Play by Web is now open

[Admiral]

Hello everyone,

Please be advised that Play by Web for Space Empires IV is now open to all comers!

Many thanks to all the beta testers and the administrative team!

The genesis of this web site was a simple idea: while PBEM play in Space Empires IV is nice, there are often drags on its efficiency. The host has to manually run each turn; forcing turns to be played after a certain amount of time may not work if everyone's turns haven't been sent; and if someone drops out, it's often hard to find a new player to take his place.

PBW effectively combats these and other issues by automating the process by which turns are sent back and forth, and by which the turns are run. There are still some small bugs in this process, the most important of which is that it does not work with the current SE4 patch. (Aaron at Malfador has promised this will change with the next patch! Until then, you should use Version 1.30, the patch for which can be downloaded here.) In this sense the PBW site is still a work in progress, and you'll see changes from time to time that will be detailed in the news or in the forums.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Cheers,

Admiral & Team

[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 29 May 2001).]

[Possum]

I will testify to the fact that this thing works, and works well. It's convenient, and while not quite fool-proof, it certainly seems to be possum-proof

I was skeptical at first, you know me. But after 8 or 9 turns, it all looks smooth and sweet.

[LazarusLong42]

Woo!!

As part of the team that built PBW, it's great to see us finally open to the public. Those of you playing in the mega-elimination tourney probably already know how nice it is.

But don't take my word for it; go see for yourself!

Also: many, many kudos to Admiral for having the vision to create this--and the ability to program it.

LL (AKA Eric the UI Guy)

[This message has been edited by LazarusLong42 (edited 29 May 2001).]

[capnq]

I'd like to add that Admiral and Lazarus are quite quick to reply to bug reports and feature requests, as well.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft
, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Richard]

Yes please check this out it is something I think is of great value to our community.

Thanks to everyone who worked hard on this, it's very cool...

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

[Suicide Junkie]

Do you know when support for mods will be ready? I would really like to play as a Pirate in a universe of humans . All I gotta do is figure out how to get a good "capture ships" combat strategy.

[Admiral]

The order of implementation for the remaining long-term to-do items is currently open. I'll be conducting a survey of the Users.

Admiral

[Fuerte]

Here is a priority list for you:

1) Support for PBEM helper.
2) Forced turn generation on work days (Mon-Fri) only. Maybe it has this already?

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PBEM

[Admiral]

Forced turn only on weekdays is not (yet) directly supported, but the game owner can go in on Friday and move the automatic turn generator ahead three days to Monday.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'd imagine it would be quite easy to write a script to set the path.txt each time you run SE4, allowing players to use mods.