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- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!col.hp.com!smithw
- From: smithw@col.hp.com (Walter Smith)
- Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
- Subject: Re: Just out of curiosity...
- Date: 29 Dec 1992 20:56:07 GMT
- Organization: Colorado Springs IT Center
- Lines: 100
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1hqe17INNsak@hp-col.col.hp.com>
- References: <1hmj5iINNeou@magna.ksu.ksu.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: fajita19.cs.itc.hp.com
-
- camelsho@magna.ksu.ksu.edu ( James A Seymour) writes:
- > Do you like start islands? Why or why not?
-
- Hate 'em...when you have decent players, it's nearly impossible
- to have a good war right off the bat. I'd rather break and
- find myself surrounded than be stuck on a start-island with
- no one to fight...
-
- > SUBJECT: Where is empire headed?
- > The coders out there are doing some good stuff. However, I have
- > to wonder if our game is becoming just too damned complex. For
- > instance, there are players here at Kansas State that would be
- > lost without the Xemp client. The number of commands is just
- > daunting to these neophytes who have come to rely on the client to
- > do the work, instead of learning the commands.
-
- Here at HP, we have our own modified version of standard empire. Jay
- Phillips and Bill Frolik have hacked it up quite a bit over the last
- few years. Bill had added in fuel for ships a long time ago, and
- it's worked well. It's different than Chainsaw; you can get mobility
- without fuel, but you can't use it without fuel. Also there are
- tanks and trains, a no-teleport market that works, spies that you
- can move around other people's countries (and try to sabotage their
- dist centers, steal planes, etc.) and now the removal of the highway
- sector type; it is now rolled into "infrastructure" that you build
- up within a sector, and costs money. Gotta have a lot of cash if
- you want networks of 100% roads leading all over your country...
- Bill also has done a major rewrite of the airplane code; planes now
- fly at different speeds, and at different altitudes; a fighter-1 isn't
- going to be able to intercept a high-flying spyplane-2 anymore. Also,
- the ability of a plane to intercept is based on distance from target and
- plane speed. If the defending planes are slower than the attacker, and
- the attacker is closer to the target, he'll get in before the defenders
- have time to intercept. The attacker might get intercepted on his way
- back *out* of enemy airspace, though...no more free ride home...
- We also have autorouting of planes (give starting and ending coords, and
- the game will generate the path; no more "bomb 122 . pin gyyguugygygguggugyugyugyguyug"
- mess...and there is an autodistribute command...
-
- So yes, the game here at HP is definitly more complex than 4 years ago
- when I started playing. The complexity has taken 2 forms; the first, added
- realism, like the new plane mods and roads as infrastructure. The second
- is things like autopathing and disting. Adds more complexity to some of
- the commands (you can restrict the path the game generates for a bombing
- mission to various sector types, like water...) but makes things a lot
- easier to play.
-
- As for tools, Bill has made so many changes, so fast, that it's been pretty
- hard for the tools to keep up with them all. A few of the players here (I think)
- have managed to keep XEMP *somewhat* up-to-date, and some others have been
- producing tools to do various tasks for them (like a program that identifies
- foreign ships on radar and attacks them, so people can't sneak up on you
- overnight..) but for the most part, the pace of changes has required
- mostly using the standard client. I mostly use that and VE.
-
- > As a matter of fact, scripts and piping out to egrep to isolate
- > info were seemingly foriegn concepts to these relative newbies.
- > Take away xemp and they are toast.
-
- Must be 'cause I was taught by somewhat of an old-timer, Carl Hommel
- at Apollo Computer,that I still like dumping things to files and
- writing scripts to analyze them...one of our players here is
- going beyond that, and wrote a set of tools by hacking the client
- itself; it logs into the game and does various things for him,
- without having to write to files; it reads the info as the server
- passes it to the client...now if he could only get my old auto_attacker
- merged into his tool...:-) (Hi John..:-)
-
- > BUT, back on the subject, is the game becoming to complex?
- > OR, is it just coming into its own? Is empire entering its
- > golden period of enlightenment?
-
- The latter; I think the changes Bill has been making to the code
- here make the game FAR better. I played a chainsaw game this fall,
- and it was good, (loved multi-fire, now Bill's added that here)
- but not having the spies and tanks and autorouting was a bummer.
- And now with the new changes to planes, it's even better!
-
- > The tools and "new" clients
- > allow people to play without having to have the knowledge that
- > was hard to gain in the days of yore. (Notice, i said "play"
- > not "master")
-
- Tools will let people play with less effort, and enjoy the game
- with less time spent. But an experienced player who knows the
- tools well enough to write them, will probobly kill him..:-)
- Personally, I think the best part of empire is the tool-writing
- part. Most of the UNIX/C stuff I've learned was motivated by
- playing empire, and wanting to be able to write tools. Instead
- of just being a game, as empire becomes more and more complex,
- it will be more and more of a learning tool for programmers.
- Which should help justify its existance on college machines,
- when the schools might be looking to cut disk useage,....
-
- > What are your views on the subject?
-
- Well, I've said a mouthful..:-0
- Walter Smith
- smithw@cs.itc.hp.com
-
-