I ran across a game called "War Worlds":

http://www.war-worlds.com/doc/

It is far from tradewars, but it has sectors, planets, ships, etc... The main focus of the game appears to be colonizing and upgrading the planets. It is open source, and he is looking for help with documentation and bug fixes. The source is located here:

https://github.com/codeka/wwmmo

I think portions are written in java, so it really isn't my cup of tea.

I have received another email from Mr. Pritchett.

in response to my comment about dwindling player base:

John asked me "what i thouhgt tw needed to attract new players"

He is aware of the bugs that have been spoken about in this thread. What he is asking about is "game play" (if i understand correctly).

So, lets create a list of "game play" features that would reignite a strong player base.
The list would be non technical and presented from the stand point of what a player requires to maintain interest.
Here is a start:
1.) new cashing methods: ??? own a shipyard
2.) greater character expression ??? citadel invites enemy guests
3.) larger, connected universes ??? connect one server to another
4.) new weapons ??? captured alien tech
5.) universe events ??? meteor shower

just a few examples... what would attract you and others?

cc bee... out

All good ideas.... I would like to see greater control over prices... including holds, figs and shields...

I'd like to see things like alien races and ship types configurable in a composable way. Like in a file format that you could exchange, edit, and add to a game.

Also, it would be great if things like the order and timing of what happens when you enter a sector were documented, so everyone could agree on what's a bug and what's a feature. Documenting it would also make things easier for new players.

There is a documentation wiki, but it needs a lot of work:

http://docs.classictw.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Apparently I'm an admin (I didn't know that), but I don't know how to add users. Anyone wanting to contribute, let me know and we will figure out how to get you added.

Second this, I like the idea of just giving more options on games.

I also quite like the way Vid does games which involve taking out aliens etc. Just means on games where you want to play solo or have a different objective it gives another variation.

So increasing the scope of aliens, multiple home worlds, potentially they even "Grow" at a certain rate as if they were human players.. i.e. their planets/colos/resources increase at a configurable amount.

I particularly like other win conditions as I like to do more than go up against citkill in the games I play

I think scripting should be embraced, that is the future of TW. So much wasted energy has been put into ways to preclude or limit it (which resulted in the loss of a fair portion of the community.)

For example, this is what SWATH attempts to do, it provides a nice GUI for the player, modifying the old for the new--it provides sense to TW. The game is too vast to play without scripting (though really if you want to avoid scripting in games, just edit low turn, low sector, and time limit games.) SWATH truly moderns TW, though the problem with it is so slow to use its features, in comparison to scripting with TWX.

Which I think is one aspect of TW that would increase its player base is the marrying of a player GUI with scripting capabilities, which is what Mongoose's Dark Matter/Weapon M project is seeming to do (which is great); ergo, it would be amazing if SWATH would either update its built in features for speed, e.g., resource moving, colonizing, etc., and/or work with EP to incorporate/port his TWX and TWXIDE into SWATH (imagine being able to edit scripts right inside SWATH while playing live.) And on another note, it would be great to have JumpGate built into TWX, so that you could simply go through a list of up TWGS select and auto load all of the connect information into a new Db.

To my point, I think at present trying to setup to play modern TW is very complex for the average user, having enable telnet in windows settings, routing SWATH to TWX and TWX to the server, and having to do this for each individual game you play... etc. In comparison to just clicking on a link and loading a Java app and signing in or whatever.

Though before any further additions be make to the game, a revision that fixes all of the existing bugs need to be released--to wit, it may just be best to rewrite the code in an updated language. (Though would this render all external TW apps useless, no longer supporting ANSI and/or telnet, e.g., SWATH, scripts, etc?)

However, my thoughts on advancing TW: patching the long-standing buggy issues, expanding edit options (such as a fully featured truce; more flexibility in general purchase costs; more flexibility in ship settings, such as the number of holds, shields, and fighters, and TWP (including 0); make ships set as escape pods to be equipped with all enabled items, including a setting for its holds to be loaded with fuel ore or not; an editor setting for the placement of SD (e.g., Sector 10, random 2-way adjacent to 1-10), random away from 1-10); prevent corporate players from deploying anything as personal (it is too easy for mixed corps to benefit from this and renders fairly useless for advanced players); alignment based ship availability setting (e.g., -/+); fully displaying all player-end ship and planet settings in the game catalogs (e.g., enable/disabled and the sum); and a major issue is changing the dynamics involved in deployed fighters, e.g., blue players cannot fairly compete in a game with proactive red gridding players.)

* One final thought (for now), would be to provide editor settings for how photos act in a game, e.g., enable/disable: photon through fighters, photon through mines, photon through limpits; yes/no: photon removes turns, photon removes all shields or photon removes all shields for x-seconds (e.g., shields are offline), photon takes warp-drive offline for x-seconds, photon prohibits fighter deployment for x-seconds, photon prohibits attacking for x-seconds, corporation immune from "friendly fire", photons detonates onboard photons, etc.

** Another thought on photons and the current static game settings, these make is completely impracticable to move around while carrying photons, as any small thing results in self-photoning and a significant loss to the player. Permitting dynamic photon settings could provide a new and interesting aspect to the game, e.g., being able to grid with photons onboard without having to lose all your turns for example. Either this or introduce a new offensive weapon into the game that does not result in the player causing harm to themselves.

This is a two sided coin, and I sit on the edge. Let's look at it from the point of a returning player. He has never heard of TWX, and barely knows how to use swath. So someone helps get them started and gives them a plastic fork, pushes them out onto the battle field, where they die before they even saw what was coming. Their enemy has weapons that are so advanced they never had a chance. Is that in any way fair?

I sit on one side of the coin, it is not fair. This debate has come up every few years since TWX became available. TWX is different from terminal programs which use scripts, insofar as the internal database provides current instant game intelligence. This can be, and inevitably is, used to drive reactive attack etc scripts.

Newbies and returnees have as much chance as a snowball in hell.

Newbies even worse - read the nonsense game helpfile, laff, Better that it pointed to navhaz.com or tw-cabal.com


- I really should copy and save this, been repeating myself for more than a decade. The moderator usually locks the thread after a week or two.

We need to invite him to play the next BIG game, see how well he fairs.

So says a CPA in a math based game.

Then what about a dynamic truce game option that when enabled affords all new players immunity, regardless of the age of the game in progress, until expiration of the set truce period (its features would function as outlined in the above post)?

That is a common feature request.

Another common feature request is server side scripting. Mondain tasks like blue cashing, colonizing, etc... could be built into the game. Then a Gameop could control what types of scripts are allowed during a specific game or TWA. Provided, of coarse, that external scripting is disabled. This would place all players on an equal footing. The winner would be the best player, not the player with the best weapons (scripts).

World of Warcraft (WOW) is an example of a game with a rich scripting language built on. You can modify the UI with all kinds of informational data, create scripts that do specific tasks (i.e. heal the weakest player), but functions like wait() that were in early versions were removed to prevent full automation of game play. WOW fails to disable 3rd party user side scripting though, so automation is easily attainable.

New and returning players aren't going to play if they don't have any chance of surviving, much less winning.

I view TW as a more complex version of C Robots.

If you are a programmer, that's great, but what about the average player. They have to rely on the scripts others are willing to give them.