13ksstuvw WinCOW ** v1.03 BETA 2** Client-Of-Win on Windows NT and Windows 95 Made In Canada by Jonathan Shekter (jshekter@interlog.com) Note: This is BETA software! This means it is in testing! This means you are expected to report bugs. Please report any bugs to jshekter@interlog.com -- after reading the documentation to make sure it's not already covered. Contents: 0. About This Manual 1. Introduction 2. System Requirements And Installation 3. Getting the Maximum Performance 4. Features Specific To This Client 5. Troubleshooting And Hints 0. About This Manual Unlike previous Windows clients, this manual is not an introduction to the game! This means, even if you're clue, you should read it. If you are new to the game of Netrek, the more general document, The Netrek Newbie Manual, is included in the standard distribution of WinCOW as the file manual.txt. If you are a newbie, you want to read this! Also, this is the WinCOW manual; that is, it only goes into the windows-specific details. For general information on COW, please see the COW Reference Manual, also included. 1. Introduction Welcome! You are now the proud owner of the latest and greatest Netrek client for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT. According to the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list for the newsgroup Netrek, "Netrek is a 16-player graphical real-time battle simulation with a Star Trek theme. The game is divided into two teams of 8 (or less), who dogfight each other and attempt to conquer each other's planets. There are several different types of ships, from fast, fragile scouts up to big, slow battleships; this allows a great deal of variance in play styles." It is played over the Internet, against real human oppenonents. If you do not have a Windows computer on the internet, or connected via SLIP or PPP, you will not be able to play. I did not invent Netrek, as anyone who plays will know. I did not even (really) write this client. COW was written by a team of dedicated Netrek players/hackers (in the earlier days of Netrek there was no difference) over a number of years. It was derived from BRM which was worked on by more or less the same team, and was in turn originally derived from the Berkely and Rick's Moo clients (hence BRM). In other words, this game has a history and can actually be traced back through various ancestors to 1972. Andy McFadden has written a wonderful history of the game, see which for more. Up to 16 players, often widely seperated geographically, connect to a central "server" running at some site. There are maybe 100 public servers in the world and of these maybe 20 are well known and popular. The individual players use a "client" program to connect to the server of their choice. Once in the game, the server recieves commands from the client (and hence player) and sends the positions and status of the other ships, planets, etc, to all players, several times per second. The net effect of all this is to create a virtual galaxy where everyone can see eachother and interact, or to put it less academically, everyone plays in the same galaxy to try to take it over. 2. System Requirements And Installation Unlike previous Windows clients, this client will not run under Windows 3.1. It requires Windows 95 or Windows NT. If you still have Windows 3.1, you can run the SWINE client. You will need to setup TCP/IP for your machine; Both Win95 and NT come with TCP/IP software; see the manual or talk to your local guru for help setting this up. Please don't e-mail me asking for help setting up your network software -- there are lots of people around who know how and I would get flooded if I had to be windows techincal support as well as client tech support. If you are trying to get Win95 networking going, you can check out the Win95 home page, somewhere off http://microsoft.com. (On the other hand, if you have a problem, suggestion, or even just a comment about the client, please don't hesitate to contact me!) If you are already using other network applications such as Mosaic, Netscape, Eudora, WinVN, you already have a winsock.dll installed. WinCOW will run with a display driver of any number of colors, from a monochrome (1-bit) to 24-bit displays, and everything in between . But, you are STRONGLY advised to be running in 1024x768 or higher resolution, as otherwise you will have trouble fitting everything on the screen. The follwing files are included in this release: * netrek.exe - WinCOW executable * netrek.wri - You're reading it * newbie.txt - The Netrek Newbie Guide (read this!!) * cow.txt - COW Reference Manual * netrekrc - sample configurartion file with nice window placements * ntrk6x10.fon - 6 by 10 pixel fonts file * ntrk6x10.alt - alternate font file, for large fonts display drivers Put these into the same directory (ntrk6x10.fon in particular must be in the same directory as netrek.exe for proper operation), make sure WinSock is installed and run the executable. If you don't know what you're doing, read the Netrek Newbie Guide (newbie.txt). 3. Getting Maximum Performance Unfortunately, I'd bet that over 80% of the people using this client are doing so over a modem. This is unfortunate as a modem really gives you horrible lag, minimally 200 ms and usually more. Really, Netrek with <100ms lag as found on a machine directly connected to the 'net and Netrek with, say 300ms lag are two different games. I wish to make it clear here that you really haven't played Netrek until you've played over a good ethernet line. (I note that this may be changing with the advent of higher-speed modems; 28.8 modems aren't too bad and the next generation of modems after 28.8kbps may be acceptable. Acceptable = < 150 ms lag.) Be that as it may, some hints on getting the best possible ping times can be found in section 4.1 of the Netrek User's manual, "UDP, Short Packets and SLIP". 