Gorgons Alliance [Archive]

Michael Romes

05-10-2021, 12:08 PM

...
First of all I wanted to patch my game. I think that will be necessary before I concentrate on any other file. But in this section I find 3 files:
- gorgon_patch (1.4)
- gorgon sierra online patch 1.3 [42122]
- gorgon sierra online patch 1.4 [42426]

Do I have to install all of them? Do I have to install them in a special row?

Usually you only have to install the latest patch (1.04) if your game is not already 1.04.

In addition I couldnt find any information in the readme.txt what got patched/improved. I would like to know what got fixed instead of just install it and be happy.

Every patch usually has a readme.txt file with it.
e.g. in the 1.02 patch zip file there was a readme that contained the fixes for 1.02

Birthright PATCH
README 1.0.0.2
8/22/97

__________________________________________________ _____________________
[ To read this file, select Edit/Word Wrap from the menu above ]
__________________________________________________ _____________________

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I] WHAT THE PATCH FIXES
II] HOW TO INSTALL THE PATCH
III] ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
IV] IF YOU STILL EXPERIENCE PROBLEMS

I] WHAT THE PATCH FIXES
================================================== =====================

1. The multi-player game will access character data files from the CD only. This will prevent
multi-player games from getting out of sync and crashing when one or more players have
edited characters using the Birthright Character Editor Tool.
2. The Turn Undead spell will be fixed so that it only effects the undead, rather than all foes.
3. Having a regent die in an adventure will no longer end the game. If any of the adventure
characters survive, they will lug back the corpse of the hapless regent and have it
resurrected. It may cost you a bunch (gold, regency, and bloodline strength), but the regent
can be revived and the game continues.
4. The LISTEN feature in chat did not work correctly. If you set it so that you would only listen
to chat from player 3, for instance, it actually only listened to player 2.
5. Often, while playing multi-player, a wait cursor would appear while other players were
interacting with NPCs. While that was up, you could neither scroll around, nor chat, even
though your computer should have been idle and able to do those functions. This has been
greatly improved so you can scroll the map, check unit and holding status, or chat with other
players whenever you are waiting on an opponent to finish up his turn.
6. When the source potential of a province declines, any sources in that province should
decrease as well to stay within the province source potential limit. This has been fixed.
7. If you are in a multi-player game, you should never minimize your game window as the
game then does not talk to the host and will be disconnected. To prevent this, we removed
the minimize button from the title bar. But, if you go into DirectDraw (full-screen) mode,
then back to windowed mode, the minimize button re-appeared, enabling the other problem.
OK, this one is pretty obscure, but we fixed it anyway.
8. When the Gorgon "dies", his message about "I'll be back." (shades of Arnold the
Terminator?) had some garbage characters in it. We fixed it.
9. Several non-landed organizations did not have the correct loyalty levels towards certain
realms. For instance, the Western Imperial Temple should like Tuornen more and Ruarch
Rockhammer should be more favorably inclined to Baruk Azhik than to other realms.
10. The prompt to memorize spells before going on an adventure will be more prominent.
11. The Coffer of the Realm should add d6+4%
12. Vassal troops visiting your provinces caused those provinces to be treated as occupied,
reducing their tax and loyalty levels. This was fixed.
13. Meteor Storm spell did not work on the battlefield. This was fixed.
14. Units can retreat from a battle either out of or into a warded province, ignoring the ward in
that case. This was fixed.
15. The Chalice of the Dead could summon infinite skeletons if it was used before any other
domain action during a turn. This was fixed.
16. The Legion Of The Dead spell should generate one skeleton per level over 6 for magic users.
That is, a 7th level mage can make 1 and a 10th level mage can make 3, etc.
17. When a lieutenant action is used for an adventure, it used up a domain action. This was
fixed.
18. Even if you have enough memory, high-res animations and textures were not being displayed
during adventures. This was fixed. The table on page 2 of your user's manual should now
include one additional line. If you have 40 Meg or more of RAM and are running the Win95
game, you will see the highest resolution images for both wall textures and animations.
19. There were several fixes to the memory manager code that would prevent disk thrashing
while battles were occurring with large stacks on both sides. In those cases, the battlefield
display would slow to a crawl. It could have also lead to a erratic and difficult to reproduce
game crashes during battles. A rare bug, but now fixed.
21. There was a bug with the string handler that could lead to intermittent and unpredictable
crashes, most often when running the game under Windows NT. This was fixed.
22. That door in Bindier that had the switch on the wrong side of the door - fixed.
23. Playing multi-player mode with different versions of the game (demo vs release game, for
instance) would cause the game to crash. This has now been dis-allowed.
24. THACO numbers were incorrect for several units. These were fixed.
25. The Scepter of Cuiraecen didn't have a single charge on it for adventures, this has been
fixed.
26. Shooting a wand with a charge on it from the "use" button instead of from the hot box
doesn't decrement the number of charges on it. This was fixed.
27. Some blood abilities were not available during adventures. Travel now allows one teleport
per adventure visit. Enhanced sense provides 3 detect evils to those with Anduiras derivation. Other
bloodlines get infravision. The Heal blood ability allows healings (minor ability = 1 healing, major =
2 healings and great = 3 healings per adventure). The Fear blood ability will act like a stun
spell. Protection from evil now works.
28. Time based adventure elements (lift movement and damage, duration spells, HP being regained, etc.)
do not continue to occur while you are waiting in turn-based mode. They stop accruing when animations
are not moving.
29. Players now accrue experience for realm actions, per the table in the on-line help on this subject.

