  Are BBS's DEAD?

  Does anyone play DOOR games anymore?

  Can ALL DOOR games be treated as Obsolete these days?!

***Be Sure To Run CODE.EXE to get your Free Reg Code - See Manual**
  

                        ***************
Hey TPC is now online at www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Stadium/9511/
                        ***************

I thought I'd add this snippet of message I received about TPC from
a sysop in the USA, I hope this message gives some insight to sysops
that are struggling with TPC, and its not entirely TPC's fault..

------------
"First, installation was really easy.  No problems of any nature.  You 
mentioned folks having problems with tpc.ctl but I can't imagine it if 
you have any door program setup experience at all.

I would say installation, setup, and addition to the BBS menu system took 
me no more than 15 minutes.  So, I could hardly ask for better.

In testing, the program ran very nicely, nothing annoying, no locks or 
hangs or strange bugs.

Now, the part I didn't tell you: my BBS isn't even a DOS or a Windows 
BBS, in fact it's a Linux BBS.  I run DOS door games via the Linux DOS 
emulator, and this is generally a *very* severe test of how cleanly coded 
the program might be.  There are doors that fail or for which I have to 
go through weird rituals to make run (and I have made 104 of them run 
thus far so I do have experience with it).

TPC may just be the cleanest yet!  I kid you not, this is not mere 
flattery or idle praise, but things are really smooth; there are not even 
a dozen out of those 104 doors about which I can say this.  So 
congratulations to you, sir, you are evidently a championship coder."
------------


** Upgrading **

All sysops check out TPC.ANS, a new promotional ansi screen for 
your system to advertise you are running The Popping Crease!

If you're running version 1.4 or greater, then to upgrade to 2.1
all you need to do is:- Overwrite TPC.EXE
                        Overwrite TPCUTIL.EXE
                        Add GRAPH.ANS
                        Add CHAMP.ANS               
     from the new TPCD2_0.ZIP archive to your TPC directory                         

If you're running anything lower than 1.4, then please do an entire copy
over, i.e install version 2.0 as new (keeping your original TPC.CTL 
file from before of course).

To play the game in Championship Mode, have a look into the Setup BBS
menu from TPCUTIL, there you can toggle it on/off and change the period
of the competition.  Basically in Championship mode, when the period of
days you enter passes, TPC will reward the team with the most points
the TPC Championship Title, then reset all team points (nothing else,
just team points, all over stats will remain if registered)
and automatically start up the new competition that same day. 
It's pretty cool...

Whats new in this version
-------------------------

Version 2.1: Made it work again
- Discovered that thanks to a problem with Turbo Pascal CRT unit
  that TPC and TPCUTIL would not run (creating Error 200) on
  fast machines (anything over 233mhz odd).  Wow... took me 
  a while to notice this bug.  Nobody contacted me about it,
  so I guess nobody saw encountered it, or maybe no-one is
  using this software.. ohh well.
- Made It **FREEWARE**

As of version 2.0: all done
- Fixed scoreboard tab problems with short player names
- Fixed screwups with quitting the game in the second innings
  (would still savestats for registered used when shouldn't, 
  before quitting)
- Added 'Worm Graph' run comparison and progression evaluation
  graphs (most fun)
- Created two different playing modes;
  Championship Mode:  Allows the sysop to decide a time period
  in which players are to compete, after that period the team
  with the most points are awarded the TPC Championship Title,
  then the points are reset for the next championship to
  get underway etc etc
  Normal Mode:  Same as the play before basically... teams play
  and accumulate points as normal forever and ever, without
  a time period/champ title for grabs.. trying to strive to be
  the best team overall
- TPC now has a BBS support site... check docs for more info

