| Concept suggestions from FreeStars |
Wed, 17 November 2004 11:59  |
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 Strategic |
 | Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 25
Registered: January 2003
Location: United Kingdom | |
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Hi,
I've haven't visited this site recently, but now I have, it's great to see a community sanctioned Stars! clone in production. This is a great project with tons of future promise. With this kind of community support, I'm sure it has a higher success rate than Supernova 
I just have some concept suggestions that I apply to any software program, but which might be very useful for FreeStars to maintain flexibility. Some of this is already planned, but I thought I'd just list everything I could think of. I hope people will excuse my arrogrance 
1) Essentially producing a clone of Stars! initially with no serious modifications or changes in gameplay (barring original bug fixes, very small proportion balance changes, etc). Although this is the goal of the project at the moment, it's particular important to remain strictly to this goal. I think it's important to produce a working clone of Stars! before anything else is done to it.
2) Flexible extension system. New options are great, but there will always be those who preferred the original option. I think an extension system would be great to resolve this problem, modules can be added and removed and therefore any game would be extremely customizable. It would also allow for smaller scale community improvements to be made to the engine with greater ease. When this project is nearing saturation in terms of updates, an extension system could be vital to maintain long-term flexibility in the system. Not everybody has the capability or programming skills to hack the source.
If the extension system isn't such a good idea, I would recommend allowing selectable options for nearly all new features planned for implementation into the game.
3) Multi-platform support. This has already been suggested and will probably be a reality. I think it's particularly important given the recent rise of Linux on the desktop. Not all of us use Windows anymore
Any discussion on these would be welcome. I would join the project myself, but not only do I have two other ongoing projects running, but I have a university course to finish too
Strategic
Past host of Walking on Eggs (2000), Walking on Shattered Eggs (2001), Dangerous Frontier (2001), Undisputed Power (2001), A Matter of Honour (2002) and Conflicted Empires (2002)Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Concept suggestions from FreeStars |
Wed, 17 November 2004 13:57  |
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| LEit |
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
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1) Yes, also, even just that much is a huge project. Every day my respect for Jeff&Jeff grows, as I see how involved this is.
2) The rules file will allow a lot of customization without changing code. While not as extensive as the IDL that was developed for Supernova, it should be possible to change the game quite a bit without chaning code. This also allows mod games to be played on an automated host setup, since they will all use the same executable.
3) The server should be fairly easy to compile on any platform. The client may be platform specific, but there is no reason that everyone has to use the same client.
- LEitReport message to a moderator
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