Questions and Answers for the Community

Below is an excerpt from the thread at RC World.  The entire thread can be found at http://rcworld.de in the Web Forum under "Players Talk".  (There is no direct link)

Wow guys, I turn away for 24 hours and I'm 17 posts behind.  Glad to see we are getting the conversation going.  
First off, I knew there would be a lot of questions and I think Bane and others are bringing up some very valid points and concerns.  I hope to be able to address them.  

Just a bit more about me and Geographical Media first.  I started playing planets when it first came out and as a teenager I was running a BBS to host planets games.  That got me interested in technology and I went to university to get a computer science degree and then worked professionally for years as a web developer and senior manager at some fast growing companies before founding Geographical Media.  For the past four years the company has been developing scalable web technology that runs in the cloud.  Our company is a small company with just a couple of full time staff and a large network of other consultants, designers, programmers, marketing people etc who we bring in to achieve the goals of our projects.  We will be activating this network and hopefully expanding it to complete the VGA Planets remake.  

This may sound crazy, but I personally have started to rebuild VGA Planets 2 times already.  The first time was about 6 years ago when I still had a job.  I put in a lot of effort, but discovered how large the project is.  Ask any of the guys who've built a Planets client like VPA, or PCC how many hours they put in.  I couldn't do it in my spare time and I scrapped the project.  

The second time was about two years ago, this time, I thought, I'm just going to build a web based client and use the current host program.  I poured through Stefan Reuters wonderful documentation and completely decoded all the files in planets, figured out how to read RSTs and how to produce TRNs and I almost completely built the client in 3 months.  What stopped me in the end, was a few things, one, I ran out of money and needed to do some paid work, two, I couldn't build a really great client with all the boundaries imposed by the host program and lastly, faced with at least 2 more months of work, I felt overwhelmed by the possibility that the community may not accept the work and it would not ever get used.  You never heard about that project despite a major time investment, and I'm guessing there are many other VGA Planets projects by other people that none of us have ever heard of as well.  

So here I am on try number three.  This time I'm going about it from a completely different angle.  The big thing I have learned in the past few years running Geographical Media is that no one person can succeed on their own.  They need support.  I can't rebuild VGA Planets on my own.  I need you, the VGA Planets community to want the project to exist, and to help me achieve it.  Otherwise, its only my dream and idea and thats not big enough for this game.  
It may seem a little crazy at first glance to ask for money up front to build it.  But if you look at the rewards at kickstarter, I am not just asking for donations, I'm giving at least as much value back.  What I'm asking you is to show your support to the project by pre-paying for some of your registration fees so  that I know you'll use it when its live and so I have a little seed money to help offset the costs involved with the project.  A top web developer gets paid between $80000 and $120000/year, this is a 4-6 month project and will involve a couple of developers, including myself and some graphic artists.  

The $10000 I hope to raise is just a small amount of the cost of developing this new version. But its enough for me to know that you are supporting the project.  Geographical Media and I are now in a position to make the rest of the investment required.  

More questions answered in the next post... 

 
Here's a story I've heard a couple of times:  

"I paid $30 for my VGA Planets version from Tim Wisseman 15 years ago, I've been playing ever since and I've never had to pay another penny.  Why should I now have to pay $30/year!?"  

Well, there is no doubt that Tim has given us all a tremendous gift with VGA Planets and that pricing structure.  I also paid $30 for my WinPlan version back in 1995 and so did my Father (Forger).  

The trouble is, that after we all paid for the game there was now no way for Tim to make any more money on the project.  Instead he had to build NEW games like VGA Planets 4.  So instead of just making version 3 better he tried to sell a new game and that never really took off and so in the end he stopped developing.  No one can work for free, not even our hero Tim.

Its only through the incredible efforts, time dedication and financial contributions (servers, bandwidth etc) of hosts like Ricki that we've all been lucky enough to play all these years.  

Unfortunately, we've all seen one host after another finally give up, despite their love of the game.  

What we need to do is build a stable foundation for VGA Planets for the future and the first step is financial stability.  We all need to contribute a little to keep the game we love alive.  

I thought a lot about how much that would cost and felt that by charging $30/year, thats $2.50/month (less than the cost of a beer or a starbucks coffee) we will be able to achieve that stability, and have some money left over to reinvest in marketing our great game so that new players start to join. 