As of version 1.7:  fixed/added
- Fixed; another rare problem with not being allowed to quit
  back to the BBS from the main joining game screen, sorry,
  it works now and also hassles the quitting user nicely!
- Fixed; a rare problem with not being allowed to select a new
  opposition side until you typed in the name of the opposition
  you are currently playing (at the select opposition menu)
- Added; a BBS promotional ansi screen for sysops to put on 
  their news menus/logon screens to encourage usage of the
  door
- Added; new screen to display the team lineups before the
  match, with appropriate icons for all rounder, batsman,
  bowler, keeper etc...
- Generally spruced up a few screens and titles, added a few 
  more colours here and there, cosmetic
- Modified the points system so bigger scores are now possible

As of version 1.6: fixed all guff with 1.5 and 1.5a
- The points calculations started doing weird things at
  maint time and sometimes after each match, giving results
  from lockups to loading in a wrong user team... daft
  Anyway.. I've fine tuned everything and taken reading away
  from writing and all sorts... lets hope this one is 100%
  then I can go watch the World Cup with a clear head :)

As of version 1.5a: FIXED!;
- Made a real mess of the score reading at maintenance time,
  though the bug only happened after a reset had occured for
  some reason.  It would hang and freeze as soon as a user
  entered the door when maint ran on a fresh new day.
  Damn it, I'm hopeless.  But it should be fixed now...
  moral of the story is, "Don't program on the eve of the
  soccer world cup, your mind tends to wander with all the
  hype and excitement that builds before the event" :)

As of version 1.5 : added/changed;
- Got rid of the win/loss percentages as a way of judging who is
  best and who is hopeless.  It wasn't really fair on teams that
  say had only played 1 match and won/lost it, not a good 
  reflection.  Now top and bottom teams are calculated on a new
  points system, points calculated after each match played
  judged on individual as well as team performances.  This gives
  a much better reflection, and helps to motivate users to play
  as they now can clearly see where they stand points wise, and
  how much they have a catch up etc etc....
- Added a game statistics screen, hidden off the main menu
  accessed by pressing the '*' key.  Just shows a few stats
  thats all (going to be greatly used by me as I test the game
  on systems in my area).


As of version 1.4 : fixed;
- Basically completely rewrote the team selection procedures for
  new players joining the game and for selecting your opposition
  side to play.  The biggest problem getting to grips with TPC
  seemed to be that new users were put off by the entering of
  *.DAT files.  So that's all scrapped, now all users have to do
  is enter the TEAM NAME (be it in full or partial) of the squad
  they wish to make a selection upon.... easy!
- Added a bunch of sclreol's which I forgot to amend before when
  the computer side is batting (I think).  Anyway, purely cosmetic
  thats all, won't get bits of Wd popping up and not overwritten
  properly by the replacement ball etc etc... yay
- Added a Rating system that is displayed when you select an
  opposition team.  Bit of a laugh, goes off past performances
  of each squad.

As of version 1.3 : fixed;
- Added an option to QUIT back to the BBS for new players entering
  the game that decide not to bother playing afterall.
  (makes me wonder why they entered in the first place?)
- Gave an option to quit the game from the Select Bowler menu.  This
  proved essential for lazy players that didn't manage their bowlers
  properly (if entered game with exactly 5 bowlers), allowing them
  to abandon the match properly without having to hangup in the door
- Forgot to close one of the files TPC reads at user logon, fixed now
  This MAY or may not cure some troubles with lockups when two or 
  more players are using the door (multinode)
- Cleaned up a few invalid sreads where it was possible to "make 
  things go iffy" if the user simply entered a BLANK response 
  (just hit return)
- Fixed problem with team creation, where players name fields could
  be left totally blank
- Added a logoff screen at quit time 


As of version 1.2 : fixed;
- Problem with displaying match result screen
  somehow several sgoto_xy lines appears, with invalid XY data
  thus messing severely with the remote screen, took em out now.
- Added some lines to TPCUTIL to make newly created teams have
  a designated mailname instantly, instead of waiting for a player
  to choose that team before assigning one.  Makes now that players
  who join a team can see how it's been performing whilst it was
  vacant of a manager....
- Team creation wouldn't write player names to the remote screen once the
  user entered them, a simple swrite cured this



