You are now looking at the first LOD Newsletter designed first as an HTML (World Wide Web readable) document. This either means you are seeing the text version that will be included with LOD, which is pretty plain, or the version on the internet with a nice hypertext contents page and nice formatting.

The World Wide Web (WWW) is certain to have a massive impact in computing in the near future. I encourage anyone who has not explored this interesting technology to do so at once - you will have access to a massive amount of information at a very reasonable price.

It was Christmastime at Sacre Base again, and everyone was busy getting ready. Early on, Defs Sacre and the leaders of Sacre Base had realized the need for holiday cheer in this grim new world. Troy Hadley was hard at work playing Santa Claus and building Sacre Warrior action figures and vehicles for the kids - these action figures were fully mechanized and had real lasers. Jeffrey spent the Christmas running away from a Mean Max action figure. Mean Max was set to play Scrooge in the Freedom City production of "A Christmas Carol," and Captain Targon had ordered truckloads of frozen snow from Frost Bite, so that the kids could build snowmen and have snowball fights on base. Some of the cooks were making their world-of-ruin-famous Liarei egg-nog. And they were decorating a Christmas cactus. The recruits that had battled this mutant cactus to the death were busy picking thorns out of their bodies.

And among other things, the Drakus were actually in a festive mood this Christmas and had built genetically-engineered reindeer from their chromosome stock. Of course, those festive Drakus paid for it when Black Widow command found out, but they died happy, in any case.

Editors Note: If anybody could pass on the author and true title of this peace (Time Running Short is just what I decided to call it) I would be most grateful.

Time was running short. Chris decided to camp his character out on an uncharted part of the wasteland and call it a night. He had been going at it for several hours now and his eyes were sore from looking at the screen. He logged out of his BBS, turned the monitor off and went to bed. It didn't take long before he had fallen asleep.

Chris woke with a start and looked around. The wasteland countryside he had called home for the night was still there. In the distance he thought he could hear the sound of a rad hound barking loudly. Probably tearing into some poor humanoid mutant, Chris thought. He checked to make sure no one had stolen anything over the course of the night and took off.

He was farther from Sacre Base than he had ever been. To the north was a string of mountains that kept a good large amount of radiation out. To the east was a wasteland surrounding a rad field where some nuke missile had hit. To the south, more of the same. He had come from the west, and had no intention of going back until he had gotten a piece of the puritron device or gotten himself killed.

In the distance he saw someone he recognized from his high school days. Sapphire, or was this her twin sister Patti? There was something odd about the way she was dressed, Chris thought, as he examined her armor. It was black (sans two red triangles that met at a point forming an hourglass shape). Both Patti and Sapphire had always been bright colored people. Floral print, mostly. He decided, since she hadn't seen him that he'd try to strike up a conversation.

"Sapph?! Sapphire is that you?"

"Chris?" She turned to meet his gaze. Her blonde locks of hair shone in the post-nuclear sun, nearly blinding him. She still had the same great build and stunning looks. Her green eyes were still as piercing as they were back in high school. Her fair skin probably burned easily in the wasteland.

"Who were you expecting? The Energizer Bunny?"

Sapphire thought about this a moment, not entirely sure if he was joking or not.

"Not really. What are you doing out in this part of the wasteland? Last I heard, you were stationed at Freedom City as a backup unit to help the convoy in the event of an attack."

"Nothing's changed. I'm out looking for Puritron parts. Some raiders calling themselves the Death Warriors charged the convoy and stole the thing."

"So then Sacre Base sent you?"

"Yep."

A thin sliver of a smile spread across Sapphire's face. She had seen a poster in the Widow Warrior's HQ. "$500 for a live Sacre Base soldier, $2500 for a dead," it had read, less than three hours ago and she intended in making a few thousand dollars for some more widow packs.

"Chris, don't take this personally,"

"Fine. I won't."

"But I've got to kill you."

Chris rolled this around in his head. Her, kill me? Her? Kill me? Chris started to laugh. It started as just a giggle, but soon he was slapping his leg to keep from crying.

"Laugh at me huh? Do you know who I've become?! Do you? I'm only one of the highest ranking Widow Warriors on the wasteland."

