First of all, apologies for the lack of updates in recent weeks. As many of you might be aware there was a problem last week regarding PA Team's relationship to Jolt, and the terms of the Non-Disclosure Agreements that we were required to sign. The time needed to resolve this, with Jolt's new representative (biffy) has distracted us from round 11 development.
On behalf of PA Team I'd like to welcome biffy to Planetarion. If you haven't already read it then please read his Introductory post and update which can be found
here.
I am however happy to say that those problems are now in the past, and progress on round 11 is continuing at a good pace. The pages for the round now have a specification, so that Mit can work on coding them while the combat system design is produced.
For those of you hoping that this thread will have large amounts of detail on how Round 11 will be played, I'm afraid you're in for a dissapointment. Many of the decisions taken so far have been made specifically to underpin the options that are available in the future.
We are aware that there are some groups who like, and some groups who dislike, pretty well any feature that either classic PA or PA:X included. There will simply be no way to run a single game with such conflicting views that everyone will instantly be happy with. As part of the specification for the Round 11 code-base we have insisted on making the game easy to configure and control. As such we are construting a game which can be changed quickly to have different options for rounds, speedgames, and LAN events without needing to recode each time. This will also allow us to cater for the myriad of different ways that people like to play the game rapidly by interchanging features.
Options that we are planning on including within the page setup, and the ticker setup pages include:
- Whether races/ships have a special ability such as EMP/Cloak/Steal
- Whether combat happens according to the initative system, or all ships firing at once in the PA:X style.
- Whether all ships cap roids, or whether special astropod type ships are required.
- How the techtree works.
With regards to the setup of round 11 I can throw a few teasers based on the stage of development we are currently at, and of course these things are subject to change, but should give you an idea of what is current thinking.
- Several distinct races will be back, with much more discernable differences than in round 10.
- Constructions will function in a similar way to round 10, with the ability to build multiple constructions, leading to different benefits.
- The galaxy forum will have the ability to "sticky" threads so that they don't auto-delete after 7 days of inactivity, allowing things like contact lists to remain available throughout the round.
Over the coming weeks we will be making more announcements about how round 11 will work. In the meantime there will be speedrounds, and with the help of Spinner in adapting the PA:X code, and biffy from Jolt, there should be announcements about them in the near future. Of course the
Suggestions Forum is still open for business and all posts on it are welcomed and read.
In the meantime the final stages of the Round 11 Name Competition are in progress. If you haven't voted already then head to the
poll and vote.
Stay Tuned!
.
Re: Development Update (27/01/2004)
Linear Mode
