currently working on an initial website / user service.

Users must register on trekwar.org and get a username/password in order to play the game, or to host a game.

Connecting to a game
trekwar.org will have a list of servers to choose from, you select a server to join, connect to it and authenticate with your trekwar.org username/password.
The trekwar client and the trekwar.org website will both have a list of active games you are currently playing.

Hosting a game
Log into trekwar.org and you will see your users secret API key (a long random code), copy this code and paste it when starting the server and creating a new game.
Your trekwar.org user is now the owner of this game.
The server will then notify the trekwar.org website that a new server is open (unless it's a private game), and start up allowing users to connect.

small games (private or public)
Can be set to have the "end turn button" enabled, if all connected players click it the next turn starts immediately.
The owner of this game can pause it for any period (allowing small groups of players to take breaks, or play across several days without anyone gaining an advantage).
Any user who connects to the server can join the game, unless the server has a password set, in which case you enter the server password once, when joining the game).

big games (public)
When making a new game you will be able to set a date for the game to start, and set how many players of each faction can join. The first turn of the game will be very long and not complete until the specified date. Players can join the server during this time so that the number of slots fill up before the game actually starts.
Also players can join a running game if they do so during the first X turns (optional).

official games
Will be created automatically and manually and will run on the trekwar.org server. When playing here you will get points, stats, achievements and happy feelings.



Maybe a limited version of this system will be up for the next alpha test and used for authentication (you will need to have a trekwar.org account when joining the alpha server).

Looking good there- I like the idea of having different options available for 'non-official' servers. That gives players with differing time constraints to be able to play at their own pace. The automation side of it still enables them to keep up to some degree as well, so it's the best of both worlds there.

Rather off topic now, but I just thought of something. It's probably pretty advanced at this point, however... Once the standards have been ironed out, and play proceeds, we can assume that once a personal game plan is established, it's pretty straightforward playing it out. That is, until the element of team play comes into being. I'm assuming that all members of the same faction will either abide to a preset number of goals, as well as expectations of team play, or simply play solo. (At this point, this is just a general idea, staying well away from details). I'm just thinking that in terms of server goals, those kinds of factors are much easier to manage if it's coded into the game, rather than the extraordinary task of personal intervention management. (I hope you see what I mean). Along those same lines, the random element is also a way to keep things interesting and challenging. For example, a supernova blocks travel in a sector, or random ion storms, or allies suddenly back out of an agreement, with some consequences, NPC activity, that kind of thing.

I'm just thinking if it's easier to set a foundation for these kinds of factors now, it would save a lot of trouble later on when it would be harder to integrate.

Anyway, I'm probably putting the cart WAY ahead of the horse here, but I'll throw it out there anyway

Some more info on TrekwarOnline, which will be a central server that does authentication and handle user registration/management.

http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Devblog-02082012

Now possible to register accounts in TrekwarOnline (but it's not online yet).



Next up is to make the authorization service described in my last post, and then make the trekwar server use it

Looking good!!

Now down to 17 work hours left until Alpha 2 (0.4.5).

0.4.5 will not use online authentication (Trekwar Online), but users will be created manually by me for each server (ugh..) Fortunately this will be the last time I do this horrible manual job as 0.4.6 will solely be focused on Trekwar Online integration.


For future development I've decided that each development cycle should have around 25 hours of work. The current development cycle was over 100 hours. Shorter cycles means more frequent releases, quicker bug fixes and more accurate time estimates.

As a result the number of contexts (versions / releases) in the Todo list has increased, and the work needed for the next 13 versions of the game has been specified:

http://www.toodledo.com/tasks/public.ph ... 2f960d2cd4

Not all contexts/versions will be released, but the following releases of the game will be made:
0.4.5 will be released to the alpha testers.
0.4.7 will be released to the alpha testers, mainly to test the Trekwar Online system
0.5.0 will be released to the beta testers + alpha testers for full scale beta testing.
0.5.2 will be released to beta+alpha testers to test out the starbase expansion
0.6.0 will be released to everyone

Some comments, knowing that the wiki is a WiP/outdated/etc., and that a lot is still not implemented.


Planet types:

Aren't Barren planets a bit too good? 6 slots, 2 bil pop, and 3 special structures (Wind Turbines, Mining Colony, Particle Fountain). Only their growth rate is low, but still it is higher than Desert and Arctic.

Volcanic planets are better than Desert planets - except for one slot, but their special building produces more energy. Is this intentional?

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Planet specific buildings:

Oceanic planets have 2 slots, and their special structure is the Aquatic Farm. Should the AF use up one of the slots? Meaning, are the slots supposed to represent land, in which case there could be an "aquatic" slot for the AF?

On the same line of thought, could there be an "orbital" slot for the Gas Giants where only the Hydrogen Extractor could be built on? (they currently have zero slots)

Maybe these planet specific buildings should have a special slot where they're built, therefore not occupying (normal) slots?

The wiki says you can only build one of each planet specific building per system, is that true? If you have 2 Jungle planets in a system, you can only build one Wildlife Preserve?

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Special buildings:

You can only build one Weather Modification Grid per system.
In any planet type? Including a Barren one? (are Barren planets the no- or thin-atmosphere variety?)
Will it affect all the Farms in the system, and increase the system's global growth rate? Or is it local only?

