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AthenaOfDelphi
12-12-2005, 10:44 PM
Hi all,

Time for me to delurk and let you know about my pet project. My partner in crime (Spirit) and I have already received some coverage thanks to Eriken (http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewarticle.php?a=12&p=1) and WILL (http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewarticle.php?a=53&p=1) , but we now have the second season of our game ready for public consumption and are waiting for players before we start the action.

The Outer Reaches - The Second Beginning (http://www.outer-reaches.com) is a multiplayer space strategy game thats played using a web browser (Mozilla or Firefox work best). The interface is entirely HTML and JavaScript, no Flash or Java applets.

There are many games like this around, but just in case you haven't encountered one, the general concept is research things, build them, goto war and aim for universal domination. Time in the game universe is controlled by the ticker that springs into life every hour perform all the updates necessary to make things happen in game.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with Pascal, well... the system itself runs on a mixed platform. MySQL provides database services and runs on RedHat along with our record locking/synchronisation service written with Kylix 3. The rest of the system (our web server software and the ticker) was developed with Delphi 5 and runs on Windows 2000 Server.

Feel free to drop me a mail or pop onto the Netgamers IRC network (www.netgamers.org) and pop into our channel #OuterReaches and have a chat if you want to know more. Of course, you could always sign up an account and give it a go.

Screenshots - www.outer-reaches.com/shots/ (These are from season 1, but you'll get the idea)
Game - www.outer-reaches.com
Player Portal - www.outer-reaches.net

Disclaimer:- This is a commercial venture, but the game itself is free to play with some restrictions that can be removed if you purchase account upgrade codes.

AthenaOfDelphi
20-05-2006, 01:00 PM
We are pleased to announce that Season 2 of The Outer Reaches - The Second Beginning will be commencing shortly.

The game will be started at 3PM GMT on Saturday 27th May 2006 and we will hold our first creators hour at 3PM GMT on Sunday 28th May in the channel #OuterReaches on the NetGamers IRC Network (http://www.netgamers.org).

If you like space strategy and don't need lots of fancy 3D graphics, then why not give it a try (its free to play, with some restrictions that can be removed by purchasing account upgrade codes).

Robert Kosek
20-05-2006, 02:44 PM
I've got a question or two Athena, I missed the last season, but how is the game played time-wise? I read a while back that every hour the game updates and everything gets calculated, this seems to me to be a "fixed time turn based" method?

I'm wondering because I'm not sure how much time I can deliver daily, and the effect of me taking a little would have upon my empire.

Also, is there any way to be peaceful? The game strikes me as attracting a small hardcore group, who by now are quite used to the game. I'd rather not fight with someone experienced right off.

AthenaOfDelphi
20-05-2006, 03:12 PM
Hi Robert,

All I can say is, its free to play... why not sign up and give it a go. If you don't like it delete your account, or just don't log into it for 30 days and the system will delete it anyway due to inactivity.

One of the common complaints with this type of game is the amount of time people have to spend playing, we've addressed this by including queues (we were, as far as we're aware, one of the first games to do this), so you can queue up another 3 items to fill the time when you can't play. The system offers you no protection from attacks though, so you should really check your account occassionally throughout the day, but making friends in your quadrant helps... get on well with your quadmates and they'll probably help by defending your planet.

Unfortunately, its not attracting too many people, and tbh, the only people who have really played it before (from the looks of the signups so far) are staff and we won't be attacking other players unless of course they attack us first ;-) So don't worry too much about being attacked by a very experienced player becauses theres not that many people who have played it before.

My advice to you (or anyone who signs up) would be... download the graphics pack of your choice (we have red, blue, green, yellow, orange and purple) and install it as per the instructions in game... have a good read of the quick start guide... decide on what you want to achieve first (a good starting point is Mass Extraction) and get busy :-) Don't worry about being attacked for a while at least, as when you get a new planet its protected against attacks... your homeworld cannot be invaded so you can never lose it and it is protected for a much longer period of time.

As I said... sign up and give it a go... it costs nothing to try it.

AthenaOfDelphi
20-05-2006, 03:21 PM
I just realised I didn't really address your question about timing etc. So I'll explain.

All the actions you carry out on your account are done in realtime, but game time is advanced every hour.

