For anyone interested in seeing some of the new admin features I'm working on for TWGSv2, I've opened a sandbox game on twgs.classictw.com. Connect to port 2003 with password "sandbox" to have a look at the new TWGS admin menu. Fire up TEDIT to check out the editors. The new timing editor is option Z.

Looks good. Some interesting options and settings. Look forward to playing with this some more.

Well make sure yo post this in the player * menu as I wont be playing any sysop screwed up timings unless I can script an advantage.

And the Default should be what is being worked out for a balanced game.

BUt let me tell u this.....If u slow down Planet move/Photon fire etc..I will write a special gridder to dominate the game. If you slow down Ship movement or anything related to it I will write kill scripts to take advantage of every last delay.

What get's in your Head?

Very nice! Thank you John!

Parrothead, are you serious?

How about I make it easy, so if a gameop chooses one of these settings, it automatically disables Parrothead as an alias? Then you don't have to worry about accidentally playing one of these lame games.

What I "think" PH is getting at is if the settings are unbalanced by a gameOp, similar to a TWA getting unbalanced, he will simply take advantage of those settings. Seeing the settings from the "*" allows the player to know what he/she is getting into, and for some of us it will help dictate our strategy. Taking advantage of a situation is the primary goal though.

Hope to take a look at the sandbox when I get home.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

The only requests I have regarding timings are to have all the settings be set to a default set of settings to what we play today and a "Set to Default" setting to put things back to the default settings.

Thats been my main concern, the timing changes won't be optional because there is no comparable setting to what is played today on the existing twgs.

H

They are options, but they are options the operator is forced to use. Is there an option to not use the new timings? If not, the timing settings are not optional

H

If all Parrothead was saying was that he'd like to have this stuff covered in the * settings, then I'd say "sure, no problem". What he said was a threat, as if I better do what he says if I don't want him spoiling the game for everyone else.

As far as defaults, my goal is for the default settings to be indistinguishable from the current game without any delays or pacing. The values that are currently in there are the ones that Singularity recommended as a starting point for finding the settings that best match the current game balance. I want all of you to experiment with these timing settings until we reach a group of settings that you can be happy with. Those will be the defaults. And there's a command to restore defaults.

For now, I have a value in the S screen that gives a basic representation of the speed of the game under the chosen settings. I do this by ranking the settings as a percentage from minimum speed to maximum speed. A score of 100%, the fastest possible, is called "TransWarp". The speeds are, from 100% down to 0%, TransWarp, Warp, Impulse, Cruise, Crawl and Docked. The default settings for the current game correspond to a rating of about 98%.

I'm trying to keep the S screen limited to one page, so I can't really show every timing setting. I can show every setting in the * screen, though. I haven't put everything in yet, but here's the new [Timing] section:

[Timing]
Ship Delay=Third (1/3 s/t)
Planet Delay=None
EProbe Delay=None
Crime Delay=Constant (2 s)
Photon Launch Delay=Constant (2 s)
Photon Wave Delay=None
Move Pace=20 ms
EProbe Pace=20 ms
Photon Pace=10 ms
Planetary Transwarp Pace=10 ms
Planet Land/Take-off Pace=2 ms
Port Dock/Depart Pace=20 ms
Ship Transport Pace=10 ms
Planet Transport Pace=10 ms
Kill Fighters Pace=5 ms
Drop/Take Fighters Pace=5 ms
Drop/Take Mines Pace=5 ms
Rob/Steal Pace=5 ms

Any action not listed in the pace list has a pace value of 2 ms.

I am putting in a lot of work to make these options available to those who want them without taking anything away from those who don't want anything to change. You don't need to threaten me to get that.

Options:

I think it may be wise to test a few of these out to come up the a "base" set of options for say a particular "feel" the sysop is going for.

Default = change to all 0 - good for very fast script friendly games

Then another set for "base" builder friendly games

Yet another set for Old Style bbs dial-up door games

This way inexperinced sysops will at least have a starting point to "tweak" from for thier own "flavors" so to speak.

Threats will not be tolerated period. Any threats will result in the poster losing their privilege to post in this section for a bit. I can understand there will be adversity and discussion/debates. But keep it civil.

That is nice to have a set to use default , as I was looking these settings over ...
I noticed that interactive sub prompts still defaults to NO ... but in the old BBS games they were always on , as I recall.

It was the single node games I don't recall ever testing in mainly because there was no one to talk to.

The only reason I bring this up , because new sysops sometimes leave this option to default while us seasoned sysops have to go in and change things.

These settings look good and you seem to have covered everything.

My 2¢

Vid, you may want to refresh your memory on the old HVS game. The sub prompts there I don't beleive are interactive at all. And they do silence for the oddest things.. say single sector moving from A to B.. all fed com, sub space and hails I believe are silenced until you reach B, then you get flooded with all messages.

I do think interactive sub prompts is a more recent TWGS option. We weren't able to communicate while on SD for example, still can't in the HVS game I'm in right now.

At the planet prompt I get sector fig hit messges, but when I lower to the citadel all messages are silenced again.