Better in-game communication...

[bvanevery]

I think a game binary that actually integrates messaging and AAR writing, might be a market opportunity for 4X games.  Compared to the typical dev trend of "we'll outsource to Discord".  But, the only person who's going to write that forum integrated 4X game, is me.  And I know very well, all the kinds of work that are needed, that aren't that.  Thing is though, I actually have the modding and AAR background to understand these issues well.

[bvanevery]

Well gosh, I'm going to necro a thread from 21 months ago!  Gotta be intrigued by anything that resembles one of my last community posts.  Yeah, uh, in-game communication.  I've drifted in the Discord wasteland for awhile. The only serious anchor for me was Will To Power's development Discord.

Also was seen around Emperor of the Fading Suns' Discord some, enough to file some bug reports and ask pointy questions about the game.  But I haven't much stuck with it, because I think they're historically more of a multiplayer community.  Various aspects of their game design probably work decently for multiplayer, and not so much for single player.  They have a modding scene, but none of it allows one such as myself, to improve the competence of the AI.  Not with the kinds of low hanging fruit data driven approaches I used on SMACX AI Growth mod.

I'm likely playing my last game of EotFS now, as there's a Steam sale ending July 10th.  Galactic Civilizations IV beckons.  I've only beaten EotFS once, as it's such a sprawl of a game.  At least I did it.  There's a possibility I may beat it "more efficiently" before the 10th, but it may not happen.  If it doesn't, I've already let it go.

Could you imagine playing SMAC and only beating it once??  I mean, c'mon!  Not because of anything being hard, but because of things being waaaaaay too long.  Imagine playing on 40 Small sized SMAC maps.  That's what EotFS is.

So, I still don't think much of Discord.  But I'm also aware that old school web forums, although functional, definitely smell dated.  And then as we know, there's the infrastructure reliability problem, which tempts one to outsource the job to a more stable entity.

I'm not sure what the answer is here.  I've taken stabs at researching "better forum software" from time to time, but last time around, I did not settle on anything.  I was disappointed to learn that the Python Software Foundation does not use a Python based solution to manage their forum.  They use Ruby-based Discourse, not to be confused with Discord.  Python, I might have found some development excuses to make use of it, but Ruby only has the forum software use IMO.

[Buster's Uncle]

Why don't we split off the last two posts and make it a thread in TOE or Modding?  They're off-topic for this thread, but the idea of modding SMACX for enhanced communication is a VERY interesting one.  How about better MP in general?  We can get into it there, if you're game.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okydoke - not worth waiting and I hope the thread surgery does not offend.

I love the basic idea - like I said above, it implies something w/ better MP that has live IRC-ish chat, and just as well make everything more intuitive and less work to set up a game and just more reliable while at it.

[bvanevery]

This thread was originally in the Council Room?  No idea why that would be.  And I can't remember where everything was.  In the past 2 days, I've been through a whirlwind of catching up on posts from the Great Forum Outage.  Necroing anything where I was the last person to post before the forum died, lol.

For actual SMAC implementation I'm guessing that an open source reimplementation would be a prereq.  Such as the https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac project.  But speaking for me personally, I regard such projects in strictly wait-and-see mode.  Like if it gets to the point that a multiplayer SMAC community is actually using it, then you see if people like the idea of adding communications features.

There is a strategic risk of the GLSMAC project having a rather different code base and method of operation from the binary hacked mods.  Lots of AI and game design work has been done by those.  Implementors may not be eager to port things over or try to unify efforts.  Will To Power, after all, lives downstream of Thinker.  So they are already sharing resources and workflow and are not unduly burdened.  Personal project leadership identity is also a thing; it's not a given that anyone wants to play second fiddle to someone else's style of cooking.

But multiplayer improvements is probably a prize to be carved out by someone.  I haven't paid attention to whether Thinker or WTP pursues it.  A cursory reading of the GLSMAC page indicates they intend to pursue it.  They talk about network stuff and incompatibility with standard GOG binaries.

As for integration with a web forum, one needs a stable web forum software stack to do that.  Something that has been updated to the latest bugfixed open source releases.  I have no idea what that means with regards to AC2, as sometimes the newest versions of something aren't the best versions.  Sometimes there are uproars about devs going in wrong directions, and a chunk of a community deliberately holds on to older releases.  Notably, the Python 2.x vs. 3.x schism went on for ~12 years.  But anyways I imagine you'll figure all that out as you do your web server migration.  I'm just saying, it's in your best interest to land on whatever current version offers the best ongoing support and bugfixing, so that you're gaining from that work.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, you posted in Building A Community, obviously thinking on those very lines.



Well, you're about ultimately Creating Your Own Thing on the SMACX model, of course.  No financial future in modding AC itself, w/ the unlikely hope of impressing someone at Firaxis/in the industry and getting a job offer.  -Not your aim to begin with, you having been there done that, wanting independence.

SO - I have to ask; what have you done on the lines of Your Own Thing beyond thinking about it?  -Indispensable work, mind you, but anything else?