PHP, Zend Framework and Other Crazy Stuff
Archive for March 16, 2006
Text/Browser Games on Wikipedia – proposed articles
Mar 16th
I remember a few months back doing an idle tour of Wikipedia for text and browser based games. The content was slim, sometimes non-existent, and often disputed. A few months later and little has changed. A few people, Moocats among them, has added bits and pieces which are growing slowly.
Particularly evident is that few open source games in the strain of using server-side source code are evident. I think LOGD perhaps is the only such with an article present – seems a bit thin on the ground really. Related to BNT/AAT the closest seems to be the TradeWars article.
Anyways, I’m thinking of throwing my hat in the ring and attempting to write an objective article or two to fill in the obvious gaps. Not sure how that’ll be received but the hope is to shed some light on these subjects and flesh out any pre-existing articles. If Moocats is reading (and I know you do on occassion 
) maybe you can contact me and we’ll collaborate on this – I’d prefer to do so rather than edge a few edits here and there to avoid over-writing your contribution (which first caught my attention). Anyone else interested feel free to chip in – no forum but comments are there for now. My email address is
The problems as I see them in the articles to date are fairly simple. The information given, though informative, is too small. Browser Games or Text Games are a broad subject with a lot of details regarding implementations, requirements, etc. If these were addressed the articles would be pretty good, and open up the field to subsequent discussions on additional contributions. As it stands though its a summary without depth.
I’ll wait a while and see what response this blog gets, I know its not exactly viewable by everyone in browser based game related hobbies/jobs so I added to the current discussion on Wikipedia also.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_game
Possible articles:
Browser based games
Text based games
PHP games – links over to Browser based games and Text based games as related
Official Website goes live this weekend!
Mar 16th
I finally did the unthinkable and proofread the entire text being used in the website for QSE – the one currently online for people to stare at during testing: http://www.quantum-star.com/devsite2/. I’ll upload the new correctly spelled and gramtically corrected version at the weekend and place at the URI root.
This is still (and always will be) open country. If you believe more information should be added then drop us a note on the forums. At present it basically a set of minimal pages designed to sketch out what the project is all about, how to contact us, how to help us out, etc. Items like a FAQ, manual etc. will get added eventually.
Of particular relevance are the Bug Reporting Guidelines which have proven highly successful so far. I know those following Generations are waiting for another release, but hopefully Ikoda will be available at some point in the near future to make a release. QSE hasn’t seen any major bugs – but then it’s not even playable yet, nor close to for the moment…
QS User Suggestions
Mar 16th
Since I won’t be online tomorrow… Hope everyone has a good St. Patrick’s Day, and for those with the day off from work, enjoy the parades!
I won’t go into huge detail on current QS progress. I’ve not had much chance to do anything on the project this week, so at the weekend I’ll spend a few hours on it. I have most of the game support ready to go, so all I really want to do for next release is have a location page finished, and fleet navigation enabled. Maybe an Admin Panel section for universe generation. That would make the first release where you can explore the universe and actually do something .
I also need to get that translation code pulled together and tested – see if this system is workable or an unrealistic pipedream. No detailed planning for this one so its off to unit testing to build it from the ground up.
Back to topic.
I made a new topic on the QS forums regarding what players/users want in QS. It’s one of those sticky threads that are meant as permanent fixtures. So far there’s been a good amount of contributions, and some ideas being swirled around. Many at the moment have been covered by QSE planning – its sad to see the most mentioned are truly bad areas of QS2 in terms of gameplay. Even QSE in its basic form would be a significant improvement over QS2 I think… Anyways, one of those perpetual followers of all things QS (and BNT/AAT more likely ), Kitty, made some good points. One thing she noted was planets and how they’re done in SE style games. QS2 did a little tinkering to limit planet counts, but it was never ideal (and it’s buggy in the current QSG legacy release unfortunately). BNT of course uses the star type to determine number of planets allowable – most logical system.
The QSE aim, and I’ve thought about a bit more, should attempt to force a diminishing return in benefits from creating more and more planets in the same star system. Rather than having an upper limit of 5 planets where those planets will all be identical in type, instead do something more along the lines of reducing the size/limits of each extra planet created (noting there would still be an upper limit of about 4-5 planets).
So a 5 planet limit would give rise to a normal “large” planet, a medium, and three smalls – or maybe just use a fixed scale where the limits for subsequent planets are always 15-20% less then the last preceeding planet. This would encourage players to move outwards since a star system would only support one large planet – the rest being smaller. This of course has a neat side effect of placing a lot of value on the number of systems controlled by a player – something completely missing from QS2. What’s a strategy game without some need for grabbing territory?
A few other posters have noted a need for more ships (and more variety within them), along with similar suggestions. The point to make is that Ships technically are nothing more than a virtual container of attributes in QS Evolved. They basically act as a collection of “Components” each of which confers an Attribute value upon the ship. So, for example, you could have a ship comprised of Cargo Bays +1000, Mining Laser +5, and Thrusters +10. Result is a ship with attributes of:
Cargo Bays: 1000
Mining Rate: 5
Manouver: 10
These attributes would be used within certain calculations and process effecting that ship, as well as specifying any ship restrictions. Since they’re all component based, and attributes are simple serialised arrays, attributes can be added to the current list with ease – another factor to consider in creating future modifications and plugins.
