this option won't work. To start a new game, follow these instructions; Select 'New' from the file menu, or press 'alt-f' followed by 'n'. The 'Start new game' dialog box appears. Select the required options. If you opt not to select any of the five OldOnes then the game can only be won by conquest, that is by defeating all the other opponents. This is because the OldOne races give certain technological 'presents' which are necessary if you want to discover the game's most prized technological advancements. Next select a random seed, if required. This will allow you to generate exactly the same initial conditions again if you wish to replay it at a later date. You can also choose 'Allow Tech Win', which means that you can win the game by discovering the secret of mysticism. Otherwise the game must be won by conquest. Once all the options have been selected, click 'begin'. The map will be generated and you will be prompted for the name of your civilisation. Next are shown the details for the races which have been generated. Click 'Continue' to start the game. You are presented with the initial map screen. In the centre is your home system, marked with green arrows above and below. This is the currently selected system. Below it, if you have the option selected from the 'View' menu, you can see the number of colonies that you own in that particular system, also in green. You can navigate around the map menu in several ways. Firstly, holding the left mouse button and moving teh mouse allows you to pan. Holding the right mouse button allows you to rotate around the currently selected object. The mouse wheel zooms in or out. You can hold 'control' or 'shift' to alter the speed of this up and down respectively. Double-clicking on an object centres the view on it. Also, hitting 'c' centres the view on the currently selected object. View options can (and should) be configured to your taste using the 'View' menu and the sliders at the top-right of the main screen. Note that the sliders only appear if the relevant options have been selected. You are now ready to begin to play 'OldOnes' and build a civilisation in the stars! ---------------------- 3) Game Control basics ---------------------- Game control builds around three main features. Firstly, the main map screen can be considered as the nerve centre for your operations. It shows the stars around you, the degree to which your race has begun to colonise the stars, and the opposition that you will inevitably face. Secondly, from the menu bar, you can select a number of control menus which allow you to govern the exact state of your empire. Thirdly, you have the message window, which allows you to step through time as you watch your civilisation grow and flourish. Firstly, the map window is rather important. Each race has its own colour, and yours is green. If you choose to display ships in transit on this map then they will also display in green. At the moment you won't be able to see any other colonies as you haven't visited any other systems or made contact with other races. As soon as you do so your map will be updated accordingly. The currently selected system is highlighted with green arrows, and a mesh sphere. The 'hover' system is also highlighted with a mesh frame. Details about these systems are displayed on the left hand side of the map screen. At the beginning, your home system is selected by default. You can zoom in on it by hitting 'C' with the map window selected. As you grow more powerful, the level of your influence throughout the galaxy will also be displayed in your race's own colour. This is represented by an influence map consisting of translucent spheres centred on each of the systems you control. This will become more visible as your race discovers increasingly powerful technologies, and grows in strength and number. You can select this through the 'View' window, option "Show Influence Map". Other options are: Show Stargates: Show lines linking all systems joined by stargates. Show Map Grid: Toggle the map grid on/off Show Colony Count: Display colony count for each system beneath the star icon. Show EnRoute Ships: Displays any ships in transit between systems. Show System Names: Allows you to customise how systems are labelled Show Lines: Allows you to customise the display of links between systems. The menu system gives you some control over the gameplay. Through the 'Setup' menu you can opt to let the computer manage certain aspects of your civilisation for you. Namely, automating exploration probes, transports, terraform ships, attack fleets, colony ships and ship design updates. I strongly recommend that you use the first three at least, as it makes the game much more fun. The other option in this menu simply allows you to set how greedy colony automation is. With the control set at 'timid' then the computer will try not to spend much money at all. With the control set to 'extravagant' you will see your cash supplies dropping away rapidly. The 'Feedback' menu allows you to alter down the feedback that you get from automated transports, colonies and territorial claims. If you are