Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

For the record, you are officially a faggot. All this time I've been using Qan whenever Q came up in acro in your remembrance, only to get punk'd. Whatever. Ignore the ?message i sent you on dugwyler, for that would only further my gullibility. Faggot.

I only did it as I was reasonably sure just about everyone already knew. No need to get so uppity about a little friendly jest. Take the pills, lean back, and chill the fuck out.

[roxxkatt]

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

i lol'd at this.

but not many ppl knew all along as i did

[Maverick]

hahaha PUNK'D Lizard Fuel! :P

[Pressure Drop]

I have to say i had no idea dugwler was Qan …

I’m disappointed you would make a dramatic post in quiting, then change names to code in secret for 2 years letting it slip your Qan so that you think everybody knows then rejoin staff …

Do you think the original reason you quit has changed much? I think staff has deteriorated in my experiences of them …

Anyhow I’ll use this post to add in that I think all this continuous testing of distension is hastening the demise of this zone.

The population is reaching a critical low where many events and arenas are running on low amounts of players or not at all and yet we continue to diversify and create new arenas or leave ones running, sucking up the little remnants of a player base we have left … soon very little will be left except a few minizones and when people retire from them there won’t be the playerbase to replace them.

I really do not see the advantages of having a secret #distension arena when 2 pubs full is only peak times, ?go base is running rarely, belim is dead, wb/jduel run only at peak times when ppl advertise. Active TWBD squads are getting rarer as finding a squad to play against is harder now

Also the distension bot spaming me is fecking annoying – I don’t want to test distension stop it pming me…

What the hell is the point of all this distension stuff? Is it going to be a sub arena? An event? Why so much testing? Replacing the pub arenas??

[gdugwyler]

I have to say i had no idea dugwler was Qan … et al

The short of it is that it was becoming so that most people were aware; first, I had to tell upper staff when I originally joined, and that will naturally leak as people ask. Whenever asked personally I wouldn't pretend. Eventually it spread to the point where the original intention -- quietly coding without any significant interaction -- was no longer a possibility. Couple that with the realization that without the title of a staff member I had little say in a small handful of things that I'd wished I did, and there is why I returned. By no means do I intend to do more than I am already, or do anything but quietly develop further. This simply allows more freedom. And it's really not that big a deal.

My reasons for quitting originally have not changed, no. I took a year off any activity in the game, clandestine logins or otherwise. After some time I began to miss coding -- not the game, really, or particularly the people (no real offense meant; I like many, but have personal friends that suffice and have never seen much of a point to the social text). Writing code/building things that were useful in some way is pretty satisfying. So I decided to ignore the problems that frustrated me, not become involved politically, and come back as a coder. Seemed to work fine. Now 2 years later, I'm realizing that I can do that, for the most part, also as a member of staff once again. Again, doesn't seem like much of an issue. If I'm reneging on anything I've said in the past, well, so goes the human spirit: change is the only constant, as (probably) first posited by Heraclitus, and I believe that -- and to keep it within the realm of pith and cliche, "old habits die hard."

Distension is death of TW, etc.

TW is in itself the death of TW. All begins, all ends. That the commitment of staff and coders is flagging to a game that can essentially never change from a set of fundamental, established rules is no strange thing. (As an aside, I think Christianity and all of the Old Gods have something in common with it here. Even the priests stop to believe, after a time. Poseidon will only be worshipped a certain number of years.) That players can't play the same game day in and day out while new and more beautiful things entice them is no surprise, either. In another 10 years, will TW still be around? If it is, only for the amusement of past players to occasionally frequent one pub of 10 or 15 people. Or as a radically different client with a new protocol entirely, quite separate altogether.

Now will Distension hasten the death of TW? I don't know, and I don't really care. Smoking may hasten your death, but smoking is also enjoyable, else people wouldn't do it; it's a risk to be balanced. Some people enjoy the game, and it might cause elims to be raided and the same base game that's played over and over to grow tiresome in comparison. Something new might be appealing to people, and might gut the other subarenas: or, it could bring much-needed interest back to the zone that refuses to change. (That is, of course, our strength and weakness, this refusal to change even the cute little trees in an elim arena for 5 years at a time. A player knows what to expect when they come here ... yet they also know exactly what to expect.)

