Ron Hiler's Plan File

July 14th, 2000

The second reason I've been lax about updating this thing is that we've been in crunch mode for about three weeks now, maybe a bit more. Crunch mode, for those of you unfamiliar with programming lingo, is what happens shortly before a new release comes along. It's a time when the programmers are coding 16 hour days, and nothing else happens in their life except coding, and that includes .plan files. The length of time they can last varies from project to project and release to release, but you can always be sure it will be there. It's like a last push to get everything finished that needs to be finished. Usually after a crunch period, the coders take about a week off to get reacquainted with the people around them, maybe even see the outside world again, if they are feeling exceptionally brave! I've heard rumors there is something called a 'Sun', but I don't think I believe in it.

Anyway, we are coming up on the release of a new demo, and that's what I want to talk about. We aren't quite finished with the coding tasks yet, and we have a fair amount of database work to do, but all in all, we are very pleased with the results so far.

We could almost call the new demo an Alpha release (technically, it's called a Pre-Alpha release). The difference between a Pre-Alpha and an Alpha is that an Alpha, though still incomplete (feature-wise) is a playable version of the game. A Pre-Alpha is not playable. It is usually released to test for bugs in the game engine, show off new technology, and elicit comments from the testers for improvements. (A Beta release, if you are wondering, is a feature-complete version of a program, where the developers are simply looking for bugs, there are generally no plans to add further functionality).

We've begun to hit sort of a blurry line now. The game, though not playable in the manner in which it is meant to be played, does have game elements in it, and people could play it multiplayer at this point. I have no idea if people will actually be interested in playing it in the form it's in, but we are setting it up so that they have the option of doing so. We're even going to put in a primitive scoring system so people can keep track of who is winning!

What makes this possible is the addition of functional player designs, research, some classes related to player units and stacks, and the combat system. What is going to happen is that each turn, the players will receive a number of units, chosen randomly from the designs they have active. These collection of units will be combined into a single stack, which will be pitted against another player's stack of units, and a combat sequence will be initiated between the two. Of course, as you research bigger and better technologies, your designs will evolve, and that, I hope, is what will make it worth playing.

Of course, to make this interesting, we have to have a large enough database that there is a fair amount of variety in the unit designs. To this end, we are in the process of adding more unit templates (we should end up with about 20 or so), more unit items (which, at this point, will be limited to only weapons, armor, and spells, I think, though there will be many different types of each). We aren't going to just give you all of the techs either. All players will start with only one known tech (food), and will have to decide what to research from there. Each turn, you'll receive some number of research points which will be credited to whatever techs are in your research queue, so as the turns progress, you will get more and more interesting technologies to throw at your enemies.

This is the sort of 'game' I would expect to get boring pretty quickly, and I don't really hope that people will 'play' it for very long, but if it is long enough to test our new routines thoroughly, that's all I ask for! When the real game comes along, all of this will be just a subsection of the whole thing, and will be much more playable in a long term manner (I hope!).

One of the big reasons we release demos is to test things, and by using this method, we will be stress testing a great number of new routines. For example, combat is new in this release, all of the file systems have undergone a complete overhaul, a lot of general integration of various components has occurred, and a whole host of other stuff. We might even try to do a little bit of play-balancing, though it might be early yet for that to happen.

Anyway, this is more of a combat simulator than anything else, since the units aren't going to cost anything to build, and you will have no control over which unit designs you will receive. We are, therefore, still going to call this a Pre-Alpha at this point. The next one, though, will definitely be an Alpha release.

The web page will shortly be getting a new addition, in the form of a bug report script, to go along with our new release, so you'll have a much easier time reporting bugs and seeing what is going on with them (the script will probably not be ready until a few days after the next demo release). One of the advantages of moving the server (besides getting a lot more drive space) is that we now have access to CGI scripts. Both Jason (our webmaster) and I are brushing up on our Perl/CGI programming skills (I already have three scripts in mind, with a fourth in the planning stages) to improve the functionality of the web page. So stay tuned!

Okay, this has already been way too long a .plan file. I need to get back to the coding. Talk to y'all later.

Ron