ExplodyThingy Posted October 8, 2008 Report Posted October 8, 2008 Hey SS Nerds, So I disappeared for a long time, and by now I can only presume to have passed from midlevel Subspace developer to forum troll to vague recollection of a bygone era. For some reason I needed to write a bot, and figured I could salvage out one of my old Subspace bots, sASSS of which they were; turns out pretty much everything about me has disappeared. Last I knew, SSI was an active biller, serving a bunch of off-SSC zones, yet now even ssihosting.com has lapsed, and I'm pretty sure 1stStrike has split. So I figured I'd delve back into the community area to see it had traveled around, even in name alone, but alas it has not. Surprisingly, I also remember my password. Normally I would simply retreat in failure and Google out some code to use like I did when I wrote those cores in the beginning, but I just couldn't help myself. Figuring you guys would like some feedback of someone who attempted to reenter the community, albeit briefly, and the roadblocks encountered, I wrote up this little essay of sorts, to explain why Subspace / Continuum seems to be viable and sustainable, yet starving itself for newbies, from a periphery perspective. I haven't even looked at the game yet, only nosed around in the web space. Honestly, it comes down to one thing: the introductory websites. SSForums looks alive and kicking, and I'm glad to see that. It's fantastic to see that the forums are populated and talkative, with only a couple subforums dating back too far. Kick!@#$%^&*. GetContinuum.com looks awesome. You guys have done a fantastic job, the sites look fresh, updated, and sharp. SSDL looks a little old and a touch intimidating, and that's where a bunch of download sites and google hits take you. The functionality seems to be there, so a minor facelift would do the trick. Try updating your copyright from 2006. The banner that carries between ssf, ssdl, and ssc carries a look of officiality, and you guys look unified. SSCentral.com gives no indication of when you will resurrect. I have no idea when PoLiX last updated that page; though I did read that article he posted on it, and if he holds true to his word, great, fantastic, job done. Also major props to PoLiX for not doing what used to happen all the !@#$%^&* time, whenever anyone got bored with a site or it started to wane, they'd shut it down only to revive it again under a new name and operator. Either way, I have no idea what's happening to that page or any sort of time frame. When you guys go live, keep a news post current. Never let anything more than 4 or 5 months old be on your front page, and never let your newest post be over a month old. Even if it's just a worthless post about your travel adventures or a fix on source of the website, it still looks like you guys are an active community to the casual browser. Hyperspace's website is full of win, and it looks like Dr. Brain's brainchild of years ago has reached fruition. Kudos, you worked really hard on that. Barring these sites, there are still some that are suspended in time. SSQDB, at quotes,sscentral.com still has me as an Admin. Really? The two most recent posts on the front page are from 2006 and 2007. Looks defunct. sscx.net and ssihosting.com: not much needs to be said about them, kill any reference to them and pretend they never happened. 17thparallel.com hasn't had a news post since July 2006. As far as I can tell, my ancient-!@#$%^&* plugin for their rumble event still runs and is logging to the 2005 archive, and probably hasn't been touched since Vile Requiem vanished into the ether. forums.minegoboom.com still looks alive, even if shanky.com and minegoboom.com do nothing worthwhile. sshq.net and ss-network.net make the game look defunct. If MMaverick could simply point them over to something worthwhile, like SSCentral, that would help lots. Subspace's main hurdle is its client-side software. It's good, workable, and flexible, even though it runs atop a protocol over a decade old. Not too much you can do about that though. When I disappeared, I'm pretty sure we were on version .39. I see it's been pushed to .40 already. Excluding kidnapping, I'm pretty sure PriitK doesn't really care too much about the client, and it will be very hard to find someone to write a new client for an old game. So what to do about the various fragmentation between the zones and their operators and their websites: fake it. Pretend you get along and all exist as this huge multi-thousand player community, link share, carry common icons on websites, and keep news fresh if not relevant. Abandon those links to defunct sites, and by that I mean stop linking to explody.ssihosting.com et. al., they don't exist anymore. Up-sell the number of people playing, make it look bigger than it really is. Excluding a few lump domains and a lackluster development process on the client, the future looks bright. There is a brand new, top-of-the-line server out there by Grelminar. From the looks of it, Cypher has a new biller as well. Got a couple of chat clients, though I suggest putting something on in each of their respective forum threads that states explicitly what each piece of software does, as though I had no idea what it was. And yet one very important and easily reached demographic has been overlooked: Mac users. Here I sit, typing away in OSX without the slightest glimmer of hope to be able to talk to you folks in real time. Might I also suggest something viral? Get on Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, or any such place where trolls troll. HackADay might even link to you guys, there's very little left in this game that hasn't been hacked to death. Buy some advertising, or run an ad-exchange system on sscentral. Get indexed by Google, and if the google-bot crawls over sscentral today, you guys are pretty much screwed for people. Put something there, or get it up soon. Anyway, have fun gaming. SubSpace is still one of my favorite games because of the level of development. You could simply be a casual gamer, delve in and tinker with the protocol, write a bot, write a server, or admin a zone. You can experiment with packets in a real-world setting without fear of retribution because you can run and make your own server. Or you can be lazy and look up what others have already found. I still love it and wish more things were like this in the world. Enjoy your week.-ET.
