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Unread 7 Jun 2007, 00:54   #26
AdmV0rl0n
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Re: Planet Dumps (Last Updated: 12/04/06)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
I agree, but then again the dumps do not offer any ingame advantage right away. They just ease the way pa players can mine data. You certainly didn't play the very first rounds where people wrote bots which cycled through the galaxy page for every galaxy each tick and retrieved the data that way. It was very server stressing, and as such the botfiles are easing the life for everyone: Tool Coders and Pa Team / game administration.



Both points contradict each other. On the one hand there are pages like sandmans which invalidates your point #3. And point #4 boils down to applying common sense / brainforce. If people cannot handle tools like sandmans then in most cases they are unable to handle the data required for 'intelligent playing' of PA anyway.



I'll answer to the rest once I am sober again. But I guess the first to comments of mine make it very clear which way this argument will take.

Point 3 and 4 do not contradict one another. You need to consider the points again. However, at least you've taken a peek at it. This is not about me being right, and everyone or some others being wrong, its really more along the lines of a discussion.

Just to cover my basic view again
1. Third party tools being outside of the game, and unknown to new users (commonly called 'Noobs' by the game fraternity) have a detrimental effect in *some* ways. That's not to say they are detrimental overall.

2. I *think* it would be a good idea to think beyond current thinking in this area. There are all kinds of directions people could consider.

Crazy examples follow:-
a) Release the dumps, with a license. The license stipulates that code created to read/use/sift/other the PA data should be *Planetarion license code - code should be open and given or at least available to the community.
Perhaps this would allow such code to be intergrated into the game, thus adding value to the community in return for PA giving the public dump data.

*Planetarion license as yet unknown. One might have to be written. Or one might be out there already that could be used.

I am obviously risking upsetting lots of people with this one, but hey, get used to it, its what I do. Besides, if (example) Thrud's battle calc one day became an in game screen we could all use, would we not like that?

b) Third party tools should be checked and once confirmed that they work (ie calculate properly within reason), they be added to the Manual or other game documentation areas, the portal, or similar, so that every player knows they are there. Thus the third party tools and utils become closer to the game and better covered and documented..

More after I grab some sleep.
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