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3/6/05 9:49 PM (Mountain Time)
The site returns!

It's a long story, but the short version is that my Prohosting site just vanished for no apparent reason, and I've been busy enough with my Half-Life/HL2 mod Zombie Panic that I let it slide for awhile. However, I just now put it back up, and will work on continuing to update it again. Sorry for the disappearance! -TJ

5/11/04 8:46 PM (Mountain Time)
A new Windows version of Anacreon straight from George Moromisato himself!

I just received an email from Anacreon's creator, George Moromisato, and he revealed that he has released a new version of Anacreon for Windows! According to Mr. Moromisato's website:

Anacreon now features:

* Beautifully rendered worlds, nebulae, and starbases.
* A graphical user interface that is both easy-to-use and capable of displaying far more information than the old 80x25 character-mode screen.
* Increased capabilities: thousands of worlds per scenario; more than 9,999 units.
* Compatibility with almost all scenarios from the DOS Edition.
* A completely new implementation, taking advantage of the capabilities of a modern operating system.
* Plus dozens of fixes and small improvements.

Below are two screenshots from Mr. Moromisato's website showing off some of the new graphics for the map screen, and the combat screen:

Visit the site to read more about the new version and download it at:

http://www.neurohack.com/anacreon/

He also has put up some very interesting Design Notes on the making (and remaking) of Anacreon. Finally, and most excitingly, is a section that reads thusly:

In Future Versions...

Of course, Anacreon is far from complete. The goal of this first Windows release was to port the main game engine to a GUI environment, but you will no doubt notice that some multiplayer features were sacrificed along the way. In a future version I hope to re-write the multiplayer aspects to take advantage of the Internet. And there are always Adam Luker's innovations to add.

If you have any comments, criticisms, or bug reports, please write to me so that I can incorporate your feedback into future releases.

Write to: anacreon@neurohack.com

George Moromisato
Cambridge, MA

This is a fantastic time for Anacreon fans everywhere, and I encourage everyone to write Mr. Moromisato with your suggestions and support and let him know how many of us still love this game after all these years!

5/03/04 4:14 PM (Mountain Time)
Anacreon Manual, An Anacreon type game, and the new link to the Anacreon Forums!

First of all, some of you may have noticed that somewhat recently, the link to the Anacreon Message Boards went dead. Well, apparently EZBoard (Who host the forums) decided to change the server that host us, without informing me. In any case, the old link was http://pub83.ezboard.com/bthetwilightcommunity. The new link is http://pub205.ezboard.com/bthetwilightcommunity.

Also, I was checking the zip files I have for download, and for some reason I forgot to include the full Anacreon Manual in Word format in all of the newer zipped versions (1.31 and so forth). This manual has over 150 pages, and goes into much more depth about the mechanics of gameplay, tips, and so forth. I apologize to everyone for somehow overlooking this, but you can now download it in the Anacreon Files Section, both separately, or as part of the full game (As I am updating all of the zip files to include the manual). Bear in mind that this manual goes along with the last version released by George Moromisato, v1.30. It is still largely applicable to the current v2.0 version maintained by Adam Luker, but his changes will not be reflected in the manual, etc.

This manual is actually a digital version of the one that came with the full registered version of Anacreon. I have the .tif images of the original artwork that was in the manual (Also available for download in the Anacreon Files Section), and will try to work on putting it into the manual. Anyone who has more time or skill with that sort of thing is welcome to do it as well. However, in the mean time, you will at least have the manual, which makes the game a lot easier to understand. If anyone does have an original Anacreon Manual, and would be willing to scan it in, or otherwise help make it available for others, please contact me at autumns_twilight@yahoo.com.

Finally, Simon Sylvester, another Anacreon fan, has come across a copy of an old Anacreon type of game he used to play, called Omega M-17, where you are in control of a fledging space empire, looking to expand your influence, increase your technology, etc. The best part is that Simon managed to track down the developer of the game, Russell Elledge, and he has very generously given Simon the Master Registration code, which is as follows:

Username: UnlockItAll
Key: 7C6F715AAA00

Simon mentions that the AI player is somewhat buggy, but that it works perfectly fine for human vs human games. He also asked me to put up this email address, which he specifically set up for hosting any Omega M-17 games people would be interested in playing: Omegam17@cox.net

You can download Omega M-17 in the Anacreon Files Section.

1/18/04 12:30 PM (Mountain Time)
Anacreon 2.0 released!

Adam Luker has released Anacreon 2.0. The changelog includes several new features and bugfixes, including:

- Implemented Warp Link Frequencies. Under "Empire," you'll now see
"Link Frequencies." The idea is that the owner of a gate/link/disrupter
can allow other empires to use the device by sharing the paraspace
frequencies needed to activate it. It opens up some neat possibilites.
So anyway, you can use any gate as long as the frequency you provide
matches the owner's frequency.

I also have finished my scenario The Nebula, and I have a couple more in
the works. Those will be released in good time. In the meantime, if
anybody has any decent scenarios they've written, please send them to me
and I'll consider packaging them with the next version.

Happy playing! Please let me know if you have any suggestions / bug fixes
that you would like to see worked on.

- Adam Luker
zot@aapc.com

You can download Anacreon 2.0 in the Anacreon Files Section.

10/18/03 12:30 PM (Mountain Time)
A New Version of Anacreon is Released, Bugfixes and Features to Come, and More!

