Kewl: "From what I’ve seen JP has done a wonderful job of breaking 50% or more of the scripts that are out"

That's news to me. I've made a strong effort to avoid breaking any scripts. If you have specifics, we can address it. I've relied on the beta testers to keep me straight on that. If you don't want to participate in the beta, then there isn't much I can do. Every time it has been reported that a script was broken, I've tried to address that.

The "Average Interval Lag" thing is a big issue. A lot of scripts rely on that (160 or so that I had to change). Also the login text was changed which required some script fixes (pretty easy tho), and the beta is now sensitive to some extra enters at the ship naming prompt.

Edit: Forget that the "Success!" message after rob/steal is now abortable too. It wasn't before. Have to make sure all spaces are removed from the wrong places so that cashing stuff works.

I’m not surprised by that.

I believe there was some effort, maybe.

Latest was the “@” issue and the "average interval lag" change.

Who is the beta tester?

Well that is very true. If your taking into account that your have developed some bug to make in game changes after stating that’s not what you were going to do. Ever since you started messing with game play I have made it clear that I was not in favor of it for one reason or another as there is one after another even as recent as this latest version. Last time I said anything about it YOU banned me when I spoke up so really what’s the motivation, easier to sit here and say I told ya so almost a year ago.


LOL, welp first one that got broken, was the login scripts… so if telling everyone they need to change their script is your way of addressing it then ok… your right on target. Like I said in my posts this year and last year, you keep making your changes and breaking script your just giving the scripter’s even more of an advantage.

So says the script master..lol

Now for the rest of us non scriptwriters. I'd like to buy a vowel.

When it comes to changing game text, that's really the issue. I had 162 scripts to change because of that one text line change. I wrote a script to do it, then made a batch file to mass recompile. Took me about an hour, total. That said, there's a lot of public stuff that could break... and until those get patched (many of which won't be), the public will be hosed.

ROFLMAO! Invasions are part of the game, I expect to be invaded. I love when the attempt is unsuccessful and they’ve now wasted resources which cause their defenses to weaken, so I can go invade them.

I've repeatedly told beta testers, if your script does not work, tell JP. Then ask Sing or Vid for the fix.

Again, I DO NOT want to stop players from using their scripts. I DO want a toggle that will make it more difficult to script TWX and Mombot in games designed for "humans" to play.

Currently I'm using Mombot's SDT and suggested it to a corpie to try. Cashing methods such as SST & SDT were common in the 90's. When I left mega robbing was still considered a bug and bad sportsmanship to exploit. I've since developed strategies and my own Zoc scripts to use that "feature" now.

I do not doubt for a moment that you have made strong efforts. It is sad that you (rightly) considered it necessary to do so, to avoid losing what remains of the player base, which is largely scripters (as opposed to script writers - @Kewl, no offense, they are not the same, few of the script users can write code, hence are known as scripters).

A Sing wrote, it is a trivial matter to change the scripts in most cases anyway.

If you want to get back to basic TW, TWX database needs to be taken out of the equation. Thats very easy to do, even whitespaces screw it up. Can probably be worked around if twx source code is on the street

It is.

When the @ issue was reported, I fixed it (in v2.02). Now, keep in mind that if features change and those changes result in broken scripts, I'm not going to let scripting keep the game from progressing. The @ screen shows different info because there are different things to measure, because I rewrote the underlying system. However, the line "average interval lag" didn't need to change, and when it was explained to me that the text of that line was important (would have never occurred to me that something like this mattered), I gladly changed it back, because there was no reason not to.

As for other changes, the consensus I saw was it's not that big a deal. If the argument is made that a change is not absolutely necessary and will be a hardship, I will try to address that. Have I been unresponsive or resistant to the requests of this group? If there's a major problem that I have not addressed, it's because I'm not aware that it's a major problem.

