K240

K240
Developer: Gremlin Graphics Publisher: Gremlin Graphics Platform: Amiga Released internationally: May 1994 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has revisional differences. This game has anti-piracy features. This game has a prerelease article This game has a bugs page

K240 is an asteroid mining colony management sim released exclusively for the Commodore Amiga in 1994. It is a sequel to the 1991 planetary colony management sim Utopia: The Creation of a Nation. K240 in turn received a sequel, Fragile Allegiance, which was released on PC in 1996.

To do: A prototype/demo version was distributed with CU Amiga (March 1994) and Amiga Down Under #9 (May 1994), which shows early features such as bugs in the missile system and early versions of certain building graphics. Pressing V does not show the version number. There was also a review build given to Amiga magazines where the win screen for defeating an alien uses the background image of the Intel screen rather than the normal outro screen. Not sure if any copies survive.

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Bugs

Unused Graphics

Orbital Shuttle

An unused Terran ship appears in the code with the internal ID 01. For reference, this is one before the Assault Fighter, which has an internal ship ID of 02. An unused string appearing in the text list at #126 (one before the name of the Assault Fighter) identifies this as the Orbital Shuttle.

According to the game data, the Orbital Shuttle would have 10 Armour, a speed of 2 FN., no hardpoints, and a length of 13 m. It costs 3,000 credits to build, has a build time of 10 days, and requires 2 Selenium and 1 Crystalite ore. There is no wireframe graphic for the ship in the game files, suggesting it may have been cut before the graphics were added to the ship construction screen.

Ax'Zilanth Combat Eagle

A small ship with ID $3e which has been dummied out. Its sprite and game statistics stlil appear in the code, but its build rate and build time have been set to -1, so it will never be selected for construction.

According to its stats, the unused ship would have 40 Armour, a speed of 2 FN., and 2 Hardpoints. However, it has 4 hardpoints listed: Photon Cannon, Laser, Ion Cannon, and Disruptor. This would give it a mixed air and ground combat role. Note that alien ships have no names in the game code, but its identification as a Combat Eagle is by equivalence to the Terran ship in the same position.

Tylaran Combat Eagle

A small ship with ID $3e which has been dummied out. Same stats as the Ax'Zilanth Combat Eagle.

Rigellian Combat Eagle

A small ship with ID $3e which has been dummied out. Same stats as the Ax'Zilanth Combat Eagle. However, the Rigellians do not have Photon technology and its Photon Cannon would deal 0 damage.

Swixaran Combat Eagle

A small ship with ID $3e which has been dummied out. Same stats as the Ax'Zilanth Combat Eagle. However, the Swixarans do not use Laser technology, and its Laser cannon would deal 0 damage. The Swixarans do not normally use Napalm Orb or any fire-based weapons, since they are weak to fire and take extra damage. The way the game code works, all fire-based weapons deal extra damage when the current enemy is Swixaran, meaning it would deal extra damage against the player if the Swixarans used it.

Kll'Kp'Qua Science Hive

Has the same function as the Data Hive. However, it's not possible for the Kll'Kp'Qua to build this, since it doesn't appear on any of their build lists. One of the build lists includes a missing entry for a different non-existent building, so it's possible that the Science Hive was supposed to be included here.

Victory Screen

The game has two outro screens: a victory screen and a defeat screen, stored on Disk 3 as outro1.mgl and outro2.mgl respectively. The disk also contains an unused third outro file, outro3.mgl. The game's code shows a third outro screen was intended to be displayed upon completing the game by defeating the final alien. However, the string for the third outro's filename instead refers to "outro1.mgl", the standard victory screen.

It's not certain why the third outro was cut; perhaps due to memory limitations, production delays on rendering the final screen, or some other technical issue. A screenshot from a pre-release review build printed in The One Amiga magazine shows the standard victory screen instead replaced with the Intel screen graphic, suggesting perhaps that the 3D rendered screens were not completed until very late in development.

