Server Help

[Mastermind]

First off, i'm a guy who likes to play by the rules, so i'll keep this post as clean as possible.
The following statements are to talk about how bad this community has become, and all the serious issues with Continuum itself.

Ok to start off, I'll bring up Continuum issues.

Lets compare timezones.

Around 2002, the population of Continuum was at it's peek. Most of the SSC Zones had well over 100 players each in many cases, over 200. Zones that werent on SSC Billing, still had well over 15 people regularly. The newer zones had at least 5 to 7 players regularly.

Programmers constantly updated all software for Continuum Servers and MervBot. And many people were devoted to helping others with questions, making the boards a exceptional community.

From 2003-2004, The population of Continuum started decreasing slowly, but in time, the population drop was massive. This was caused by many things. By this time, many programmers became greedy, and chose to stop making plugins for the public.

Because of this, people asked questions like, how does this zone have such and such, why isn't there a plug like that released, ect. So when they brought it to the boards, the programmers just ignored the questions, and waited for people to stop asking, or they wanted money for the plugins.

This caused less zones to be added, and without new features for zone owners, relying on plugs, many zones got old. People got bored, and finally they moved on to play other games. All of this was caused by the lack of help and support, and upgrade software. When people got greedy, face it, half the population of Continuum died as well.

There are now Half the people in SSC, and non-SSC Zones. New ones don't have any population whatsoever, so people have to beg thier friends to play in thier new zone, and mabye, by luck, people come and if your even luckier, people like what they see and tell thier friends to come as well.

It is now 2005, there have been no new MervBot updates in months, no Continuum software updates, except mabye some skins and non-essential stuff. Population is STILL degrading, but at a very very slow pace. These help forums are somewhat dead.

Now about this community.

The fact that some programmers... (not naming names) want money for mervbot upgrades, is not only rediciulous, but it's sad. Knowledge is a gift to be shared, not sold or bought. What this community is forgetting that if there aren't some BIG changes, like updating MervBot and releasing more essential upgrades, the Continuum population will keep dropping, until only the SSC zones will have any kind of population at all.

The funny thing is that it doesn't suprise me. The programmers are so damn greedy now days, that's what they want. They want thier zones left stadning in the end, without any competiton. So they keep thier customized plugs and thier customized software for themselfs.

Now I know some people have tried to keep Continuum alive, by making clients such as Continuum Next Level, but even they stopped working on it. So you can scratch that idea.

I also realise SOME things are being done, like mabye 1 decent utility, like the new Lvz Image Placer by Bak. But it's 1/10 of the upgrades that should be done by now. And with noone else really working on anything for the public, people keep quitting sContinuum, and new zone owners stop working on thier zone because they cant compete with all the other zones with thier fancy plugs and software.

Now here's where I'm coming in. I'm sick and tired of seeing Continuum die. I'm VERY tired of zones with thier programmers give exclusive plugs and software to only a handful of zones, making everyone else suffer.

So since the programmers in this community, have decided not to release the upgrades to the public, I will. How? I have a friend who is a master programer with just about everything, Visual Basic, C++, you name it.

He is currently decompiling everything MervBot

Once he takes a look at the source for the Program, and the Plugs,. he will make all those fancy plugs, that the public hasn't been getting, himself.

And you know what he wants to do with them? He wants all of them to be relased to the public. And trust me... they WILL be!

Mabye later if he likes what he sees in MervBot, he might even make a upgraded version of it, and if he does, it's going public too:)

By solving the MervBot issues in this community, I can only hope it will bring back some of the population, along with some Zone owners.

[-Smong-]

I think you may be disillusioned.

[Mastermind]

It's comments like yours, that make posts out of line. Mabye you need to re-read what I said.

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything:)

[Dr Brain]

You got the symptoms correct, but your diagnosis is all wrong.

People are leaving because there has been no new client released. I can go into detail if you like.
_________________
Hyperspace Owner

Smong> so long as 99% deaths feel lame it will always be hyperspace to me

[SuSE]

If the population is declining, it's not doing it very fast.

[Mastermind]

@Dr. Brain: I'd be happy to hear more details, but like I said: Continuum Upgrades(meaning new versions and bugfixes).

@SuSE: I know. In the year 2004 the population dropped fast, somehow it's slowed down now. But it's not enough, we need to focus on gettign an increase in population. Like I said, I hope adding merv plugs will help somewhat.

