Yeah... Daala's hex map plus the planar graph bigbang option that JP has been talking about would equal totally rad.

what do you mean back in the day. I started playing BRE again a few months ago before I started getting my feet wet in tradewars again.

Because back in the day to me is the early 90's when BRE and SRE came out and we played InterBBS BRE via dial up and 2400 baud modem.

Another usage idea - could you give every new player a 100-500 sector map, then when or if they want, they could defeat some defensive position in a sector to "create" a warp gate? Once one is created, it is bidirectional, but the fact that the player was able to defeat the alien/planet/sector of figs somewhat prepares them for the pvp zone that awaits.

I like it, I like it! You could probably do that with Gold bubbles (with the links to the rest of the universe edited out) and botlink to control the gate.

That could be a possibility. Currently we have about 2 gates per game that exist (so with 4 games that is 8 gates total). We have been looking at the "gate creation" portion of our design. We play a game called VGA Planets and have a "Jump Gate" addon that allows players to build a jumpgate providing they have the required minerals/credits. We can do a similar thing- gate construction would be like the port construction- requiring a planet, minerals, and credits. Once completed, that info is passed on to the server-side application and the gate gets added to the database list and you can gate using it. However, we also have been looking at figuring out how to deal with issues such as the planet that ties to the gate is destroyed, or aliens capture it.

My apologies. Since you were discussing it publicly I assumed there would be a release.

I learned a lot working on the Universe Expander about what did and didn't work. I've also seen the game become virtually impossible to play.

The financial model that Gary originally built into the game has become so warped that it doesn't work anymore. I put together a modified cost model which did even things out to a certain extent, but some of the issues are built into the game itself. Consider the T-Warp upgrade costs - since the game uses a an unsigned single digit number, and multiplies it by 1000, upgrade costs are limited (in theory) to 32,000 credits. But the game itself i2 coded to only accept 20,000 credits as the maximum, you have to use a hex editor to get a higher price (or I could get off my Butt and finished the TW Toolkit that I started working on...) Of course to do that I'd have to dig out that ancient piece of crap that has Windows installed on it. And then hope I could remember what to do, it's been years since I worked with Windows.

The new player issue is something that really worries me. I started playing the game when TW2002 V0.96 was the latest and greatest, so I've been playing the game from sometime in the late 80's. There aren't many people playing who are much newer. The cost in time to become an OK player is so high that most people aren't willing to make the effort, especially with things like World of Warcraft out there.

Effectively we need a Farmville version of TW2002, something simpler, and not as time intensive.

Wayne

It will not be a release as of yet. This has been a big project of ours for some time. The original concepts were to allow traversing between games on one server. In order to do this with the least amount of headaches, we wrote two applications to run with the TWGS- a server app handling all the "admin" stuff (such as getting the player's assets from one game to another, etc); a computer player app that handles the "computer players" in the game (currently rotates through 4 players every 24 hours); and a client app for us. We are now totally independent of TWX Proxy or the other helpers. No scripts have been introduced yet into this for the player, such as trading, attacking, etc. We wanted to ensure the core was solid first before we decided to see what "expansions" we wanted to do.

Following my return from active deployment and relaxing after the holidays, we are now looking at introducing a second server to see how well we can "link" the two together. We are attempting to be able to traverse on one server up to 4 games, and then be able to go to another server and do the same. If all works, we have a few more servers we know very well that may also want to link up. Our own little "bubble" so-to-speak.



I realize that botlink may have the ability to do some of this, but that is for v2. We're still working in v1 and want to see if we can do it.

In 1998 I read about a hexagonal galaxy and it seemed interesting, but I have not seen mention of it since. We would finally be able to visually map every sector, but it would be an extremely huge map! I could not figure out the math, but I just did--it would take 99 warps to get from Terra to the outer edge of a 30,000-sector galaxy!

I understood the basic math, just not how to solve for it.
3(x+1)(x+2)=30,000
(x+1)(x+2)=10,000
x≈99 (100*10,1=10,100)

I visualized the galaxy as an eight-sided prism, with every point on the outer surface being equidistant from Terra.

Is there a simple explanation for the planar graph?

How many sectors can one player or corporation control? How would you protect newer and less-experienced players from aggressive and experienced players? Alignment and experience can be gained or lost. Ships and fighters can be bought. Would you make one entire galaxy or a significant fraction thereof FedSpace?

Wouldn't you need to turn off the experience cap on being Fed Safe? If I just trade without haggling, I will gain too much experience. If I create planets and open and upgrade ports, I will also gain experience. If somehow a game is controlled by a blue, there might not be any reds on whom to post bounties to get commissioned.

How do you gain alignment without experience?

Would you be able to see in which galaxy other players are? Could you write a script to hit "#" every minute and transwarp to the portal if someone was in the same galaxy as you?

Would portals transport players and their ships? Let's say that in order to go to the second galaxy, you just need to purchase another Merchant Cruiser. You go to the portal, which is at a port, pay for the ship, and then leave your main ship docked in the first galaxy and teleport to your new ship in the second galaxy.

Can you currently attack ships while the players are docked? Can you even see them?

Let's say that you manage to lay fighters in every non-FedSpace sector in every galaxy, but I am in a different galaxy, and I hit your fighter. You cannot transwarp to the sector next to me, you need to get to the portal dock, transport to your ship in the other galaxy, and transwarp to the next sector.

However, that would be exactly enough time for me to move to a third galaxy.

As much as I have enjoyed dropping planets on people, I really do not want to see that possible between galaxies!.

Maybe the shallow end of the sandbox, say an entirely FedSpace galaxy, only offers the smaller ships and ports cannot be upgraded. I guess that planets should upgrade easier because they should not be able to hold as much. What good would an Oceanic producing 50,000 units a day be if you needed fifty different ports for just that one planet?

I would think that you should be able to lose your ship more, too. You make some mistakes, a red snuck in and podded you, or you have 999 experience and need to find some more ports, etc.

If nothing else, I think that you should have more galaxies than players allowed on a corporation.

It is a very interesting idea, though. Obviously more important than my schoolwork. Good luck!

Very interesting, but Terra shouldn't be the center. Place a huge black hole, and a lot of stars in the center and terra 50-90% away from the center.

What you are describing is an elliptical galaxy. For a spiral galaxy, you probably want something a little flatter.

There are black holes in TW?

I don't believe I've ever seen a black hole "naturally" in TWGS, although a sysop can make it happen.

We used to get black holes from time to time in the old HVS MBBS version.

I cannot imagine anyone implementing anything actually resembling a black hole in-game.

If you are five warps from the black hole, ten percent of your stuff gets pulled one sector closer, per day.
Closer than that and it is the inverse square rule:
4: 20%
3: 40%
2: 80%
1: What are you doing one sector from a black hole, you crazy?!

It would need to grow--shrink--whatever black holes do as it eats things. It might be fun to corner someone, drop toll fighters in adjacent sectors, and ping them with one fighter, so that they automatically flee towards the black hole. Drop a fighter and move in.

It's not quite that "real". If I recall correctly a black hole sector has no warps in or out, in essence it's an orphaned sector. The only way in was to blind warp and hope there wasn't a port, and the only way out was to transport to another ship. Once you had a ship in the black hole, it was the ultimate hiding spot.

It's been nearly 20 years since I messed around in one of those, I may be wrong on some of the details, but no sinking gravity well or anything cool like that.

IIRC, you could warp in to a black hole sector but not out. The only way out, as Cruncher said, was X to another ship. Odd thing was, you could X to any other pers or corp ship in the Universe, even from a pod or a Scout.