On October 1st I recieved an email from Adam Luker with the following:

I just wanted to let you know that I'll be maintaining the Anacreon source code. George Moromisato released it a couple of days ago, and I've fixed the fleet240 bug and the advanced-ships-on-the-planet hack. The new version should be available for download any time now. (I sent it to George to be put on his website: www.neurohack.com/anacreon ) - Adam Luker

At George Moromisato's site, you can get Anacreon version 1.31, the 1.31 source code, pictures from the original Anacreon manual, and more. These are also available in the Anacreon Files Section on this site. Another email from Adam talked about his progress with Anacreon v1.4 Beta:

I'm really excited. I'm actually pretty far along with version 1.4. So far I've implemented SRMSweep orders, extended the WorldBackGroundIndex commands so that they're more versatile, an added a "RandomizePlayers" command for scenarios, so that you can have some variety (i.e. play Empire 4) in scenarios without having to play all the empires UP TO 4. This way, when you enter the game, you are dynamically assigned as any ONE of the player empires. The others may or may not be reassigned as NPE's, depending on whether the scenario has them defined.

The other major change I've implemented so far is that Disrupters now allow your warpfleets to go jumpspeed, within 2 sectors of the disrupter. I did this because I have NEVER found disrupters to be useful enough to make their cost of building worth it at all. Having this side-effect on warpfleets, even just within 2 sectors, should help make them more relevant to game play. I'm also in the process of implementing Terraforming, which has been in the code for years, but was never finished. I'll also be looking at some other bugs, like the one where enemy fleets are sometimes given the names of your old destroyed fleets.

If you know of any other bugs, please let me know. There are so many new features to implement that George Moromisato had ideas for, but I want to fix any bugs that are there too. (Just wait till you see pulsars, black holes, worm holes, artifacts, Wanderers ... GM had a LOT of good ideas.) - Adam

Here's part of another email from Adam I received October 2nd, reiterating some of the changes he is making, plus some new information:

Right now I'm nearing completion of version 1.4. The following are some things I've done so far:

- Changed disruptors so that they not only slow down enemy jumpfleets within 3 sectors to warp speed, but also can make your warp ships go jump speed WITHIN that area (that is, 2 sectors or closer). This change was made because disruptors are so expensive and I've never found them worth building. This will make them more useful and thus more attractive.

- Added an SRMSweep order for fleets. I'll work on Abort later.

- Added (finally!) Terraforming as a gate-level technology. This has been mentioned in the code (my friend and I discovered it whil perusing the .exe while we were young teenagers) but was never quite implemented. I'm not sure if I like it being so powerful, but we'll see how we like it. I've tried to temper its power by making the side-effects pretty daunting. Let me know what you think!

In the WorldBackgroundIndex, the following changes have been made:

- Added an 'O' target which matches the owner of the object in question. Thus, '2:4 O E:1,2' would be matched when looking at planet 4 only if the empire looking at it were empires 1 or 2 AND owned the planet. (Just '2:4 O' would match any owner.)

- Fixed it so that multiple brackets could be used. E.g. if part of your flavor text is 'Just look at [C2:13] or [N2:5]' it will give you the coordinates of planet 13 and the name of planet 5, instead of the coordinates of 13 and then '[N2:5]' for the second part.

- Changed it so that any "void" coordinates (i.e. coordinates for an object that doesn't exist) are not displayed in the flavor text. This makes it so you can show coordinates of objects not yet created without having the whole place covered with "-17,24" or whatever coordinate is just off the upper-left corner of the map

- Added a scenario command "RandomizePlayers." This is important because I always got bored with playing the same player. I wanted to be able to play as other players without having to play ALL the players. (Like be player 4 without having to be players 1-3 also.) Any non-created player empires that have NOT yet been created will be randomly allocated to players who have not yet been assigned an empire. If RandomizePlayers comes before any player empires have been created, they will all be random. Otherwise, only remaining ones will be. This is just a hook in case people want to create scenarios where one empire MUST be a player and others may be randomized. To play existing scenarios with this option, you'll need to add the "RandomizePlayers" call and (optionally) CreateNPEmpire 0.

There are still a few bugs to work out (the disrupter thing messes up warpfleet "in transit" numbers, I haven't yet addressed the bug where enemy fleets pull your old destroyed fleets' names) but I think I could have the whole thing done by early next week.

He went on to say that "v. 1.4b would be fine to distribute, as long as you let people know that it still has bugs and they should keep an eye out for the full release sometime next week.". The 1.4 Beta is also available in the Anacreon Files Section.

Adam's Email address is: shrikel@hotmail.com am planning on expanding the website over the next few days to include more things. Up until now it has been pretty exclusively an Anacreon site. I am going to continue to host the Anacreon content (As a matter of fact, there is some really big news, but more on that soon...), but also open up some other sections. For example, my wife and I have decided to start doing some game reviews.

10/05/03 4:47 PM (Mountain Time)
A Little Bit Bigger...

I am planning on expanding the website over the next few days to include more things. Up until now it has been pretty exclusively an Anacreon site. I am going to continue to host the Anacreon content (As a matter of fact, there is some really big news, but more on that soon...), but also open up some other sections. For example, my wife and I have decided to start doing some game reviews.

For the most part, we're planning on sticking to demos of commercials games, shareware, and freeware. In other words, all games that can be easily (With the possible exception of bandwidth sometimes...) and legally downloaded and played. We're hoping to uncover some hidden gems out there, and also hoping that by reviewing them as husband and wife you'll get a more balanced view on the game. You'll have two opinions instead of just one, and you'll have a male and a female view on the games, as each sex often tends to have very different views on what is fun, etc.

Anyway, be on the lookout for a somewhat different layout.

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