Hey JP. have you ever considered a centralized TWGS server?

The reason I ask is I think one of the major problems is TWGS is so easy to use, all the players have one. They set up games and they want all the other players (whom also have a TWGS server of their own) to join them.

It's self defeating.

If you got all the players to come to one place, then you'd have a lot of people playing the game and interacting with each other. Charge a few bucks for sysop access so they can manage a few of their own games, put them all under one house and let everyone have at it.

It's just too spread out now....

Someone is already doing that... not sure it is working out so good for them.
http://www.tradewarsxxxxxx.com/

EDITED by JP. We don't mention that game in here

That was the plan for the new game I started working on a few years ago, TradeWars Tournament. I wanted to allow people to run their own game servers for small, private games, but have an official site for people to come and play tournaments and such, and even allow gameops to host their own games there. I do see the need for greater control over the games, as well as bringing as many players as possible together.

I do think that it's too late to make such a change for classic TW. I don't want to take players away from the gameops who have worked so hard to grow their player base. I do think that today's gameops should expect to recruit their own players, like you would if you wanted to host a game of D&D, because there simply isn't a large pool of players looking for sites these days.

One of the goals of Jumpgate is to draw the fragmented community together into a single site that can demonstrate the level of activity in the game. If Jumpgate can report that there are 100 active game servers reporting, and 1000 active (unique?) players on those servers, then that helps to demonstrate that the game isn't quite dead. And though it's likely that the players will be spread thinly over many servers, I think the solution to that is to make sure the game can be fun with fewer players, as it originally was, rather than have the expectation that a game needs 20 or 30 people to be fun. I think with the proper settings and rules, small games can be very interesting and fun, so that a fragmented player pool doesn't necessarily mean that none of the games are worth playing.

Also, keep in mind that the new registration policy is meant to favor small, private games and limit larger, public ones. The vast majority of new regs I've sold have been for $10-$12, just a few nodes and games, and only one registration has taken advantage of the option to max out the server for $100. This is how I want it to be. I want the sites like Ice9 and UltimateTW to be rare. But I absolutely want any single individual to be able to grab the server for free and play locally. That's actually a higher priority for me personally than having one or a few active public sites where everyone is playing.

Whatever happens, I feel strongly that completely taking away the community-hosted games would be a mistake. I think it's one of the things that makes this game unique, and the vast majority of those running servers do so in private among their own group of friends.

I think I've reached my forum bloat quota for the day.

Bobad, the project I reference above, TradeWars Tournament, is what became "that game that shall not be named" that you mentioned. I don't think that the fact that it's running from a single server is the problem. I guess we'll never know, because there are so many other things wrong with that game.

I AGREE!

(with the bloat comment, holy cow!)

LOLOL!

I just saw that site when googling tradewars. Never played it and did not know it was not to be mentioned here. I will not utter it again

That's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, Bobad ;) You can mention it if you want. I just have to poke fun at the situation because otherwise it would drive me nuts. (mumbles curses under his breath)

Dont forget, this is the only place in the USA where censorship is not only accepted, but expected. You are not allowed freedom of speech or thought, you must conform.

HEIL EIS!!!!

Ok, just cuz I can, I'm gonna go play the 500 X 500 game I banged 2 days ago that no one seems interested in. Maybe I can get someone from another server to come show me how to die slowly.

Maybe that proves once again..no one really likes that type of game anymore.. Just a thought no offense.

Well for starters, the game is extremely slow, and it does not have all the features of Classic Tradewars. For instance, stardock only has bank, hardware, and bounty and isn't beefed up with a full 6 warps out. The slowness isn't caused by the central server, but thier decision to use JavaScript instead of compiled Java. Since you can see the client half of the source code, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone on there isn't cheating.

function cmdMove(dir)
{
_elHTML ('gui_base_holder','');
_elHTML ('gui_station_holder','');
_elHTML ('gui_selection_info','');
_elHTML ('gui_selection_option','');
ajaxGetText ('event/move.php?var1='+dir, cmdMoveOk);
}

Looking at the move command source, it looks like I could press ctrl-n to open the game in a new window and enter "http://www.tradewarsrising.com/engine/event/move.php?var1=*Something*" to move to a new sector. Notice that they aren't even using HTTPS to encrypt the data.

I sent the author an email about the possibility of a helper or plug-in, and they said that anything of that nature would be considered cheating, and the player would be banned.

Seriously, the fact that you can even say that is proof that you're wrong. I think it's generally offensive to suggest that someone is a Nazi. It's also completely unjustified by anything that is happening in this forum, and certainly not by anything that I (EIS) am personally doing in this forum. My edit of Bobad's post was meant as a joke, and is certainly not part of a pattern of censorship on my part. So please, just take a deep breath and don't take everything so seriously.

There is a very negative attitude on the part of certain members of this forum, and if it persists, I will start calling for bans. It has nothing to do with censorship or abuse of power, it has to do with ridding the forum of those members who offer nothing but complaints and negative comments. As long as people have constructive contributions to the forum, they're welcome here. But when their every post is an attack on me or this forum's staff and our decisions, whether related to the game or the management of the forum, then that member is no longer a positive contributor to the forum and there is no other choice than to ask him or her to leave. So take your shots if it makes you feel good, but be warned, if that's all you have to offer, you're not welcome here.

Our first disagreement was over the choice of platform. I wanted to have either a standalone client or a client integrated into a browser, but I wanted to have a persistent connection with the ability to process commands quickly, as TW players expect. I have never considered an http interface to be acceptable for TradeWars. And there are plenty of other games that already provide such an interface, so why go there?

I doubt if you see cheating in the game because I don't think anyone cares enough to figure out how to cheat.

I would tend to agree with that, although I did do a little experimentation using the internet explorer browser control in a windows forms application a few years ago. I managed to successfully script moving from sector to sector before I lost interest.

Exactly, compiled java and flash games on yahoo, pogo, etc... can maintain constant connections to a server and fast game play. Silverlight can provide even more with the power of the .net libraries. I still perfer an actual client application like WOW and almost all MMORPGs use though.