The Universal World Owner's Manual

v0.10 Pre-release Notes
Aims for v0.10:

- To create an obvious progression for new players with clearer immediate goals - in general, 'make it a bit more obviously a game' (while maintaining the wider scope for general exploration, creativity and new island ideas).
- Integration of 'elite'-style galactic-economy with existing worlds/islands with minimal changes.
- Get some of the fun old gameplay bits working properly :)
- Finish fishing!!

The new game structure
A brand new player to the game is initially given a character selection screen. Here you choose your style of character, grouped along the lines of Economic, Fighting, Leisure, etc. The character you choose affects your starting world. This is one of 3 or 4 specially built 24/7 worlds, all with a short & simple gameplay style. In game-terms, these starting worlds are 'Level 1'.
The aim of the starting worlds, as well as to introduce new players to the basic features without overloading them with complex economic systems, is to earn enough for the player to progress to 'Level 2', by purchasing a spaceship from the world's starport. Earning enough for this will be a fairly simple task, like making a few deliveries, flying a plane from one place to another, capturing a flag from an auto-defended base, win a crow-fight, etc etc, which should take at most about an hour to complete, depending on how much time is spent prattin about nd explorin.
Once you've got a ship, you can launch into orbit and view the details of the system you're in. Each starting world is in a star system with up to 4 other worlds. You will need to play and do well on at least one of these worlds to earn enough for a stardrive that can take you to other systems in the galaxy.
These other worlds in the starting system will be a selection of slightly longer-term and more complex gameplay goals - like an economy game that would take a couple of days, or a fighting game that takes a few hours (and enough opponents). The emphasis of the worlds in your starting system will be related to the character selection you made earlier - so a fighting character will start in a star system where all the worlds have a fighting element.
Beyond the starting systems ('Level 3') will be other staff and 'player-run' worlds and islands. Any of these that are well-run and not easily open to abuse may have additional starport items, such as longer-range stardrives and ship upgrades that can be bought in exchange for the local currency, and in time will become a part of the wider galactic economy.
The player will be free to move to any of the available star systems - providing they pay for the fuel - but the total number of star systems available will be limited by the range and capacity of their stardrive. (Which can be controlled galaxy-side.)
Two key new elements to the game will be Starports and Space Stations

Space Stations
Each world has a space station in orbit around it. Space stations sell items to upgrade ships (at fixed prices determined by the galaxy server) - such as weapons, faster between-planet drives, stardrives (for travelling from star system to star system), armour etc etc. Initially, most of this isnt used or available - space is not yet 'physically' connected (See below) - perhaps a few different drives, a few different ship models and a few different stardrives. The stations also include subgame, repair and information options.

Starports
These are a new, special building type used on the islands. When a player accesses a starport he is dealing with the galaxy server, not the island server. (Though this is not be noticeable to the player).

Starports give you the ability to exchange money or kudos earnt on the island to cash for your universal character - with the exchange rate regulated by the galaxy server and being determined by how easy it is to get money or kudos on the planet. On any player-run world or island not conforming to acceptable economy rules, this exchange rate will be limited to a minimal level. (i.e No matter how much you earnt on the planet, you wouldnt be able to make more than 1cr for your universal character).
At the starport you'll also be able to choose to buy special 'universal' items like spaceships and other extras, as well as get general game information and access to other subgames.
A few specific features highlights and info..
If you're jus interested in poppin on for a quick blast or to play on an old style staff-run 'isolated' island, you'll probably be found hanging out in dingy backwater space stations, where you can access a special limited selection of 24/7 game servers.
Flight mode has been fixed up and is wayyy nice now. Proper physics and fun to fly.. better than before it got broke. :] CTF is working again, Robocrows have been polished up and new gameplay options have been added for them. Much fun when they work right. STG is also working again.
A new 'remote access' screen means you'll be able to change buildings, models, textures via the client on worlds/islands you have remotely hosted.
Theres now a multiple chat system similar to the one in subspace - once you see the message 'Universal chat server connection active' you can use ; to talk to anyone on your chat channels, no matter where they are in the universe. To join a chat channel, you type “?setchat chatname” And you can add more channels, e.g by doing “?setchat chatname,mychat” for example. (To type on the channel 'mychat' proceed your messages with ;2; ) You can have up to 6 different chat channels.
Some bits that ya shouldnt expect too much of yet :] -
Galaxy economy is not gonna be anywhere near like finished for a long while yet - its basically at about the same level that a 0.009.6 island was, with jus a limited set of basic features.. In many ways, thats probably no bad thing :). Linking the output of worlds directly to the galactic economy (as opposed to thru the exchange rates in the starport) is still a way off.
Full collision detection systems for really good proper jumping off ramp type stuff is being worked on intermittently and will hopefully be added in sometime this year. For now, there are some simplified but stable collision detection options available - these are effective for doing things like stopping ppl driving thru buildings but no use for any serious fun yet :)
Flying around and fighting with other ppl in space is obviously something that would be.. umm.. 'Nice'. If you think thatd be so nice that you want to pay me to write it.. well, then thats jus sweet :)
Finally -
Special thanks to hedge and fooli who've pretty much been working fulltime on the game for the last few months - hence why its so pretty lookin now :)

