This file contains Ufo data. These are not used within the host program, but sent to Winplan users in RST files. This file allows third-party programs to create completely new objects. Players can interact with these Ufos using the mission codes 20...999, special FCodes or messages, depending upon the program.
The host uses the visibility ranges to decide which Ufo to send to which player. This makes it impossible to show a particular Ufo to selected players only.
The file contains 100 or 1000 records of 78 bytes each:
+0 WORD Color (1..15)
0 means this Ufo doesn't exist. The color is the usual
encoding for colors in VGA text and graphics modes:
0 black 8 dark gray
1 blue 9 light blue
2 green 10 light green
3 cyan 11 light cyan
4 red 12 light red
5 magenta 13 light magenta
6 brown 14 yellow
7 light gray 15 white
+2 20 BYTEs Name of object, shown on the star charts
+22 20 BYTEs Info 1
+42 20 BYTEs Info 2
Shown when the object is selected.
+62 WORD X (0..4000)
+64 WORD Y (0..4000)
+66 WORD Warp speed (official range is 0..15, but some programs put
other things than a Warp speed here...)
+68 WORD Heading in degrees: 0=North, 90=East, 180=South, 270=West,
-1=unknown;
+70 WORD Distance from which a planet can see the object
+72 WORD Distance from which a ship can see the object
Valid values are 1..5000, all other values are equal to
5000.
+74 WORD Radius of object
+76 WORD Type of object. A program always should use only objects
if it knows their type. To avoid collisions, each
programmer should get a range of Id numbers from Tim
Wisseman. These are already assigned:
1 used by PHost for wormholes
101..150 Dan Gale
151..200 Jan Peter Dijkstra
201..250 Sean Martens
251..255 Bret Lusskin
256..260 DeltaDev@GMX.net
300..310 Norman Violet
311..350 Scott Zinssell
351..400 Boris Psakhis
401..425 Nestor Delfino
426..450 Bruno Smit
451..475 Dave Killingsworth
500..525 Tony Llopis
526..550 Joerg Schueler
551..575 Markus Mann
576..599 Rick Blanchette
600..620 Michael C. Patrick
621..630 Anthony Adam
631..650 Evan Shanks
651..699 Marc Bonaventura
700..799 RAW! (Dan and Dave)
850..900 Rene Gallati
901..999 Tobias Wolf
1000..1050 Sven Bursch
1051..1075 Jean-Marie Clement
1076..1099 Scott Garner
1100..1125 Kenneth Strom
1126..1150 Atomic
1151..1175 Hofbauer Heinz
1176..1199 Kevin Foster
1200..1299 George Carey
1300..1349 Thorsten Kaben
1350..1374 BioMenaced
1375..1399 Jayesh Palshikar
1400..1420 Scott Lombard
1421..1440 Ronald Landheer
1441..1460 Greg Kazarian
1461..1470 Don Friesen (Robomaster)
1471..1555 Wolfgang Merkel
1556..1560 Bernd Ruf (PHCc)
1561..1570 Dennis Weise
10401..10499 Yann Ramin
10500..10599 Star DestroyerPHost Wormholes
Wormholes are not stored in the UFO.HST file; only in RST files and KOREx.DAT. PHost "overlays" them during RST creation.
Wormholes are mapped to Ufos and then filtered. PHost allocates one Ufo slot for unidirectional wormholes, and two slots for bidirectional ones. From the sequence of Ufos alone you can not tell whether a particular wormhole is the entry or the exit of a bidirectional wormhole. Matters are complicated by the fact that wormholes are reported with a different Id in UTILx.DAT and as Ufo.
However, the sequence of Wormhole reports in UTILx.DAT and the sequence of wormhole Ufos can be matched against, so the UTILx.DAT sequence can deliver the real Ids for wormhole Ufos (UTILx.DAT does not contain the information whether a wormhole is unidirectional or bidirectional!). Thanks to Piotr Winiarczyk for this.
Wormhole Ufos always have color 2. In PHost before 3.3e, they always have radius 5 and visibility range 5000; later versions report the correct values.