To the more concrete: it's not replacing pub, it will be just "distension" as a subarena without the #, it will run regularly (maybe not 24 hours a day -- we'll have to see if there's enough interest, and if it's too taxing on other parts of the zone), and it will stop PMing you within the next few weeks. After talking with alinea I think we're just going to wrap up the beta test this week. (After this the bot will never PM you, PD.) There will be a week or so of time for making a few changes that reflect the differences between the beta and public, and then there will be a reset, the beta multiplier will not exist any longer, and we'll give it a run. All data after that will be saved permanently, barring unforseen tragedy. There may still be UP refunds as I add new abilities, and some changes as minor development continues, but we're pretty much where we need to be now.

Thanks to all the testers for your endless support, and especially to the die-hards who are testing right up until the end. I'll announce fairly soon a bit more about how you go about getting your reward for beta testing in the public release.

[AcidBomber]

why the hell would you OR staff take this project that you have worked countless hours on, and endlessly listened to pointless harsh critism from forum faggots, and just hand it over to some washed up nobody who hasnt been seen in years. If you let this happen, I hope it dies along with your desire to finish what you started. qan, or anybody else, does not deserve any credit for your creation. I can only assume what kind of BS politics are involved that we don't know about, but I think you should suck it up and drive on, and finish YOUR project, THEN staff can suffer without you

I Lol'd in real life... ahaha Lizard is so OUT. ^-^

[2kill]

we're just going to wrap up the beta test this week.

Wo ho!

and oh darn

the spider still seems over powered if anyone ever gets it to 47 that brings me right to my next point. Well you want higher levels to take longer they should not be impossible or to the point of annoying, my rank 55 spider needs 300,000 rp to level average kill gives me 500 divided by 9 (the mulitpler) 55 rp per averge kill of the same rank thats 5454 people to kill thats about one rank every two and a half weeks taking that you kill 2000 people a week like I can if I play alot (if I don't play SS alot in a week I get alot less) now the only question I have is... are the round wins and goals have the mulitpler too? or is that what it will give when its released?

looking forward to the new abillities that you are working on once the database switch is done

you've done a great job cya in continuum

2kill

[roxxkatt]

RIP Distension Beta: October 2007 - July 2008

last comments:
spid needs to wait till lvl50 for lv2s.
RP TNL needs to be tweaked.
lag settings need to be modified for public use: no more ppl playing with 500ms.
antiwarp pixels need to be set to 160.
opsmine needs to be added.
lanc bullets still need a little slowing.
lagout should have a 1min d/c allowance.
merge jav shrap upgrades.
a decent F1 needs to be added. pm me with a txt file somewhere, and i can make it in 5 mins.


possible future additions:
dist hub, with 3 bots in 3 arenas.
global ops in dist hub arena.
chao's ear wormhole ability idea.
a beta test in #dist before any addition is made to public bots.
rank pictures, and team flag pictures.


its been a long run, hope it goes well...
its a shame i didnt have enough time to get all 8 ships in the top 5,
and that we didnt get to test high ranks...

It's time for the Public Release!

[Mjollnir]

I am pretty sure that the leveling rate will be too slow after the multiplier is gone. Most of the fun in the game comes from leveling. That's why it becomes increasingly boring at high levels, when you have nothing to look forward to.
It will probably be a more balanced rate at the low levels but I think it will still be too slow. I guess we'll see about that.

[Pressure Drop]

qan I disagree with what your saying despite how nicely you put it. I don’t deny that some people enjoy distension and I could be wrong, these are only my views and in these scenarios there is no clear cut answers. I personally believe that the zone would last longer if minor tweaks where made to pub and marketed at communities only getting onto the internet on budget pc’s, thusly more people would have fun for longer. you believe that distension could gain interest in the zone making the whole zone better and even if it turns out that it is detrimental to the zone at least the people playing it had fun and the zone is going to die anyhow.


