It occurs to me that probably no one but me will ever actually see the hub. It's the boring gray dialog in the upper left.

Note that you can just make out 3 lines of text. Those are the three copies of rocket club connected to it.

Note that each copy of RC has 3 lines of white text on top with the same info in it.

Woo hoo! Each copy of RC is aware of the other copies, plus each copy has has a secure 'logon' with the hub (one which supports varying forms of banishment, hint hint). All nicely encrypted and message-digested. No more ascii packets.

[note: the proceeding was in NO WAY meant to imply RC is un-hackable. You *know* it's gonna be hacked. That's the nature of life.]

I do believe this is the very first time I have allowed a 'central server' to play such a signature role. I was able to do this because I do not have to support modem play, etc. RC is solo or Internet, and nothing in between.

Though who knows. In theory one could run their own hub on the company LAN, but we'll worry about that when the time comes.

Anyway, having a central server to do name resolution is really cool. Life is incredibly much easier this way. Of course, it's also pretty much a single point of failure and bottleneck. But, in theory, the bandwidth is low since you pretty much only send data when you first start the game. (not completely true, but let's pretend it is all the same).

---

Next weekend I will flesh out the menu tree, so you can flip back and forth between menus which largely do nothing but test the ability to connect/disconnect in semi-random order.

Then I will probably push a version which you can help test with. It still won't have multiplayer game elements, unless I cram in a first cut at chat.

I still need to come up with a preferred UI for the 'catalog' sorts of interfaces (long lists of players and stars) which is easy to implement, and not too ugly to look at.

Not to mention the chat interface. I still think... well, that's life.

Regardless, I hope this game doesn't let people be ub3r, and includes the /ignore and chat filters of WoS.

I like WoS, I stopped liking the community the second the word 'snert' became vernaclar. So, I stopped playing WoS, the good Lord only knows that I hope the same doesn't happen here.

Might as well get this started right away. This ties in with the worries that your home star system is 'too safe' to make gameplay fun.

I proprose that there are 2 billion stars total. One billion of them are reserved for "home stars" as described before.

The other billion are the 'skirmish' stars, owned by NPCs (or no one at all).

And it is the domination of the skirmish star systems which are the measure of your club's standing in the meta game.

So Club X has dominated N1 starts, while club Y has only dominated N2 stars.

Club Y can either dominate a new skirmish star, or attack one of the ones dominated by club X.

There's a little hand-waving there, since I want to encourage fighting over existing stars, over dominating new ones... but since I'm not sure yet what 'domination' really means in this context...

No matter where you are (except maybe while in a wormhole), you have some chance of being beset upon by adversarial NPCs (Non-Player-Characters)

For example, while on foot, this would be "monster spiders"

While in interplanetary space, it would be "pirate ships"

etc.

Now, aside from giving you something to do, what is the point of these NPCs? I am already leaning AGAINST you earning any sort of 'level' from your NPC killing.

(well, let me say any sort of level which increases, say, your attack power.. I don't mind you simply having a 'good NPC eradication score' which doesn't make you particularly invincible against other players.)

---

So, ridding the system of NPCs might be:

* a source of revenue
* a source of rare elements
* a way to create/broaden 'safe' areas
* a way to develop new technology

I like the way RC is turning out. I'm glad I started reading these design notes today. This definatly sounds like a winning game, Dan.

Someone commented on how the buildings you put on a foriegn planet could be destroyed easily when you logged off. I'm guessing any buisness we put on a foriegn planet is a fairly big risk right? So we just try our best and put a ton of defenses around it...

How will any wars that clubs have work? Would getting bot armies be a possability (besdides defensive turrets and such)?

And about the 1000 people playing RC: It's anyone's guess about how many people will play RC, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a lot more than a 1000. If the players contact the right people and get the word around...well lets leave it at that.

* each player owns ONE star system
* that star system is available ONLY when that player is online

I mean, both are fundamental points, right? There is no room for waffling on such a key issue, right?

And yet... and yet... technologically, anyone who had ever visited your star system could, in a pinch, host it in your absence. It's just that anything built or destroyed while they were hosting would not be 'binding'

I mean, when the real owner of the star system returned, it would be THEIR copy of the system which would be the official one.

I think this might be super cool, but I am positive it would be super confusing...

Still, such a 'distributed database' could have secondary implications... the ability to recover your star system in the case of a disk crash, for example.

But it also raises hoary issues like:

* I don't feel it is MINE if just anyone can host it.

* What if I come online only to find someone else is already hosting my star system. Can I force them to shut down and have everyone break their connections and have to reconnect to me?

* could I maybe SELL my star system to someone else? Is all we're talking about here a lease of some sort, that the hub could keep track of? Might I lease several systems at once? Might I hand my lease to someone else if they want, for example, to be the grandpoobah of my star's Club? (the club belongs to the star, after all). Need I worry about someone hijacking my lease?

Anyway, I feel myself waffling... At this point I am sticking with the gameplan. One star per player. Only hosted by that player.