First off, its going to go toward ongoing development of the project, bug fixes, new graphics, small changes that the Game Council thinks will improve the game etc.  

Second, its going to run the centralized servers.  I'll talk more about this in my next post about the technology I intend to use but all games are going to be run from centralized, load balanced highly available servers which will be up 99.999% of the time.

Third, I have already said to Ricki and some of the other long time hosts, some of the money will go toward sponsoring them.  I will provide free servers and hosting to any of them that want to take advantage of that.  Also, we can have a lot of fun by giving t-shirts, posters, stickers and other cool prizes to hosts like RCWorld so they can give those prizes away to winners of big games, or the most reliable players of the year.  That will help maintain and attract new players to the hosts.  

Lastly, we will invest some of the money in advertising and public relations to market the game to new players.  I believe by making the game easy to join and doing a little advertising we can get a lot of new players excited about Planets.  

One last addition.  I mentioned this on Kickstarter but will put it in here.  

Any player will be allowed to join and play the game for FREE.  

However, free players will be subject to the same restrictions that Tim put in the original Shareware version.  Players can then upgrade to a "Registered" account and get all the benefits of the full game.  

So new players will not be required to pay until they have tried the game and are ready to upgrade.

Alright, here will be my last big post for today.  

This project will be a complete rewrite of both the host services and the client program we use to play the game.  

The games themselves will exist on a centralized set of servers with modern databases (MySql).  

Players will play at one of the host websites.  When they come to the website, they will sign in and then they will see their current games listed on the web page.  When they click on one of their games the game will load right in their browser window.  There will not be any plugins to install or anything, the game itself will just be a web page using the new technology of HTML5.  

When you click on a game you will see your home screen right in your browser with your messages and VCRs.  You will then be able to load the star map, ships etc. right inside the window.  It will feel a lot like it does now, but the difference is you will just be on the website of your host and playing from inside your browser instead of running your separate program for planets.  

The game will use another technology called AJAX, so that you will not ever have any screen refreshes so it will feel very similar to how it feels when you play now.  

By making the game playable in a browser we will get a few really big advantages and one disadvantage.  The advantages include:  

1) The game will run on ANY computer which has a modern web browser.  So it will run on your PC, your MAC, your linux box and it will also run on you iPad and even your iPhone (though the screen may be a little small).  

2) Nothing will need to be installed on the computer to play the game.  So new players don't need to download anything or install anything they just sign up and play.  This also means you can play on any of your computers.  So you can play your turns at home, check your VCR's at work, or even log in and play your turns when you are travelling in an internet cafe.

3) You will not ever need to receive, unpack or pack and send in your turns.  Since you will be interacting directly with the host server the turns will be automatically submitted.  All you will need to do is check a box that says, "I'm ready" and the system will submit the turns when all players have marked that they are ready or the host time comes.  

Ok, so whats the disadvantage?  The disadvantage is that you will need to be connected to the internet to play.  This is a real disadvantage.  But I feel it is far overcome by the advantages.  This is VGA Planets for the 21st century... and in the 21st century we are nearly always connected.  

When players play the game at the host site, the host site will actually be connecting with the central servers to bring up the game.  This will take the pressure off of the hosts to keep the game servers always running and allow new hosts to be able to create hosting sites a lot easier.  We will work with the current host sites during the making of the game to set them up to host the new games when it is ready.  

As for the actual game itself.  The game will still be the same game, but with cool looking ships and transparent ion storms and other nice features. 

Any changes to the game will first be approved by the new "Game Council".  See the reward details at Kickstarter to see how to become a member of the council.  First on the agenda will be the possibility of some small changes to the ship list, and I will propose the addition of a 12th race.  

I have already done a few prototypes of the new HTML5 technology to ensure that we will be able to make the game this way.  There is one sample here (works best in Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari): Sample Echo Cluster

I have also done some work on a prototype VCR system but its not ready to be posted.

Here is great example of HTML 5: BenJoffe Canvascape

I am totally open to your questions about the plan and as I said on Kickstarter I welcome the help of any programmers or artists who want to participate in the project. 

Use the contact form on vgaplanets.nu or the message system at Kickstarter if you want to contact me directly or post your questions here.