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Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:51 am
by Saladin
Ants are an important part of the ecological chain...well at least they were...

BTW what would be a good idea to have people more active is to give a points bonus for every specimen of a specie you kill.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:58 am
by Egbert
Dameon wrote:Whoops, I appear to have stepped on some ants. :twisted:
lol. I wish I could have seen what happened! I logged in this morning, and it said I was extinct. I apparently have no way of finding out what happened. Did I at least fight back?

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 12:36 pm
by Donut
The game itself gives huge bonuses to those who are more active... Life. I think that the majority of people who get eaten, get eaten while the player is sleeping.

Donut

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:08 pm
by Lowebb
yeah you should definately be able to find out what happened, otherwise it would just piss you off

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:18 pm
by Saladin
Why not allow a species that has gone extinct to simply view it's event log?

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 3:04 pm
by Dameon
You fought back, but as I started with about 400 more specimens than you, it was a quick and bloody affair. I wiped out all 155 of your ants, but you did kill 21 of my wolves. Their sacrifice will be remembered! 8) I do think dead players should be able to view their event logs, no harm in that. I also think giving hunting players some kind of score bonus would be nice too- this brings my kill count to 3 (could of been 4, but I felt bad for Allister), and while it's fun, a score bonus could help promote this kind of activity since it's not really easy to hunt another species to death usually.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 4:11 pm
by korexus
"No RIP bonus for killing off a species" was on the very first draft of the game which Al sent round to the Dev Team. So it's probably going to stay.

As I see it the logic goes something like this:
1) Players are probably going to take each other down anyway. They hardly seem to need any encouragement.
2) In the "real world" which (despite the conversation I had with Al 5 minutes ago) we do try to mimic in Species there is no bonus for making a species extinct. In fact it usually causes problems as you just removed one of your food sources.

Seeing your event log should be possible. We currently delete it when you go extinct but I don't see why we can't change that. *Adds it to list*

And as for people who die over night, we should have an option coming up to help you with that...


korexus.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 6:23 pm
by TBert
Don't eat the Blue Mule! His meat's all tough and gamy...he's been starving :cry: cuz he hasn't figured out how to play yet.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 6:59 pm
by Allister Fiend
Why does the game say that the turns and etc.. are do in -minutes?
Negative minutes? :cry:

Next turn: In about -67 minutes :(
Next step: After turn #1480 - in about -57 minutes :(
Next cycle: After turn #1488 - in about 23 minutes :(


I think the thing is stuck and needs a kick in the butt. :lol:

Allister

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:07 pm
by Mullog
I was just going to post about this.
Somehow the orders table had become corrupt. I managed to fix it, and the game should proceed as normal now.


Mullog, on vacation but still present. :D

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:14 pm
by Allister Fiend
Thankyou sir! Appreciate it.

Allister

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 7:51 pm
by Dameon
Well, there might be a bonus for killing of species if they stayed dead! When I killed off Korexus' jaguars, there were 21 species in the game. I have since killed off two more species, and a couple have starved- yet there are still 20 species left. My guess is since Kor told me players cannot re-signup after turn 1000, it's just new players popping up- I'd rather new player signup be closed at least at some point so I felt like I was accomplishing something. Not that it still isn't fun, of course, but just a thought.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 8:07 pm
by Donut
I think that if Carnivore is ever expected to be valid Skill, new players are going to be necessary. This also got me thinking, maybe boosting Fertility or making it easier to get would be a good thing. It'd make your species harder to mantain while sitting in one square, and it would give more food to Omni/Carni players.... Just a though.

Donut

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 8:33 pm
by Dameon
I got to the point where I am by boosting Fertility, but only once I knew there were enough BS2 squares in a certain range that I wouldn't go hungry. It means I gain less SP because I have to move around so much, but it also means I continue to have the top score and eat any species I can get my ah, paws on.

Speaking of which- there can be only one Alpha Male! There just wasn't room for more than one wolf pack, Mullog's freaky blue ones just had to go.

Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 9:14 pm
by gm_al
@Rune: negative time - easy pal, me thinks the US guys (where the server is) switched to summertime this weekend.... :P I was affraid it would kill the game, but apparently it hasnt.

@Donut: SYMBIOSIS will push your fertility if.... well you will see, its a nice one. 8) Talking on fertility, there is a clever trick to push it up - anyone (except chris and Rune) has found out yet maybe ?

Hey Rune was fixing something.... maybe it means more changes can be done during his holidays ? *drags out loooong list* :twisted:

Heard some good news from my boss today about WOK SP, Ill share them soon. Just take care that next beta will not be started before Rune gets back and had some time to work on the code again.

cheers everyone !

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 8:13 am
by Lowebb
My guess it is something to do with indifference, would that be right? Or does anyone have a clue what indifference does?

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 11:56 am
by Mullog
gm_al wrote: Hey Rune was fixing something.... maybe it means more changes can be done during his holidays ? *drags out loooong list* :twisted:

Heard some good news from my boss today about WOK SP, Ill share them soon. Just take care that next beta will not be started before Rune gets back and had some time to work on the code again.

cheers everyone !
The fixing was done through a web interface to the species database. It was just a quick fix, two clicks and it was done.
I have no editing facilities here so I won't be able to do any changes to the game code.

What's the good news AL? Want to send me a mail and tell?


Mullog

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 3:42 pm
by Dameon
Yummy, two for one! Any idea on the actual ending turn of this beta? 2000 perhaps? 8)

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 3:47 pm
by Lowebb
keep it running until the 4th Beta is ready to go or 400 turns as was said initially

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 4:42 pm
by korexus
There's not much point in carrying Everglades on any further. I suspect the balance problems which are coming up now are more to do with the number of players/plant distribution and so on so we're not likely to find much more to change. Even if we do, it's getting hard to be sure if it actually needs changing.
Even the Carnivore thing is uncertain really. In the game concept there are more players on a board so the current abumdance of plants is something which may not actually occur in the future. Running the next beta on an 8X8 board should help us see issues like that clearly.

That said, we won't be starting a new game until Rune gets back and can work on quite a long list of engine changes, so we may as well carry on with Everglades until that's ready, otherwise we'd all get bored! :P


korexus.