still getting too much feedback then make sure that the ambassador settings for alien races are set low in the 'Ambassadors' dialog box (see below). The controls for the main map screen are the following; Mouse : Click left button and drag to pan : Double click left button to select a system : Right click and drag to rotate the map 'C' : Centre on the currently selected colony 'E' : Toggle ON/OFF En-Route ships 'G' : Toggle ON/OFF Map Grid 'I' : Toggle ON/OFF Influence Map 'O' : Toggle ON/OFF Colony count 'S' : Toggle ON/OFF Star gate links Next, I'll briefly cover the message window, and then I'll go through the control windows in turn. The message window has three buttons. Initially only two are functional. These are 'Next Turn' and 'Sleep'. OldOnes is essentially a turn based game, and if you really require to do so, you can step through it one turn at a time. The game starts at the beginning of a new millennium, on the 1st of January, 2000. Each turn is one quarter of a calendar month, and there are therefore 48 of these in one year. On the message window the data is displayed, together with the current wealth of your civilisation. OldOnes can be a rather slow-moving game at the beginning, so you are provided with a 'sleep' function which allows you simply to skip turns until an important message arrives which merits your attention. Every year there is a meeting of the senate of your people which tells you a little about the main problems facing your reign, and what you must look towards if you wish to keep your people on your side. There are also periodic events such as meteorite impacts and food shortages. These won't have an enormous effect on your whole civilisation, but could damage one colony or system if ignored. Please note that the game is autosaved every year. The autosave file can be found in the Oldones directory. To turn this off, use the option in the File menu. Finally, if you have selected any of the OldOne races to join you in this universe, then they might well drop by to pay you a visit. The OldOne races are vastly older than any of the emerging civilisations such as Humanity. They have been around for many millions of years, travelling around the galaxy in advanced space craft when humans were only just discovering fire. The OldOne visits might be beneficial for your people, or alternatively the OldOnes could consider you a threat and decide to attack. Either way, it would be wise to defend even your most remote colonies, just in case. Some of the OldOnes are more generous than others. The Vorlons and Ty'rath are reasonably kind, whereas the World Eaters and Shadows are vicious. The Heirok are somewhere in between. The Control Dialogs ------------------- I'll consider each of these in turn. There are a lot of these windows, and I admit that the control system is a bit clumsy and complicated. It takes a lot of practice! I usually have the system view dialog and the colony view dialog open at all times, together with the map window and the message window. With a little resizing of the map window, these four can all fit on a desktop at a reasonable resolution without overlapping. I play OldOnes at a resolution of at least 1280*1024 pixels. With a larger resolution, you can easily fit in the other important windows such as the ambassadors box, the ship design box and the ship list. a) The System View Dialog This, together with the map window, forms the heart of your navigation control. In this window is displayed the map of the current system (if it has been visited) including all the planets, moons and the star itself. There is also a large amount of data on the system, including the star type, plus a brief explanation. You can change the name of this system by clicking the button with the current name in. You can also alter the details displayed in the main system view window by selecting or deselecting the three check boxes. Colonies are displayed with an appropriate colour box around the colonised planet's icon. The level of defence of that planet is also displayed in the form of white squares around the corners of the colony box. No squares means 'no ships', one square means 'weakly defended' right up to four squares which means 'strongly defended'. The definition of 'well defended' depends on the level of threat about which your civilisation is aware. You may also select any planet in the system (using the left mouse button) and view the details that you have managed to gather so far about this planet. Double clicking with the left button will bring up the colony dialog if it is not already open. You can view the ships of your race currently based at that planet using the 'ships' button and view the planet itself using the 'view' button. There is a fractally generated surface map of the planet displayed at the lower left corner of the dialog, and this is mapped onto a spherical surface when the 'view' button is pressed. The detail of this mapping can be altered using the '+' and '-' keys, and the viewing angle can be changed using the mouse, while holding the left button. b) The Colony Dialog This is possibly the most important