LIke rank 1 can fly around, shoot stuff.
Rank 2 can build homes on there planet
rank 3 can build factories/a commodity exchange

etc.

GS sounds like a cool little thing, but not as a continuous one. 25 bucks is easy to pay once but not again and again even at lower prices. RC will definatly not be a stupid game but many people are just not willing to pay for a game that has what they consider bad graphics.

But I just *know* the following issues will come up:

1.) "but I didn't KNOW it was SO IMPORTANT since I hadn't even played the game yet and you made me pick my star system right away and now I want a different one coz this one is ugly!"

2.) Man, I am leaving the state and my build co-captain would really like to take this star system over for me.

----

So, I want to be able to handle both cases technically, even if officially I don't allow either.

While the owner of the system is offline anything that's built cannot be destroyed, only damaged to the point that it cannot function any longer.

All factories damaged to this point will begin auto-repairing themselves after 12 hours of being non-functional, during this they are invincible and useless until they reach full health.

To speed this up the owner can either:

#1: Self-destruct the factory and build a new one.

#2: Pay resources to speed up the repair once it has begun.

--------------------------

To prevent fleets from hanging around weaker systems and just wrecking everything they come across, then stay there until it "regenerates" or is rebuilt and just wreck it again, I would recommend that noone can stay in a system for more than 6 hours in a row unless the owner gives them permission. If they do, "Security Forces" are spawned and try to destroy them or force them to retreat.

Either that or they'll just be auto-warped back to their home.

If they stay anywhere for more than 3 hours and then leave, either because of auto-warping, retreating or just normal leaving, they can't return unless they're given permission by the owner of the system.

This is to prevent people from just getting as close to the 6-hour limit as possible, leave for a few seconds, and then return.

Also, unless I missed something, once the owner of a system leaves, that system closes to everyone else. Thus nothing will happen to your star system while your offline partying. Foreign factories in other star systems is a different story.

-----------

About the many star systems:

2 billion is certainly alot. Hopefully we'll be able to travel to unoccupied ones and colonize them. Perhaps as soon as we build a certain building (HQ, colonizer etc) that star system would become ours. It would make everything a mad scramble but perhaps that is where the fun lies. Destroy the colonizer and that star system has no owner unless there are other buildings built by that guy.

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Safe zones:

This sounds like something out of EQ or whatever but I guess it means everyone has a certain degree of invincability. If your able to eventually colonize other planets, only allow a safe zone on your very first home world that you started the game with. And don't allow the building of turrets, walls etc within a safe zone...

It just needs to be as hard (or harder) to destroy and it is to create.

I do NOT want to facilitate marauding gangs who ruin the fun for other players so that they give up on building stuff. SOME of your stuff has to be safe.

Using elements to customize weapons will make this game very worthwhile. After all, it'll bring in:
*The "career" of weapons researcher. Try to figure out new weapons and such.
*More strategy. (Hmmm......we need to attack the main planet. Would it be better to use nukes and blow everything up, use poison gas and hope they don't have masks, or start with some drones to establish air superiority, then use homing missles on the command structures?) Infinite (Practically weapons = more options.
*Creativity. For instance, you could take some SpreadShotium, some Fragmentium, and some Poisonium, put the resulting weapon in a small ship, and you have a pest duster. Replace the Poisonium with some Explodium and you have a carpet bomb.
*Really cool economics. "Buy Nerd Zone brand anti-personnel mines! Now with better range and more Armorium to keep your enemies from blowing them up!" If we have brands, maybe we could have advertising? And weapons superstores? And corporate price wars? Yes!

[Oh yeah...actual ideas. Will you be able to add infinite elements to something, thus further increasing the advantages of the players who have been on for a while? Or will you only be able to add a set amount, say, 10 kilos or so?
In any case, keep the element idea!]

I think I have decided on what might be a short term technique to get past a certain mental block.

And, of course, short term means "forever" probably

Here's the problem. The 3D window is optimized for drawing 3D stuff. And yet we need a ton of 2D stuff on top of it. Some of that is inevitable and enjoyable.

But a lot of it would be unpleasant, in that I would need to reinvent a ton of wheels (i.e making my own scrolling list box with sortable column headers) which probably would end up looking crappy anyway.

As opposed to just using the controls which God.. I mean Microsoft.. gave us, which is easy to do, and I already know exactly how crappy they look.

Hence, I think the decision is made to go ahead and use regular MS controls wherever I can get away with it.

So, for example, the Star Browser screen would consist of the 3D window showing a 3D view of the star system in question, with perhaps some static text overlay here and there, but the actual CONTROLS (step to next star, list of planets around current star, etc) would be a regular windows dialog. Either floating, or embedded in the screen somewhere. Hopefully not too esthetically unpleasing.

Aside from esthetic issues, this means the program would always be run in 'windowed' mode (not the alt-enter mode, I mean). Which means if you went full screen, you would still have the menu and title bars (A good thing, in my mind) and the screen resolution of your desktop would control the resolution of the game (unlike alt-ENTER which lets you go full screen in, say, 800x600, even if your desktop is 1280x1024)

This also allows me to use my favorite embedded browser trick, which is not available in alt-enter mode.

