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My Stars! Epiphany. Sun, 03 May 2020 09:19 Go to previous message
platon79 is currently offline platon79

 
Chief Warrant Officer 3

Messages: 185
Registered: February 2004
Location: Norway
 My Stars! Epiphany.
Some weeks ago, I was reading about raptos disassembly project, and then rereading my old Stars3 thread, realising that even with the original source kode of stars, tweaking the original game is an almost impossible task, and without the source code, it is hopeless.
It is too bad it will never be a Stars jrc5 or the like. Then I started thinking some, and some more. And eventually I had a small Epiphany. It might not work at all, but if it works, it would be very cool (at least in my opinion).
Ok, my thinking went something like this: We all love Stars, there will probably never be a new stars version. No additional bug fixes (maybe an x-file sanitizer though), and no tweaking/balancing of existing gameplay.
Regarding the balancing issues, there is a lot of fun stuff in stars already that is never used due to it costing too many or two few points. Eg CA is usually banned, AR is usually too weak, GR, UR, MA is usually not worth it, who in their right minds picks BE? etc.
If the race wizard could be tweaked, then it could reintroduce a lot of fun gameplay. Hmm, as we know, the computer players does not cheat, except that they play races with negative advantage points. Hm, I wonder if stars therefore only checks for negative advantage points in the race wizard, and not during gameplay?
What would the consequences of the latter be? The stars encryption algorithm for the file blocks has been in the open for some years. If I designed a standalone race wizard, and managed to understand all the blocks in the race file, then I could in theory write a race file with negative points. IF this race file is then accepted in Stars, like the computer players, it would open up quite a few possibilities..
If such an approach is possible, then I would propose the following:

-Step 1: Recreate the stars race wizard as a standalone application that exactly matches the advantage points left of the original stars.
-Step 2: Create additional rule sets that tweaks the game, where points are added/subtracted according to rules in this ruleset after the original points are calculated.
-Step 3: Validate the race file vs points towards the ruleset, instead of the original points.
-Step 4: Write the race file (May have negative points in Stars!)
-Step 5: When a new game is created, as long as all the players use the same version of the RaceBuilder app, and the same ruleset, the host then just have to validate each race he is sent in his own RaceBuilder app.

Step 4 may take some time to figure out, but I have already started on step 1 ( https://starsautohost.org/sahforum2/index.php?t=msg&th=5 650&start=0&rid=0 ) and hopefully will get the code correct for the original points soon.
I think a standalone race wizard that could save the race based on another rule set would open up for a lot of very interesting things, and open up for existing traits and gameplay that is normally never used.
If someone already knows that stars validates the race files an additional time before starting the game, then please stop me now, but if not..
Just think about it. If you want, you can come with suggestions for the standard new rule set here in this thread.
Just think how fun it would be.
"Hmm, BE sucks, everyone knows this. Hmmmm, it gives me a lot more points than usual? Maybe I should try it this time and try to live with it. I really need those points."
"Wow, AR gave me that many additinal points? I want to see if I can survive with an AR with these rules then".
"Hmm, CA is now allowed? But that was quite a lot of negative points for selecting it. Let's see what we would have to do..
"Wow, MA and UR was cheaper than before, I want to try it this time! Should I also try CE? That also gives me more points than normal, but it is risky.."
Of course, the rule set could also incorporate eg validations ala no "No advanced scanners" for Joat, or other stuff.
There could also be played scenarious with rulesets ala "Battle of the Titans - Super races" where a ...

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