What kind of progress has been made on the jumpgate feature of twgs? I've been waiting for someone to ask, but haven't seen it brought up in ages. When we upgraded at notorious from TWGold to TWGS we paid a fee.. This was not a free upgrade. One of the things that were promised was the jumpgate feature, which we were interested in.

I'm still interested in this feature, but have not seen any signs of progression. From what I've noticed there are now several new moderators which would indicate changes.

What kind of changes are being planned? What exactly is going on with the software we have all purchased?

Thanks

Excellent Question.
I will ask JP to post here also and respond. Progress is being made.
I will not give an estimate of the timeline since they are always wrong but i will say it is being worked on.

If you are interested in helping with Jumpgate and you design graphics and/or websites, please email me at tradewars@hotmail.com
earth.

Sorry, but it seems that EIS doesn't pay enough for me or my 'crew' to help

Would love to see some awesome graphics though (Not sure what they're needed for) but would love to hear about it!

I'm going to assume that jumpgate was the feature that would link bsb to bbs, as to create one big "universe"?

I meant bbs to bbs, but I'm gonna leave that typo, because it fits well. [;)]

As has been posted on this site before, the Jumpgate software
will be to allow registered sysops access to a locked area of the site.
And will allow players to get a more accurate overall picture of the avaliable twgs'es,
and there address'es so that a greater spectrum of games will be avaliable to them.
The Jumpgates will not connect games together, nor will it connect servers together
in any type of grand nexus to create super sized games.
The variables from one game to the next would preclude any way of syncronizing
them together in any stable way.

Also it is unlikely that Jumpgates will become active in ver 3,

It seems as if Jumpgate was designed to locate other TWGS games on other servers that connected to your TWGS server to allow players to jump over to the new games.

I always had a dream about multi-BBS based Tradewar games between servers, or being able to move planets, ships, figs, credits, ect from one server to another. Alas, that is a feature we might not see due to the variables that need to be in synch.

I think that V3 is just trying to get the game stable with bug fixes, performance enhancements, and ported over to the new language so that it can be run on most versions of Unix as well as Windows.

BTW, Windows Vista, which is supposed to be out this year, is supposed to change a lot of things. Besides XP, Microsoft plans to fade out all other older versions of Windows from updates. XP might be fazed out in a year or two. In any case Windows Vista might be expensive and require expensive hardware to run efficiently, and break a lot of older software. People running older software might want to consider a free Unix solution like Linux, *BSD Unix, Apple Darwin, etc if their Windows 2000 and lower updates are shut off and they don't have the hardware to upgrade to Windows Vista. Which will make that Unix version of TWGS that much more valuable.

Lots of mights and maybes there, OB. Using the past to predict the future, I'd say Windows XP will be around and supported for many years to come, 2012 at the minimum I suspect.

I've never really considered multi-server universes, but I do see how it could be accomplished. In 20 words or less...
Create a proxy to run between the TWGS clients and server, and have it add warps to a few key sectors to lead to the other server's universe, one-way black holes sorta. When a player takes that warp, they get a message "You've just entered a Black Hole!!!", and the proxy connects to the other server transparently, logs in as the admin, creates/updates the player account/status/ship/creds/etc., logs in as the user, and begins redirecting that users session to the other server.

Bah, that was 21 words. That's off the top of my head, but seems feasible, though I'm unsure of the merits. Those 'black hole' warps wouldn't really exist on the server, but would be added to sector scans/CIMs via the proxy.

+EP+

I stopped counting at like 27.... I was gonna copy paste and remove one "that"... woulda been kewl, but you can't count.

I do like the fact that 2 moderators are arguing about what the jumpgate is for... From what I remember hearing the jumpgate was suppose to be kinda like... gamespy.... listing servers, and games running, and the like, and being able to switch through them, or link to them via your twgs... (ionno) that's why I asked for the input on it...


graz

I am not argueing, what i said is fact.

The jumpgates will not allow players to go from within one game into another game on the same or on any remote server.

Jumpgate is a portal that will list all TWGS and Tradewars games were the sysop has not disabled this feature. The data will be updated in realtime so that any changes are automatically reflected. This becomes a searchable index of all active tradewars games.
It will not act as a vortex to "connect" tradewars games although that is a kewl add-on idea.
earth.

It's a much more attainable goal the way you guy's envision it, although in reality it is one and the same; just a different vision from one to the other.

obtainable

invision

rojflafj;alsdkfjhhahaha

now if the draft were that easy...

Eat a ****. You're going down. It is that easy.

quote:Originally posted by ElderProphet

Lots of mights and maybes there, OB. Using the past to predict the future, I'd say Windows XP will be around and supported for many years to come, 2012 at the minimum I suspect.


No maybes about it, Microsoft has an end of product support as part of their business plan. Usually each product has about a five year lifespan. XP came out in 2002, so that makes about 2007 or 2008 when Microsoft decides to pull the plug. Windows 95 has already been phased out, and Microsoft announced it would phase out NT 4.0 and Windows 98 next. After that Windows 2000 will be phased out in about a year or so. By phased out I mean no more tech support, security updates, bug fixes, service packs, or making any more copies of it. Sure you can buy old Windows from online vendors who have wharehouses full of copies that Microsoft could not sell, but good luck trying to get Microsoft to support the older copy.

I lost my Windows 95 install CD, but Microsoft does not replace it anymore.

Visual Studio.Net, Office 2003, and many more Microsoft software only supports Windows 2000 and above. Microsoft phases out older copies of Windows this way so you can no longer run the latest and greatest on them.

Did you know that Internet Explorer 5.0 is only available for Windows ME? Trying getting Windows 95 to download it, and you just get errors. Because they removed the 95 install files from their web servers. Internet Explorer 7.0 will only support Windows Vista and XP. The IE 6.0 that has pop-up and Anti-Spyware built in only exists for XP, did you know that? Can't get that Windows built in Firewall for 2000 either. That is because Microsoft wants to force 2000 users to upgrade to XP or Vista.

Microsoft depends on phasing out software to make even more money. If they can force upgrades, they stand to make more profits on training, certification, book sales, software sales, and a cut of the profits from hardware makers when you are forced to upgrade your hardware to run the latest and greatest Microsoft software.

None of this is a secret, you know. If you just learned it from me, then you haven't been paying attention to Microsoft since 1995.

Anyway Jumpgates are just a way of advertising TWGS games on other servers and routing the information through EIS's website as a search portal. I doubt it will ever combine TWGS server universes together, but it should bring in new players to other servers that need them. I think that it should communicate with EIS's web site, the game specs, and then you can load up EIS's website to see what active games are out there and what settings, edits, players, age of game, ect exists out there. Right now we do all of that by hand when a SYSOP posts a new server address and the bangs of the games in these forums and other Tradewars forums as well.

Reading posts I going to reply to one issue...finding games doing a one stop look. cbs228 and Eleq spent a bit of time building program that allows players to stop and look for fresh games and details and it has been online for awhile now at Eleq's site. Gameops have to log in though and list the details of their games. I believe once gameops register that new games and details should be automatic but then again I might be wrong as is the case in many issues.