Re: What to do with Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Bob Carragher wrote:
> 
> Hi Stan,
> 
> Please forgive me if I'm making a comment about a "problem"
> that is no longer a problem.
> 
> Actually, for me the biggest turn-on about the game was the fact
> that I could battle other humans, without having to worry about
> managing little cardboard/plastic pieces or rolling dice and such.
> My fondest memories of xconq come from my first days playing it in
> our department lab when, from the other side of the workbench, you
> hear one of your opponents exclaim, "You son of a bitch, you blew
> up my battleship!"  B-)  (Or, better yet, just a plain "Aaaaaugh!!")

This reminds me of the group at Utah who were playtesting the very
first version - the "Aaaaugh!"s were very often due to just-discovered
bugs, but nobody wanted to stop the game to let me install a fixed
version (this was before game saving worked)

The ability to chatter during the game is one of the motivations
for adding voice channels to online games like Team Fortress etc.

> Theoretically, there's plenty of software support for multi-player
> xconq over a network.  But is there support for assembling those
> players together?  Xpilot evolved a central clearing house of sites
> with running servers, so that one could log in to an arbitrary game
> through the network (assuming that outside people were not locked
> out).  Actually, I was surprised when I first ran that version,
> then started play-testing it, and saw another person from U Mich
> logged in and kicking my butt!  B-)

A metaserver would not be too hard to add - I looked at the one in
FreeCiv, seemed pretty straightforward, but if you wanted to do
pickup games, you'd want game scenarios designed for it.  The
standard game, for instance, is better organized for set-piece
games.  There is now the ability to add a player into an ongoing
game however, and the module for pickup games could start the
world with more unclaimed territory, so a just-starting player
can noodle around a bit before getting sucked into a deathmatch.

Speaking of deathmatches, I wonder if one could do a module that
downplays the amassing of forces, so nobody wins by sheer weight
of steamroller?  What would the standard game be like if, say,
each player could have at most 40-50 units?  (GDL already allows
for setting such a limit)

> On the other hand, I'm not sure this would necessarily solve the
> problem of "lack of new interest/blood," since us old-timers would
> be even less inclined to recruit new people to playing xconq ....
> 
>                                 Bob Carragher

Actually, one of the bonuses of the metaserver is that it acts as
a sort of permanent floating advertisement.  Give it a web page
that can be bookmarked, people can get in and be playing in just a
few minutes - suitable for lunch hour games...

Stan