Upcoming changes..

[Mit]

Hia,
Been a while.

I thought it time i let anyone still reading these pages know a little about what i've been up to lately.

In a short while theres going to be a bit of a restructuring to how the game works.
A lot of internal tech has changed, which has broken lots of stuff and fixed some other stuff, but ultimately should let us do lots more interesting things, more easily, in the future.

Alongside that, I've been developing an idea called the 'The History of the Federation - Part 1'. (It is called this purely because i put little effort into naming it :] ). The general concept of 'The History' is that the game itself will progress through a series of .. lets call 'em.. 'chapters', over the course of the next year (or more, if everyone is particularly slow). The chapters will detail how a simple civilisation with but a tiny group of players, struggling for basic survival and with only a primitive comprehension of the universe, grew to inhabit & control a whole galaxy. And maybe this time, at the end, it'll all be a bit more interesting

Regularly during The History, certain players will solve problems, achieve goals and/or turn up at just the right time, and change the course of the game. These people will become famous, in a very very small way. At the end of part 1, one person, i know not who, will make a choice that determines the course of the whole galaxy for the future - with one option being to do the whole damn thing again.

The History is a gameplay narrative and a game-development one, taking us back through the existing history of this old game that some of us have being arsing around with for years now. While revisiting, we might be solving some things we've done before, and how these things develop might change The History. See.. its all self-referential and post-modern and i like that.

The first stage will be an 'alpha' at the end of this month.. there will be not much to it and it will be fairly static & quiet... This is deliberate. Within a month or few we'll progress to a 'beta' and start trying to get some other people to play too.

Don't expect too much of it.. part of the motivation for doing this is to try to make the game more interesting without relying on lots of time for new development. Any world builders left, sorry, but some things aren't going to be possible again for a while.

There are many reasons why I spend a good portion of my spare time (little that there is of it) working on this game - not all of them coherent - but really the main reason is that I just enjoy trying to make a game that i think is interesting and people might like to play.
Hopefully some people will enjoy this new approach.. if not, ah well

See you at the beginning again soon.

mitch

[morbydvisns]

Mmmm interesting..., but...

Any world builders left, sorry, but some things aren't going to be possible again for a while.

This is the single most important sentence of the post, yet left so little to go on O.o


Wait, where were we?

[MasterNiCron]

sounds great

[Mishka]

Any world builders left, sorry, but some things aren't going to be possible again for a while.


mitch

This sentence alone sent shivers up and down my spine.

What do you mean by this Mit?

[zaroba]

hmm...not to be negative, and i apologize in advance if i sound rude or overly forward or whatever, after all it is your game so you are free to do what you wish with it...but...given the history of, well, development and activity over the past few years, will this thing really be doable in the timeframe you mentioned?

i mean will the beta end up being a year or two long and then the thing finally gets put up to run for real?
will each stage be something that requires coding (that we have to wait a month or year for) or are all the stages pre-coded?

does this all mean your coming back and going to be active again instead of the occasional visit once or twice a year?

i would also like to know more about the world statement brought up. but, as long as we can still run worlds, i'll be happy without any new stuff for a while. can continue to workaround whats not coded yet and make do with whats available.

[wes773]

Sounds good.

[Mit]

Zaroba, so many questions

1) will this thing really be doable in the timeframe you mentioned?

Dunno. Maybe. Certainly a lot of the work i've been putting in over the last couple of years has been to make the process more dynamic and configurable without so much effort.

2) i mean will the beta end up being a year or two long and then the thing finally gets put up to run for real?

See above. I hope not.

3) will each stage be something that requires coding (that we have to wait a month or year for) or are all the stages pre-coded?

Some are pre-coded, some rely on world development, some are basically turning on a switch to reactivate a feature we developed at some point in the last 10 years or so . Its all reasonably flexible too, so can be adjusted depending on time, effort, enthusiasm, etc.

4) does this all mean your coming back and going to be active again instead of the occasional visit once or twice a year?

I'm sometimes more active than you think, but in a parallel universe shunning publicity. Thats just the way it is sometimes. I'll probably be less parallel for a while once we start on this stuff.

.. world stuff is mostly a time constraint .. not sure i'll have time to do what needs to be done there yet - it will become more apparent later. World dev still has a big part to play, but the alpha will stop things for a while until I finish off some new stuff.
I do also want to focus on getting people to play for a while... I think its easy to forget we're a game here.

