Re: what about the future?
 

Squirrelloid should be ok. He's tenacious (in the same way that a pit bull prefers not to let go) but pretty much argues the point, not the person. But I'm glad Zeldor took a break from posting and I agree with you and WL about toning it down.

Re: what about the future?
 

We had an age thread once. I forget but I think the average came out around 30. I was surprised to find out at 50 I wasnt the oldest or even in the top 10.

@Squirrelloid
What I was trying to do was say something nice when I didnt feel like saying something nice, and qualifying it so I didnt feel like a liar. Call it whatever you want.

I apologize for any passive-aggression but I would say it was taught. I used to post only much nicer posts. But such posts got jumped on instantly with name calling and snide remarks. I might admit that some "teaching" occured there. I will now be seeking to restore my old demeaner while I can.

Re: what about the future?
 

Tim Brooks:

It will be a bit different with Ganfalf banned, but well, maybe you are right that removing users that spoil the experience here is something worth trying.

Re: what about the future?
 

heh very nice

Re: what about the future?
 

If only everyone could learn from their mistakes, and adjust their behavior appropriately, then noone would ever have to be banned. We all make mistakes, as human beings, afterall.

Philosophically speaking, it's when we won't admit that we're wrong and refuse to learn from our mistakes, and then try to incorporate those errors into an idealogy and movement, and when those movements then gain momentum, that problems arise (the Nazi party, etc.).

Re: what about the future?
 

Honeybadger,

Are you getting PMs from *edit* as well? Your posts in this thread look like responses to the crap he is filling my inbox with. :D

Re: what about the future?
 

Yeah, I reported him after I asked him (politely) to no longer contact me, and he persisted. Tim's gonna sort him out.

Re: what about the future?
 

And Godwin's law is achieved.

Re: what about the future?
 

Don't give the guy personal info; whatever he is playing at goes beyond a forum grudge.

Re: what about the future?
 

Oh I didn't.

Re: what about the future?
 

Well, that's pretty much exactly what many people are trying to tell Shrapnel, isn't it?

But yeah, I also get what WL is saying, enough is enough for now.

Re: what about the future?
 

I disagree that trying to maintain order and politeness, as professionals trying to run a business, and then enforcing that, in a professional way, translates in any way to a state of fascism.

If someone comes into a store, and starts harassing the clerks, knocking over displays, and chasing away customers, how is the store manager supposed to react? How would you react, if you were that manager? If that store is what fed your family? Who's supposed "rights" would you put first: the harasser, or yourself and your employees and your customers?

And if your store is knocked over the first time, will you wait passively for it to happen again, or will you take steps to protect and secure your business, even if it means a more disciplined environment than you've had in the past?

Shrapnel is reacting. That's the moral difference here, as I see it.

Re: what about the future?
 

Who is saying that? Who are you disagreeing with?

Re: what about the future?
 

Bah! A completely new term - passive agression!
Congratulations, Squirrel! :P

Re: what about the future?
 

:lol

Being the ignorant man that I am I learned a number of new terms from Squirrelloid & Soyweiser. Amongst which are: passive-aggressive behavior (damn, so every time I sulk I'm being P.A. :confused: ) & ad hominem.

Bah, you can't believe anything Soyweiser says since he's never been to gaming conventions and has a scary avatar to boot :D ;)

Re: what about the future?
 

Wow, reading the entire thread starting from scratch was a pretty daunting task. Had to skimread some parts just to get to the end.

Just try to keep personal drama and vendettas out of this thread.

Re: what about the future?
 

That one is true.

I never said that. :)

Re: what about the future?
 

Wow, I had to read that sentence 5 times. It's still very confusing. I agree with Fantomen. Who exactly are you talking to?

I liked that movie with the "V"

Re: what about the future?
 

I was replying to Fantomen (which should be pretty clear, as his is the above post), rereferencing, and then inverting, my own quote, to make it clear that it wasn't seriously applicable to Shrapnel Games.

"Fascism" = the mentioned Nazi party.

Appologies for any confusion, but I didn't find it difficult to read or understand, even after rereading it several times.

Re: what about the future?
 

Ah, well. It was more the "learning from mistakes etc..." part I wanted to borrow. I don't think Shrapnel is in any way fascist or evil, just a bit bullheaded.

Re: what about the future?
 

But you brought up the Nazi Party? 10 commas per sentence does not make for clarity. If you wish to be clear use simple sentences. (full stop)

Let me see if I can paraphrase you.

