Hammer of Code

Well I started my first full game of minisec on my local server. I’m playing against myself, and have shortened down turn lengths down to 2 minutes. I found in the beginning of the game that this was great, but as things got more complicated I was rushing to complete both players moves in the two minutes. I’ve reached a point where only “big things” were happening and can now alt-tab away from the game and start writing this post, as I am often waiting multiple turns for things to happen. This raises a few questions for me.

I’m left wondering how to make my own game play out, as it is obvious that minisec and any ruleset, for that matter, can take an obscene amount of time to play. Considering in Minisec building a fleet can take up to 25 turns (to be able to crush a home planet!) that would be ~4 hours if turns were ~10 minutes long. From my understanding players can choose to “vote to end a turn early” or at least that is the impression I got. What do you do if someone steps away for a few hours? A question I have for the mentors is this: Are games supposed to take days? I don’t mean to insult TP at all, I just have a different impression as to how long games should take (and hence why I am trying to make my Risk ruleset a very fast/involved game to play.) As it stands my biggest concern for fast gameplay is the update-download mechanic. I think if it was one click instead of two I might be more satisfied, but two clicks seems a little much. I’ve been told there are clients that download more seemlessly but I cannot design my ruleset for a specific client, especially when the norm seems to be tpclient-pywx.

Unlike the Minisec ruleset Risk will consist only of 1-2 moves per turn, so it seems reasonable to assume a 1-2 minute turn would be alright. As well, all actions in Risk will only take one turn, so there won’t be any need or chance to have to wait for a long time. I may be able to speak with the llnz or mithro about a server option to auto-download the universe after every turn, or I may be able to implement this myself. I don’t know if I want to include this as part of my project, but it is something I would personally like to see included in the server. Especially seeing as another short-playtime ruleset is being created.

I have noticed a few bugs here and there while playing, and I will need to speak to my mentor about how to contribute in that fashion. Here are some bugs I’ve run into:

• Every turn my Linux tpclient goes funky on zooming. I need to set view to something other than “fit”, then back to “fit” to fix it
• Problems updating unit positions. Units appear to get stuck in places. A restart of the client is needed to properly display units/ownership of systems.
• Attempting to move units occupying enemy systems can cause crash “Unable to insert move order.” I haven’t quite figured out exactly what causes this, it is often related to the updating bug I found.

I think when I am done with my ruleset I would really like to help improve the clients, lets hope some of the GSoC work this summer yields interesting clients!

Update on my  in progress game:

This is pretty dang fun, I have to say. After playing for another hour or so I can see so much potential for TP. I have unfortunately had to limit my strategy for this game I am playing or I would be playing for many hours to come