of your control dialogs, and forms the heart of your strategies, both military and internal. The colony dialog allows you to view all the available information on your colonies, as well as those of your enemies, if you have sufficient contact with them. Here you can view and change the colony's current name, view its type (the icon in the top-right corner), find its current size (the grey circles) and check its current food supply levels (the red bar behind them). You can pick any colony for your race (or indeed the race of the colony currently selected) using the 'Pick' button. This shows the details for all the colonies owned by the current race, and allows you to zoom to any of them. You can also view the colony's current production status, and more importantly change what the colony is producing using the 'change' button. In this dialog are displayed the individual options for this colony, together with the cost, and resources needed for each. The 'automate' button allows you to leave this colony's building in the hands of the built-in AI system. You can also queue up a number of repeated builds for ships. Beneath the 'build' indicator are the resource details for this colony, indicating how many of each resource you have in the colony, and an estimate for how much there is left in the planet beneath. If you have a matter teleport system then you will have the option of Right-clicking with the mouse to bring up the matter teleport screen. The next row of buttons will all initially be blank, but will eventually present you with a range of options for further investigating advanced features of your colony. Finally, towards the bottom of the dialog are a series of buttons allowing you to view the buildings at this colony, seek advice from your council, view (and give orders to) the ships based there, or disband (destroy) this colony, if you decide you don't want it any more. Of note in this version of OldOnes is that the existence of jump gates connceting your colonies now gives you a bonus to science and funding rates, based on how many other jump gates this colony is linked to, and what the size of the jump gate is. c) The Fleets Dialog This is a fairly simple dialog. It allows you to view and order the fleets under your command. You can build as many fleets as you like, though you start with none. As each fleet is selected, you are presented with two lists of ships. Firstly, those actually members of the fleet, and secondly, those at the planet or colony at which the fleet is based which are suitable for joining this fleet. You can select any number of ships from each box, and order them to join the fleet or leave it using the arrow buttons on the right of the dialog. In addition, you can view more advanced details on each of the ships using the 'View' buttons. The 'Goto' button allows you to move your fleet around by sending it to the currently selected planet or system. If you want to attack the current location with a fleet, then click the 'attack' button. You can also set each fleet as an 'attack fleet', which (if you automate attack fleets) means that this fleet will be controlled by the AI, and will automatically fly around attacking your enemies. Finally, you have two buttons allowing you to create a new fleet, or disband an existing one. New fleets are created at the currently selected planet. d) The Ship List Dialog This can be reached either from the menu, or also from the 'view ships' option in both the system dialog and the colony dialog. It presents a list of ships, and a series of buttons, most of which remain unavailable. When each ship is selected, its available options are highlighted for you to choose. 'View Ships' allows you to view more details on the ships in the dialog. 'Zoom' moves the display to that ship immediately. 'Move Ship' allows you to order your ships to move to a specified destination. First of all select the target using the map window and the system dialog, and then click 'Move Ship'. Next is the 'Attack' option, for when you want the selected ship to attack its current location. If this ship is a member of a fleet then you will be given the option of attacking with the entire fleet. You can also opt to view the details of all ships shown in the list using the 'Details' button. 'Survey' allows you to carry out a geological survey of the current planet. 'Colonise' is used by colony ships to set up a new colony. 'Terraform' allows you to alter slowly the surface temperature of the specified planet to a more habitable value. 