[SuSE]

I've never seen the population drop "fast". Cite your source.

[Dr Brain]

No, you blamed the programmers and zone developers.

I'll write up something this afternoon or this evening.

[Bak]

[Phyran]

well you cant really blame it entirely on zone developers and programmers. I agree with Bak that programmers just dont want to take time for a zone that is going to die or is already dead...and players are very fickle and impatient they like zones full of people (they stay away from near-dead or dead zones) so its a vicious cycle.
I myself is a zone developer, when put in a choice between my zone and someone' elses I would choose mine...because everytime I help some other zone I get no credit whatsoever...basically I got kicked out after I was used for all I was worth.

Well since your friend is willing to make plugins that will go public, does your friend take suggestions?

[Gravitron]

Dear MasterMind,

First of all, the game's name is SubSpace.
It was created as SubSpace, it will die as SubSpace, and no matter what the trenchers think, this is the truth, and I'll not allow the SSC to falsify it otherwise.
The full credits are Jeff&Rod&Juan's, they came up with the concept, they made and produced it, they are the reason anything at all is here now, and I won't let anyone take it away.

Secondly, it's peak gold age was during VIE beta test, counting entire zones (how many we had? 5 or so zone types with VIE East & West servers for each? plus SSX and iNet starting up) at 100-300 users.

Third, the game been dying ever since VIE died.

Fourth, Catid quit working on MERV (and SS at a whole) due to loss of interest, being generaly lamed by the community and the SSC and having a life and bigger projects and studies to invest his time onto (you don't do these things without motivation, and none but perhaps me ever gave him a supportive one).

Fifth, you need to understand, the power-mongering-hungry people who put themselves in the zone's ?owner only care about their big ego, not the game.
There is no centralization, they are too stupid to care, frankly they don't deserve xalimar's graces and that is why the game is dying.
It's the same reason you don't pick a judge at football to judge a game between two countries while he's one of them.
Same reason a staff member can't (well, shouldn't, but as said, current zones and their owners/staff have little of the understanding in the topic of ETHICS) participate in the game, be in a guild/squad and enter tournaments against players.
The people in control should never have a personal interest, alas, they do.
Were they not, perhaps they could maintain an objective view on the GAME"S best interest, not their ZONE"S best interest.
Xalimar's only concern - Powerball, all else could die, he doesn't intervene for good or bad, as long as powerball is up which is all he cares about life is good (he host the entire SSCX BTW, major props on that).
GhostShip - The Patriach of SS, or was he? All he cares about now, as it seems, is to have Pro League keep on rolling, isn't really a SVS patron, but it's a given circumstance that pro league be SVS (or a mega-tweaked version of it) that he seems to be able to live with (at VIE he was AML not PRO sysop, premier league settings never been the same since be butched it, mostly in favor of the lancaster).
Priit - Taking his place in the "blood line" of SS rulers, he's self-assigned to post at Trench, biggest SSC populated zone (and the biggest newb zone in existance) where ussually the SS leaders take place at the ivory tower.
The list just goes on (like how pointman, Extreme Games sysop, made sure to get sysop in a rather short term from being a nobody, mod, sysop and booting the other sysops, then doing what none other did before and placing himself as ?owner of the zone, then he went on to revise the EG site's history to fit his purpose, smear and smudge past sysops and praise himself, go big ego go, he even found the time to ban Zennor, of the oldest mods in the zone, of the oldest SS players at large - Doomsday Squad, rings a bell?, and someone who's at least 10 years older than pointman, because Zennor told him to his face exactly what he thinks of him and just what a little teenage punk he is).

Sixth, the so called updates to subgame were always minor, and it was practically the only thing priit actually did work on, the most important ones were to seal a DDoS-triggered program-crashing exploit that catid found and maybe other security issues, and the server-side support of LVZs.
Updates to continuum client itself been at large as rare as a white raven, and the last two were most negligible (he added ability to see bombs on radar, out of any possible feature, for trench which he sysop - no other reason, and the 39pr1 was put out because he fucked up somehow in 38 and caused an intermittent yet frequent bug in the prox behaviour which made the entire SVS league go in an uproar and have ghostship tell him to put a fix ASAP) and the most important or only important one was the addition of LVZs.

