I agree that truce games and the like are detrimental for those who are trying to learn how to play the game. However, your statement on parasites was more in general than that, and that you felt that JP would be trying to get rid of people using scripts and such.

As for Flash: I disagree that it will bring people who play flash games into the TW universe. As a general rule, people who play flash games are into clicking. They are NOT into typing, or doing math, or anything else that TW does well. They are into instant gratification, and waiting days for their citadel to upgrade isn't the ticket. Not only that, but flash crashes and is one of the least secure platforms out there. Can you imagine someone being in the middle of an invasion and having their flash client crash? Rage log!
=]

It was a very general comment, meant to stir emotions in my opponent before a game - this originated in the SMACK forum where such flame wars are common before a big game. I never mentioned anything about JP.



The tests for this flash client were from a link on the TW Facebook page. I saw well over 50 "characters" in one game alone. I don't know how many of these were dupes, but there was quite a bit of interest stirred up with the Facebook link.

How popular this method to connect to a game is yet to be seen. There are a lot of unknowns at this point in time, I was just simply asking if it were possible to segregate players using this method to connect before I opened up the link to my server.

Then.... the "stuff" hit the fan so to speak... as it often does when I ask questions or voice opinions... on a SMACK forum!

If you have questions, then ask them in the OD, not smack.
If you ask them in smack you know you will just be starting a flame thread.

My concerns for the flash client still stand. Flash is iffy, and many of its intended users will not want to have to type anything. Sylvain already created a TW for clickers. If it was popular, more players would be using it no?

I saw you use them, I knew you could never write one


Yep, macro misfire of which I have admitted repeatedly for a couple years now, you can let it go and move on. I was corping with Xanos and he brought you in, so I did what was needed for the good of the corp. I later figured out that a "parasite" had infiltrated our friendly games and ruined a good thing so I walked.

I also say what I mean whether in smack or not, smack usually just reveals a person's true feelings.
IMO I think the scripters are what kept the game alive and upped the level of play to what it was about 2 years ago. I say that because the majority of hardcore players that were dedicated to all out war style play are now gone.

It was Big D who brought the smack conversation from Hyperspace.forums to this forum. You allowed it to continue.

I was on the Sylvain e-mail dist list for a while, and read their development notes, I never did play their incarnation of the game.

I have no idea the possibilities or the limitations of a flash client are. That's why I was asking. I'm getting two different view points now. Your's is that it's not a very good idea for anyone serious about playing, or that click driven helpers aren't effective? Or that game players who play click driven flash games won't be interested in TW?

Then there's D who threatened to write flash macros and kill all noobs using the flash client on my server if I had accomplished what I first asked about, which is segregating the two.

You had no one, you were recruiting for BOTE. I offered to join you. I invited Xanos to join us. He was tickled that I brought him another script writer. We were a good team, I had fun chatting with you on team speak. I had questions you couldn't answer, and you quit.

I still have a Great team, I still enjoy playing. You quit, your choice.

ROFL, I beg to differ!! Your best player (since Toyman Left) is now Xanos and thats it!!!!! Lets think, who did Xanos played with before your "less then average corp"? BooInc. and they actually had WAY BETTER PLAYERS THEN YOUR CORP, and they never won anything, get my drift?

She is correct....I quit.

You'll be back...

Just as many others have in the last 2 years that were playing Tradewars constantly. Anyone see a trend here?

How many times have you left and returned?

Returned to play v1.03, the same game we've had for years that has yet to be repaired. Version 2 just isn't cutting it. How many left when they realized that JP wasn't going to fix v1 and instead changed the game completely?
Who hasn't returned?

Singularity, Kane, Dell Bond, Parrothead, Magnum, Desert Fox, Uncle Sam, Spider, Convict, Misbehavin', Trader Vic, Kaus, Saarducci, Rider, Traitor, Filthy Maggot, Raptor, and this is just a few of them.

Who pretty much only plays v1?
Big D, Butcher, Oso, Locutis, Kewlbreeze, Zep, Zip, Farley, Bounty Hunter, Lonestar, just about everyone that plays at UTW included.

All of the above mentioned players played in a major tournament within the last 3 years, and most of them quit during the time JP was working on v2. If they haven't quit, they are planning on quiting if things don't change.

I wish you had done a little more research on your own before leaping to conclusions and calling people names.

Google something called Sikuli. It is what I used to automate data entry for Boeing's shipping website. It uses screen shots, and you can program it it pretty much do anything. I also have not played TWR, but I imagine you could set it up the same way. Heck, people have posted vids on how they use Sikuli to play their FB games.

Cruncher, I understand what you are trying to do. It is good of you to attempt. Thrawn and I originally did this years ago before I left the game and he was deployed repeatedly. The only difference was our approach. We wanted to give new players a place to play and test things, while teaching them how to use scripts and understand the game mechanics. You wanted the game itself changed to disallow for scripts and such. Our method allows everyone to play as they wanted, but yours does not.

All of the settings that make it difficult or impossible to use certain scripts are all on toggles. Only a handful of sysops use these toggles. There are some people who don't choose to learn how to play the game using advanced scripts. They enjoy the game playing manually or with Swath. No one should be able to take that away from them.

Thrawn has been playing on my server for some time now, testing the latest pre-wide release Beta. He can tell you what works and what does not.

The majority of the advanced scripts work on my server, even with some delays and toggles on. Trading, colonizing, hauling etc... those all work. So if players want to learn how to use advanced scripts, to a point they can on my server. Once they are comfortable learning game mechanics and
playing with these scripts and seek more aggressive PvP 1-1 combat, then they can move to another server that is set-up for aggressive play.

As for the changes in the timing I'm hearing complaints about. I had nothing to do with those changes. JP came back to make the game work on Windows 7, and to create some sort of limit on how fast commands can be processed. I believe up until this point the game would process as fast as the command were coming from the internet and were processed as fast as the server could process. At some point this is causing data corruption, so he worked to give the game some limitations. If you recall, it was not I, but Sing who worked closely with JP on these timings.

So, the settings I use are all on toggles, not hardwired into the program. The speed settings are all JP, and his decisions were based on input from Sing and others who play this game at top speeds.

The way I enjoy playing this game, I have no trouble. Rarely do I get kicked to the menu, but when it does happen I'm able to re-log immediately. We've not been able to narrow down the trigger for that bug yet.

Many times I've been kicked to the menu playing 1.03 and ended up "ghosting" in the game. Unable to re-log immediately.

If for that reason alone, I'd say that I prefer v2 for tournament games over 1.03.

I can openly say that this is incorrect. Thrawn has been on deployments, leaving me to code our site and work on our developments. The only time he spent testing was on a server for John when the version that fixed the mail bug came out. Other than that, most of his testing was done on a server here in our home. I know for a fact he has never been on your server.

If that is the case, then someone is using his alias. Both he and I never played outside of our own server, except for one. We played on D's server because he allowed a husband/wife to play together on his server after we asked permission. He was also kind enough to have a particular edit on his server because we really enjoyed it. We do not play v2 at all for the moment- we still have our project in v1 going.