JDS Posted October 8, 2008 Report Posted October 8, 2008 what the !@#$%^&*? i cant read all that but il trol lthis thread
PoLiX Posted October 8, 2008 Report Posted October 8, 2008 Just got done uploading everything last night. Plugging SSC and SSDL into SSF's user db. Lots of talk in the admin forum, will post more about it later.
»CypherJF Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 hey, explodythingy ... long time no see.
rootbear75 Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 hey, explodythingy ... long time no see.Yup. weird. most of the predictions have been a slow and painful death. your's is the only bright one i've seen. also, as for development, check out Subspace2
»Lynx Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 (edited) Continuum runs smoothly in Parallels, and I'm looking at Mac WINE to see about getting it running (almost) natively. I also agree on the websites, and I guess the only people who will write the same old boring posts to keep websites active are those who this thread is directed to: Trolls. It'd be nice to see some new faces around, though. -Lynx (As for Mac WINE, I've downloaded it, compiled it - and I'm tinkering. DirectX is a !@#$%^&*, though.) Edit: Bear with me though, I've only had this MacBook for two days Edited October 9, 2008 by Lynx
CRe Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 Continuum runs smoothly in Parallels, and I'm looking at Mac WINE to see about getting it running (almost) natively. I also agree on the websites, and I guess the only people who will write the same old boring posts to keep websites active are those who this thread is directed to: Trolls. It'd be nice to see some new faces around, though. -Lynx (As for Mac WINE, I've downloaded it, compiled it - and I'm tinkering. DirectX is a !@#$%^&*, though.) Edit: Bear with me though, I've only had this MacBook for two days Wooo Lynx to the rescue.
»Lynx Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 It's not exactly a swift movement: so far I've only got the installer running - but I've still got a lot of things to address. Hopefully some other people will get interested in some posts I make on the Wine website, but activity as it seems has got a little dry lately. Oh well, I'll hope for the best. Even if this doesn't work, it's easy to CTM in Parallels or even in any virtual machines. (I'll try not to think of these easy way outs, though. ) -Lynx
»D1st0rt Posted October 9, 2008 Report Posted October 9, 2008 Welcome back Splody! Maybe you can help go through some of the quotes and get these hyenas off my back. I would say we should hang out in-game sometime but you're on a mac (there are chat clients that will run on OSX by the way) and I don't think I've actually logged in since the end of August. We can probably figure something else out though
rootbear75 Posted October 10, 2008 Report Posted October 10, 2008 Welcome back Splody! Maybe you can help go through some of the quotes and get these hyenas off my back.you know if you took 5 minutes out of your day, you could knock them all off
L.C. Posted October 10, 2008 Report Posted October 10, 2008 Excluding a few lump domains and a lackluster development process on the client, the future looks bright. There is a brand new, top-of-the-line server out there by Grelminar. From the looks of it, Cypher has a new biller as well. Got a couple of chat clients, though I suggest putting something on in each of their respective forum threads that states explicitly what each piece of software does, as though I had no idea what it was.Don't forget Snrrrub's wares, including a brand new directory server and more; http://sharvil.nanavati.net/projects/subspace/. I agree with Explody pretty much in every respect. (I read it, unlike some people I bet )
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