Will the Ore Refinery be required to use ore to speed up construction? If so, will it have an unlimited refinement potential, that is, if you want to use 2000 ore it will refine 2000 ore that turn? (any other way would probably require 2 seperate stockpiles for ore)

Same thing for the Deuterium Plant, is it required for refueling fleets in the system? Can it process an unlimited amount of deuterium?

A bit confusing, the report, though I'm sure it's just a first pass. Some comments:
6 of the 8 torps kill 217.5 pop, the other 2 only 60? It doesn't seem to be related to the planet being bombarded (which have different pops), because the 1st hit is to the one with the lower pop (for 217.5) as are the last two (for 60).
Destroyed troops should probably be rounded (14.5 sounds weird).
Is 8000 billion the system's total pop, or do both planets have the same max pop?
The destroyed structure on planet 2, which one is planet 2, the one with the lower or higher pop? It's not clear where the damage is being applied.
The total pop killed, there's some rounding there - should be 1425, if you want to nitpick

the ship has 6 good torpedo launchers, and 2 level 1 torpedo launchers (didn't have enough power for 8 good launchers)
the level 1 torpedo launchers do less damage.

The troops are rounded down, 14.5 is just show in the debug info

all the pop. numbers are in millions. so Terran planets currently have a max population of 8000 million, or 8 billion if you wish.

Planets have an id (1-X) in each system, it's not clear from that debug log alone where the structure was destroyed.

it's 1422 and not 1425, because rounding down happens individually per planet that is attacked. But I do <3 nitpicking

Also, uploading a webapp to tomcat when you have virtual hosts set up is driving me INSANE!!!! <-- why trekwar.org has been down for over an hour

yes it was a single ship, but very high tech and made to only have torpedo launchers (so it had no phasers, armor, shields, sensors, and it was slow and had a short range).

The starsystem had NO bunkers or other defenses. By adding a bunker on every planet that ship actually only hits for around 4 million pop damage on each planet. So this would likely
never happen in a real game.

So it would take a long time for it to do lots of damage (it would kill off morale which means no pop growth) and destroy structures until it eventually hits a bunker and then starts doing more population damage.

I'll probably have to fine tune it after the next alpha test anyway.

in other news:
Just finished orbital bombardment, and there is only 7.5 work hours left until next alpha.
I also updated the trekwar.org website. The wiki is not up yet, but I'll try and get it back up during next weekend.

Minor update:

Just finished a very old issue about how the client handles downloading of game data from server. This seems to be working perfectly now, especially when server is taking a long time executing a turn (server was forced to to it slowly, just for testing, it usually just takes less than 1/20th of a second).
Also the client should never download the game data twice in a row, and never skip downloading it for an entire turn.

basically all that is left now before I start the second alpha test is for me to check out a few issues with the space combat resolver, to make sure lots of different ship designs and scenarios all work as intended.

Workhours left: 4 hours

hey klogd,
nice to see another botf style game in the works and respect for keeping it up!
You've done quite some on it already as I see.

Watching the screens I first thought that's maybe C++ and SDL like QuasarDonkey on AFC keeps using, but I read you use Java. Another gap closed in botf2 development technics.
What gui or libraries you use? Swing? SWT?

Looking forward to some new screenshots with next alpha. For a short test I'd be around also, just not too long as my time is limited.
You should make a post on about your project to get some more people taking notice!
From what I see gameplay differs from other projects in certain aspects, that's great. Not my preferance probably, but I wish you good progress with it and when you make it well playable and work out it's characteristics, I'm sure it'll find it's fanbase.

A couple quick comments:
The planet background in the lower panel kind of makes stats hard to read.
I like the shipyard overlay in the starmap.
In the invasion screen, the defender has higher strength than the attacker, though he doesn't have any troops; the invader has 100% chance of winning.

Keep up the good work.

The screenshots look promising! Wonder how it plays and am eager to try.
Do you have any special in mind for testing, plan a multiplayer match or somthing?

Right off I can say I'm very sceptical to building up systems with set slots. Never liked it in any game as it makes lots of work finetuning each system indiviually plus planning buildup while the game rather is focussed on galactic gameplay. Specially when you name it a war game which implies 'action'.
And it just isn't logic to be limited by slots on a planet when you even can build on top another.

Some profiles or sliders for configuring system development easily would be great I think and maybe use limited slots for special buildings instead.
Would need further thought to get a well solution with not breaking too much of current code ofc.

But don't care too much if it just works the way you want.

What I'm mostly unsure about is the number of planets per system, too many perhaps. For two reasons mostly.

Too many slots - you have to build loads of factories and stuff, which doesn't seem very attractive and feels somewhat boring (one of the screenshots kind of shows this), and with many systems it might be too much MM to be fun (can you deal with all systems in the time it takes a turn to pass?).

System diversity might suffer - most systems might have at least one of each of the planet types, somewhat diluting the value of special buildings.


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BTW, bunkers only reduce civilian damage, right? And they're one per system, right?

Update
Alpha testing will begin on the 28th or 29th this month. I would have it next weekend but I'm going to wales for a couple of days.
I'll send out e-mails to everyone on the alpha list a couple of days before it starts.
Also if you can't make it that weekend, I'll try and also have a couple of games during the following week, maybe try out a game or two with longer turn speeds.

Until then I'll be working on getting a ship combat simulator up and running, to help with balancing and let people experiment with building ships.
Hopefully this would be ready before alpha starts in 2 weeks.