Star Traders is having a Christmas Giveaway!

ID:187442
 
Dec 11 2004, 10:42 pm
Check out the game Star Traders by LordJR.. Sign up for the Star Traders Christmas Giveaway and get the chance to win a 1 month FREE subscription to Star Traders. Only 3 more left... check the main login page of Star Traders to find out how to join the eGroup.

-LJR
Dec 12 2004, 5:46 am
LordJR wrote:
Check out the game Star Traders by LordJR.. Sign up for the Star Traders Christmas Giveaway and get the chance to win a 1 month FREE subscription to Star Traders. Only 3 more left... check the main login page of Star Traders to find out how to join the eGroup.

Gotta say, timed subscriptions are a pretty poor concept when you still can't save a game. Good grief man, I subscribed 2 years ago and it was a waste of my money; I could only play if I had an entire day to spare and I had to start from scratch each time. No matter what you say about good players being able to advance quickly, it's clearly a develpoment game and it does take a significant time investment to get anywhere.

It strikes me you'd do well to put your effort into this lingering problem instead of promoting a half-finished product.

Lummox JR
Dec 12 2004, 11:23 am
In response to Lummox JR
Alas, My dear Lummox JR...

I DO intend to add saving, but I'm not developing for BYOND anymore. I've moved on to Win32 API... Star Traders is one of the games I'm porting over to a stand-alone format and I plan to sell the game with better sound, graphics, GUI and fuller gameplay.

LJR
Dec 12 2004, 1:33 pm
In response to LordJR
Could you at least paste some code into the thing and recompile it for us? I'll even make the code for you.
world
    mob=/mob/login
mob
    login
        var/mob/M
        Login()
            var/savefile/S=new("saves/[ckey(key)].sav")
            S>>M
            if(M)
                if(alert("Load?","Welcome","Yes","No")=="Yes")
                    client.mob=M
            if(client)
                M=new
                M.name=name;M.gender=gender
                client.mob=M
        Logout()del(src)
    Logout()
        var/savefile/S=new("saves/[ckey(key)].sav")
        S<<src

Just taking 5 seconds to do that would make the game much better.
Dec 12 2004, 7:51 pm
In response to Loduwijk
I'm not sure that code would work as such. If you loaded a mob like that it would connect instantly. Instead you need some sort of system to select a character from a savefile before loading.

Star Traders also needs to save global info on planets and stations. This is hardly a difficult thing, since I believe those are all implemented as objs. (Or if not, they're implemented in such a way that they'd clearly be easy to find and store together. Moreover, any links to an owner could be easily changed from a mob to a string with fairly minimal work.) A simple save of each planet and station with their positions would be fairly trivial.

Point is, modifying the game to support saving is such an easy thing to do, we're talking about maybe half an hour's work at most--unless certain minor issues like owner vars need to be addressed, which could tack on maybe an hour. This could have been done any time during the last two years, but LordJR has been dragging his feet. As it was he had to be browbeaten into admitting saving was in fact necessary for the game, even though every single player requested it, and since has been promising repeatedly to get around to it. The truth is he simply has no intention of following through on that. If he had, it would have been done long before now.

And that being the case, since the game is unfinished, why go to this length to promote it except to milk a cash cow? I have no problem with cash cows, but this isn't even the full cow. Indeed why allow it to continue charging subscriptions at all? Failure to save is a serious flaw that was tolerated during development only. If development has well and truly ceased--at least as far as BYOND is concerned--it really has no place in a public channel.

Lummox JR
Dec 13 2004, 12:24 am
In response to Lummox JR
And that being the case, since the game is unfinished, why go to this length to promote it except to milk a cash cow? I have no problem with cash cows, but this isn't even the full cow. Indeed why allow it to continue charging subscriptions at all? Failure to save is a serious flaw that was tolerated during development only. If development has well and truly ceased--at least as far as BYOND is concerned--it really has no place in a public channel.

In other words, why buy the cow when you're not even getting the milk? :P
Dec 13 2004, 3:09 pm
In response to Hedgemistress
Hedgemistress wrote:
And that being the case, since the game is unfinished, why go to this length to promote it except to milk a cash cow? I have no problem with cash cows, but this isn't even the full cow....

In other words, why buy the cow when you're not even getting the milk? :P

Crap. You found the very clever analogy I was looking for.

Lummox JR
Dec 13 2004, 3:12 pm
In response to Hedgemistress
For the beef of course! :)
Dec 13 2004, 5:42 pm
In response to Shun Di
Yeah, well, some people do have a beef with it.

Ba-dum-CRASH!