2d spaceship gamer

What's the status, doc?

Or just remove brick and burst from shark. It is a scout/spy, not a high-weapons ship.

Why should base 1 stay? It sucks!

?listnewb is just an easter egg I think, shows the zone "newbs" ?listmod shows all moderators+ (including hosts) in zone, self explanatory

To get on brickwarp, you need to brickwarp someone. To get on lagcoma, you need to lag so bad that your connection gets in a coma.

Maybe the simplest solution would be to give players more starting money? Instead of 1k give them 5k (also raise ?give limit to 5k, so it can't be abused).

Because Sharp is an abuser What's an infiltrator?

In general I'd tend to agree -- it's not that base 3 and 5 (and to an extent 7) are so good, its that the rest suck bawls. Although I have a problem with 3 -- the good bomblines are too close to start. It makes it unfair for attackers, they can't get a good grip. I think base 5 is better -- the bomblines are well spread throughout, defenders can defend the midbase well, while attackers can conquer the early sectors more easily. 7 sucks for most part but has a very strong final bombline (just near FR), which I think is the way it should be. The perfect base would be a combo of 5 and 7 -- easy to attack the first 1/4, and then gradually get harder and harder, and the final stretch is the hardest to attack and easiest to defend. In other words, exact opposite of 3, where only the first 1/4 are hard to attack and rest is easy. That way, we'd actually encourage good baseplay -- the equilibrium will be midbase, and for both sides its harder as they progress -- really hard for attackers to completely get to FR, and also really hard for defenders to completely kick attackers out of base.

That works in high school because it's easy, but when you get further along in college you get absolutely wrecked if you procrastinate. Not so sure about that... I'm in college (end of 2nd year by now), a huge and hopeless procrastinator, and still have over 3.9 GPA. That doesn't mean I'm not a hardworker, or not paying attention -- to the contrary, I listen very carefully to lectures, read the material, etc, and have a higher ap!@#$%^&*ude for the subject (Comp Sci) then vast majority of people in my class. That being said, when it comes to do a major term project, I procrastinate, and just can't do anything about it. I seem to have a magical knack feeling about the final red line when it comes. That is, I know exactly the day (sometimes hour) when I know I have to start working NOW or it's not getting done on time. Then, I can pump out a few 16-hour workdays if nessecary, and finish it off, usually the night before it's due. I know it's a horrible work habit, and should !@#$%^&* well better change by the time I enter the workplace. I also know I may miss that red point sometime and completely screw my term project. But for now, this works for me, and I'm still getting A's on those projects. In Canada, if they give you a $100 fine for having marijuana (!@#$%^&*uming it's a personal amount, not big enough to be considered a dealer), you can appeal the sentence for being too harsh. Usually they just take it away and leave you alone (I bet they smoke it themselves later though).

That's what spider or terr is for.

If it is technically possible, give shark unique ability to see neut and enemy flags on radar. This should take up one or two sensor slots and NOT be combinable with the extended sensors upgrade. That would make it the scout ship of choice to look for those hidden neut flags. In unrelated news, I think antiwarp should block ALL warps, and that means also blocking token/p!@#$%^&* travel that gets in its range. That would allow countering the flag warp abuse.

