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 Author When to play?
Daisy
Grand Admiral

Joined: March 13, 2017
Posts: 23
Posted: 2017-03-14 20:21   
It's really really quiet here, but the server is being funded so somebody must be playing it, right?

So, what is the best time to log in?

I've kept GCQL up for a couple days now and I've been checking the killboard as well for activity, but it's sporadic at best, usually just a random death or two every day.
[ This Message was edited by: Daisy on 2017-03-14 20:22 ]
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Azreal
Chief Marshal

Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
Posted: 2017-03-15 05:13   
been like this for a while now. A few hardcore players still left....mostly old players. a few come along to join, but not many nowdays.
Hard to say when its best to log in....im usually on in mornings and evenings, usually one or two others are on when i am.

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Daisy
Grand Admiral

Joined: March 13, 2017
Posts: 23
Posted: 2017-03-15 11:24   
I guess there have been a lot of alternatives to DarkSpace popping up, and it seems like sci-fi in general has been coming back as a genre.

I've yet to see anything that combines ship combat and colony building like this game does, though.

With some active development and recognition, maybe even a funding, I could definitely see a DS2 to be popular if it was brought to modern standards of graphics and user interface.
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Azreal
Chief Marshal

Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
Posted: 2017-03-15 13:58   
Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.
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Daisy
Grand Admiral

Joined: March 13, 2017
Posts: 23
Posted: 2017-03-16 00:23   
Quote:
On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.



It probably would have been better to make the source accessible when there were still people playing this and some probably willing to pitch in. I can understand the security concerns of it being an MMO, if that was something holding it up.

There's a few changes I want to go over in the code, but to what end?
What would we have to do to bring people back to this game, to make it interesting and worth playing again?
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Azreal
Chief Marshal

Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
Posted: 2017-03-16 10:45   
IMHO....It needs enough of a revamp, that it gets released as DS 2. Don't mean to knock Medusa...but the development world is leaving it behind. Ive been playing around with the assets in Unreal Engine 4.15. DS needs a facelift, and it doesnt have a dev team. At least not an active one. Any admins that pop in never show their faces. Sometimes see a moderator, but they usually seem afk.
The license is pretty wide open though...just sayin'.
It needs a facelift.
It needs a more user-friendly engine (that will allow a wider range of contributors).
It needs the older metaverse, with split resources (giving planets a purpose again).
It needs fewer ships. At least until (if) a player base materializes.
It needs ways to earn minor amounts of game credits. (Incentive)
It needs missions.
It needs the user-purchased AI to be non-random and orderable.
It needs a mobile platform!
It needs planteary defenses reworked. (honestly, the whole build system is antiquated, limited, and needs a thorough revamp)

I'd love to help with any of this, but I don't code. The problems aren't environmental or modeling. Textures aren't going to fix the low population. If it were UE4, I'm all over it. But...its Medusa....I mean....im just sitting here trying to think what the code would look like for me to simply take a pen and stab myself in the eye...and....yeah, no C++/C#/Lua for me. I am not a math person...
But the Blueprint system in UE...now that is simply freaking brilliant!

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Azreal
Chief Marshal

Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
Posted: 2017-03-16 10:47   
This is first time I have seen no combat kills in the last 24 hours. I've usually died at least once in 24 hours....
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
Posted: 2017-03-17 17:43   
Quote:
On 2017-03-16 10:45, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
IMHO....It needs enough of a revamp, that it gets released as DS 2. Don't mean to knock Medusa...but the development world is leaving it behind. Ive been playing around with the assets in Unreal Engine 4.15. DS needs a facelift, and it doesnt have a dev team. At least not an active one. Any admins that pop in never show their faces. Sometimes see a moderator, but they usually seem afk.
The license is pretty wide open though...just sayin'.
It needs a facelift.
It needs a more user-friendly engine (that will allow a wider range of contributors).
It needs the older metaverse, with split resources (giving planets a purpose again).
It needs fewer ships. At least until (if) a player base materializes.
It needs ways to earn minor amounts of game credits. (Incentive)
It needs missions.
It needs the user-purchased AI to be non-random and orderable.
It needs a mobile platform!
It needs planteary defenses reworked. (honestly, the whole build system is antiquated, limited, and needs a thorough revamp)

