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Beta 6 Milestone 1 is online

5 July 2010, 6:31 am Sticky post

After quite a few mishaps, and a lot of real-life related delay, I am happy to announce that the first milestone to Beta 6 is finally ready.

As was said in the initial description, this release is not anything like Beta 6 should be in terms of game or interface. It is meant to be a test of the system’s architecture. As Tim’s preview pointed out, a few things have changed – some in the right direction, some … not.

The release can be found at http://b6m.legacyworlds.com ; it is open for registration as of now. The game itself will start on July, the 15th.

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Milestone 2 – Battle system

29 July 2010, 9:20 pm

While I had considered posting about fleet strategies and tactics, I thought it would be more appropriate to start from the beginning – the battle system itself.

There are two major computations performed by the battle system. First, space combat is computed. Once this part is over, and provided there are still attacking ships in orbit, computations regarding ground combat are performed. Once these two main chunks have been computed, experience points are attributed.

This posts attempts to explain what the various steps of each computation are and how they work, generally speaking.

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Milestone 2 – Weapons and defences

27 July 2010, 5:21 pm

I am currently working on designing the M2 database. While quite a lot of the basic structure stays, there are many changes, especially as far as fleets and battles are concerned.

In order to make sure that the fleet-related information is complete, the most crucial component is the battle system. It affects a few things on planets, and has far-reaching consequences on the whole ship design and fleet management system.

The most basic types of information handled by the battle system are the definitions of weapons and their countermeasures. The basic principle – three types of weapons vs. three types of countermeasures – has been described many times. This time I needed to come up with the details.

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Beta 6 Milestone 1 – Tips

19 July 2010, 6:57 pm

These tips were sent through game-wise administrative messages during the first week of the M1 game. I’m reposting them here for those who missed them.

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Towards Milestones 2 and 3

13 July 2010, 12:00 pm

The initial milestones post described milestone 2 as being oriented towards planet management and milestone 3 as introducing the new ships (in addition to the research system). Because the delay between milestones will be much higher than initially announced, a few changes need to be made.

Milestone 1 is definitely not a good game, in that there are no incentives for anyone to actually fight (which was also true of Beta 5, with the exception of corruption which never really worked as anticipated). If the next step had been planet management, as was initially announced, it would have made it even worse, as the relatively heavy Beta 6 rules on this point would have added complexity, but no incentive, and no reason to spend money on anything other than just “breeding planets”.

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Beta 6 Milestone 1 – Software architecture

11 July 2010, 12:00 pm

I have stated numerous times that one of the primary goals of Milestone 1 was to have a clean basis for future development. This post – which will probably interest only a minority of people – is a brief overview of the design and technical choices that were made.

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Beta 6 Milestone 1 – Administration Interface

9 July 2010, 12:00 pm

With Beta 6 being a complete rewrite of the game, it presented an opportunity to include many features that were missing in earlier versions of the game such as administration tools. Milestone 1 has an incredibly detailed administration interface with a large array of options to control almost every aspect of the game. Depending on their privilege level, administrators have many powerful tools to ensure that the game runs properly, bugs are taken care of and rule-breaking is not left unpunished.

The administrative overview page for a superuser.

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Beta 6 Milestone 1 – Game and interface

7 July 2010, 12:00 pm

The game itself really wasn’t the point of this release; neither was the user interface. However, since they are of interest to just about everyone who wants to play it, giving a little more information about it seemed appropriate. This is especially important for Beta 5 players, as a few things might surprise them – to say the least. Everything that really differs will be noted using a cursive font.

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Milestone 1 delayed :(

22 May 2010, 5:49 pm

Hey guys.

It would appear that the schedule I gave for milestones was a bit too enthusiastic.

As you know, LWB6 is a complete rewrite of the game. In a different language. And therefore, using different libraries, some of them chosen completely at “random” (that is, based purely on API cleanliness).

Two weeks ago I noticed that, despite the fact that everything I had actually worked, I was having major performance problems. This prompted a rewrite of 75% of the code I already had.

I have rewritten most of the code already, but it is not really “clean” code, needs additional testing, and more commenting. In addition, some parts which used to work no longer do.

In addition to the above, I am currently (1) working on a government-funded contract, (2) trying to turn my job experience into a diploma and (3) buying a house. While all of these are important (to me, anyway), I’m afraid they aren’t compatible with heavy LWB6 development work.

Because I want to make sure that B6 development starts on a clean basis, Milestone 1 is delayed until July, the 15th. In addition, other milestone releases will also be delayed – probably with a 6-month release interval, but I need to think about it some more. I will post the new schedule when M1 is released.

Please accept my most sincere apologies.

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Contribution credits in Beta 6

11 March 2010, 8:37 am

I’ve been asked about contribution credits and how they are going to work in Beta 6 a few times on IRC, therefore it seems like a good idea to write a post about this. It is written in the style of a FAQ, because it’s easier.

Will there be contribution credits in Beta 6?

Obviously, yes, or I would not be posting about them. However, they will not be used simply by viewing the pages as they were in Beta 5.

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