Responses from Jolt to your questions.

[Forest]

Answers in response to this thread http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=178881

1) What is being done with regards to PA team to make it more efficent, eg hiring more than 1 person who can code
A) We're in discussions with PA Team at the moment on a number of matters including the size of the team and it would be premature to comment on that any further at this stage.

2) What incentives wiill be on offer to players to play a round? Eg Last Horizon has offered 3 prizes for the top 3 players for one of there upcoming FREE games, one of which is a brand new DVD Player
A) We cannot offer prizes to players for anything related to the paid part of the game because of restrictions from the credit card companies we deal with. We have in the past offered prizes for other aspects connected to the game which are outside of this restriction and we intend this to be a feature of future rounds.

3) A number of players have expressed interest in acquiring Planetarion, and gathered a lot of support by their intention of turning it into a free game again. Is Jolt interested in either selling Planetarion back to the community, or moving to a free system in order to raise player numbers, gathering income in another way than by the obligatory purchase of game accounts?
A) Jolt has received an unsolicited offer from an individual recently which we rejected as we felt it wasn't the right thing to do and if we were to receive any other offers we would probably respond in a similar manner.

A lot of people who seem to believe "the only way to raise player numbers is by making it free again" need a commercial reality check. Everything has to be paid for somewhere along the line. If the ad placement world suddenly places a premium on banner clicks again then yes we'd certainly be willing to look at running the round free. The reality is that this type of decision would make PA very unprofitable and lead to less resources being available for it, which is not what it needs right now.

Paid accounts are here to stay for those that want to get the most out of the game as this is the only way to give PA the financial resources it needs to grow and prosper. We do very much believe in limited free accounts as a compromise position though and in the same way as the balance of the game itself needs to be optimal, the balance between paid and free accounts will undoubtedly see further tweaking in the future to get it closer to "just right". We have taken steps to reduce the cost of playing as much as possible to make it less of a barrier for people to sign up, but the "everything on the internet should be free" mentality will be pervasive for many more years to come until the majority of the internet generation matures through commercial experience to better understand that everything has to be paid for from somewhere at some point. With increasing player numbers there will be more money to invest back into the game, which in turn can be used to both improve the game itself and attract more players to it.

4) We dont see that Jolt care, its as if they wash there hands of pa as to speak. This may not be the case, so if its not, what can/will u do to show u care. Pateam mess up often, but things dont get so heated cause its shown they care.
A) We most certainly do care about PA or we'd have taken the "corporate" decision to sell it a long time ago. Since the acquisition of the game it was very clear that the community and PA Team had very strong feelings about how the game was run. We have previously taken an approach of "hands off" management in that we have looked to provide the resources that the game needed and that the PA Team asked for wherever possible, but in general left the team and the community to run the game as you all saw fit. While we thought that this would have been an ideal situation for you all, clearly this hasn't worked out to be the best one for any of the parties involved. For our part, we feel as though there are parts of the community who will take any opportunity to bash us and disregard the facts in many cases and instead promote their own point of view to our detriment. There have been some very concerning communications problems recently as well which has resulted in many factual inaccuracies which have gone uncorrected. Whenever there are issues it's always easy for people to stand by and do nothing if someone else is getting the blame, and because of our "hands off" attitude it's always been easiest to blame Jolt for everything that goes wrong.

We have taken steps to improve communications between Jolt and PA Team recently and will be taking a more active role in the management of the game in the future. Initially our efforts are focussed on building stronger ties with PA Team and making them feel more a part of Jolt. We want to be unified in our presence to the community and be seen to be working much more as a coherent team towards common goals in the future.

We also want to strengthen the bond with the community but it seems clear that we need to take some measures to do this. We will always have an attitude of welcoming constructive criticism, but will no longer tolerate people who simply want to flame the game/support team/Jolt for whatever personal reasons they may have. These disruptive elements can have a very negative effect on communities by repressing the voices of others who have valid opinions and contributions to make, plus also engendering a "mob mentality" towards whatever their chosen flame-subject is at any given time. It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example. We don't see why we should tolerate this type of behaviour on our own forums. I will remind you again that those with genuine constructive criticism are most welcome to remain, as their motivations are clearly for the benefit of the community.

5)Why do new starters get two stages automatically in the space travel field of research regardless of whether they have paid or not? Whereas an old unpaid account is limited to only one stage of space travel.
A) We introduced this to try and give new players more of an incentive to sign up after the start of the game. It will be tweaked for future rounds.

I would like to thank Biffy/Geoff for taking the time to answer these questions.
Due to the lack of feedback form the pa community (I felt that most ppl just wanted to flame me and cba with what i did), i have declined to follow up the questions by probing more. Once I had taken out the questions that looked to merely flame Jolt, this is what we are left with.
Some things have changed somewhat, for instance I know that new official offers are being made/have been made, although I dont know in what capacity they are being taken by Jolt.

[biffy]

I should add that these are responses from Geoff aswell as myself.