I'd love to help with any of this, but I don't code. The problems aren't environmental or modeling. Textures aren't going to fix the low population. If it were UE4, I'm all over it. But...its Medusa....I mean....im just sitting here trying to think what the code would look like for me to simply take a pen and stab myself in the eye...and....yeah, no C++/C#/Lua for me. I am not a math person...
But the Blueprint system in UE...now that is simply freaking brilliant!





Many moons ago, when DS still had a stable player base, I had envisioned the game I wanted to play. This game was only tangentially related to DS itself. During this period, DS's player base also contained quite a few gifted people who had dev skills, and I don't mean DS devs themselves, these were just players. I had discussed the game I had in mind and several people jumped on board with the idea. We got as far as some Alpha models, and I had licensed a game engine and had started the long process of modifying the codebase.

Coding is not quite as daunting as people often make it out to be. It does however, require certain mental abilities. You have to be able to conceptualize things that don't really exist. This ability to think in the abstract is fairly paramount to the ability to program, especially in object oriented programming.

Don't get me wrong, I am not in any sense saying that I am anything other than a novice. But I would say that one of the more difficult aspects of programming isn't the syntax, it's remembering and being able to recall thousands of functions, their usages and parameters at will. In php, a fairly loose language, I write most of my scripts barely using any of the thousands of native functions, or the functions added by the framework I use to build applications with. Truly advanced programmers' code is a site to behold in itself.
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The Fridge
Chief Marshal
Templar Knights


Joined: December 13, 2008
Posts: 559
From: In Your Fridge, Eating your Foods.
Posted: 2017-03-18 20:23   
http://i.imgur.com/ZI4IRHW.jpg

It's just like when Sagittarius went missing

Also relevant..



[ This Message was edited by: The Fridge on 2017-03-18 20:23 ]
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Pantheon
Marshal
Palestar


Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1789
Posted: 2017-03-20 08:50   
Quote:
On 2017-03-16 00:23, Daisy wrote:
Quote:
On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.



It probably would have been better to make the source accessible when there were still people playing this and some probably willing to pitch in. I can understand the security concerns of it being an MMO, if that was something holding it up.

There's a few changes I want to go over in the code, but to what end?
What would we have to do to bring people back to this game, to make it interesting and worth playing again?



Problem with that mentality is that it was easily accessible to those who proved their ability to work on the game. 90% of those who did, disappeared when they first set eyes on the task realised.

Being open source now or 3 years ago would have made little difference - there are very few people with the skill set, time, and as Ken alluded to, the mental ability to work on a project this size (it's all well conceptualising something in a small program, with a project this size that often involves delving into many, many systems and changing them to support what you have in mind - it can be very daunting, even to those in the field).

It's easy for someone to have the idea, but implementing it requires you to go through a mental checklist that is not only daunting, but extremely time consuming. Things like performance for the client or server, how will you add new, or change existing systems so that performance is maintained or not adversely effected? What numbers have you chosen for this new thing, and why? Do they balance out? Is there a runaway somewhere? There are hours of testing ahead for this alone, and that's not even going into the number crunching in spreadsheets, let alone the very basic math to support those numbers. Then there's a bugs, because there always are. Things like syncing between client and server, making sure key objects are updated as regularly as they need to be - but how often is that?

You see, like many before me, you, and most people here have come to realise, is that wanting to do X,Y, and Z for a game is always easier said than done. Once you come to understand the task ahead of you, and the multitude of downfalls for it (time, money, etc), your want to do such a thing wains.

Being open source doesn't fix any of that, sadly.
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kenetiks
Admiral
Galactic Navy


Joined: November 21, 2001
Posts: 1130
From: Bandcamp
Posted: 2017-03-20 17:30   
Quote:
On 2017-03-20 08:50, Pantheon wrote:
Quote:
On 2017-03-16 00:23, Daisy wrote:
Quote:
On 2017-03-15 13:58, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
Agree...its an open source game atm...but pretty much limited to C++ code monkies.