This essay is not about 17th in particular. I'm sure there are other reasons why this, as any other zone, gradually lose their population . But at least one serious is the overzealousness of those who create the zone to make the "perfect zone", as they see it. Many admins fail to realize what makes their zone popular. What makes Continuum, in the first place, popular. Their fail to realize the difference between a small, old game like Continuum with a small dedicated core, and a big new releaze like Halo 2. Some of the most common techniques that end up backfiring: - "Balance at all cost" principle - Nerfing ships and other settings - Overlistening to whiners - Trying to imitate other games - Overemphasize teamwork, dynamics, and any other "hot idea" - Overemphasize graphics and other media - Change for the sake of change Subspace is not about the ultimate balance or ultimate teamwork. It's about having fun. It's about preserving it's charm and preserving the nostalgic spirit that keeps veterans here and not sends them off elsewhere. BALANCE/NERFING/WHINERS: Sometimes, your zone is unbalanced in one way or anothers. THAT'S FINE. No need to change it just for the sake of balancing it. You may lose more than you gain. A good analogy for 17th was, long time ago, the removing of the ICBM weasel and replacing it with a more traditional ship. I'm sure you did it because people were complaing "omgwtfbbq get rid of that stupid wizzel with cloak and 1-hit kill". So you did. But by doing so, you ruined the fun for others, not just those who liked the weasel, but the community in general who were used to the weasel the way it is, who, while sometimes not realizing it, were enjoying the challenge and uncertainty the weasel brought. Sure, they often cursed it, and sometimes even whined about it, but once removed, people suddenly lost their "favorite enemy", and felt a lot of the point about the zone gameplay was lost. I roll my eyes when I see Trench Wars following suit now with nerfing the Lev. They will step in the same beartrap. They may please a few whiners, but those who whine will tend to whine anyways, they'll just find something else to whine about, while a large community of those who enjoyed LT-ing, or hunting LT's, will lose a challenge, and gameplay will become boring for them. IMITATING OTHER GAMES: Many zone admins fall for the carrot of "modernizing" Continuum to catch up with newer games. THAT DOES NOT WORK. I repeat, THAT DOES NOT WORK. People do NOT play Continuum because they want the hottest graphics, sounds, teamplay elements. It does not matter how much you modernize Continuum, how much you'll invest in making new graphics. Guess what, the graphics are going to suck no matter how much you modernize them. And that's fine! Those who play Continuum do not give a !@#$%^&* about the crappy graphics or the decades-old concept of a 2d spaceship game (see my name). If they did, they would not be playing Continuum, and no amount of "modernization" would bring them back. People play it because they like it the way it is. There will not be many players who like it this way, but your changes will not bring in fresh blood. All they will do is alienate existing veterans. You may think its fancy to have supercool 3d graphics. But, apart from the fact that 99% of those graphics are poorly done and look stupid, that's not what people play for. 3d gamers will NOT suddenly pick up Continuum because you changed 2d sprites to 3d sprites. They'll stick with Unreal Tournament and Halo 2. You may think its fancy to make the game have an "uber team spirit", but you never realized many players LIKE milking with flags, duelling, spawnkilling, and doing other "lame" stuff. Take that away, and people quit, period. Either to another zone, or from SS altogether. And no, you will NOT get a replacement. Those who want the ultimate tactical teamwork game will go play Battlefield 2 or the like, not Continuum. Do NOT try to compete with Halo 2, Unreal Tournament, or Conter-Strike. You'll fail. Miserably. Stick with what works, with what makes Continuum unique. Let players play the way they want to play, not the way you want them to play. If the majority of people like mindless spawnkilling, or flag fraying, do NOT stamp that out because you find that lame. Sometimes allowing people to be lame is the best thing you can do, because laming is do !@#$%^&* fun! CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE: If your zone has been around long, and had a stable (even if small) population, that means players like it the way it is. It doesn't matter if YOU think your new upgrade is so friggin cool and will make the zone much better. Think about whether your players will agree with you. For most part, they don't. If they stay at the zone, is because that's how they are used to play. It doesn't matter if you think the gameplay is unbalanced. It doesn't matter if you think the map sucks. Your players' presense is the ultimate seal of approval that the zone works the way it is. Sometimes the best way to preserve a zone's popularity is just don't screw with it. Change is not always good. If it's not broken, don't fix it, as simple as that. --- Of course, I realize that's not the only reason, and sometimes not the most important one, as to why zones die out. Sometimes it's about the zone staff giving up on maintaining the zone or keeping players interested by hosting events and such. Sometimes players leave for another zone. There are many reasons. But very often I see zones start to decline because of admins deciding they want to bring about change that simply wasn't called for. One thing to always remember: Vast majority of Continuum players are veterans. The turnout rate is very low, not many new people come, and not many old people leave. But if your changes cause old players to leave, it will be VERY difficult for you to find replacement. Something to think about.

!buy Capslock Capslock 100000$ 10000 exp Allows you to type in ALL CAPS.

I left you a PM Bak, please take a look.

