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Helper programs for TW2002 fall into two basic catagories: on-line and off-line.
On-line helpers, also known as "scripters", provide an expanded user interface beyond the basic scrolling screen display provided by the game itself, such as continuous display of the current ship parameters. Also they provide scripting functions, which allow the player to automate some of the more keyboard-intensive (and tedious) elements of game play. The most basic example is "auto-haggling", which performs the "negotiation" with the ports for selling and buying products and automatically "haggles" for the best prices.
Off-line helpers provide various ways to analyse the map of the game's universe, such as finding paired ports, finding dead-end sectors, calculating shortest paths, specifying e-probe targets to find unexplored sectors and graphic displays of maps.
This is the one helper program that the Mac Tradewarrior simply cannot be without! Similar in form and function to such applications for the PC as ATTAC and SWATH, it provides the following features:
Mapping functions include: Course Plot, Nearest Fighter (with course plot to target sector), Nearest Product Seller/Buyer
Autoscripting functions include: Pair Trade, Triple Trade, Planet Trade, Colonize, Transfer Products (between planets), Photon and Move, Sell-Steal-Move, Sell-Steal-Transport, Steal-Dump-Trade
Click HERE to
visit the program creator's website for the latest news on the
development of TW Scripter 3.
An off-line helper program, similar to TW Helper or TW Assist for the PC, with the following features:
The program generates printed reports based on captured CIM data from the player's "onboard ship computer" within the game. The listing of one-way warps is also a very useful function.
Another off-line helper, this was ported to the Mac from the granddaddy of all TW helpers for MS-DOS. Simple command line interface, but useful for generating graphical sector maps.
This program has some strange quirks, so read the docs carefully. Being an "alpha" version it may have bugs or OS conflicts. Click here if you would like to download and try eariler versions of this program, TWview.85 or TWview.88 which may be more stable.
While not properly a "Trade Wars helper", this telcomm application is included because it provides for user-created Applescripts to be run while on-line. Until the release of TW Scripter 3, which will include the ability to run Apple Script, this is the best solution available.
Apple Script, like ZOC for the PC, allows the player to create "auto-responsive" functions from within the game itself. A common example is the "Planet Bomb" script included in the SIT archive here. From within a t-warpable planet's citadel, the player waits at the command line for entering the target sector to t-warp the planet to. If an enemy enters a sector with a fighter in it, the script takes the sector number from incoming the fighter's report and passes it to the game command input, automatically warping the planet instantly to that sector -- presumably so the planet's q-cannon can destroy the enemy before they can leave the sector.
In the future, this website will serve as an archive and exchange for Apple Scripts created by players to share with each other. It is expected that scripts created for Black Night will also function with TW Scripter 3.