Oh.. and to put it all another way, lets say we had a purely optional monthly $1.99 subscription. (Couple of bucks a month.. thats nothing is it? :] ). With 10 subscribers, i couldn't guarantee more than a chapter a year. With 20 i would. With 100, it'd be at least one every six months, guaranteed. 1000, one a month, for sure, with scalability included etc etc. :]

This new stuff is good :] I'm enjoying it immensely already.

p.s. @TheUniversalDev

[morbydvisns]

wat is that twitter? I dont twitter, myself. Theres far worse games that charge more than a couple bucks a month so I dont think thatd be a bad idea, if the playerbase is there to give enouh action to justify paying for. What would the subscription get over non payers?

[wes773]

I'd pay that.

[zaroba]

i would be willing to as well.
i imagine its EU$1.99?

only side issue with that though is that as free, bugs and lack of features are no real issue. but when people come around who like and pay for the game, some might expect a bug free game. but then, you did say optional so it would just be a matter of the person stopping paying if they didn't like something


time to start working on worlds again

[wes773]

There are no bug free games, and people have paid good money for games that are horribly filled with bugs, so that shouldn't be an issue. For me, the bugs make some games more fun to play. As long as people can come in and play for free, and the pay stuff is optional, nobody should have any problem with it. Don't like how the game is? Don't pay for it. Those of us who want to, will. I know that as long as TU keeps its uniqueness, I'll be up for paying.

[MasterNiCron]

<~~dileup internet with a 1.5 to 2.3kbs connetion and thats on a good day

i only have 1 small concern about this up come update. and thats a large download to install. becase the 30MB 1 we use now is about the max i can download at 1 time. so very much bigger and i want evan be able to play

[zaroba]

what about using something that lets you pause and resume downloads?

[MasterNiCron]

i have a buitin thing that duse that but most sites dont let u resume. but if this site duse than that will work

[zaroba]

if it doesn't, it wouldn't be hard for me or (probably) anybody else with a website to download it, split it into multiple smaller rar files (or just a multipart rar) and upload it for you to download in pieces

[MasterNiCron]

that would be that fastest way thanks

[fhko]

Hey Mit! This really cheered me up to see.

I like your idea of taking the game back to the simple times. I was always a fan of fresh starts and times to try out new ideas.

Sad to say games and life don't mix very well for me anymore, but I'd be happy to chip in the $1.99 a month. It's nothing for a chance at a dream isn't it?


One casual suggestion: If this game is really being taken back to it's roots and we want fresh bodies on the ground to help give it some new life, I will be so bold as to propose a reset of the forums to clear out a lot of the old cobwebs. The old posts could of course be saved in some sort of 'archives' area for posterity's sake, but it might help get rid of that desolate feeling I sometime get when I peek in occasionally. Again, only a suggestion.

To new beginnings!
-fhko

[flametard]

I will be so bold as to propose a reset of the forums

I MEAN HOW MUCH IS GONNA CHANGE!? lol

[morbydvisns]

I will be so bold as to propose a reset of the forums

I will be so bold as to say this would be the most retarted thing I've seen come from your brain

Too much valuable info hidden in them there forums.

[zaroba]

ehh, i wouldn't say reset *all* the forums, as there are a lot of things that should be saved.
but there is also a lot that could probably be gotten rid of due to no longer being relevant to the game. like help topics relating to issues that are no longer in the game and topics about worlds/factions that no longer exist. but then, how often do new forum visitors browse more then a page or two back anyway?

in my opinion:
-if anything, any topic with 0 replies could be deleted out of the general forum, help forum, and off topics forum. as these are either topics nobody was interested in or didn't result in any type of discussion, helpful or otherwise.
-probably most of the old help topics could be deleted. a lot of them might not apply to the current version and more may not apply after the change. maybe delete everything past page 5 which has topics from 2007.
-i'm sure stim will disagree, but the old topics in the faction forum could probably be deleted, but there isn't much in there anyway.
-old topics in the world news forum could be deleted as most are no longer relevant to the game
-maybe prune the general forum so any topic over 3 years without a reply is deleted, that would leave about 4 pages of topics.