The 1.03 readme had those fixes:

Birthright: The Gorgons Alliance PATCH README
10/31/1997
Version 1.0.0.3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[1] WHAT THE PATCH FIXES
[2] HOW TO INSTALL THE PATCH
[3] ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
[4] IF YOU STILL EXPERIANCE PROBLEMS

[1] WHAT THE PATCH FIXES
====================================
Several minor bugs
Code support for the Deluxe Tools

1. Scenario Editor support. Any new game scenarios (no longer The Gorgon's Alliance) can be dumped in the saved game directory and loaded as if they were ordinary saved games. But, they will allow you to select other realms (not just the 17 the original game allows) and it properly modifies the game so that if you are playing an awnshegh or monster realm that the game adjusts appropriately.

2. The Character Editor is now fully supported in the game. Create your own characters and inventories and have them appear in the game.

3. The game will display and allow players to go on adventures built with the Adventure Editors. Build your own castles and dungeons and adventure in them yourself. Or send them to friends for their use.

4. The Character Editor was fixed and improved. Lots of minor suggestions by users.

5. The Adventure Editors were released. Building a full, new adventure is a time consuming task, but determined users or minor edits of existing adventures are possible.

6. The Scenario Editor is done and working. Allows users to change ownership and starting conditions of every province, holding, and force in the game. Setup starting alliances. Choose which realms are in the game and which are player starts. Lots of cool features. Radical changes to game play are possible and scenarios may be shared.

7. Experience At Battle Level The following chart of combat experience points now works. The first number is points awarded to fighters, the next to priests, the third is for thieves, and the last number is for wizards.

Engage in Battle 500, 500, 300, 500

Go onto the battlefield 1000, 500, 300, 500

Cast magic or use magic item 50, 200, 50, 200

Command a win in battle 1000, 500, 500, 500

Bonus if command a win against larger army 1000, 500, 500, 500

8. The intermittent message "Endier assassinated a unit in" has been fixed so that the location of the assassination is now printed.

9. The intermittent message "unknown has gained an experience level" was fixed.

10. The intermittent bug in which a character at the realm level, defeated in battle, chose to not retreat and then could not be engaged thereafter was fixed.

11. Battle magic was improved so that non-mages could now use magical artifacts such as Necklace of Missiles on the battlefield.

12. A bug in which items with multiple charges disappeared from the hot-boxes after one use was fixed.

13. The message about characters gaining a level now identifies their realm.
...