Turreting is the quickest way for noobs to get money. You only need one reasonably experienced player, and that is the driver. With an avarge driver you may get 10-20k per run, a good driver will get you well over 100k. Other team members don't need lots of exp, they just have not to be idiots and not to spam themselves thin red, so they can survive the occasional bomb.

SSC

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3185/bdaymineswr3.jpg

I got it running (as in launching the window), but I still can't connect to zones. I tried chatnet, it works fine, I can connect and chat to numerous zones, but connecting to those sames zones with the casino bot (same IP/port, username/p!@#$%^&*) results in the same error message as I posted above. Also, why does it say that it can't find chatnet.conf and PlayerData.xml?

I left a reply on your Casino bot topic in the HS forums. Can you take a look please.

Tried chatbot. I don't have a prob with VIP (using it with ASSS server that doesn't need one), but it is not a bot, it's a client. A bot is programmable, a client is not. I need to be able to autmatically read text, make some decisions based on that text, and send text out.

You're missing the point. A living, breathing human player can connect to any zone without being on VIP, right? And it can see all text without any encryption on his end, because that encryption is handled by the Continuum client. I do NOT want to bypass the client. I want to have something running ON TOP of the client. For example, I have access to the Continuum chat window available on the alt+tab mode to every player. Now, imagine, that I write a COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT program that looks at the final, decrypted chat from that window, copies it, and parses the chat to tell commands apart. I repeat, I do NOT want to intercept encrypted packets half-way, I want to grab the final output given to actual human players in that window. The same program would, after processing the text it got and making all needed decisions, PASTE the text back into the window and emulate the Enter key to enter the text. Why should that be, in principle, not possible?

Found a bug which allows betting less-than-minimum amounts. Whenever you place a bet on a game, the bot does a check to make sure it is within the bet limit. However, in a separate process, if you place a bet larger than your current balance, it would then lower it to your existing balance, but WITHOUT checking whether the newly-lowered amount is also above the minimum. Took a look at source code... The "if (money < MIN_BET || money > MAX_BET)" condition check should be executed after the "if (money > ppd.credits)", not before, or re-executed after. ---- In other news... I downloaded your bot. I created a java project and included your .java files in it, then compiled the project. It compiles fine, however, it does not produce any binary files, just a lot of .class files. I'm not sure how to execute those. I tried running "java Casino" from my console, when at the project directory, and it didn't work. I was able to execute the project from within my java IDE (didn't manage to find the steps it took so I can re-run it outside of the IDE). Besides, I then encountered the following errors: I <chatnet> Loading v.0.3.9 E <config> chatnet.conf (The system cannot find the file specified) Error loading: java.io.FileNotFoundException: PlayerData.xml (The system cannot find the file specified) WARNING: Connection timed out: connect (1TCP) Reconnecting in 5 seconds... (Those messages then just keep looping). The GUI does load, and says "type ?exit to exit", but typing anything in it doesn't do anything, and the bot is not showing up in HS or any other zone I try to run it in. Please help.

Why mod+ not possible? If the bot behaves strictly as a player, then it should not be so, if only because the server should have NO way to tell a bot from a player. If a player can enter a zone and use chat, then why can't a bot do the same? It should only use the same interfaces that a player uses. If there are no better ways, it could scrape the chat by reading the same chat window the player reads, then parse it; and simulate keyentries to send outgoing chat, just like a player would press the keys.

I was wondering if there are any bots that can be run from client-side, not server-side. That is, they would log in a zone just like players would, and the owner can also be a player. I've seen some players have some impressive bots that fight, fly around, etc. But while getting my hands on one of those would be cool, I'd be content with a simple chatbot that can pub/pm messages. Open source or other programmable ability would be great. I've seen joke bots, casino bots, mailbox bots, etc, but never figured out who owns them and how can I get one. Such a bot should not require mod+ privileges, and should not be able to do anything a regular player can't. BTW, please don't start any of that rules stuff... I'm perfectly aware that many zones don't like players running bots, and have no intention running it in those zones... Or any SSC zone for that matter.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7708/rebootsw6.jpg