4. Features Specific To This Client All windows in WinCOWcan be moved by positioning the mouse cursor over the window border so that the mosue cursor changes to an arrow. Clcking the mouse button will then drag to window to a new location. The default window positions are pretty horrible due to differences in border width and such. The included netrekrc file has better ones, or at least I think so. One useful thing is to specify that your main window (which is called "netrek") is full screen at start-up. The black background reduces the visual clutter. Also, you may have noticed that the main window gets an inactive title bar when you click on any of the sub-windows. This is a minor point, but it is due to the fact that the sub-windows are popup windows by default. To change this you need to specify ".parent: netrek" in your netrekrc for each sub-window. This will also resrtict these windows to staying inside your main window, which is further reason to set your netrek window to full screen. Making a nice window layout is a pain but it's worth it. 5. Troubleshooting And Hints Q) I can't ever connect! I always get network errors! A) Several people have reported that when running under Windows 95, WinCOW will only work when using Microsoft's TCP/IP stack. That is, you do not need to use MS Dial-Up networking (but if you want to that's fine), but need to use Microsoft's TCP/IP stack. Actually, the problem is probably caused by trying to use Trumpet Winsock under Win95. Trumpet is a 16 bit application, and unlike Windows 3.1, a 16 bit winsock.dll is not thunked to 32 bits under Win95. If that made no sense to you, don't worry... just don't use Trumpet Winsock under Win95. Q) Okay, I connect now, get a whole bunch of status information on the screen... and then it just exits/crashes. A) First, if running on Win95, check your win.ini file. Does it have a line that says "load=pointer.exe"? Some people have reported problems with this. Comment it out (put a ';' in front of the line). Restart Win95. If it works, great. If not, or you are running on NT, did you just copy over your netrekrc file from your old client? If yes, re-write it, using the COW Reference Manual (cow.txt) to figure out what you want set. Marcos, keymaps, and window placements you should be okay to just cut and paste. Q) I can't type! It won't process my keystrokes! A) During operation, X-style keyboard focus is in operation. This mean that, even though you can't see the effect, your mouse cursor must be in the window which you wish the keystrokes to go to. Many people have been frusttrated by saying "it isn't responding to keypresses!" when in fact the mouse was just in the wrong window. What is the right window? For most game functions the tactical window (the left of the two large windows) is where the program expects keystrokes; your mouse should be here to steer the ship anyway. For a few other things, such as typing a message (although you can hit 'm' first to tell the program you're sending a message and avoid this) or setting up keymaps while in the game, you will need to move the cursor to whichever window the keys will actually appear in or "go to". Q: When I run the program, I get unreadable, garbled fonts. A) What seems to be happening is that some display drivers have problems displaying very small fonts in "Large Fonts" display modes. The solution: switch to a "Small Fonts" display driver, or try renaming the file NTRK6X10.ALT to NTRK6X10.FON (save the old one first!) This alternate font file is actually a 6 by 12 pixel font, but it displays allright in most cases, and only garbles when ships are displayed close to the bottom of the screen on the galactic, or in the playerlist. You probably won't notice it but use the original font file if you can. I'm still working on this bug but this is an acceptable interim fix. Q) The colors are all weird, or, where is my color? A) Some display drivers incorrectly report the number of bits per pixel or palette capabilities. If you are having display problems (e.g. mono bitmaps on a color display) you can try adding a line that says "forceDisplay: n" netrekrc file, where n is 0 for autodetect (default), 1 for monochrome or 16 color display, 2 for a display that supports palette manipulation (such as most 256 color drivers) , and 3 for a high-color (15/16 bit) or true-color (24 bit) display. Q) The display is all garbled (not fonts, other stuff) A) Netrek seems to be rather hard on video drivers; I know of several card/driver combinations that do not work properly. Fortunately, in most cases has been fixed by getting a newer version of the video driver. Q) Servers keep on kicking me out! Or, I log in, play for one second, then blow up! A) Netrek clients use an RSA encryption sheme to prevent people from writing "borgs", clients that cheat, by doing things such as automatically firing phasers, or showing cloaked ships. Part of the protocol used requires the client to send its IP address; if the server sees the client located at a different IP address than what the client repors, verification fails. For this reason, a) if you are playing behind a firewall, or b) if your local WinSock setup is incorrectly reporting your IP, verification will fail. If you are playing behind a firewall, yell at the sysadmin, otherwise, check your setup carefully, to make sure your IP really is what WinSock thinks it is. Q) I can't fire my phasers with the middle mouse button! A) Many mouse drivers under Windows do not properly support the middle button. If you can't fire your phasers, try switching mouse drivers. Getting the middle buton to work can be something of a black art, as while most mice have a middle button, the default Microsoft serial driver, which is installed on abou 90% of the Windows machines I've seen, does not support it. Contact you favorite Windows technician to help you with this. In the mean time you, the default netrekrc maps Shift+Left to phasers.with the line "buttonmap: 4p". This helps quite a bit. Or you can always use the keyboard. In fact, there are intermitent debates on rec.games.netrek on whether the mouse or the keyboard are better for weapons. Have fun! Jonathan Shekter, Toronto, Canada (jshekter@interlog.com) Thanks to: Jaime Allister and the Crew at Factory X for being my testers, and the official distribution site for WinCOW. Steve Sheldon for writing COW-lite and SWINE, on which the original Windows were based , R.I.P. Jordan Christensen for helping me debug the very first (Aug '94 BRM beta) client on Win32s. This stabilized the windowing and network code in use to this day. Nick Trown for posting my keys so quickly All the people who wrote the articles in the Netrek Archives, without whom the Netrek Newbie Guide would never have come to be. Everybody on rec.games.netrek for being so enthusiastic when I posted the question, "Should I broadly release this Windows client of mine?" or "go to". Q: When I run the program, I get unreadable, garbled fonts. A) What seems to be happening iwsomig c _[WRN:`^$$$0$$0H wtqnkheb_\ Y' VS$0 xru{ro#lCi_f'c'`y(]{(Z3WS$ ifffff f f )<<)+UW|~7@B?A N P * ,   <?d)UY[&(?ACace:<!q!q!s!$$$$R'T'''b)d)))s*u***r-t----}000000000L1N111R2T2223333300000000L1N111R2T22233f=/2!898(A encryption sheme to pre393 "borgs", clients that cheat, by doing things such as automatically firing phasers, or showing cloaked Ui( '0s the client to send its IP address; if the server sees the client located at a differen ArialTimes New Roman 0Courier Newication fails. For this reason, a) if you are playing behind a firewall, or b) if