[mist]

interesting stuff, and good to see geoff taking part - hopefully a sign of things to come. will we be seeing him in 1:1 next round?

i do, however, look forward to an exploration of jolt's definition of constructive criticism

-mist

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by Forest

...
We also want to strengthen the bond with the community but it seems clear that we need to take some measures to do this. We will always have an attitude of welcoming constructive criticism, but will no longer tolerate people who simply want to flame the game/support team/Jolt for whatever personal reasons they may have. These disruptive elements can have a very negative effect on communities by repressing the voices of others who have valid opinions and contributions to make, plus also engendering a "mob mentality" towards whatever their chosen flame-subject is at any given time. It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example. We don't see why we should tolerate this type of behaviour on our own forums. I will remind you again that those with genuine constructive criticism are most welcome to remain, as their motivations are clearly for the benefit of the community.
...

Strengthening the bond with the community is not a bad idea. My constructive critisism: use another tone to approach the community. This tone doesn't make me want to 'bond'.

[Forest]

As I told Biffy, my main outlet now will be links betwene jolt and the community, basically Jolt have to SHOW they care, and that is what I will be pushing for from now on.

[I am Idler]

to be quite honest Im litteraly frustrated with the answers given here, especially a few lines such as theses.

"A lot of people who seem to believe "the only way to raise player numbers is by making it free again" need a commercial reality check. Everything has to be paid for somewhere along the line. If the ad placement world suddenly places a premium on banner clicks again then yes we'd certainly be willing to look at running the round free. The reality is that this type of decision would make PA very unprofitable and lead to less resources being available for it, which is not what it needs right now. "

Then perhaps you would like to explain to me the difference between 180 000 accounts with no p2p.
and the current count with p2p.

Perhaps Jolt would like to point out how you raise ten times the current playerbase with p2p.
Or should I explain to you how you can make the game free and still make a profit using ingame add-ons that basicly makes the game more enjoyable.

Basicly I suspect that you have not even thought about this plan, or you have and couldnt come up with a good solution to the idea. Its more to the world of business and function than A-4 "pay-to-use".

Banners was never the only way to make a proft out of PA. Make a further investigation on the subject. May I suggest www.google.com ?

Its a shame that you insist on serving total gibberish when the community asks for answers, not corporate standard replies.

Paid accounts are here to stay for those that want to get the most out of the game as this is the only way to give PA the financial resources it needs to grow and prosper.

Or: Paid accounts are here to stay becase that is the only way we can make a profit out of a game that we have managed to turn into a small time online game, instead of the leading role it once had.

As I said, find ways around p2p, the answers are many and not hard to discover. Obviously I'd tell you but my financial advisors says that they are worth more than PA is worth atm.

[mist]

somehow, i doubt that's going to be taken as constructive , although 10/10 for criticism

i can kinda see their point on p2p, as pa does need ot make money and i gather that the bottom rather fell out of the banner adds market - wasn't the 180K planets round also the round where one of the banner lot didn't pay up, and dumped pa in the shit?

however, your comments about paying for features raises an interesting point - i'm going to take a wild guess that biffy or pateam will be along in a bit to point out that you've just suggested what pa's already doing - you get a free account, and if you want more features you upgrade it. however, i'd suggest there might be some balancing that needs doing somewhere along the line :P

-mist

[alch]

i still think its a step forward, jolt found the time to answer our questions.

[pablissimo]

Originally Posted by Forest

We will always have an attitude of welcoming constructive criticism, but will no longer tolerate people who simply want to flame the game/support team/Jolt for whatever personal reasons they may have.
...
We don't see why we should tolerate this type of behaviour on our own forums. I will remind you again that those with genuine constructive criticism are most welcome to remain, as their motivations are clearly for the benefit of the community.

How very concerning.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Jolt

We have taken steps to reduce the cost of playing as much as possible to make it less of a barrier for people to sign up, but the "everything on the internet should be free" mentality will be pervasive for many more years to come until the majority of the internet generation matures through commercial experience to better understand that everything has to be paid for from somewhere at some point.

All fine and dandy, but that mentality is what you're dealing with now. Planetarion cannot wait for "many more years" until people are ready to pay, we need a solution now.

It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example.

There aren't enough smileys to convey the stupidity of this remark.

[I am Idler]

It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example.

Seriously, did you even read that sentence through before you gave it away?

I find it kind of hard to give a 'serious' reply to these things when they are written by people with a narrow minded approach to things regarding PA in the first place. (£££)

[wakey]

Originally Posted by I am Idler

Banners was never the only way to make a proft out of PA. Make a further investigation on the subject. May I suggest www.google.com ?

Imho using goodle ads isnt viable as a way of making profit. Their t&c are so strict and they deal with failures to adhere to these t&c's in such a harsh way that its a risk. All it takes is someone either out of spite or just being overeager to start clicking multiple banners and they could be closed down. You simply cant run a business under these circumstances because your leaving yourself very open for trouble somewhere down the line. As much as a free PA would be good I know id certainly perfer a PA that was finacially stable first and wasnt about to suddenly close down for good

Originally Posted by Forest

It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example. We don't see why we should tolerate this type of behaviour on our own forums.

