State of the Nuniverse

Saturday, July 9, 2011
Development began on VGA Planets Nu over 1 year ago and we've come a long way since that time. The first training games were being tested in September, October of 2010 and the very first standard game, Rebirth 1, began on November 3rd, 2010 and just ended a little over a week ago after 8 grueling months of conflict. It was a game I thoroughly enjoyed and was well played by Kedalion, Mesh_hong and Madinson.

Where are we now?


The Planets Nu community has grown tremendously over the past 8 months, there are now over 900 active members playing in over 250 standard games and countless training and blitz games. More than 3500 people have signed up to try Planets Nu, most of them first time players, and more sign up every day. The vgaplanets.nu website gets more than 100000 visits every month from over 20000 unique visitors. We're processing more than 8000 player turns every week (with thousands of VCR's) and we're just getting started!  

Development on the game over the past 8 months has focused on precisely duplicating the functionality of the original game, identifying and fixing bugs in the game play, improving the user game experience and creating a stable, scalable, automated platform on which we can grow. Thanks to the tremendous feedback from the community (and a lot of late nights coding) we've been very successful in attaining some of these goals. As with any complex software project, as long as we continue to develop the game there will continue to be bug reports but we are happy to say that at this point more than 99.9% of all turns run perfectly!  

In summary:
  • Duplication of original functional - Check
  • Create a stable, scalable, automated platform - Check
  • Improvement of the user experience - always ongoing
  • Finding and fixing bugs - 99.9% (but always ongoing)

Where are we going?


While the past year has been focused on simply creating the base VGA Planets game, the next year will be spent on growing the community and making it as fun as possible to play!  

Key goals for the next year include:
  • Extend the standard game with many add-ons, including both historically popular add-ons such as explore map and sphere and Nu versions of starbase+, race+ and many more which have never been seen before.
  • Introduce more game scenarios and forms such as team games, mini-speed-games and giant melee games.
  • Create more reward and ranking systems and offer real prizes for top players, championship games and good gamesmanship. 
  • Expand on the leaderboard, the Grand Theatre and Officer character concept.
  • Provide more options when creating private games.
  • Continue to improve on the user experience, graphics and interface. 
  • Make more live game and race statistics available on the site.

  • Create a standard Planets API (programming interface) so that player-developers can expand the user experience with project such as: http://vgaplanets.nu/discussion/time-lapse-project
  • Expand the user experience to native apps on more platforms such as iPhone/iPad and Android devices. We plan to achieve this goal by partnering with player-developers using the API. If you are interested please contact us.

  • Market the game as much as possible.

  • Continue to listen to feedback and implement ideas from our awesome players!

Premium Membership


After over one year of development the time has come for us to create a two tier system here at Planets Nu. As always, we will continue to offer a free version of VGA Planets to all players. This free version will continue to be the full and complete version of the game as it is now until October 1st, 2011. 

Players on the free version will have:
  • The ability to raise tech levels on starbases to level 7. 
  • The ability to get tech 10 goods by building starbases on planets with humanoid, ghipsoldal, siliconoid or amphibian natives (as with the original shareware version). 
  • Ability to join any of the classic and smaller game formats found in the Outer Quadrants on the game signup screen.
  • Full leaderboard achievements, experience and rewards. 
  • Access to training games and private games created by premium members.  
Players on the premium version will have the above plus:
  • The ability to raise tech levels on starbases to level 10.
  • Ability to create and manage private games for your friends.
  • Access to all the games on the Planets Nu system, including team games, games with add-ons and special scenario games.
  • The opportunity to play against other committed players, with less dropouts and quality play.  
  • Eligibility for championship matches.
  • Eligibility to win real prizes.
  • A good feeling inside for supporting development of the game they love!  
Premium membership will be available immediately and will have the following price:
  • $3 for 1 month
  • $8 for 3 months
  • $30 for 1 year
  • $54 for 2 years
All players who register for a 3 month, 12 month or 24 month premium membership before September 1st will get an "Early bird special" bonus of 3 months of premium membership.  

Premium membership is available now and you can register here via credit card or other payment options: http://vgaplanets.nu/register 

Show your support for Planets Nu by registering today!  

Team Games


After a fun, active discussion about the best 3 race combo we are happy to announce that team games have arrived! The first game format features 4 teams of 3 players with each team starting with a full alliance. Winner is the first team to capture and hold 300 planets for 5 turns. To maintain the best combination of choice and diversity the following rules apply when joining the game:
  • Each player chooses their race when joining
  • Each team must have 3 different races
  • There is a maximum of 2 of each race in the game
With this setup, players joining first have a very slight advantage of more choices, but players joining later have the slight advantage of seeing what the early joiners chose. Game formats of 2v2v2v2v2, 4v4v4 and 5v5 will follow soon.  

So grab two of your best allies, pick the best 3 race combo and join the first Team game to be played here at Nu (please join as a team of 3): Australis System