http://www.microblaster.net/Servers.aspx

Click on server
Click on game

I'm working on getting my website to do the same for my own games, and then steal Micro's system so we have at least two sites to do this from.

RP

Eventually I'd like to build Jumpgate up to start providing that kind of detail and the ability to set your search criteria (basically steal everything Micro and Eleq have done ;) ), but for now, Jumpgate is just a basic list of sites.

There are a number of ways you can grab details about active games on a server. One, when you connect to TWGS, from the main menu type $ to get an xml dump of all game settings. Two, in a particular game, at the startup menu, type $ to get an xml dump of that game's settings. Neither of these are very human-readable, but good for people like Micro and RP to write tools. Three, press * from the startup menu for an ini formated list of settings.

The last option, press S at the startup menu to get a series of human-readable setting screens. This is the main way people are expected to get a sense if a game is for them.

For the kind of depth you're looking for, getting detail on Gold custom ships, planets, aliens, etc, you'd have to rely on 3rd party tools like Vid Kid's ansi generator that creates a set of displays with this kind of info. The game provides a mechanism for providing detail about Gold customizations at the Library, but I don't think a lot of gameops utilize that.

For many of the popular edits you can check the TWA database, it contains the ship and planet specs:
http://www.runawayproton.com/TWADatabas ... oject.html

That's a bummer. I should have checked before I posted the link.

OK I found a mirror of the TWA database that appears to still work:
http://roguegalaxy.com/twaproject/

I had some problems with my host, and it appears the files are missing. I didn't even realize this till only a few weeks ago.
I've got to find the host files and get them back in place. Sorry about that!

Site repaired,.. thanks for bringing it to my attention

Thanks RP! It would be a shame to lose access to all those great edits.

Is there anything special involved in getting these old TWA's to run in the latest version of TW? Is it just plug and play or is there some tweaking involved?

It should be mostly plug-and-play. The main thing to consider is alien behaviors. Some fixes to Gold alien bugs have allowed Gold aliens to be much more aggressive and deadly than they were. So it may be necessary to tweak some Gold alien settings down if they're too overwhelming.

You can directly import any .twa from V1 into V2. The only issue I found was that V1 had no delay settings (z menu) and by default when you import a V1 game the delays are turned on. Switch it back to Constant 250 unless you want the delays enabled. I wish by default they were off.

Hmmm. There were delays in v1, so whatever delays you were using, they should be duplicated in the new version, and I don't default any of the new delays to on. So if that's not working, it's a bug. Do you have a TWA where this is happening? Send it to me and tell me what delay settings you expect for ship movement, crime delay and EtherProbe movement and I'll make sure it imports properly.