So for an example, lets consider building a new building. If you start a building at 1:30PM and it takes 6 hours to build, when you start it, it will show as being complete in 6 hours. When the next tick (at 2PM) has run, it will show as being complete in 5 hours and it should complete at 7PM. If you've got another building queued, it will start as soon as the current one finishes.

The same applies to all times in game.

The thing to remember is that when I say things occur in realtime is that if you launch an attack, it will show up on your victims warning system immediately you launch (unless you've delayed the fleet departure). Resources will be used in realtime, but they will only be produced when the tick runs.

I hope that clears up the game mechanics, if not, let me know whats not clear and I'll try and explain further.

Robert Kosek
20-05-2006, 03:26 PM
So then the only "real" enemies are raiders and newbie players. I must admit, with how you and Spirit have set the timetables up for construction, you really took the wind out of rushing. ;) And that's the tactic I hate the most.

Thanks for the further explanation of time, that is what I was after. What about at night? I sleep ~8 hours or so and so would be vulnerable to someone of another time zone who, per se, was in the middle of the day while I slept. Anything to protect folks in situations such as that?

AthenaOfDelphi
20-05-2006, 03:52 PM
Spirit does all the game balancing/timing... I just make it work :-) As far as the pace of the game, we basically enjoy this kind of game and we appreciate people have other things to do (like life) so we've tried to make it more accessible by having longer build times and such like. We think, based on the feedback we've had, we've got it about right.

As far as protection when you're sleeping, nope, afraid not... the sleep thing... we all do it :-) So we are all subject to the possibility of attacks during off hours. Again though... friends... this is what drives games like this. The more people you know, the better the chances of getting defence when you need it.

Robert Kosek
20-05-2006, 03:57 PM
Good point. ;) I'm assuming "TAGS" are like Guilds/Clans?

I've started signing up and just finished reading the EULA. that thing is really long! :D I didn't spot the kitchen sink though, so it's better then a MS EULA. (*teasing*)

Anyhow I'll give it a go. You do realize that the game starts at 4am my time, I hope. Can I "Prequeue" things so I don't get stuck way behind everyone else? Otherwise I think I'd be almost a permanent 4 hours behind everyone.

Robert Kosek
20-05-2006, 04:14 PM
My portal account of "The_Wicked_Flea" is not functioning, and I've not received my validation email yet. The main site was instantaneous in emailing me, but not the Nebula. Could you get in there and activate me? My host has problems with the email sometimes...

AthenaOfDelphi
20-05-2006, 08:07 PM
Hi Robert,

Apologies for the delay in answering...

You're quite right, tags are like clans/guilds... season 3 will see them develop into fully fledged alliances with attack target organisation and a whole bunch of other stuff.

You can prequeue things, so you won't need to be up at 4am :-)

As far as your portal account... I wasn't aware of any problems with the email facilities... however... since you posted that message, I've been checking out the site and it transpires that its actually an issue (sort of) with PHP Nuke... if you don't have sendmail (or a wrapper) configured for PHP, it can't send mail.

I'm investigating a solution to the problem, but as it happens, I didn't envisage people signing up on the portal... we would much rather have people sign up on the forums.

Robert Kosek
20-05-2006, 10:04 PM
I assumed that the portal would share accounts with the forum, since PHP-Nuke sites normally do so.

Also just a note, but the gfx pack won't work with FF 1.5.03 and I've swapped to IE which works fine. The stylesheet, for some odd reason, refuses to work properly.

AthenaOfDelphi
21-05-2006, 08:30 AM
The portal was really intended to provide a one way information flow... many of the people who have played complained that they had to read the forums to find inmportant information, so I added the nuke portal with the intention of providing all key information there.

I have considered a system where by you sign up on the game and the game automatically creates the accounts elsewhere when you activate your account, but my biggest enemy with stuff like that is time.

As for the graphics pack... would you believe me if I said Mozilla and Firefox consider stylesheets loaded locally from your machine by a page served from a remote server to be a security threat?

Quite what you could put in a style sheet to make it a security threat I have no idea, but its an issue that has plagued many users and so... there is an item in the Helpdesk/FAQ section:-

Mozilla and the graphics pack (http://www.outer-reaches.net/forums/showthread.php?t=252)