Chris sobered up immediately. He had read the messages on the Sacre Base BBS. He knew what the Widow Warriors were capable of. "You don't know how much it pains me to hear that."

"I wish it could be different."

"Likewise," Chris said, assuming his combat position.

The ensuing battle raged on for several minutes. Sparks flew on both sides. Finally Chris's Laser Resist Armor Monitor beeped at him. His armor was depleted down to nothing. The only things that save his life now would be a miracle or good place to go run and hide at.

Unfortunately, the nuclear blast that had happened some fifty years ago had melted all the rocks in the area. Boulders had been reduced to a raised area in the Earth about half an inch high and several feet around.

Sapphire also heard the beep and took full advantage of Chris's distraction, slashing viciously at his neck.

The last thing Chris saw was Sapphire standing over him saying "Forgive me, Chris." She raised the Widow Lance a little, readying herself for the final blow.

Chris sat bolt upright in his bed. Beads of sweat glistened off his forehead, his heart was pounding, and his alarm clock buzzing at him, all in the safe confines of his bedroom. His computer lay in the corner, the lights giving off the usual glow of their yellow and green LEDs.

The room was dark, otherwise, with the exception of the eerie glow of the Electro-Lance that he held in hands. Chris looked down at the deadly weapon that hadn't even been invented yet.

"No!" Chris cried as he saw the thing in his hands. He started to sob and shake his head, as if that would help to shake away the impending future. "NO!"

The thought of fighting like that with a woman he idolized was bad enough, but to be killed! He looked around, using the Electro-Lance as a flashlight. The room was in it's usual state of chaos. Clothes, books, armor, weapons, and a few CD-ROM discs lay on the floor. Chris got up, unsure of where the armor or weapons had come from. The black energy armor had the same red triangles as did Sapphire's armor in his dream. The black Widow Lace also bore the symbol of the Widow Warriors, as did the Widow Blaster. The CD-Roms were also familiar, EM-Warp (Emergency Warp program) and a NOTES CD ROM.

Chris picked up the NOTES CD, put it into his computer, exited the BBS software, which had finished doing the nightly maintenance, and ran the notes program. The usual was there, with one exception. The log read as follows...


C-COORD 1,52,41 ACME Weapons Inc.
C-COORD 1,104,1 EM-WARP Activated.
Manual entry: Chris,
If you are reading this it is to let you know that I am back with my fellow Widow Warriors. You got lucky this time. A Rad Hound saw me and decided I'd be an easy lunch. After fighting you. I was in no mood or condition to face him, so I warped out. I just wish things could have been different.

S.S.

P.S. Try using the Widow Armor the next time you're out that far. You might last a little longer.

-END LOG-

The future of LOD lies in the construction of user datasets. This is really what I have been striving to accomplish for the last several years. Many of you may not realize the extent to which lod can be customized. With the LGPL programming language that is now built into LOD, you can easily add your own objects, new places to explore, etc.

One very good example of this is Konnor McCloud's dataset for version 4.21. Konnor added a ton of new items, in fact I believe he even filled the entire device definition file up! Some of them were bizarre, like steroids or cherry pez, but others were natural extensions of existing concepts, such as medkit-rechargers and warper rechargers. All of this can be done by ANYONE who has a reasonable knowledge of a pascal-like programming language.

You don't really even need to know how to program that well either. By cutting and pasting existing code, you can easily make new objects that perform functions similar to objects that already exist. I'll give you some information on creating custom objects below.

The first thing to do is obtain the proper LOD files. To test your creations, you will of course need LODxxxA.ZIP and LODxxxB.ZIP, and whatever other items may be required for svga graphics, etc. You will also need the dataset construction package, LODxxxE.ZIP.

The primary files of interest within LODxxxE.ZIP are LCDOS.EXE, COMPILE.EXE, and STANDARD.ZIP. STANDARD.ZIP contains all the files for the default dataset and you'll want to unzip it immediately and have a look at the contents. The following files are used to create LGPL objects:

- lodlib.inc. This file contains definitions for function calls that can be made to the lod game that is operating. For example, such things as placing objects on the ground, initiating combat, etc.