It probably would have been better to make the source accessible when there were still people playing this and some probably willing to pitch in. I can understand the security concerns of it being an MMO, if that was something holding it up.

There's a few changes I want to go over in the code, but to what end?
What would we have to do to bring people back to this game, to make it interesting and worth playing again?



Problem with that mentality is that it was easily accessible to those who proved their ability to work on the game. 90% of those who did, disappeared when they first set eyes on the task realized.

Being open source now or 3 years ago would have made little difference - there are very few people with the skill set, time, and as Ken alluded to, the mental ability to work on a project this size (it's all well conceptualizing something in a small program, with a project this size that often involves delving into many, many systems and changing them to support what you have in mind - it can be very daunting, even to those in the field).

It's easy for someone to have the idea, but implementing it requires you to go through a mental checklist that is not only daunting, but extremely time consuming. Things like performance for the client or server, how will you add new, or change existing systems so that performance is maintained or not adversely effected? What numbers have you chosen for this new thing, and why? Do they balance out? Is there a runaway somewhere? There are hours of testing ahead for this alone, and that's not even going into the number crunching in spreadsheets, let alone the very basic math to support those numbers. Then there's a bugs, because there always are. Things like syncing between client and server, making sure key objects are updated as regularly as they need to be - but how often is that?

You see, like many before me, you, and most people here have come to realize, is that wanting to do X,Y, and Z for a game is always easier said than done. Once you come to understand the task ahead of you, and the multitude of downfalls for it (time, money, etc), your want to do such a thing wains.

Being open source doesn't fix any of that, sadly.



The math, and logic of programming are often the arrow in the heart of a great many noble ideas for projects. These two things along are why a great many people give up on programming to start with. It's very difficult to "see" the logic of a program you're creating when there is no physical representation, or even on screen virtual representation, of what's happening. The entire process must be visualized virtually, in your head. This lack of any visual clues are what makes it possible for bugs to reside in programs for years before they're even noticed by anyone. For instance, Eve Online has had several known bugs that stayed put for YEARS before they were eventually found and corrected.

And, as Pantheon points out, being open-sourced is no guarantee, of anything. Many, many open-source projects die every month, becoming in essence, abandon-ware. A great many things have to come together for any projects success. It is a culmination of these characteristics that make them successful. Not unlike memes, there is no sure fire way to guarantee it will achieve anything. There is no one thing that will trigger it.

I have the ability to learn DS's codebase, and start to implement slow, and methodical changes. Truly, there probably isn't another hobby I'd like to take up more. You'll notice however, that I don't. I don't even try. This isn't due to a lack of ability to, or inability to learn things like LUA, it's due to recognizing that I am in over my head. There is no way I can set aside enough free time to learn the codebase, and start work on either bringing the current assets up to speed, or porting DS to a modern engine. Even with 5 of me working I couldn't do it. It would be a full time job, and unfortunately, I have to work and pay my own bills. If we had 10 to 20 solid, experienced, committed people giving all of our free time to the project, yeah, we could probably do it in a few months. But we're still talking months of work taking up every single minute of free time we have. Which is precisely why DS's development work has stagnated. Less than a handful of people are donating their limited free time to management and upkeep of DS. As much as it breaks my heart to say this, in all likelihood, there will be no more development for DS. It's had one of the greatest MMO runs out there. Surpassing even EVE if I remember right. Be thankful we got that because if this was any other game design outfit, THEY'D HAVE TURNED THE LIGHTS OUT YEARS AGO!
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lilFrigate (Marys Soldier)
Vice Admiral

