It's GT beta time again! In 4.3, I allowed a limited number of testers on the
beta. I'm opening the beta to all players this time around. Effective
immediately, you will all have access. Merely connect to gt.gamingmuseum.com
as usual, but use GTBETA with password "beta44pass".

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Here are the bugfixes. Make sure that you are not able to reproduce these,
and let me know if you find new ones (there will probably be many in the new
features):

"Hall of Fame" would leave the 10th place player's save record locked because
it failed to close the I/O channel when leaving this subroutine (except
in an error condition). The lock would not be released until the player left
the game and could cause players to fail to enter SU.

Corrected long-standing error in misjump calculations.

Aligned all maps and commons on 64-bit boundary for increased performance.

Timestamps are now updated when the player is at ACTION>. This prevents
the player from being kicked into SU for being "idle" when they linger
too long in the atmosphere.

Captured ships no longer remain captured even if the tractor beam is destroyed.

Equip no longer shows up as negative values for trade in (see testplayer)

Police stations no longer show up on non-Fed planets.

Navy ranks are now reset after death.

Sand clouds no longer attack other mobiles.

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Here are the new features. These are supposed to be complete, so let me know
if anything doesn't work.


New options dialog uses letters instead of numbers, allowing more options to
be moved to this menu.

Keep field listing of each player's base holdings. Bases are added to list
when built and subtracted (if found destroyed) when the player returns to the
planet.

Docking menu for outposts/bases. Options:
- Salvage
- Limited upgrades
- Police station
- Refurbishment (reduce jumps)

Add new command to EQUIP menu to get equipment descriptions.

Players may only change legal status at bases with 1 or >6 legal status.

Added HTML and XML leaderboard output.

Police and Navy now both lose 25% of their score when summoning reinforcements.

GalPol CI ships now appear instead of commandos when an experienced
player jumps in.

Added compile-time option to disable CTRL-C.

Set the owner of all abandoned ships to the player who shot it.

Min value of salvaged ships is now 1500.

Value of salvaged ships has been reduced by 10%. The cost of repairs
has been increased correspondingly.

Allow only players who choose to use the PK flag to kill other players.

Scroll ship prizes:
Added scroll that increases energy 25%
Added scroll that increases speed 50%
Add scroll that increases laser output 50%
Add scroll that makes reliability 100%

Number of player jumps and ship condition (based on number of jumps completed)
now appears in (c)heck status.

Set all prompts so that the player MUST enter Y or N to proceed.

Limit players to two sessions per IP address.

Mobiles now hyperspace out of planets to keep them from becoming
crowded.


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Finally, there is a new feature which is incomplete and in progress.
I am in the progress of adding Mud Sound Protocol support. This means that if
you are using a telnet client which does not support color, you may see
messages like the following:

!!MUSIC(GT-INTRO.MID V=100 L=1 U=http://mozart.gamingmuseum.com:8080/sounds/)

This is normal. When ANSI color is enabled, these messages will be
black-on-black and invisible.

MSP allows music and sound effects to be played during the game.
Unfortunately, not a SINGLE telnet/MUD client exists which properly supports
both MSP and the VT100 graphics. Zmud
(http://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud/zmudinfo.htm) comes the closest. Therefore, I
am putting together macros to provide rudimentary support in Tera Term. If
you don't have Tera Term, you can download it here:

Tera Term 4.26
http://www.gamingmuseum.com/download/teraterm_utf8_426.exe

Download the macros here:

http://www.gamingmuseum.com/download/gt-ttermpro-pack.zip

After installing Tera Term, open the attached ZIP file containing a new INI
and scripts. Backup your existing Teraterm.ini. Unzip the files into \program
files\ttermpro, start Tera Term, and click OK. To turn on the feature, select
option "A" in the new Options menu.

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Known issues:
- MSP: Musical pieces are popular classics to be replaced by original
compositions.
- MSP: When Tera Term plays a sound, a command window will momentarily flash
on screen. I am working with the new Tera Term programmer to resolve this
(first, he needs to stop denying that he broke the macro support).
- MSP: There may be delays while an MSP sound is downloaded. I will probably
switch to installing the sound files locally if this is a big problem.
- MSP: Some planets and events still don't have sounds.
- Options menu: Because the old options have been rolled into the main player
file, your original options will be deleted. This will cause your options to
be reset to defaults when you enter the non-beta game.
- Scroll ships: The scrolls are done, but the ships aren't ready yet.
- HTML leaderboard: This isn't running in the beta yet. You can see sample
output for the HOF and current leaders here:
http://mozart.gamingmuseum.com:8080/gal-leaders.html


Report issues directly to me at this email.

--
----------------------------------
Stephen Eickhoff
www.operagost.com

"No one lights a lamp and puts it
in a place where it will be
hidden, or under a bowl. Instead
he puts it on its stand, so that
those who come in may see the
light."
Luke 11:33
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