Seventh, to truely save the game, you'll need a major beckend hosting support.
To fight the SSC, to fight the corruption, to fight for SS, it is a three fold front.
1. An active coder to keep introducing features which they hold back (due to priit zealotishness to share code/let others do the work he's not doing, while he's doing whatever it is he's doing which isn't working for the game).
2. Replace the zone owners and their staff with all their corruption, as you can replace the house tenants, you can relocate the house, but if the house is built like crap without a solid foundation, it'll still cramble no matter what.
3. Constructing a trusty and wide billing center.
Above all, this is the SSC's biggest power, the biller which nails down the players.
No one want to lose their alias, and everyone want to be able to communicate with their friends no matter which zone they are on.
Since priit is in control over everything, he's also in control of the biller.
BD Vine being a major dimwit and ass kisser trying to hold his power (remember the aforementioned ego kids who just love their virtual-power?) even he's no longer functional as iNet shutdown all SS functions, to remain in his top billing op position he surrendered the biller and all of its Database directly to Priit.
Who now host it on the same server as trench, who now also BTW has the only direct access to it and inorder to lighten its burden also enforces an automated zone-wide scorereset every couple weeks.
Yes, you can ask to be excluded from it, but if you want your entire zone scoreresetted, go fish after priit, I'm sure he'll be available for audiance with you sometime in the next century.

Eighth, have this friend of yours contact me, I'm interested in your plans.



Power To The People!

[CypherJF]

ROTFL

[Gravitron]

It might be a solid 1k (which it is not), but the player turn over is rather mediocre.
That is to say, it's not that there are many players who keep loggin on and off so that the 1k is maintained due to a high player population.
But rather mostly due to same people who spend a hell of a lot time in the game.
Not to mention all the zones with the 24/7 spec babysit people.

Compared to 2000-2002, maybe even 2003?, the population has dramatically fallen.


Also, I find the way continuum "which isn't for SSC control, no really, it's not SSC it's just a client" do you the "favor" to "alert" you when you enter non-SSC zone quite funny.
Way to help new non-SSC zones grow, huh?
As if the SSC zones are trusty (there been cases...).

[CypherJF]

No one is held back from starting where priitk started. Subgame from 1.34 is on the Subspace Iso file, etc. Begin hacking it again - start writing a new client that does LVZ, etc. etc. ... If your motivated enough, do it.

[Gravitron]

And if you know more than jack shit about C++, directX API, network protocols, MS Winsock, server - client model...

[CypherJF]

I probably wouldn't do it w/ MS's proprietary junk. Something that can be cross platform -- so even linux peeps can play.

[i88gerbils]

There are opensource ASSS modules out there...


It looks to me like this Mastermind fellow is a lame n3wb who needs a history lesson.
_________________
Oldbie Server Help

[Gravitron]

Don't even go there gerbil, you don't want to jump start me.

[Dr Brain]

[Chambahs]

LOL brain = me, luckly i found smong which i give major props to, without him, my zone = subgame LOL

[Mastermind]

@i88gerbils Nah, I'm no newb. I played Subspace/Continuum, for over 5 years. So if your gonna bring up that crap, you better drop it now.

History lesson? I like history:) You write a paper on a history project, but it doesn't mean it's 100% accurate. If someone needs to correct me in apolite manner about something, go for it.

But if your gonna be rude about it, and start with the chilidsh name calling, then I really don't think you should post here.


@Gravtiron I can arrange my friend to contact you, but i'll need to contact you though msn messenger.
You have GravitronOK in your hotmail adress, but it's invalid.

[Guest]

[Gravitron]

Hotmail, LoL, no, I don't use hotmail.
I had GravitronOK registered under non-hotmail email, maybe, I don't know, was long ago.
I don't have MSN either, anyway, and I need to install the yahoo plugin too, so I can't chat there as well.
I'm using MirandaIM (cool program http://www.miranda-im.org kind of stopped development but it beats trillian since last I had trillian, has plenty of skins and plugins).
If your friend uses MSN pm me his contact name and I'll reach in touch with him.
If e-mail, (for real e-mail purposes, not MSN purposes), it's ori_kl~at~netvision~dot~net~dot~il

[Bak]

Yeah Dr Brain's Hyperspace was an original zone, and that's why I played it. Got a little weird when he took away my ability to base the ball, as that was one of the most enjoyable activities I had in Hyperspace, but overall it was good. But in general Continuum (not subspace) is lacking with new ideas with the tools we currently have.

[Muskrat]