1) Shrapnel has the right to make rules and enforce them on its forum.
2) The intent of the rules is to have order and politeness.
2) Shrapnel is not being fascist in doing this enforcement.

Would that about sum up your argument? I'm still wondering who you think disagrees with these points. It does not appear to be Fantomen.

It looks a lot like what Fantomen was saying is that a number of people are refusing to learn from these episodes. And on both sides.

Equating an internet forum with a corner store is disingenious. The revenue models are completely different. If you want to use a simile, try a dance bar. You make money by selling drinks. More drinks = more money but at some point it's too rough. Then you clamp down. But damn few bars permanently ban the heavy drinkers. Send em home in a cab, or to the drunk tank maybe.

Shrapnel makes money by selling games. Games sell by being in the news and print and word of mouth. Does order and politeness put a game on the map of the internet? I doubt it. Take MachineGunJoe's example. The highest ranking thread on Google from this forum is Crossbows and Longbows. Definitely not a polite ramble about let's just all get along.

Re: what about the future?
 

Dance bar might not be bad.
They want people who walk in to see it as a friendly place to meet people, talk, dance. They might offer alcohol but dont want to be seen as a drunk bar. So rowdiness is quickly squashed and escorted out. Repeated rowdiness is indeed banned. In my experience, in numbers fairly equal to forums.

In both cases there are some important points. The owners get to decide what kind of place it will be, what kind of impression it will give, and how much moderation will be done over the members. Any rules and enforcement will be a give & take as far as numbers. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that if the dance bar is too tame and controlled for someone there is definitely a bar down the street for the wilder crowd. Both bars benefit.

As for the profit scheme, THIS is the forum that people most end up at who have NOT bought the game. Whether or not anyone thinks it will work is one thing but can it really be doubted that if it comes to friendly vs open that the friendly is more sales conducive? Right but rude should definitely exist on the net (somewhere) but I dont think its a "sensible" argument that it should be here. :target:

Re: what about the future?
 

As a relative newcomer, I really have to say that I find the attitudes on the forums pretty similar. The only real difference I see is that there seems to be a fairly low tolerance for deliberate misinformation and malicious trolling on dom3mods. This isn't enforced by mods, rather it seems the community of experienced players there feel free to post decisively to deal with such episodes. Having been a moderator on a different forum, I really don't understand how a community like this can function when the only times I see moderators is on the buglist or when somebody gets reported. On the forum I moderated for, moderators were expected to be active, contributing members of the community whom people could respect. From my own searching and lurking, this does not seem to be so much the case here. However, I see no reason to not enjoy whatever fruits both forums may offer.

Re: what about the future?
 

It used to be. Then it entered a dark period.

Interesting reference to "low tolerance for deliberate misinformation and malicious trolling". That was one of the old complaints. But they referred to it as fun ribbing and sarcasm (even when it was with people who were brand new here and had trouble seeing it).

But yes, thats going to be one of the advantages of split forums. One of the things that forum will serve is being for low tolerance for deliberate misinformation and malicious trolling. More power to them.

Re: what about the future?
 

How long are we going to continue to beat this dead horse?
http://www.cenekreport.com/storage/b...=1274642541111

Re: what about the future?
 

But look at the new people its bringing to the forum. :rolleyes:
Isnt that what we want?

Re: what about the future?
 

I skipped 15 pages and what happened to this thread? It seems to be talking about something else then the future of dominions.

Re: what about the future?
 

Yep, it went from the future of Dominions to the future of the Dominions forums.
Not at all the same thing (altho some might think it is).
My apologies to Pocus.

Re: what about the future?
 

On the topic of the future of dominions, and the future of Illwinter. I'm still a bit disappointed that Illwinter keeps the new project so close to their own chest. A dev blog would make most of us more interested.

Re: what about the future?
 

I can see the point of something. I dont think it would be a blog. At best, maybe a rarely updated comment text page like the Dom3 progress page is.

But everything has its pros and cons.
I do believe that such things do as much to discourage as encourage development. The smaller the development team, the larger the impact of every comment. Depending of course on the developers themselves.

Re: what about the future?
 

Yes, being a Goon is mandatory to use Matryx' service, you can see that as soon as you try to register on there. Well, there are exceptions to that rule, but it has been designed to be for games originating from the SA forums. That's why it isn't on the list of the Dom3 game servers.