To be honest when dugwler started this project I thought at least a new player is showing interest and enthusiasm in the game even if it’s in a misdirected way. I did not realise it was an old coder coming back because he had little interest in the game or people but missed the coding …

Ultimately I now question how altruistic this project was and how much of it was to entertain yourself as the Beta lasted a LONG while and drained one of the most important resources we have left – active players …

There are a lot of staffers that do it for the wrong reasons, rather than purely serve the community, they do it for status and abuse their power. Perhaps coding for the sake of coding can be put in a similar ball park.

Setting up a bot to pm people shouldn’t have been allowed yet I guess this is why you had to sweet talk staff and finally rejoin as qan … further promoting the negative insular old boys club staff is (look at spiders post)

Personally I think everything should be done with a remote view “is this the best for TW” – I’m not against minor change but all for it, however do we need another subarena ?? is that the best thing for tw ?? in my eyes no … pub could be improved and many worthwhile suggestions go overlooked. Rather than spreading out our playerbase over many different games concentrate on uniting the ones we have left and hosting different events.

I’ve no preconceptions that this game will last forever, yet your rolling philosophical analogies seem to miss the point. (your aside is not valid – the vast majority of people grow up and believe in the gods they are taught – over a vast timeframe (lifetimes) these change and are eroded by larger social contacts and political influence ebbing and flowing with time. However for the individual they are as devote a believer in greek gods as they are jesus – some priests loose faith others are fervent) The same with games – look at chess for an example – I think it was invented in the 8th century and has been played ever since being changed here and there along the way and has changed little in present lifetimes other than in that now you can log into the internet and easily get a game of it.


I plan to stop playing this game when I stop having fun – unfortunately this is being exacerbated by the decisions and direction TW is going in, perhaps if TW gave me the power to recreate the game in my own image changing a sub arena with all the changes I’d like to see and after xx months of automatic pming ppl to test it out till I am happy with the balance that will reinvigorate me.:greedy:

anyhow i've said more than enough. I know you've put alot of effort into this and hopefully it will compliment the zone rather than conflict with it.

[roxxkatt]

pd, yet again you have reconfirmed your status as an idiot.


to anyone that bothered reading the above post:
qan wouldnt have wasted his time coding it if noone enjoyed playing it.
distension is an rpg, which takes TIME to play, and many people enjoy it.
if it is handled properly, it will not only attract ppl to the zone, but it will hold them there.

if it is handled properly.....
turns out, dist wasnt going to run as planned, 24/7, every day...
now its going to be hosted occasionally, MAYBE 24/7? <_<

[Aquatiq]

Everyone can have their own wacky theories, it means nothing. Attitude is 9/10 of failure, these people should be quitting the game by themselves rather than sticking around trying to make others feel like they're wasting their time.

[Pressure Drop]

Everyone can have their own wacky theories, it means nothing. Attitude is 9/10 of failure, these people should be quitting the game by themselves rather than sticking around trying to make others feel like they're wasting their time.

Fuck yea!

For having the audacity to give my own views and question what I think is best for this zone ,I should quit the game !

Top notch staffing aquatic

I hope you teach all the staff such tolerant attitudes, remember attitude is 9/10 ths ! we don’t have time for any who disagree or fail to fall in line !!

[Mjollnir]

Fuck yea!

For having the audacity to give my own views and question what I think is best for this zone ,I should quit the game !

Top notch staffing aquatic

I hope you teach all the staff such tolerant attitudes, remember attitude is 9/10 ths ! we don’t have time for any who disagree or fail to fall in line !!

There is a reason people are bashing your post. It was negative and didn't have any valid points. Distension has a lot of potential and it is the only thing some of the older players enjoy in Trench Wars anymore. Personally, I might still play twd and maybe even other things, if it wasn't for the resolution cap. In Distension there is no such thing and that only adds to it's perks. The pub was always boring and most of the hosted arenas get old really fast. Having a new, totally different kind of game in Trench Wars will only be a positive thing and there is no way the zone will lose people because of it.

[meddi]

So about this distension thing: what is going on?

I have no interest in reading through this drama-filled BS. Someone summarize important news regarding the "public release" and the times it is currently being run (if applicable?)