Kewl, a don't have a lot of patience with your dismissive and outright antagonistic demeanor about what I've doing with TradeWars. If you want to continue to be a part of this forum, limit your responses to, at worse, constructive criticism. Your suggestion that I'm clueless about the needs of this community simply isn't constructive and is not something I care to waste my time reading. You can argue that the @ screen needs to be fixed, as Vid did, without insulting me and questioning my commitment to the community. I allowed you back on the forum so you could join the others in remembering Space Ghost, but I have a very low tolerance for your antagonism.

Sing, if you have serious issues that your not discussing with me, you should continue to make your case. You should not have the attitude that I'm closed to hearing any arguments. I've been under the (perhaps false) impression that you're satisfied with what I've done, that it's not breaking the game. I depend on your feedback as a very knowledgeable and fair advocate for both players and gameops.

My bad the pessimism - I forgot that a good sword has 2 edges grin.

LOL Now that is a funny statement. TWX and mombot are open source and available for anyone to change or edit to thier own specifications. Most scripts are available to the public in .ts form, so anyone can edit them or make the changes they prefer. There are so many clips/subs available that it isn't hard to change scripts even for the so called non-scripters. Take the time to look at them and give it a shot, then if you have a question, bring it here and I'm sure 3 or 4 of the current experience scripters will help all they can. As I said earlier, if someone wants to learn it's not that complicated, the only reason I see for failure is because some people don't want to even give it a shot.

I know that .ts is uncompiled, but I did not know that the source code to TWX itself was public domain.

I consider that TWX and unlimited turns have more or less destroyed tradewars for newbies and retreads. I am certainly not alone in that opinion - just trawl USENET.

I still play TW, but am untypical.

The main thing I've done with this new version to address these problems has been to make TWGS cheaper and more accessible to anyone who wants to run a small private game. I think the public server scene may be a lost cause. But I want small groups of like-minded people to be able to run their own private games by their own rules. However, I know that a limiting factor here is hosting. It's expensive to run a server on a net-accessible host, and not everyone can afford to do it. To address that, I put a lot of effort into supporting guest-ops in TWGS v2. I'd like to see some of the big sites offering to allow their users to create a private game and invite their friends to play. I see it like the lobby of most online multiplayer games, where you can create a game with a password, then invite your friends to join. Most people don't create open games where anyone can join, unless they're just into serious, hard-core competition. Most people just want to have fun with their friends. TWGS v2 ops can support this kind of use by setting a password on a game slot and allowing a user to admin that game. I'm open to any feedback on what could be done to better reach that goal.

TWGS v2 has so much more flexibility in how individual games can be set, as compared to TWGS v1. One game can be vastly different from another. And with the ability for remote guest-ops, there really is a new opportunity for large public sites to support a much broader base of players and ops. That's my hope.

Serious issues? No, I wouldn't say that.

Most of my posts here have been directed at cruncher.
She wants some switches, that's fine. But building a
light switch and expecting magic elves to drop from
the sky when it's flipped is unrealistic. She scape goats
whatever she doesn't understand (scripts) at whatever
level she doesn't understand (TWX proxy, currently),
which has prompted most of my replies thus far.

I think the beta offers a lot of nice new features. I
think it will also run a lot better than the old version
once everything is worked out. I haven't yet seen how
the micro timings will work out, but that's about the
only big thing left.

Game text changes aren't a big deal for me, but I'd
like to document as many as I can find so they show
up on a search somewhere. If the @ thing is fixed,
that will help a lot. The reason it's used so often is
because the text "Average Interval Lag" is unique. No
other command generates it, so you can send a long
macro string followed by @ and set a trigger for the
"Average Interval Lag" message to know when it's done.

Most of this process so far has just been balancing
positive and necessary changes with their impacts.
The biggest impact will be on people that use, but
don't write, scripts. That's a rather small crowd, tho,
and I'm sure once things settle down they'll mostly
get fixed, tho some people might have to abandon older
scripts.

Perhaps you could add a flag "Please don't use scripts"
or "Please don't use TWX proxy." I could get w/ EP and
get a little dialog box to pop up whenever someone has
that set asking them to respect the sysop's wishes. Yes,
people can code around it, but there aren't many people
here with a working delphi compiler, and it's more of a
request than a forced issue anyway.