- Changes so the world server can run as an island as well as a world. Also, fixed character settings override the settings for vehicle 1 on all islands.
- Towns now have a 'local construction tax' (percentage of the construction price of any new building is added to the town investement), 'local sales tax' (percentage of every sale is added to the town investment) and 'town type' (to allow towns to be 'industrial only', 'retail only' etc.)
- construction and sales tax (local and island based) all workin. changed the way the tax is taken, so that instead of it being removed as a percentage of the stores profits, its added on to the total price when the player buys stuff. Makes it much easier for the store owner to work out how much he needs to charge, irrespective of tax 
- fix for the triggering of the jetpack animation + animated wheels on the vehicles
- Linked in the triggers for the 'Move start', 'Walk damaged' and 'Run Damaged' animations and fixed the triggering of the run animation
- New Landscape settings : one to allow the use of different landscape renderers, one to control how the sky is drawn.
- Redid all 2d drawing functions to use an orthogonal projection matrix (listen to the sound of eyes glazing over) instead of a pre-transformed directX vertex, as doing the latter seems to create real ugly blocky textures on certain vid cards.
- Changed the way the 3d font (thats used for building nametags etc) is displayed (to stop it occupying quite so much of the screen)
- Model and radio files on the server can be stored in a redirected path
- Moved the while gone screen forward in the connection process, so it is displayed as soon as the landscape generation stuff starts - makes better use of the time while waiting for the map to download.
- Made the wildlife trigger 'move start' and 'run' animations
- Flags show on the island map
- using the DestroyedBuilding setting (set to 2) to allow access to destroyed buildings so they can be repaired. (Based on the 'Building Access' rules)
- Fix for *setallvehicles without arg kicking players.
- changed the heightmap download so that the file does not get downloaded if the client already has the latest version
- changed the way turret rotations are applied, animated propellers are now possible.
- Proper nice friendly fun working realistic flight physics
- some fixes to get STG running again
- .remote command for accessing the model selector via client
- 'Hitch Ride' option to 'attach' to another player
- re-arranged the shadow caster a bit so it can be used without causing *too* much lag
- jpgs, tga's and dds's recognised by the model selector
- removed all harcoded text for things like wood and steel used to restore and construct buildings, so that they're properly over-ridden by the itemnames.txt
- spec mode setting to control whether a player appears in the world when they enter spec mode
- some improvements for the handling of crow position messages to smooth things out a bit
- *specall command
- *speclockall and *speclock <NAME> commands added
- 'Export Webpack' option added to world server to produce delineated data files containing player and building info.. to be used for generating world homepages and stats.
- option on client to not draw the player vehicles when in crow mode (which can help FPS a lot)
- option to make buildings go semi-transparent when they're in the way of the camera.
- space station trade screens working
- extra check to prevent the employee count in a building going to 255
- tweaks to the lighting and behaviour of robocrow particles and plasmas
- removed the weapon mode switch completely. tab + shift/tab are now always used to fire weapons if the vehicle has any. If there are no weapons available, tab will be used as the horn or to trigger a gesture animation, depending on the engine type