- lodvar.inc. Primarily structure definitions and a few variable declarations. The structures in this file define the record formats in which users and fortresses are stored, etc.

- lgpl.in. This is the main file. It contains high-level code and include statements for all the other files.

- miscuse.inc. Many miscellaneous objects are stored here. You can get a good feel for how LGPL works by examining the procedures here.

There are lots of other files too. LGPL files usually have the extension of ".INC" and you can always find include statements referencing them in LGPL.IN.

To add your own object, this is the process that you will need to follow.

1) Assign a new "devapp" code to your object. All of the devapp codes are listed in lodvar.inc. Just pick an unused number and that will be the code for your object.

2) Using the device editor (inside CUSTOM.EXE), create the device itself. You might want to put it in a store so you can get them easily for testing. Make sure to specify in the devapp field the devapp code that you chose in step 1.

3) Load up LGPL.IN and find the procedure USEITEM. This procedure has a large switch statement that dishes out control for smaller helper procedures that handle the devices. You'll need to add a new line for your device. For example:

       case devapp_mydevice: use_mydevice;
                             break;

4) Now you have to actually write the procedure to handle your device. I suggest you create a new .INC file and "include" it the same way the other includes are done (look near the top of LGPL.IN). This is where some programming knowledge is necessary. You can of course just cut and paste in code from another device that is similar to what you want to do and modify it slightly. Or if you really know what you're doing, write it from scratch. The name of your new procedure should match the name in the switch statement in step 3.

5) Now you have to compile the LGPL code. This is done by running the program LCDOS.EXE. If it won't work ("invalid entrypoint called") and you're running windows, then try LCWIN.EXE.

LCDOS will probably spit out some error messages, because you probably mistyped something somewhere or used improper syntax or something - nobody's perfect. LCDOS will tell you what line number has the problem and you can load up the file and try to fix it. LCDOS's error messages can be somewhat confusing at times, but with enough practice you will be able to figure them out.

6) Finally, you must compile the dataset itself. This is done by running COMPILE.EXE.

Now that I've given you some information on creating custom devices, here's a few ideas for you:

- Finish out the stuff I've left unfinished! There's a few odds and ends about in the game. If you see something that could be dealt with more thoroughly, then you might want to add some custom devices. For example,

HISTORY.TXT tells about Richard Sacre's orbital platform. Maybe you could add a way to find it? Or a device to communicate with the online computer?

That DRAKU HQ is pretty plain. Maybe the Draku's ought to have some sort of secret weapons facility there...

- Potions are nice and easy to create. Have a look at chem.inc... How about a potion to transfer attributes from one type to another?

- Gadgets. Everyone loves gadgets... How about a mine-sweeper? Or maybe some plastic explosives to blast fort defense shields with? What about a nearest-pylon locator.

- Rechargers/Converters. An idea vastly explored by Konnor Mccloud... How about a device to convert power packs into armor rechargers? What about a do-it-yourself three round burst kit?

- What about a more complex bar? I've seen other doors that let you flirt with the waitresses, meet with secret black market dealers, etc.

- Puzzles/Riddles. How about a sphinx that makes the player solve a riddle?

- Build stuff. The good 'ol "use item a with item b to create item c" strategy. Maybe you can add combine TNT and a detonator to make a new sort of mine? What would happen if you hooked up a proximity trigger to a fully-loaded vortex cell? How about a kit to add molecular-bonding to a steel shield?

- Diseases... Let your imagination run wild! What about a disease which causes to you occasionally get delirious and walk to a random location?

A little more than 2 years ago I started my BBS, Kerowyn's Haven, in Duluth, MN. Somewhere along the road of development I found the game LOD. I liked it a lot and it became a bit popular for a while. One of my users, Detrix, liked it so much that he wanted to register it for me. (He eventually became the first person to win the game on the BBS).

Anyway, Detrix and I met at my college. I thought he was a bit strange with the long hair and all (you can see an old picture of him at my WWW site), but we really kicked it of. We had so many of the same interests..about 1/2 year later we started to date. Now 2 years later we are engaged!

And to think none of this would have happened if he hadn't registered LOD for me.

:)