'Cargo' allows you to load up cargo ships. In this menu, holding down 'shift' increases the loading/unloading rate. You can alter the ships you are displaying using the two filters. One of these allows you to select whether to view ships at the current selected location, or the entire navy. The other allows you to select only certain ship types. Finally, you can disband ships when they become surplus to requirements using the 'Disband' button. e) The Ship Designs Dialog This is a fairly self-explanatory dialog. Your race can set up designs for each of the three major classes of ships, fighter, cruiser and battleship. Every time a colony is instructed to build one of these three types, it simply builds one according to the current design. The different options become available at different stages of the game, and initially none of them are available as you have not discovered the relevant technologies. If 'automate designs' is switched on then these designs will be automatically updated when new technologies are discovered. f) The Ambassadors Dialog This dialog box allows you to examine the intelligence reports you have on your own civilisation, and those of other neighbours. You can also alter the level of diplomatic links you have with these other civilisations if you click on the button at the top of the dialog which displays the level of diplomacy. Note that these advanced options require advanced technologies. You also have an option here to alter the technology that your civilisation is currently researching and to alter the focus 'task' that your race is engaged in. Be aware that using any advanced levels of diplomacy such as ambassadors and spies will increase the feedback you receive in the message box. For example, you will learn more about what the enemy is building. You will also be able to view the enemy's colony data from the "Colony View dialog box" once you use spies. ------------------ 4) Battle Controls ------------------ It is inevitable that at some point during each game you will have to fight battles, or watch others do so. OldOnes contains an advanced 3D battle simulation which implements a flocking algorithm together with a heuristic- based Artificial Intelligence system in order to help you visualise what is going on. Of course many battles are always taking place in the background that you might never hear about, or at least not have the necessary military intelligence to view. However, for those that you can view, the following information might be useful. Whereas you can't actually influence the battle, you can at least view what is going on. These keys are useful; '+' and '-' - Zoom in and out Arrow keys - Move up,down,left,right Mouse + R-button - Rotate about battle centre L-button - Pan the camera '1' - '9' - Alter the speed of the battle 'P' - Pause the battle 'S' - Toggle ON/OFF display of ship statistics (health etc.) 'L' - Toggle ON/OFF display of ship labels 'T' - Toggle ON/OFF display of ship trails The landscape will be rendered together with the colony in the case of colony defence battles. Otherwise the battles will take place in deep space. Military stations, and other colony defences are also rendered if they have been built at your colony. Hovering over ships allows you to see their details. ------- 5) Bugs ------- As far as I know there are no outstanding bugs at time of release. If you find anything that you consider to be a bug, or alternatively if you have any suggestions for interface development, ways of improving game play or anything at all then feel free to email me and I'll see what I can do to fix your problem. My email address is colin@frayn.net. I wrote this game primarily for the experience, and I must admit it's proven amazingly good fun. I hope you also derive some enjoyment out of my hard work, and if I can possibly add to that fun then I'd love to do so. If you find a situation that causes a reliable bug, then please enclose a save game file, together with a description of exactly how the bug occurred, what you were doing, your OldOnes version number, your system details, and email that to me. Feel free to fiddle with the data files yourself if you want to alter anything. I deliberately left them in ascii format so that people can do just that. Use 'notepad' or similar editing software, but remember to keep backups of the originals in case you mess up the files. Any problems caused by altering these files are entirely your own fault! A couple of people have expressed problems getting OldOnes to run properly on lower-end systems. I've been testing it on a P4-3Ghz with an NVidia GeForce 6600 graphics card. I suspect it should work well on much slower systems too, although the lack of a good graphics card might be a problem. I have personally tested it on Windows XP, though I don't see why it shouldn't run on other systems too. ---------- 6) Credits ---------- Design & Code : Colin Frayn (colin@frayn.net) Acknowledgements: Thanks to J. Michael Straczynski who wrote the Babylon 5 series upon which much of the story behind this game is based. For those who are interested, the OldOne races are based on the following science fiction races; Vorlons, Shadows : Babylon 5 races of the same names (from the 'first ones') World Eaters : Aliens from the film 'Independence Day' Heirok : Inspired by various ideas of my own, including some of the other 'first ones' of B5. Ty'rath : The 'Eldar' from Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 plus some of the 'first ones' from B5. Thanks to all those people who designed the above. Thanks also to Dave Gittins and Chris Jordinson for testing of the initial versions. Finally, thank *you* for reading. I hope you enjoy the game! Cheers, Colin