Matryx might share some codebits about his server setup there, but he is using an internal framework from his job which prohibits him from sharing it with others. So don't expect that there is going to be a non-SA branch of the service unless Matryx himself decides to host it.

MoseHansen shares his Perl scripts from his automated Dom2 game server, if you're interested in that. I did plan to develop a fully customizable web frontend for Dom3 game servers in PHP using some other frontend before Matryx showed me his site, but I dropped that project when it became apparent that the Llamaserver became the de-facto standard for playing Dom3 games and people have no issues about PBEM turns, I then put the time into the Dom3Wiki instead. It seemed there was no need for a network equivalent, and what actually killed it for me was the whole user management stuff that one has to model and implement. :hurt:

It's possible to verify purchased copies with the publisher? That's very interesting, I think server admins would like to have this option. Are llamabeast's and Gandalf's servers doing this already, too?

P.S.: I didn't really read much of the rest of this thread, or the other threads. Looks like the emotional tampon levels of the forums are quite high again. :cold:

Re: what about the future?
 

Lch:

Afaik pirated version works up to 3.10 or smth anyway. So I see no reason to verify anything more, unless someone wants to play vanilla unpatched... I don't think we have any real piracy issue here.

Re: what about the future?
 

A front end something like this?
http://www.dom3minions.com/lab/MakeGame.htm
Actually most of the pieces for such a server have been ironed out if someone wanted to do it.

I didnt really want to with Dom3Minons. Like most things of mine it was meant more as a proof-of-concept for others to build on and improve. Which has happened to some extent. What I had originally wanted was for Dom3Minions to be a community asset as a shell account server but very few took me up on it and Im losing the ability to keep up with even that little an offering. I never did plan to go to a full hosting service.

As far as the need, de-facto, and no problems with pbem I would disagree. It is very common on this forum to put larger games on LLama's server (and I greatly appreciate it for that) but its not "the de-facto standard for playing Dom3 games". Possibly it is on Sombre's. On the other forums very little is pbem, nor does there seem much interest in it altho I make sure they all know that LLama's is available.

But if someone wanted to create a server like Matryx's (they would have to do it from scratch I guess) then it might spread things out abit. That server arrangment is entirely setup for hosted direct-connect games. It facilitates their different forum style because it serves some of the purpose that separate game threads do on this forum. It displays games that want players, allows them to find out the settings, join if they wish reserving the nation they want, download the mods and maps for it, and once the game starts it allows checking to see who has done their turns. And it gives a one-stop location for checking the status of the games you are in. But unlike servers like LLama's or Dom3Minions it doesnt host any. The games are all being played on other systems. In fact, a number of the games are being hosted on Dom3Minions.

Of the 3 types of servers, I have put that one forth as the best concept for any possible future official server IMHO.

Gandalf Parker
--
feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes
I have done what I could, those who can will do better.

Re: what about the future?
 

Good post. :)

This community has functioned pretty well with various levels of moderator posting activity for years. I'm around and I read the forums even if I don't post a whole lot.

I have a posting philosophy of not posting if somebody else already covered what I would have said, since it would not add anything new to the discussion. There was a time when you could hardly find a thread where I wasn't posting when somebody asked a question, but you'd have to dig a while to get there. The same is true of the other mods, all of them have been very active some time in the past, even if that may be in the very distant past since they were already mods back in the day of Dominions 2.

The various moderators also have jobs, families and other interests, which often cuts down on their available posting time, even if they keep an eye on the forum. Keeping an eye on a forum requires far less time than actively posting on said forum.

The community here does a fairly good job of keeping things in hand by itself, it doesn't need a whole lot of moderator action as such. When certain sorts of things do crop up, then we may need to intervene, but I like not needing to intervene. Most of the other mods also prefer that state of things.

Sometimes though there are clashes of strong personalities that don't smooth out on their own, which is usually when the report button gets used and then moderators have to step in.

With regard to moderator activity on the bug reports, that's my primary job description here. It was the reason I was made a moderator in the first place, so I need to pay especially close attention to it.

Hopefully this answers some of your concerns and questions about how this place works.

