Den News, Third Issue From: den@netcom.com (Gamer's Den) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 22:31:55 +0000 =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+^+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ DEN NEWS ISSUE 3 JULY 27, 1994 =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ > > > > NEW PHOENIX AMBASSADOR < < < Next week we will release the lastest version of the Phoenix Ambassador, an elaborate graphical front-end to Phoenix. Anyone with an MS-DOS machine and VGA should check it out. TABLE OF CONTENTS Den Notes What A Deal! Industrial Empire Planets Special GenCon Phoenix Errata Background Spotlight: Ambassador Add'l Phoenix Tools VP Battle Simulator In Print Flagship Paper Mayhem Shadis Origins Brief New Features Early Orders Check Your Balance On The Horizon Industrial Empire Odyssey See Ya Soon! DEN NOTES It's that time again - another issue of Den News! Welcome to all the new readers, especially those from Origins. I hope you find this issue informative. We've learned that many folks are not aware of all the ways to get freebies out of the Den. Not only do new accounts get 2 free turns in all our game systems (VGA Planets and Phoenix), but they also get *4* free turns for each referral who plays a month with us. Also, rules and computer interfaces are provided on-line free of charge! So, you can check us out for free, and if you like it pay the modest turn fees. If you enjoy yourself enough to recommend us to your friends, those 4 turn credits add up quickly! You could end up playing several games for free! As a special offer, we have changed our VGA Planets billing again. The first 20 turns of any VGA Planets game are free. Then we charge 50 cents for the next 30 turns ($15 maximum). Thereafter the game is free of charge. Dave and Jonathan have finally come up with a name for their game - Industrial Empire! It was a hard decision, and may other options were tossed around, but in the end they decided to represent the game goals in the name while giving honors to its roots (Empire). New Phoenix players invariably start in a single player game. By far and away the preferred race is Pini. Love those RTs. No-one has won in less than 20 turns yet... The spotlight of this issue is the Phoenix Ambassador. It will be available for public consumption next week. It features new artwork from Bart Van Bael (thanks Bart!). Check out the spotlight article for details. Following that is an article about a couple of Unix utilities newly written for Phoenix. This issue also contains a summary of several PBM/PBEM magazines, some new features available in our games, and Origin highlights. Enjoy! --- Den News is published by Gamer's Den, and contains up-to-date info provided by players and staff about the goings on at our gaming club, affectionately called the 'Den'. Though "Den News" is a monthly newsletter, issues may come out slightly earlier or later depending upon activities at the Den. We will post any Den player letters we receive - space and content allowing. If you are so inclined, we offer free gaming credit to the author of any articles published. Just drop us a line with your ideas. You can contact Den staff on the Internet at support@den.com and on CompuServe at 73613,3472. For additional info about playing games at the Den, you can get readmes by sending Internet email to info@den.com or by downloading the file INFO.DEN in library 15 of CompuServe's PBMGAMES forum. Players should periodically re-check the readmes to find out about the latest and greatest features. If you are reading this and you are not playing at the Den yet, you should signup! It costs you nothing to join, and you receive two free turns for any game service offered, right now this includes VGA Planets and Phoenix. You can contact the Den staff or look in the aforementioned info files for further details. SPOTLIGHT: AMBASSADOR Get ready! The newest version of the Phoenix Ambassador, written by Dan Moen and featuring new artwork by Bart Van Bael, will be available to you to download next week. The Ambassador is an MS-DOS PC player interface, and it features classy graphical galaxy displays, an elegant battle simulator, and one of the best 'diplomat' pictures we've ever seen. Though the graphical order entry support is still pending, this version will substantially enhance your enjoyment of the game and greatly reduce your book-keeping. Over a thousand hours of development and drawing have gone into the Ambassador, and the presentation is well polished. We hope to entice home computer gamers to try PBEM gaming with the Ambassador. Tell us what you think of it when you get a copy. For those players with Macs, we are working on a deal to port the Ambassador to your platform. ADD'L PHOENIX TOOLS Other than the Phoenix Ambassador, several other players are actively creating shareware tools for folks to use. Two that we know about for Unix players are described below. If you are writing a tool please tell us so we can spread the word. -- Visual Phoenix, by Jim Griffith Jim Griffith, long time gamer and power player, is writing Visual Phoenix (VP) for Unix players. He just reached the stage where he is seeking playtesters to help use his program and pass him feedback. If you are interested, please contact us so we can pass you a copy. Here's a blurb about VP written by Jim: VP is an ASCII-based Phoenix viewer which runs under UNIX. It allows you to graphically view the state of your empire and plan out your orders. It maintains a database of information from past turns, updating pieces of information when new turns come in. It allows you to view data from multiple positions within the same game at the same time. VP was written by Jim Griffith. Jim is soliciting playtesters to help him identify bugs and shortcomings. The code is written in C++ using curses. If you have access to a C++ compiler and would like to playtest VP, please contact Gamer's Den. In order to help, you'll need some programming knowledge since you'll have to compile the source files yourself. -- Battle Simulator, by Steve Mann Steve Mann, a Professor at Waterloo (in Canada) with time to kill, put together a Battle Simulator written in perl. Though it has only been run on Unix boxes, it may work on most other machines with perl. Here's his summary: I've written a Phoenix battle simulator and made it available via anonymous ftp. The program is a Perl script, and runs in two modes. In the first mode, it simulates an attack. The output shows which units fought each other, what the probability of destroying the other unit was, and which units were destroyed. In the other mode, the attack is simulated 1000 times, and statistics are given noting the chance of each side being annihilated and the expected PU cost to each side. Both