Joined: August 30, 2002
Posts: 92
From: Police Station
Posted: 2017-05-12 13:32   
Quote:
On 2017-03-17 17:43, kenetiks wrote:
Quote:
On 2017-03-16 10:45, Azreal (KLuth Lives Matter!) wrote:
IMHO....It needs enough of a revamp, that it gets released as DS 2. Don't mean to knock Medusa...but the development world is leaving it behind. Ive been playing around with the assets in Unreal Engine 4.15. DS needs a facelift, and it doesnt have a dev team. At least not an active one. Any admins that pop in never show their faces. Sometimes see a moderator, but they usually seem afk.
The license is pretty wide open though...just sayin'.
It needs a facelift.
It needs a more user-friendly engine (that will allow a wider range of contributors).
It needs the older metaverse, with split resources (giving planets a purpose again).
It needs fewer ships. At least until (if) a player base materializes.
It needs ways to earn minor amounts of game credits. (Incentive)
It needs missions.
It needs the user-purchased AI to be non-random and orderable.
It needs a mobile platform!
It needs planteary defenses reworked. (honestly, the whole build system is antiquated, limited, and needs a thorough revamp)

I'd love to help with any of this, but I don't code. The problems aren't environmental or modeling. Textures aren't going to fix the low population. If it were UE4, I'm all over it. But...its Medusa....I mean....im just sitting here trying to think what the code would look like for me to simply take a pen and stab myself in the eye...and....yeah, no C++/C#/Lua for me. I am not a math person...
But the Blueprint system in UE...now that is simply freaking brilliant!





Many moons ago, when DS still had a stable player base, I had envisioned the game I wanted to play. This game was only tangentially related to DS itself. During this period, DS's player base also contained quite a few gifted people who had dev skills, and I don't mean DS devs themselves, these were just players. I had discussed the game I had in mind and several people jumped on board with the idea. We got as far as some Alpha models, and I had licensed a game engine and had started the long process of modifying the codebase.

Coding is not quite as daunting as people often make it out to be. It does however, require certain mental abilities. You have to be able to conceptualize things that don't really exist. This ability to think in the abstract is fairly paramount to the ability to program, especially in object oriented programming.

Don't get me wrong, I am not in any sense saying that I am anything other than a novice. But I would say that one of the more difficult aspects of programming isn't the syntax, it's remembering and being able to recall thousands of functions, their usages and parameters at will. In php, a fairly loose language, I write most of my scripts barely using any of the thousands of native functions, or the functions added by the framework I use to build applications with. Truly advanced programmers' code is a site to behold in itself.




So right! This is my thoughts on programming. THERE IS NO SPOON! I learned to program while making a 2d space combat/rpg similar to starflight. While I am not a master coder, and am only capable in the format I used. I would say I was a programmer because I understood and applied the fundamentals. Essentially to use a different language, like you said, I would have to become familiar with the syntax, the classes, functions etc.

It's been years since I looked at code. I also have a semi photographic memory so I could hunt bugs good. I knew where in my code particular functions were, without having to use the navigation. But you've got to have a good memory for real. Remember what your class is called which deals with X aspect.

In the end my features were
space combat: lasers, shields, armor, lovely particle effects, ship upgrading, crew interaction, crew AI

Interaction: communicate with aliens, ask questions etc

trade/barter system: similar to starflight where you and the AI barter to reach an agreeable price. Lifted directly from starflight actually.

Wormholes.
Jump drives
Warp drive
Huge galaxy relative to you the player
Dynamic event system: factions would fight wars with each other, etc
Relation system: you could improve/unimproved your relations with them.
Distress signals, aliens would call you for help, or you could send distress signals yourself
Mining asteroids.

Special weapons, like battle jumper (which lets you hop around the screen when activated (random hops) to avoid incoming fire.

Point defense!
Cloak
Super torpedoes
Powerful AOE torpedo bombs.

What killed me commercially?? I was a one man team I had no one to test but me. I could NEVER hope to find all the bugs with the game.

The game had 10 unique alien races who talked in unique ways, all inspired by starflight.

People just couldn't understand, one man on such a big project, wouldn't work. I hoped it could, but in the end that's what I learned. I would need like 3 dedicated testers willing to find the issues by 'playing' the game.