- Change to retail and store buildings. Settings -> Economy -> Sales mode 1 acts as previous. Sales mode 0 (the default) means that players can stock retail or store buildings with whatever they want. Think this mode increases the fun & benefit of running a store and simplifies the building dat creation. (By making jus 1 or 2 generic stores needed - with diffierent capacities when thats included in the editor)
- new sales modes 2 and 3 to turn off the ability to stock your own buildings
- mouse lock released when window loses focus
- variable number of "denaris in a sheckle".
- working LOD system in the ATM files
- reduction in bandwidth use of server for by only sending ping responses for 1 in every 10 positions, instead of 1 for 1.
- 'give fuel' fixed
- new setting 'skills mode' replaces 'default skills'. (Default skills are now used whenever theres a file created with em in).
- Skills mode 1 means that a player with a level 1 build farm skill could not build a tech level 2 farm. To increase their skill level, they either need to re-enroll in the skill at a school (if thats possible.. i forget :]), or they must build a tech level 1 farm first. (Everytime they use their skill at the maximum level it increases by 1)
- Added 'Building Process' mode 2 - All buildings of all tech levels require 'wood' to build.
- fix for crash using .racego before starting a race
- fix for being unable to demolish an unconstructed building
- textures used for background models that use a texture containing the phrase "nomip" in their filename do not use mipmapping. (useful for certain textures, like wire fences etc)
- failed graphic initialisation brings up a more useful dialog that gives you access to the vid, graphics and fullscreen/windowed options
- New .profile screen to help find out what causes low FPS on your puter.
- New libs for joystick support
- island scale configurable in settings
- Banks can have employees
- option to enable anisotropic filtering. whatever the feck that is.
- landscape rendering mode 4, which means that instead of water aroudn the island, a copy of the normal map heights is used. (which means you can have worlds that are huge repeating landscapes (tho the populated area has to be within the original map limits))
- "Build Spacing" options so that the spacing between buildings is configurable. 0 means there can be a building on each tile of the map
- exit vehicle button on client returns the player to vehicle 1
- , the value control accelerates the longer u hold page up/dn <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->
- server sends a message to acknowledge every failed transaction, so the client can know that the screens should be reset. (Fixes bug that meant ya couldnt use the transaction screen until you've relogged if the transaction failed for some reason)
- added option to enable/disable the shift+ctrl moving up thru the menus, which annoys some ppl and pleases others..
- new 'barter' type building that will allow items to be exchanged for other items
- New 'thrust' and 'tetris' arcade games
- world rules -&gt; new player start position now works. 0 spawns new players in random towns. 1 spawns em in a default (team 0) spawnzone. 
- a new field in the player record for the amount of 'fixed rewards' earnt - this is for islands that, for instance, give a one-off reward of 100s for a certain lap time or something. This field stores how much they've had from the rewards, so the game knows when to stop givin em more. The limit for the rewards is set in the subgame settings
- Multiple wildlife types now possible