army and fleet battles are supported. For fleet battles, the simulator accounts for loss of cargo space. A command line flag lets you simulate repeat attacks. The perl script uses perl version 4.0 and is available at watcgl.uwaterloo.ca in pub/smann/Phoenix/sim Soon, you will be able to acquire Steve's Battle Simulator directly from Gamer's Den as well as the site he listed. IN PRINT We are actively increasing our presence in the PBM community through ads, reviews, and specials to folks that read the industry magazines. Currently, we are visible in Flagship, Paper Mayhem, and Shadis. With that in mind, here are some things to be aware of: -- Flagship Flagship is a bi-monthly, B&W PBM/PBEM magazine that is published in the USA and Europe. There are a couple of thousand subscribers world-wide. In the latest issue of Flagship, Craig Mills a part-time reviewer and part-time Phoenix playtester, wrote an article comparing PBEM to PBM. You may want to pick-up a copy. The upcoming issue, #51, focuses on PBEM and features reviews of several PBEM games available. Craig's rather lengthy review of Phoenix appears in this issue, so I suggest that you get a copy. Flagship offers Super Coupons to its readers. They are good for about $20 of rules and game-play with several PB(E)M moderators. If you wish to cash in your coupon with us, we will give you a single player game of Phoenix for free! Only one coupon per player, please. No-one has finished a game in under 20 turns yet... If you want to order a $6 copy of issue 51, you can get them directly from the publisher or through us. Should you decide to subscribe to Flagship, either the USA or European edition, you can contact them through Nicky Palmer (CIS: 76276,2147 - Euro Editor) or Joey Browning (76702,1365 - USA Editor). -- Paper Mayhem Paper Mayhem is a bi-monthly, B&W PBM/PBEM magazine that is available to players in the USA. There are a couple of thousand subscribers. Unlike many other magazines, Paper Mayhem is filled with blurbs written by companies discussing goings-on and who's doing what in which games. If you are interested in checking it out, call David Webber in Illinois at 815 433 2047. -- Shadis Shadis is a bi-monthly, full color (new!) independent gaming magazine that hosts PBM and electronic gaming sections. They have a couple of thousand subscribers mainly in the USA. In addition to subscriptions, they give away tons of free copies at all the major and many minor conventions. All told, they distribute over 10,000 copies of their magazine! If you are at any gaming convention, especially GenCon and AndCon, you should stop by their booth. They will probably be showing off the Phoenix Ambassador and passing out Gamer's Den brochures. To contact Shadis, call them in California at 909 371 7336. ORIGINS BRIEF We went, we saw, and we enjoyed ourselves. Gamer's Den hosted our first gaming convention booth at Origins '94 in San Jose, CA. Though there were far fewer attendees than expected, we were pretty busy the whole time. Folks stopped by to look at the Phoenix Ambassador and Industrial Empire's Advisor interface. The free Tootsie Pops were very popular too! We added about 100 potential players to our lists. When these folks finish figuring out our system and reading the Phoenix Player's Guide (no small feat!), you'll probably start seeing them in games you join. Here are some highlights from the convention. -- PBEM Is In While most folks were familiar with PBM gaming, and many had even played a game or two, few were aware of PBEM gaming. After seeing our game interfaces and hearing about the convenience of PBEM gaming, eyes widened in amazement. By the end of the convention, there were a number of folks haunting our booth asking detailed question about our games in obvious delight. It was very satisfying. -- Masters of Orion? The Phoenix Ambassador, with Bart's new artwork, reminded many folks of the PC game Masters of Orion. While we don't think the game system is very similar, the comparison is flattering none-the-less. -- War College Anyone walking by with a War College badge (they paid money to attend special military seminars) invariably stopped in to check out Industrial Empire. They were impressed with the emphasis on features the game simulates beyond the classic force on force engagements. The designers had several long conversations with one of the Air Force War College officers about using it for training purposes. Thanks to all of you current Gamer's Den players for saying hello. It was good to see you. NEW FEATURES There are several new features available to Den players - Phoenix future early orders and balance queries. -- Early Orders Phoenix players can take advantage of the Phoenix early order feature to file orders early for upcoming turns. You simply use the TURN command as normal, but specify a turn number in the future rather than the current one. You may submit early orders for turns 5 cycles ahead of your game's turn number. For more information, check out the Phoenix Errata section of the Phoenix readme closest to you. -- Balance Query Players can find out their current account balance by sending a command to the VGA Planets or Phoenix game server. The syntax is as follows: Internet Players: (send to phoenix@den.com or vgap@den.com) balance p=password CompuServe Players: (send private PBMGAMES message to 73613,3472) phoenix balance p=password or vgap balance p=password A more complete description of the command is given in the VGA Planets and Phoenix readmes in the Errata section. ON THE HORIZON -- Industrial Empire Dave and Jonathan, besides agreeing on a name for their game, have feverishly been working on the user interface and coming up with balanced scenarios in anticipation of their upcoming playtest. We will keep you posted when we finalize the date so that you can sign-up. -- Odyssey We have just completed the Odyssey battle simulator. It allows playtesters to check our army combat system - both algorithms and troop statistics - by sending email describing the attacking and defending forces. Our Odyssey game server runs the requested battle and passes you back the round-by-round results. If you are interested in helping out, please mail us. SEE YA SOON! Well, the bottom of the page is at hand. Hmmm... that doesn't really work with computer files does it. Anyway, that's all for now. Catch you next issue. -- Phoenix, Copyright (c) Garrett, Goodman, and Woods 1988-1994 All Rights Reserved =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ ===+ GAMER'S DEN +=== =====+ PO Box 390755 +===== ==+====+ Mountain View, CA 94039-0755 +====+== =====+ Internet: support@den.com CompuServe: 73613,3472 +===== ===+ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ +=== =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Up