It works for farmville too.... the game alone has more regular players than twitter has members.... But you wont ever see me giving them any $.

think of the profit off of the cash heavy newbs for the programmers. and though the newbs would still get annihilated, they would probably last longer, and maybe play again instead of just being slaughtered and quitting...

Some of you have probably seen this, but this is a prototype I put together for the Sylien TradeWars Tournament project, back when I was actually involved in it. It was meant to be a graphical overlay of the current game, and I think you can see where it would support most of what's in the game today. It was meant to be a much more dynamic ui than what ended up in TradeWars Rising, with ship's coming and going from a sector, and little balloon messages showing activity like the game currently scrolls text events. Whenever a ship entered a sector or blasted off from a port or planet, you'd have the ship icon slide onto the main window, and it would also be listed in the Ships list to the right. You could interact with a ship either through the icon or the list, and you could set filters to limit your view to, for example, only hostile ships. There would also be a notification for hostile actions. The game could be played with a mouse, or keys for those who prefer.

I think this still has some potential as a graphical client for classic TW. If time was not an issue, I'd turn this into a functional client myself. I'd use the same engine I'm using for the TW rewrite, Torque Game Builder. Getting the UI in place would actually be the easy part. The hard part would be getting it to interact with the game. Of course, that's something that's already been done by helper authors to some extent. Having the ability to integrate this with an existing helper or script engine would definitely speed things up.

But I always come back to the belief that there are things that need to be fixed in the game itself before something like this could be done. If I could finish that rewrite, it would open the door to so many options. Until that happens, though, there are some things mentioned in this thread that would be pretty easy to do and that I could get done on my limited TW time. I hope to be ready to release a new revision of TW soon, and continue to address critical issues for awhile, things like the mail bug and maybe some of the options proposed here.

There are many independant programmers out there who could do all the work, with your creative control. Releasing the soruce code would be a mistake --unless you plan on walking away. There should only be a single trusted source for TWGS.

I agree. Release it only if you are completely done with it and walk away. Otherwise you are only inviting many problems.

Cheers

There are many options when it comes to open-sourcing a project, and not all of them involve giving away the farm But that is definitely a big reason why I have not yet done that. There are already plenty of forks and clones without me giving the "green light" by making this open source. On the other hand, I hate to see this kind of energy being wasted when I see the good that has come from other open-source games like Myth's Project Magma (http://projectmagma.net)

I spent a rather large number of hours last year trying to build out a graphical interface for the classic telent tradewars. Sadly, as a network engineer and not a developer my efforts did not come to any good fruition. At the very least I learned a massive amount about both the telnet protocol as well as the graphics codebase used by tw. I actually did manage to create my own telent client that was around 99% compatable with tw, and a secondary screen that was able to populate and update basic information such as sector, warps, and some basic ship information. But it was buggy.

I realised eventually that my project was flawed from the beginning, and that I should have been designing the system for use in any generic browser as opposed to being a stand-alone app. Thats what I get for not being a developer, the cart was a thousand miles down the road before the horse. I may give it another try from scratch later this year once I get some spare time.

From the standpoint of further development of classic TW, I think the idea of the degeneration of assets in space has some appeal, as does cross-server gateways. Both would be welcomed additions for most players both new and old.

TWedit settings for more granular controls over things like busts as well as limiting the number of times per day a planet could be warped might lead to some interesting scenarios as well. It would be nice to see another version someday incorporating simple features that players could have fun with.

While John is working on the future version mentioned here. I will point to my customized game with shipyards and customized ships that are delivered in game. It is something I wanted for Tradewars too so I built a framework and used info from JP back in 2003-4 to build a data mining piece that enables my website to deliver much more info about your in game assets. It is all built and working, but interest has been up and down both from me due to RL situations and from those who have given me feedback. I have a game "RogueEmpires" running now where you can try this all out. If any of you want to get the money and level 4 planet needed to build a shipyard quickly, then join my game and pm me here to TEDIT you some resources. If there is enough interest then I will be motivated to start an official game using my setup. I am in the current game just for testing but won't play in an official one.

Just something to try out while we await JP's new work - which sounds great!

For those with graphics on the brain. I would like to point out that Mafia Wars and Travian / Tribal Wars are text based games. Any new version should allow for the old style text. I for one would hate to lose all the scripts I have already written. Granted all the ideas presented are good ones. A more complicated game would be interesting. However to bring players to the game I think an ad based wrapper that would bring in money so that ads could be spammed across the internet to attract players is the way to bring in new players. This is a Great game. Many old players don't even know that you can still play.

It has been my experience, from a lot of feedback, that when the old players "discover" the game and come in to take a look, they're turned off by what it has become. I don't agree that it's "a great game" at this point. It's a game with a very limited appeal. There are people who enjoy the game on private servers, but I don't see old players coming back and participating in the public games against modern players. I also don't see new players being interested in it, no matter how successful I may be at reaching them. There are many things that need to be fixed. I agree that it's not just the fact that it's a text based game. People will play a text based game if it's a good game. This game once appealed to a very broad audience, and maybe it could again. But not without fixing some of these problems.