28-Jun-2004

- players will be able to set a 'Minimum Investment Limit' on any buildings they own. 
This controls the level of investment below which the building will not buy in or produce new stocks. (But it will still pay wages and can still sell items).
For example, you might set the limit to 100s, and invest 300s in your building, it will be able to buy in 200s worth of stocks, after which any more sales to the building will be rejected. So even if someone turned up and sold lots of stuff to your building you'd still have a hundred sheckles in reserve to cover wages.

This should help ensure more stable jobs and wage incomes on many world types.

10-Jul-2004

New items.. when you possess these items :
Biosuit - you cannot lose health thru starvation or thirst.
Liquisuit - your thirst won't go up
NutriSuit - your hunger won't go up
NeedsSuit - Neither hunger or thirst will go up
Armour2 - Doubles your armour
Armour4 - Quadruples your armour
DivingSuit - Means you will not suffer water damage when underwater
ScubaGear - The water damage is reduced.
Tires - Makes your vehicle handle better
4 types of Turbo - Make your vehicle faster
Also theres a bunch of new 'book' items that'll link to text files on the server. Selecting the item downloads the text file and displays it on screen.
(Note actual item names may differ on worlds)
- Tidied the census screen (removed unused buttons) and added 3 new info screens to give a beginners guide, a command ref, and an island specific 'background' text. Each is accessible via shift + f3, shift + f4, shift + f5 respectively.
- Updates for the textbox control so it automatically formats text nicely and creates a scrollbar when necessary
- "Set min invest limit" on investment menu of buildings you own. This value can be used to control how much your building spends on supplies on production and helps ensure there is always enough in your building to pay wages. Set it to 100s for instance, and when the investment drops below 100s, ppl will no longer be able to sell supplies to your building - but wages will still be paid till it runs out completely.
- Stopped wildlife ai type 1 reacting violently to ppl crowing, and added an AI type 3 for slightly vicious killer sheep
- Fix for some 'infinite' weapons
- Fix for building sales sometimes not updating the sellers wealth
- When a player buys his first skill, a msg is displayed indicating that further skills will cost more and take longer to learn
Extra animations available (gesture 2 on shift + tab, gesture 3 occasionally instead of bored - requires models that include these animations)
Animated turrets now possible
Player list setting to display crow kills n deaths
Made small mode a lil smaller
Option to prevent ppl speccing other teams
Settings for waves in the sea
Extra lighting modes for darker/lighter landscapes
Some fixes for ultrakricket
10 new landscape rendering modes (using blended detail maps etc.)
Extra options for islands with an automatic map reset after a specified time
New fixed reward options for giving a cash prize when a player reaches a certain number of kills
Evileye weapons fixed
Hopefully a fix for a fullscreen -> small on certain systems (particularly those using DirectX 9)
-- Galaxy Client specifc stuff..
Partial fix for galaxy connect failing sometimes
New world connection and landing sequence
Point drive button on system map
'Cutscenes' for launching and docking with space stations and for landing on planets
Worlds wont allow exchanges unless the galaxy connection is active
-(Oh and maybe a few weird graphical crashes (particularly after relogging a few times) that i'll try to fix up soon :] )

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12-Jul-2004

Next version of the game (coming shortly) includes a replacement for the rather convoluted weapons system that is currently used. Instead of the pre-defined list of weapons theres now a script file that the world owner can edit to change any aspect of the weapons available.
Heres an example of the script format and a brief explanation of what things do..
Weapon 1
{
Fire=Basic
Control=Javelin
damage=3
graphic=2
item=WEAPON4
prox=low
param=0
delay=800
object=projectile
sound=1
anim=AnimFire
}
Weapon 2
{
Fire=Bomb
Control=Basic
damage=6
graphic=3
item=NONE
prox=low
param=0
delay=300
object=projectile
sound=2
anim=AnimFireWeap2
}
"Fire= " determines how the weapon is launched (i.e. is it thrown upwards - or horizontally - or lobbed like a projectile )
"Control=" determines the procedure for launching the weapon - Can be simply when the fire key is pressed, or there are more complicated options such as a mode where the strength of the launch depends on how long the key has been held for.
"delay=" determines how long a gap must pass between shots being fired
"object=" assigns the weapon a certain set of physical properties, defining such things as whether it bounces, how much air-resistance is applied, whether it leaves smoke trails, whether it explodes when it hits something..
"graphic=" sets the weapon model that will be displayed - linked to the server-configurable list of 'weapon models'

23-Oct-2004

Building triggers now working :
0 - Building explosion
2 - Wargames end game sequence is activated
5 - K.O.T.H. building type for fixed rewards
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Configurable wall textures have now been added. Please note this will change the appearance of any walls you currently have, and may need a bit of tinkering with to get lookin normal. Will put up some new versions of the default textures somepoint soon.
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Fixed reward additions :
As well as cash-based 'fixed rewards' , certain modes now also allow a fixed kudos reward.. This is set by having the Subgames -> Fixed Reward Param set to 1 for the following events:
Holding the KOTH building
Capturing a flag
Scoring a hornball goal
Acquiring one of the Kudos Items
The amount of kudos earnt is specified in the 'Fixed Reward Amount'