Considering that 90% of the players in the game are people like "us guys" and that all those so-called "casual" players are a big myth... that might not be best idea

But yeh, if you want to wreck the game I guess we can always live w/ the last release. There are quite a few ppl here that already think that's your end goal, lol. KB will have a field day telling me "I told ya so!" ... snicker.

HIding on the game menu would be a good way to keep a low profile, so people don't realize you're monitoring the game. Doesn't matter tho, me and another player here figured out how to route twxproxy thru TOR last week, all to circumvent possible IP-restrictions on time-limited monitoring.

W/O strict authentication, none of this is going to matter. With it, none of it is important. Sysops need a way to lock down who logs into a server w/o locking down games.

TWGS v2 has been downloaded and installed on over 500 unique machines since I quietly released it earlier this month with only a mention on the Facebook page and this forum to promote it. So no, it's not a myth. If I honestly thought you guys where all that's left of TW interest these days, I'd be long done.

It blows my mind what lengths you and some others here will go to in order to destroy this game and basically guarantee that, from your limited perspective, only about 50 people are left playing. There are others who would like to play this game, but they won't waste their time playing in games with players like you. Sure, you can come up with ways to be so dominant that no casual player can compete, but if you do, don't be surprised that you're playing game after game against the same small pool of players. Seriously, very VERY few people get any enjoyment out of playing the game like you guys play it. It irritates me every time I hear from someone who came back wanting to enjoy the game he or she enjoyed years ago only to find out it's infested by bullies who consider it their personal playground to dominate, and not even through superior play, but through cheats, work-arounds, bugs and bots.

If you want more people playing in your games, take some responsibility for how you play. That's all I'm saying.

Sweet. I wonder how many users are on them. I've never ran into a casual game w/ more than a few users, and I've looked around. If they're just servers with the owner playing on them, why bother making any menu lurker changes at all?

Oh, and you're tracking unique machines installs? Interesting...

Or maybe we can just fix the problem all together by implementing basic authentication?



Shrug. I play because I enjoy the competition, that's all. Eliminate the competition, what's the point? Casual play is boring, what's the fun in staring at a planet prompt?

Yes, that's what activation is. It sends a unique machine ID so I can track how often it's being installed. Since the game's free now, I can't get a good picture based on regs alone.

I don't think you guys realize that there are other ways to play this game. I use D&D as an example, because that's a game where every game that's played is between a group of friends. That's how 99% of TW gets played. But the problem is, people still do want to run public games and they still do want to set rules and they find it difficult when faced with players like you. So I respond to my customer's requests by providing tools for them to manage their games and players how they choose. That's customer service.

Fine, but don't wreck it for people who have different ideas about what's fun. When a player goes to a server that says "time limits", and there's a player who's dominating the server because he's using every trick in the books and completely ignoring the rules of the server, you're burning that player, and when he realizes it, he's not coming back. Not because you're so good, but because you don't play by the rules.

There are plenty of servers where your way of playing is acceptable. Fine. But if you're on a server with certain rules, you should follow them. If a server says "time limits", don't hide in games or any other trick. It's just lame.

Sure, I'm interested in doing something with authentication if I can. I like what we talked about to use the forum as a centralized authority. But still, it's going to be up to you guys to play with integrity and respect the ops who are hosting your games. Otherwise, it'll never get any better. I can drum up interest now and then, but none of it will stick.

The game is free now? Interesting...



No, I realize it, they're just all boring ways to play. I never played D&D, I had a girlfriend in high school. I had a few friends that played "magic" but again... funner things. I did play chess for a while competitively, it was fun researching new openings and tactical lines. I watched the heck out of the deep blue matches.

I would do more w/ that, but I got into trading and it's taken most of my time for the last several years. It's a lot of fun, too. Some talking head on TV predicts that XYZ will run for the next 6 months, but statistically the retracements are too shallow to sustain the growth... guess what I'm shorting? Yeh, sure, it'll screw over the idiots that listen to the talking head, but that's half the fun. World's a shark tank, and I like to nibble on my prey first.



Yeh, but that's my point... you're not really providing the major tools they need. What we need is a registered user list, a list of usernames and passwords, that people can do to run a registered user pool. The games would still be open and public, but could require registration. The list could be updated via telnet, so we could design an interface to add/remove/update regs from a web site if needed. Sysops could prevent all of these kind of tactics if they really wanted, then.

If the sysop has a "no monitoring" rule, then they need to enforce that rule. If they can't enforce it, bad stuff is going to happen. It's all about consequences, risk v reward. Rules are made to be broken.



Yeh, there's 3 or 4 of them out there. Servers don't generally have time limits tho, games do.



Yeh but that's the thing, if we can can verify users before letting them sign in (to whatever extent), then people that cause "problems" for the server can be blocked w/o affecting everyone else.

Free implies .. not purchased.
But we Who have purchased .. are customers , yet you take advice from
players "who use to play" and "have come back" , once they were
on top of the heap , now they barely hold their own ... times have changed.

Seems they have to learn to catch up ...

Also I was thinking to post meaning of "Bot" .. but I'm tired of going thru
and teaching that a bot is .. a collection of scripts in one package.

_ck_saveme.cts and _ck_callsave.cts is a bot .. if you want to
consider a bot is a script that controls another player.

Do we want to remove these from game as well ?

I think not.

Learn to play .. and besides as J.P. said .. there are hundreds of places to play.
Why cry for something to "fix" your problems.

I don't know if I need to ever upgrade any further , it seems all or most all bugs
have now been fixed.
I would like to see this game continue as it is for those who have payed into it
with the purchase of Swath or TWGS reg codes.
But for those who have free zoc or free TWGS ... learn to live with free
and deal with it.

I know quite a few tricks myself, and if you take away immediate updates of the "high scores screen" you are going to shut down the major portion of time limit cheats. Sure they can monitor whos in the game, and they can have one person logged in at a time and call in corpies when needed, but that won't be much of a factor. I think that's the reason they are pulling your chain is because that change will considerably hinder game monitoring. They'll have to use up time to see what's happening in the game with that change.

Very well said, but I don't believe that the people in this forum are a good representation of the whole. I believe that there are players out there with integrity and respect for the game, and they aren't looking for the next cheat that will give them an edge. They aren't "Casual" players; They are true competitors.

"integrity" - Oh No He Didn't!! lol


Most have left or play privately now.

The only "I told ya so!" is you can STILL play YOUR game. Just find a server that bangs game with settings you prefer. Or only use the last revision that you prefer, it's your choice.

Sing - Go play on Vid's server
Vid - Go play on Sing's server

There, problem solved!

At least now sysops who choose to put up time limit games have options that will help enable those games. You guys don't have to dominate every server in the universe, go play in your own sandboxes.

Not yet they can't...