Yeah!

Hello everybody,

i'm not sure if this will work, at least as of the much higher costs. I actually play only one game per time and the games takes about 1-1,5 years in time.

With the monthly/yearly cost you want to earn from all those players (3$ a month or 30$ a year) it means much higher costs than i had when i bought my dosplan licence in 1995.

But i will take a look about the future of this "nu" project to find out what other players thinks about it.

Hi Mydgard,

Its true its more expensive than the original. However, Running servers for a game like VGA Planets can get pretty expensive, and one of the problems with the original pricing was that because there was no on-going costs, there was also no on-going development.

We will continue to develop, improve and market the game and want to be able to do that into the far future. Unfortunately, that costs money. It will mean a healthy community in the long run.

We tried to price it as cheap as possible at $2.50/month when you buy annually.

I think the pricing concept makes sense. At least I support the idea of expenses being met by the playing community. I would love to see a free or cheap app for an iPad, or iphone.

Hi Joshua,

I agree with Mydgard. VGA Planets was a single payment game. I guess, most guys aren't willing to pay permanently for it. But we will see.

Some thoughts from my side based on my experiences:

Original VGA Planets v3 is lasting for 20 years now.
No major development on v3 has been taking during the last 10 years.
Consequently the game is outdated regarding graphics, player convenience and game variability, effects and speed.
New potential (young) players are more addicted to full action games with high-end graphic.
The VGA Planets community has been reduced from thousand of players to a core less than 1000 people.
Most of these players are between 30-50 years old, go to work, are married and have families. Spare time is very limited.
Therefore the starting basis for a successful relaunch is in my opinion pretty challenging.

The original VGA Planets v3 has been advanced by PHost. A lot of new features has been introduced, like an experience system.
However the progress here was also too slow and fragmented.
http://www.phost.de/
There are copycats as
http://www.skrupel.de/www/index.php/Portal

VGAP has another weakness. Winplan, ship list viewer and host.exe are stand alone programs.
What IMO is needed for a successful reanimation is
a) an integrated concept of a player client, ship list and feature viewer, and easy set-up section for hosts. One installation, one user interface for all sections.
b) an open structure. Races ship list shouldn't be limited in slots, pictures, equipment lists, moves, and features. Keep it flexible but simple.

There is already a web-based client called JVC
http://www.jvc-client.com/

For other clients please have a look at:
http://www.phost.de/links.html

My 2 cents. I hope this helps.

Degi - Vagabund Team

P.S.: Tim wouldn't give up VGAP v3 if there would be a chance to earn money.

@Tyrion: Thanks for your support Tyrion! The HTML 5 technology that I am planning to use will run natively on the iPad and the iPhone, so it will be free to play from there if you have an account. The iPhone screen may prove to be a little small to work with easily, but you should be able to perform some basic moves, or view your VCRs.

@Degi: Thanks for all your input, I agree with a lot of it. I'd like to add a little to what you've said.

1) No major development has taken place: This is absolutely true and is a result of the one-time payment system. Its difficult for developers to keep working on the game when there is no money coming in, by changing to a subscription plan, money will continually be generated from the community which can go to keeping the game fresh and modern looking and also to market for new players.

2) The players are 30-50 and young players want lots of action: Again, I think this is true. Fortunately for us, more people are becoming 30-50 every day and reaching a point in their life where they need a slower moving game that they can walk away from when their baby cries, or boss calls. This is a valuable difference that VGA Planets provides. We just need to get that message out through proper marketing.

3) The current game setup is too complex: This is perhaps the biggest barrier to new players joining and the #1 thing I want to overcome.

The new web-based solution I have in mind is not just a web-based client for planets, but the entire solution being web based and hosted in "the cloud" on centralized servers. Players will not need to install anything at all to play the game. They simply arrive at any one of the host sites, click the big button that says "SIGN UP HERE TO PLAY NOW" and they will create and account and join a game. Once joined, they will immediately be taken to the game page where they will start playing.

From the http://vgaplanets.nu site there will be a link for new hosts to be able to sign up and create a new host website. That will also be a very easy process and they will be able to have a new host site built in a short time. We plan to use the technology we built for our CMS called Lara for this. Learn more about Lara here: http://getlara.com

If we can start to get a little more money flowing through the community we will be able to invest that money in marketing the game to new players who want an alternative to the super-fast action packed game and we will get many new players.

Degi, I would love to have you help out on the "Game Council" as we design the new game, I'm sure your input would be very beneficial.

Thank you!

All in all I like the idea and even the monthly cost of a few bucks is no big deal I payed a yearly fee to play on other sites for years. The cost of just one PC game today will pay the $2-3 per month for a couple years.

My dislikes from what I read so far is the idea of a remake of Version 3. Fancy graphics are nice and all, but I'm fine with what is already there. It is the other features of the game that cry out for fixing and that would then be a new game. Examples: Only one mission at a time, static race character abilities, movement should be incremental not all at once (if I intercept you from 5 ly away and am going warp 9 and you warp 7, I should catch you long before you have driven your entire 49 ly, weapon loss is not computed correctly, multi ship combat (a biggie), and a multitude of other things. I'm sure everyone has a list of things they feel would be a major improvement. Having said all that, I would pay the couple bucks a month to play a internet version of the game. It is still the only game in town, so to speak, that I know of anyway. :)

One other question. Say I put in the $50 or $100 and you do not get the $10,000, is my money gone?

Good luck with this.

Hi JRM,

Thanks for your comments. The idea now is definitely to not make any major changes like fleet combat, or changing the way intercepting works. That would indeed be a new game. The big change now is getting us onto a new platform so that its easy for new players to join and play and its not so complicated.

As for your question about funding. Your credit card will only be charged if we reach our $10,000 goal. Kickstarter is an "all or nothing" funding platform.

You can find a lot of info on how it works here: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq

VGAP on my iPhone you say.
Man I love you guys!
Good luck with the project, emailing all my old planets contacts with the good news right now.

This is a really old thread. I have just found it surfing on the forum.

I believe it will be interested for all players to read it.

Good reading!

@ $2.50 a month to play, that's nothing to have an online game which gets regular updates etc. If you don't like then you stop paying.

Get's my vote.