No, as far as I'm aware that's an interface to create and start a new game, but nothing after that. I had something in mind which smoothes the whole process that currently has to be handled manually by game admins in regards to organizing and administrating a game. Something where game admins can create/register a game, invite other people by formmail and use possibly some kind of token to the game or have it displayed on a overview page and leave the slots open for (registered) users to fill them. Verification of email addresses so people receive email notification on hosting for the games they're in, which they could optionally turn off, too. Then an option to boot people from said slots, handle players who work as substitutes, reset/change the clock for the game, and so on. All the little manual things. For games hosted on the server itself, access to the game backups, ability to revert to turn no. X, optionally extensive graphs for the game and a map of who owns which provinces currently. Blahblahblah, as I said, implementing the user management and web interface to handle all this would take quite some time and while something like that would certainly be "nice to have" and I even had some of the technical stuff implemented, I thought that it wouldn't be worth the effort. Especially not in the long run.

I've considered PBEM to be quite cumbersome, myself, but after the Llamaserver was fully operational people have voiced more than once that they prefer it to networked games. One of their points was that you have less issues with firewalls, the other that they automatically have access to their previous turns in their mailbox, which for networked games would require them to take care of backups themselves. I'd say that's about as much work as saving and getting the turn files from your mailbox every turn to play PBEM, but I can accept the points they make.

As you said yourself, it isn't really a server (as in, something that hosts games), but a service which tracks games on other servers. A web interface or web version to the game monitor tools that have become available here from multiple people, too. I don't know if you noticed that I had something like that when I've had my stuff hosted by you, too, I've even shared/compared code with Matryx. The problem is that the socket support in PHP4/5 is abysmal and you can't be fully sure that you receive something back when you make a request to a remote game server, it could just hang for an indefinite time. AFAIK what Matryx does to overcome this is to poll every server in set intervals, every couple of minutes or so, instead of when a request is made.

Re: what about the future?
 

I think the genius of the llamaserver in in the accessibility rather than any differences between PBEM and direct connect.

The three key features IMO is:

1) That you can do everything from game settings and uploading you own mods to admining etc. entirely by yourself.
2) That doing this is so easy and obvious that anyone can do it almost regardless of computer skills.
3) That it is completely open to use instantly by everyone.

A comparable service fulfilling these three conditions for networked games would be absolutely wonderful, and I hope some day it happens.

Re: what about the future?
 

I agree such a system would be great. If anyone wanted to do one I would gladly pitch in. Most of the needed functions have been played with and fairly ironed out that can make it happen.

Actually, my system was supposed to be a "do it all yourself" system, but in the mode of logging in and running your own games on my server. That level of DIY didnt seem to take off. Not enough linux lovers (or DOS retirees) I guess. Some did. DrP, lch, targa, zen, torvak, nagot, alneyan, pvk, psitticine, nerfix, ballbarian, arralen, xietor, wraithlord, horstjens, coobe, jarkko all had logins on the server and some had admin (root) privileges. I was kindof hoping one might start play with the idea of such a system as you describe. I think lch was the only one to take a stab at it.

I dont think I will be adding new logins anymore. But my system will stay up as long as I can to host games in hacker mode. With no menu of choices. Get creative, anything you can come up with I can host. Dom3Minions can do everything. It just doesnt menu it.

But I agree. A Llamabeast version for tcpip (direct connect) games would be great if someone wants to do one. Pretty much anyone can do it, and quite possibly do it better. Especially lately. If you have upgraded your computer and have the old one sitting around, consider it. Here is some info on mine..
http://www.dom3minions.com/ServerInfo.htm

Re: what about the future?
 

Well, here's what part of Illwinter has done recently. Unfortunately not much of a strategy game.

Re: what about the future?
 

He is quite proud of it.
I thought this was a signature note...

Re: what about the future?
 

Obviously the "Omnibat" is a bat-winged pretender deity in the new pantheon.

* Sacred troops will have darkvision (echolocation) and sonic ranged weapons.
* "Vampire Bat" - blood/death mages
* "Little Brown Bat" - spy
* "Fruit Bat" - seducers
* Infantry wield bats (clubs)

Of course, all the Bat-Sh** causes insanity in dominion.

Re: what about the future?
 

You left out the unique national result for the crossbreeding spell - a giant. hideous green hopping insect with leathery wings and a terrifying chirping call.

Re: what about the future?
 

I havent read all these post here, and it seems like I dont want to either. However, is there any hints at all about the 'next' thing?

Re: what about the future?
 

The only hints Ive seen lately is that its not Dom4 and its not going to be soon.
Those came from Johan O in another forum.