While I did have at least 5 guys over different periods (never same time) submit lots of feedback and bug reports. That was it. And it great. Anything someone found as a bug I could fix.

The game was called 'void of darkness' was for sale on gamers gate and desura.

If you wanted a copy I would gladly give you. I always am tempted to open the source code and play through it and fix the bugs gradually. Not like full time, but just every now and then. I guess after a year or two and enough time passed, it would be in way better shape.

I even make a list and keep it in notepad of changes and bug fixes to be made.

The thing with programming like you said. it is an easy concept, but difficult to master. Everything abstract. When you realize this, you grow leaps and bounds.
There are no ''éngines''. Only a variable called engines. Which you might say has '100'' health.

When a ''laser'' beam image collides with your ship, you delete the laser beam object (which removes the image from the game), play an explosion where the collision occurred, and subtract from the health of the ''engine'' based on variables of armor or damage mitigation. Then the ship also flies 'faster' or maneuvers based on the health of the engine. So as it declines, so too does your top speed. Top speed = 100*engine health.

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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights


Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
Posted: 2017-05-13 03:05   
Am I really the only person who isn't bothered much by the UI? I mean sure it could use a bit of polish, but it's not THAT bad. My only issues are balance issues, more specifically how some things always seemed to get nerfed immediately while they weren't really needed (followed by people quitting), and how some others don't get touched for a long time when they should have (followed by more people quitting), and that isn't even something that's a programming issue.

I mean ship editing is easy, even I can do that. System editing.....I wouldn't really call it easy, but as long as you can work with and remember coordinates you can do it with notepad.

Basically, if it was me I'd say trying to keep a few people happy drove away many others and killed it for everyone else.

Quote:
On 2017-05-12 13:32, lilFrigate (Marys Soldier) wrote:
The game was called 'void of darkness' was for sale on gamers gate and desura.



I remember that, I actually bought a copy off gamersgate after someone posted about it on the forums here. The listing on gamersgate didn't have any info about it still being in development though so I remember wondering what was going on after realizing it wasn't finished. A shame you had to stop working on it, what was there was a decent game.
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DOM700 [-IMO-]
Fleet Admiral

Joined: July 26, 2001
Posts: 3175
From: Eckental, Germany, Sol-System
Posted: 2017-05-14 02:03   
Quote:
On 2017-05-13 03:05, Talien wrote:
My only issues are balance issues, more specifically how some things always seemed to get nerfed immediately while they weren't really needed (followed by people quitting), and how some others don't get touched for a long time when they should have (followed by more people quitting), and that isn't even something that's a programming issue.

Basically, if it was me I'd say trying to keep a few people happy drove away many others and killed it for everyone else.



I only understood that years after I had left.
All successful games have some kind of rock, paper, scissor model in place, typically in a way that features revolving balance issues (you know community crying about A being OP, then B, then C, then again A, just because the classes work well against certain others).
In DS there never was such a thing, first by limiting A, B and C to a single faction (when it was unlimited, it didnt work either, but that was because of different numbers of slots/faction.
In addition to what you wrote, there were certain updates that just drove people away, by taking away things they liked. I imagine the big planetary economy change made a lot of a people leave. For me it was the removal of the jump cruiser (which I loved playing), for the sole reason that noone was playing it

Quote:
On 2017-05-13 03:05, Talien wrote:
I mean ship editing is easy, even I can do that. System editing.....I wouldn't really call it easy, but as long as you can work with and remember coordinates you can do it with notepad.



There used to be an editor for the star systems, even I did manage to create a few systems (proof is still in the download section )
But that certainly isn't in the top 10 list of problems.

Edit: Another nail in the coffin certainly was the editing of personal statistics, giving people odd numbers for kills for example, in turn making it completely worthless


[ This Message was edited by: DOM700 [-IMO-] on 2017-05-14 02:10 ]
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*Flash*
Chief Marshal

Joined: April 19, 2009
Posts: 291
From: Semi retired after 1.67 !
Posted: 2017-05-15 14:06   


[ This Message was edited by: *Flash* on 2017-10-07 00:02 ]
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