A short game history of the 6 years that i've played

[zaroba]

It has now been 6 years since i've started playing this game (give or take a few days since i don't remember the exact date). In that time i have seen the game evolve so much that it amazes me, mit and other staff members have put alot of time into making the leaps and bounds that the game has taken.

when i first started, it was version 0.00.00.95 i think. the game was very much different from how it is now. there was no space, opening the client provided you with a gray window that only listed the servers that you could connect to. there were no planes yet, and boats were more like hovercraft. The world maps were bigger, and worlds had much less features. self stock wasn't a possibility, nor was using height maps, adjusting the lighting amount (worlds were darker back then), and wildlife wasn't even around yet.

It wasn't until Summer of 2002 that the first player owned worlds came around, mit handed out 5 of them to test player world ownership, later in september, mit opened world ownership to all players, thus birthing the player run community that led to what we have today. The (two) sites at the time was much different from the single site that we have now. the old main site can *possibly* be seen at http://web.archive.org if you search for gameislands.net and a-tractor.net. that is, if the archive site even works, its very slow and often fails/times out. some of the older sites are still around, but different from how they used to be. gameislands.net and i-lands.net are still accessible, and have some older news on them.

around july or august of 2002 mit released the first version of space. it was a crow based team combat world. you could get to it via the Launch option in the house menu and there was a planet in the middle of it that you could land and you would be presented with a list of worlds that you could connect to. It had problems though, namely it would toss you randomly into the world possibly way from your house. Mit abandoned it though in favor of a much larger project. It is still around though, except for the planet landing stuff, it is now called Subspace mode and can be used on any planet (see Bongtrek for an example).

The new creation that mit made in its place was the Galaxy that we have now. It first went into closed testing in november of 2003 and was released to the public in june of 2004. there was no infimp drives yet, or combat. you could type .infimp (world) and had to type .stardrive (galaxy) to get around. it wasn't until later when space combat first came into play. this later evolved to include the bounty system and cargo theft that we have today.

late 2003 also marked the birth of the new site for the game, the beautiful site that we have now.

Meanwhile, worlds also continued to evolve too, becoming more feature filled and more customizable. Around november or december of 2002, one of the first big changes came. It was known as version 0.00.01.53. it offered the heightmap stuff that we have now and wildlife. but the biggest change of the version was the conversion to the .atm format from the .x format the game had been using. this new format that mit created offered much smaller files, and allowed models to be fully animated efficiently and far more animated then when the game used the .x format (could only have simple animations with a separate download for each position instead of a single model)

later in 2004 adjustable tile sizes was a good milestone for the game. although most worlds use similar sized maps due to having to place buildings on tile corners, the option to use a larger or smaller sized world is a great positive to the game. The building placement issue was solved in 2007 with ability to place buildings anywhere on tiles which makes larger worlds much more feasible now then they were before.

Scripting is another big milestone in the game. perhaps the biggest thing since the galaxy itself. The scripting system allows owners to greatly customize there worlds with quests, games, puzzles, etc. there are infinite possibilities for customization using the scripting feature. it can even be used to provide things not yet programmed, like teleportation, temporary use vehicles.

what will the future hold?
maybe the future will offer a way to combine space and world play more. like the ability to put items in a certain building, launch to space WITH those items, and then land WITH those items on a different world, all the while still allowing piracy to be possible. maybe the future will allow a world owner to designate a launchpad/landing zone where players entering the world will be seen landing ON the world in there space craft in this zone and have to travel to the main city from there, maybe when launching players will have to goto this zone and will be seen taking off IN there space craft after buying fuel for it at the local starport/fueling station.

only time will tell what mit has plans for.

Mit, Fooli, and the rest of the staff have done an excellent job in getting the game to where it is today. I applaud there hard work and am thankful for them for making a great game.


*please note that some of the above dates/versions might be wrong since i havn't looked extensively threw the old code logs to see the actual dates/versions*

[lensman]

zaroba wrote,

Mit, Fooli, and the rest of the staff have done an excellent job in getting the game to where it is today. I applaud there hard work and am thankful for them for making a great game.

Yep I do agree with you there. For the guys who only work on this game when they have the time, have done a great job.

I is a Sandgroper.

[Mishka]

Very, very nice indeed Zar. Thank you Mit and Fooli and the rest of the staff for making such a great game.

[lucifer1101]

here here may the great STAF of the universal prosper and live another day to make such great entertainment

[Guest]

wow....i cant imagine how the game was from the begging.....6 years u must be mad determind