And modern 3D cards handle windowed mode super efficiently, so it shouldn't be a frame rate problem for the computer which is destined to run RC. (Remember, RC will have heavy CPU requirements, as promised).

BUt, of course, I feel a little bad about this decision, since the menus in EMPEROR: Battle for Dune are so cool, and I wanted something like that.

Maybe its just me, but all these cheesy, sleazy ideas for getting more money (while more money for Dan certainly is a good thing), sound like bad ideas. $10 to be able to say "I *own* this extra star system" doesn't appeal to me. Especially when there are (theoretically) a billion of them. And then Dan would inevitable faced with complaints.

Golden Stars/Souls is a nice bonus for people who've already got one (Wow, WoS, Arcadia, AND RC! What a bargain!), and as long as the extra features have no significant effect on gameplay, that's great. But it seems almost like lying to advertise a free game, that you need to spend $10 on to get anywhere

~~~~~

I *do* like the idea of colonizing star systems. You construct a Star Hall (like, city hall) or something to represent that you govern this area of space. If someone destroys your Star Hall (hopefully, you have some major defenses around it, though!), then you no longer govern that stay system. Someone else would then get the chance to build their own Star Hall in that system, and claim governmental rule. Your colonies would no have safe areas, like your home system does: its no different than losing a second mineral-gathering base in Starcraft. After a while, if one government controls a system for long enough, they should have so many defenses that they are practically the permanent owner of the system, but only because they literally have undisputable rule (not because, for example, they hit the 1 week mark as system governor. "Woohoo!")

I like the idea of minature economy-based governments/corporations, battling (or cooperating) to control the galaxy/universe's resources. I hope that this ends up as a few large Clubs, although I suspect there will be many aspiring newbies who want to rule their own club. I'm guilty of grandeous visions of my own empire stretching across the galaxy, but I hope I'll have enough common sense when it gets down to it to join a nice club on its way to the top

~~~~~

I would also like to offer my services as graphic artist to you, Dan. I insist that if you need anything art related (skins, logos, even models) that you come to me for help. I find that having multiple projects actually helps me to get more done (especially if I hit a thinking block on one project, I have another project to work on while I get over it).

I think that if you're going to invest the time to make such a large-scale game, then Microsoft-default buttons and scrollbars and windows just wont cut it. I'd be perfectly happy to make any number of buttons, sliders, window borders, and other UI objects. I've got the tools, the time, the talent, and the motivation. Just give me a word, and I'll get started on just about anything you want.

Making a game is a lot of work, Dan, but you dont have to do everything yourself.

Supposedly there are about a billion or two systems. Each has some number of planets. Now lets keep those numbers in mind.

Lets say that there are 10 planets in each system. Imagine the size of each planet. Imagine you colonizing each and every one of these big planets. See yourself colonizing each planet for about a month.

Its not hard to guess that the planets will be fairly big. Just look at the extra-early alpha. It will take you a long time to colonize a planet fully. Colonizing the whole system will be even more hard. But the rewards for a whole system at your control will be great. And you payed only what, $10? For maybe 6 months of fun? With just that ONE system? Think about the others. $10. 10 measly dollars. 6 months.

Hey. Thats a damn good deal.

EDIT: Quick follow-up. How about a person who pays 10 bucks for another system becomes a golden star automatically? Some people who are freebiers will be content with one whole system I'm sure but maybe the GS could come with the new system.

And Dan, Jac has some l33t artist skillz ;-)

So I don't remember exactly how many minerals will be in RC but I do know it is alot. How many different minerals will be able to be extracted per mine? Perhaps we should lower the minerals to maybe 10-20 varieties. Some are very rare, others are common so there is plenty of room for good money making.

In the already mentioned game Mankind, there are some modern minerals like oil and iron and some made up ones too. But stuff like uranium fetches a high price and is used in special units and buildings. Maybe a similar system could be used in RC.

[This message has been edited by aiabgold (edited 04-28-2002).]

[the rocket club universe has up to 256 elements.. 128 are reserved for the 'real elements' (however many we are up to these days) and the rest for special RC universe elements "killium" "defensium" etc.

Any object you make requires a mix of elements (defined by the object designer).

Each player star system has the same distribution of key elements, just not the same localization. So we all have 3 units of gold, say, but mine might be all on planet 3, while yours is distributed over all x planets.

But ALL elements are available in trace amounts. It just takes longer to extract them, and you might be better off traveling to a distant spot where they can be mined more quickly. Or to engage in commerce with other systems where they are readily available.

How do I make my first few credits? I started with absolutely nothing, including resources and credits (well, I had settlers, but I couldn't sell 'em). I need them to make my first buildings and therefore get even more credits, right?

So, yeah, I'm pretty stuck, and how you're supposed to make those credits isn't mentioned in the manuel (it says I make those 'first few credits' after building mines... but I can't even afford those).