It's interesting to discuss ways to evolve/restore the classic game, and like I said, that's definitely on my "todo" list. But while I have you guys talking about TradeWars games, I'd like to gauge your interest in something a bit different. I've recently been in touch with some of the developers who worked on TradeWars: Dark Millennium, and they're just finishing up a strategy game called BattleDex. It's a collectible card tournament game that plays on a hex grid. The developers came to me because they felt that it might be interesting to apply the TradeWars IP to their engine. Such a game would be very compact compared to a classic TradeWars game, both in scale and time. But I think it would be possible to capture some of the best elements of classic TradeWars, yet appeal to a much more casual audience. Have a look at the game at http://www.battledexgame.com, or look at this youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoHJIie1dRc I'm excited about the prospect of fleshing out the TradeWars ships, hardware, etc, and bringing some much-needed visuals to the TradeWars universe through a project like this. Is this something that might appeal to today's TradeWars crowd? Would it appeal to the older TW crowd? I think it would do well with a new audience, but I'd like the TradeWars community to see a project like this as a natural fit, as opposed to just another game with the TW name slapped on it...

Let me know what you think.

BTW, if any of you are interested in beta testing BattleDex, let me know. It's a closed beta right now, but I could get you in. They mentioned that they were impressed by the TW players and gameops who beta tested TW:DM. I guess TW players tend to have a pretty high IQ for strategy games ;)

Ok, I'm not sure why my last post ended this conversation. Suddenly I'm hearing crickets in here

The reality is, as BattleDex illustrates, I have many opportunities to create new games with the TradeWars IP, but if I want to create a game that's very close to the classic game, I'm probably not going to find a lot of support for that. It doesn't mean that it won't get done. But it does mean that there will be projects like a TradeWars BattleDex, and other potential projects I can't name at the moment, before there can be a true remake or modern version of the game you guys play today. I can do my best to devote personal attention to the old game, and I want to do that, but as a hobby. Projects like a BattleDex game are my best opportunity to merge my TradeWars hobby with my game developer "day job", and that's been a major goal of mine for a very long time.

LOL. I got busy and forgot to reply, sorry.

While the idea of a TW battlecard game may appeal to others, it's not something I'd probably play.

TW has evolved into a very complex game... Here's a few examples of what I mean:

There's the strategy component, ie: You have to do some things before you do others, or you have problems
later. But the order is complex enough that there's a rock, paper scissors aspect to it. If I choose to spend
my first few days gridding aggressively, and you choose to spend the first few days building aggressively, and
I find you then I can deny you those resources. On the other hand, if I don't, then your resource advantage
will be a serious problem for me later on. So you have to balance your approach to match your skill level and
the skill of the competition.

There's a technical component, ie: If you don't know there's a planet with 1:1 figs in an edit, you're in
serious trouble if the enemy knows and develops that.

There's a tactical component: You can be the best base developer in the world, but if you can't beat my
grid defense then it doesn't matter, I'm still going to win. If you have the best grid defense in the world,
but you can't manage your ore usage or self-torp on enemy mines, then you're as good as dead. There are
tactics within tactics.

There's a real time shooter component: You're in the sector, I'm in the sector. The winner may very well
be determined by the order of events in battle, and who reacts the quickest. A pirates edit, for instance,
has 5:1 offensive odds. First shooter wins. Of course it goes the other way: Subzero unlim, solo death
match. First person to attack goes blue, can't cash, loses.

There's a psychology component: My enemy has a history of doing X in games, what happens if I mess
with that? What happens if I use that knowledge to my advantage?

There's an experience component: There's a few edits I've played so often that I've memorized exactly
how many figs it takes to capture common enemy ships in a single shot. The same edits... I can tell you
exactly how many turns it takes to build each planet, and what planets to build and what not to build,
and how to build exactly what needs built. Someone w/o that level of experience will burn turns, build
the wrong planets, screw up on their startup, I'll have lots of little advantages.

There's a programmer component: Scripting gives programmers, or people w/ access to programmers, a
definite advantage. This may be a turn off to returning players, but it's a serious advantage for others. It
lets me add my own personality to the game, allowing me to develop my style outside of the confines of
a boxed game. I like games where creativity provides an edge, they reward intelligence.

There's a social aspect: I can chat with other players in the game. I can chat with other teams. If there are
other teams, I need to create a team. Because the only way to beat another corp is to build another corp,
there's a very real reason to stay in contact with people for years and years.

There's a teamwork aspect: How my team operates will determine whether I win or lose. We all have to get
along and work well together or we're hosed.

...

I think a game needs to have most of those components to appeal to the current TW base.

Have you ever played the game Star Control 2? When I think of TW, it reminds me a lot of that game. If you
had a large multi-player, team-based universe similar to that, I think it would work well w/ the TW crowd.
There's strategy, there's experience, there's tactics, there's a shooter, there'd be psychology and team play...

Battle Dex looks interesting.. reminds me somewhat of MS's Age Of Empires. I think it would effectively turn a 'Space Game' into a 'Board Game', in other words, the 'Hex' would two-dimensionalize a three-dimensional Game/Universe. Additionally. If you were two step back and increase the size of the Battlefield in a Space simulator, the game board would get congested pretty quick; conversely, a 20,000 Sector 'Hexiverse' would porbably crash most Internet Browsers. I'm not sure of the abilities and limitations of the app-software but you would really need to turn that Hex into a Multi-layerd Hexahedron, with a Fog-Of-War in all dimensions.

@Singularity: I think if you can capture all of that, but do away with the extreme committment required to play a game, then we'd have something.

@LoneStar: I was actually looking at the battles as being more of a simulation of fleet combat within a Sector, and not of Sector-to-Sector combat. I think there'd need to be a higher level strategy map where territory is claimed, but then when two or more players are battling for control of a Sector, that's where this kind of tactical combat system would play out. I don't necessarily see that larger map as being anything like 20K Sectors, either, because I think most players would want to play a game more comparable to Risk in terms of scope and time. But definitely, it does bring out more of a boardgame feel, I agree.