The Future of Space Empires IV

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron said:

Bigger than the 50 MB file SJ made for GritEcon one time?

And that one was the one that snuggled up really close to the hard limit of 32k components, so it would be pretty hard to beat it

[PvK]

Atro, what does it mean to you that a game is "dead"? It seems like a very meaningless yet negative kind of thing to say.

[Ironmanbc]

there are quite a few of us the STILL play SE IV (I for one still bug ya all for any update to mods)

There has been alot of us that are playing SE V now that is alot of fun to play but we still go back and play a few more turns just to remember what we were doing before and apply the same strats to SE5

[thorfrog]

I'm still playing and modding. I like this more then SEV.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Suicide Junkie said:

And that one was the one that snuggled up really close to the hard limit of 32k components, so it would be pretty hard to beat it

Well, it includes parts of GritEcon, but does away with tech gridding (too many similar and redundant components). Since tech grids are exponential, it's considerably smaller. So I guess it's not the hugest components.txt file ever.

[Suicide Junkie]

The magic of tech gridding is that you don't see the similar ones unless you take a different path to your techs. They're all useful to somebody tho, so the components are not redundant except in specific instances of a game.

It also changes your tech tree into an orchard

[Black_Knyght]

Atrocities said:
The amount of people playing SE IV has dropped off dramatically over the last two years to the point that the game is for all intents and purposes, dead.

Slanderous libel and utter gibberish, and I'll gut the scoundrels who claim it as such like the scurvy dogs they are !!!

That said, I will have to say I predicted this, and have seen a dramatic drop-off in general activity as well, CBmod not withstanding.

I've been working my a$$ off on a few shipsets, and trying my hand at a Mod as well, but it honestly seems that other than AT or Urendi Maleldil all the better-known personages who once contributed strongly to SE4 have left it by the wayside, except for occasional games. No one else seems to be seriously adding to or developing anything else for it.

So, to reiterate AT question - Why not get Aaron to release the source code for SE IV and let the modding community have at it?

As AT pointed out, it can't really be making any more money. To me the only real reason for holding out at this point seems to be to prevent any possible loss of interest in SE5.


IMHO

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, one factor is that Aaron sold the series to Strat as I understand it, so he doesn't have the only say in that.

[Fyron]

Black_Knyght said:
No one else seems to be seriously adding to or developing anything else for it.

I guess some Adamant patches don't count. Combat Wombat put out an update for Invasion! a few weeks back. Doom and gloom is much more fun, however.

Suicide Junkie said:
Well, one factor is that Aaron sold the series to Strat as I understand it, so he doesn't have the only say in that.

He still planned to release the SE3 source code at least, but he's been dragging his heels for a year now, pending some documentation cleanup.

[Xrati]

At this price, you have to wonder how much they're making on SE5?

http://store.purplus.net/spaceempiresv.html

I'd say that the problems with SE5 has severly hurt the series.