Unused Sounds

Disk 3 contains the file ENEMYVES.MGL, an unused speech line which says "Enemy Vessel Detected."

It may have been removed since individual enemy vessels never deliberately pose a threat, only fleets, which have their own alert voice line. Individual vessels are either scoutships (which only explore space or unoccupied asteroids) or transporters (which only travel to colonize unoccupied asteroids). The player also can't do anything to respond to a single ship, since fleets can only intercept other fleets, so such an alert isn't very useful.

The demo version of the game included the text strings for this purpose: "ALERT!! SENSORS REPORT ENEMY SHIPS ENTERING SENSOR RANGE." and "ALERT!! INBOUND MISSILE WARNING!" These strings are removed from the final release.

Sound Tests

Two cheat codes allow access to a sound effect test and a voice line test. Press Return (Enter), type "NOISES", and press Return again to activate the sound effects test. Do the same with the code "BJORK" to test voices.

Note that there are two entries for the voice clip "Equipment Malfunction". This may be because "Enemy Vessel Detected" was removed from the game.

Revisional Differences

Two versions of the game were released at retail. Pressing V while in colony view will display the version number and build date.

K240 - VERSION 1.886,  20-5-94 13:25
CLICK MOUSE TO CONTINUE GAME...

K240 - VERSION 2.000,  7-6-94 11:15
CLICK MOUSE TO CONTINUE GAME...

The only difference between the two versions is that v2.000 fixes a bug which causes the game to crash when dealing with fleet movement.

It has also been observed that the floppy disks with V1.886 have an orange printed label, whereas the second release with V2.000 have a white printed label. The second release also usually included a flyer for a tutorial VHS tape (now possibly lost media), and a sticker on the box with the game's magazine review scores.

Anti-Piracy

K240 requires players to enter a word from the game's manual (at a randomly-selected page, line, and word number) to proceed. Since the game manual would take up too much room on disk (the text of the English manual alone would be around 178 KB, one-fifth of an Amiga floppy disk), only 100 words are actually stored for each language (English, French, and German; the Polish release simply supplied players with a sheet containing all 100 English codes). Interestingly, they are not stored as ASCII but as Amiga keyboard scancodes, which are also how the game's cheat codes are stored.

The code requirement can be removed by hex editing the file "playk240" at location 0x40ee (16622 bytes decimal) from 303c to 6016, which will cause the program to treat any failed check as successful, effectively treating any word entered as correct.

Cheat Codes

Twelve cheat codes appear in the game. These were likely used by developers in testing. Type in any of these codes during play. The codes are not case-sensitive. You must hit Return (Enter) before and after each code.

• Skyscraper - Toggle building construction time. Reduces the build time of all new Terran buildings to 1 day.
• Panel - Establishes buttons around the screen. Buttons do not appear until you refresh the asteroid view, either by leaving to sector view and returning, or by rotating the asteroid with the arrow keys on the keyboard.
• NASA - Create a ship at the current asteroid. You will be prompted to type a number between 1 and 8 to choose which type of ship. The ship's hardpoints are chosen at random, except that it cannot have a Static Inducer or Warp Generator, and the first hardpoint is always a weapon.
• Iceman - Toggle asteroid movement on/off.
• Tracey - Toggle voice on/off.
• Bjork - Voice test.
• Widget - Toggle which blueprints you own; i.e. gain all blueprints you don't own, and lose all blueprints you already own.
• Noises - Sound test.
• Loadsadosh - Gain 100,000 credits.
• ICBM - Gain 4 spy satellites and 4 of every missile at the current asteroid. This even works on alien asteroids. Some screenshots of development versions printed in magazines show asteroids with exactly four of each missile, suggesting that this cheat was in use.
• Telescope - Toggle the ability to see all asteroids. Asteroids are still considered undiscovered for the purpose of firing missiles, unless you're fighting the Tylarans, for some reason.
• Lemings - Add 50 population to current asteroid.