I understand we all have other real life or other online obligations or need for rest and relaxation. Like I said I was simply interested in a rough estimate. I also figured it was a legitimate discussion as I have found others somewhat vague as to this ultimate question. Discussions that involved questioning whether Mars attempting to promote SF before 2.0 came out; which is a big dilemma if everyone knows there is something better where a completely new nexus will be installed and everyone will have to re-work themselves back up there; then why play when you can wait? Which meant that Mars' proposed efforts may or may not have been in vain.
We never stated we were shunning, but we aren't going to spend time promoting it ourselves. In a market sense, you don't want to advertise something that someone can't get in a install package. I don't want to release a install package because there will be so many updates it would just be a hassle. That's why at the moment you can only get it through SVN only. In the future when I hope to have a lobby, it can auto update there. I'll explain details on this later though.. You can feel free to promote, but most people get the 1.4 version since its easier, and they get driven away from it. Normally, people don't stay and they'll vanish into the void because of it. I also think it would be best to advertise a working game when everyone can do it at the same time, aka I will most likely pay for some ads around. MPOGD is a good start, not too expensive, etc.
Another reason I don't want to advertise 2.0 yet is because or the first week we may need to adjust the prestige value, which might go higher, but normally will go lower. Some prestige gain might be to high, aka capping planets for example. It needs to be pretty balanced. I don't want the public to undergo that, as I, myself know how much it sucks to lose things. We also don't have a nexus for 2.0, which really kills 2.0 online play for much. I COULD see when we have a good/stable version, but advertising now is an issue because we simply don't!
I too would like to promote SF when it's in better shape. Especially as Night mentioned the FPS / LAG issue which is something we both agree on ; how disgusting it is. I would love to see so many different things in SF too but that's not to say you guys don't already know what's more important in the long haul
Yeah, Brent overhauled the network coding. He did a awesome job. I think there is some minor sync issues left (Like cloaking etc), but it should be 100% better. People still need to test and relay it to Brent though, not much of that has been going on. But for the most case, the old SF coding would even out of sync in a LAN game, which was crazy. Brent is using RAKNET now, and it's amazing what it can do. I'm glad hes damn here because networking and me don't get along. He is a guru at coding though
The FPS problem, I'm pretty near done but working on stability. I think I've gotten it from 40-60 FPS on my machine, to something crazy like 1200-1600FPS. The issue is it jumps like a school girl. Though you won't notice it, someone with a less strong computer or tons more robots will feel it. Mainly theres some issues with the collision detection that needs to be solved. There's a few things that can be done too the rest of the coding too that I'm going to be beating when I get to that point again. But for now it can be released like this. Most people won't realize it in a regular game. But if your FPS drops past 64 then you'll be getting sync issues since you can't keep up. But we'll get this all worked out.
Mobious is planning out the Nexus stuff too, so hopefully we can get a base going. We want to get the nexus going and a I wanted to see about a 'game lobby' idea I've been planning out too. Soon as we have a Nexus though, we should be in good standings, and Mobious is going to be probably focusing on that I believe, so should be awesome. Just need to figure out how we are coding this/handling this. It's probably going to be one of the only games that handles everything in PHP (Including chat). I have some ideas on the executable side of it anyways... It should all work out in a nice little package having three active coders. Alot better!
I could see starting minor/free advertising WHEN we get a Nexus up, but not yet! I am glad you are on board and I hope you do stay, the game needs more upbeat people, eh?