I have to say comments like that do annoy me (even more so due to the fact biffy seems to hold me in this group) People arent kicking up a fuss because they are trying to undermind the game ffs, its because they love the game and want to see it successful. Those of you at Jolt need to actually learn that people kicking up such a fuss is actually a good thing in a way because it means you have a community based around PA who is passionate about the game which is alot better than a community who sits there and says nothing

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

somehow, i doubt that's going to be taken as constructive , although 10/10 for criticism

i can kinda see their point on p2p, as pa does need ot make money and i gather that the bottom rather fell out of the banner adds market - wasn't the 180K planets round also the round where one of the banner lot didn't pay up, and dumped pa in the shit?

however, your comments about paying for features raises an interesting point - i'm going to take a wild guess that biffy or pateam will be along in a bit to point out that you've just suggested what pa's already doing - you get a free account, and if you want more features you upgrade it. however, i'd suggest there might be some balancing that needs doing somewhere along the line :P

-mist

was going to reply qouteing idler, but your post required less editing mist

basically we have limited development time, not just for round 12 but in general becuase spinner is only half time - so as much as we would like to rip the game apart and put in multiple account classes with people getting a basic account for free and then paying for additional features, its not going to happen any time soon - however as mist said there is still a lot we can do to make free accounts more viable, but paid accounts being needed to win so to speak.

Most of the developments for next round will be in the area that most of the paid customers complained about - poor buddy code implementation, inactives, exile, minor stats tweaks and other stuff like that - the end result being that the game will probably look pretty much identical but will be a lot more playable and robust. At the same time we do want to make free accounts much more playable, but if you like also maintain the growth in paid accounts. The more paid accounts grow the more resources planetarion gets and possibly we can even make free accounts even more playable.

What people will hopefully see is a steady round by round improvement in the game as well as a steady increase in numbers. Now we can help improve the game, we can even help improve it in such a way that old and new players might enjoy it more. But us paying for ads on a site or in magazines won't really portray what is being done - word of mouth is the best form of advertising we can do, which is why the community plays and has played such an important part in pa's recovery since last round at least. I know of many alliance HCs who asked old members to return, and thoose members did return. Hopefully they liked the game and will like next round even more and will stay, but we need more players so go and find us some

[mist]

kal - how much coding have you ever done?

not wanting to be insulting or anything, but you seem to think simple things are vastly complicated...

adding differet account levels isn't that tricky, you add an int to the users table, giving their account level, then at various points in the code you add an "if userlevel > X allow, else deny" type line. it doesn't take *that* much effort, particularly as you can fairly guarentee it'll work, and imo it's the mechanics changes that're most tricky due to haveing to throughly test them

on a similar note - please stop using the excuse of limited coder time! it's rather annoying. yes, spinner's part time etc etc etc, we're well aware of this. however, that doesn't mean he has to be the only coder working on the project. i know jolt are worried about people wandering off with their code (lol), but if they keep a core of code to themselves, and then allow people to code over that then they'll have the security they want, and the game will be updated - i don't understand why this isn't being done!

as for word of mouth, i agree entirely - however bad publicity travels faster than good, which means that pa needs to be doing good things, rather than filling the universe with inactives, having things like the BBW shouting etc etc. although, given things nowadays i feel a lot better about my time in PA PR

-mist

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

kal - how much coding have you ever done?

not wanting to be insulting or anything, but you seem to think simple things are vastly complicated...

adding differet account levels isn't that tricky, you add an int to the users table, giving their account level, then at various points in the code you add an "if userlevel > X allow, else deny" type line. it doesn't take *that* much effort, particularly as you can fairly guarentee it'll work, and imo it's the mechanics changes that're most tricky due to haveing to throughly test them

on a similar note - please stop using the excuse of limited coder time! it's rather annoying. yes, spinner's part time etc etc etc, we're well aware of this. however, that doesn't mean he has to be the only coder working on the project. i know jolt are worried about people wandering off with their code (lol), but if they keep a core of code to themselves, and then allow people to code over that then they'll have the security they want, and the game will be updated - i don't understand why this isn't being done!

as for word of mouth, i agree entirely - however bad publicity travels faster than good, which means that pa needs to be doing good things, rather than filling the universe with inactives, having things like the BBW shouting etc etc. although, given things nowadays i feel a lot better about my time in PA PR

-mist

1st thing - lots of coding
2nd thing - i haven;t a clue how thigns are done in the current pa code as i don't have it so can;t comment - but spinenr did say it wasn;t as straight forward as u might think, as it was discussed early in this round for a possible next round feature and ruled out
3rd thing - yes i know its a crap long term excuse - but in the short term its valid - people would need to be found to code, then contracted/NDA'd, then get up to speed on the current code before even thinkng abotu changing it. Also maybe the reason spinner is half time is that there isn't enough money to pay him full time. Hence we need a free perl coder who is willing to sign the NDA - spinner never turns down help.

[Chaos]

This reply was a step in the right direction.

The first part was ok, made me more friendly towards Jolt. but then it seems as it drifted over to anger and corp bullshit talk.

but. it's a good start.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

we need a free perl coder who is willing to sign the NDA - spinner never turns down help.

in that case, it would seem sensible to review the nda. last time i saw it, you had to sign your life away for 6 months after you terminated it - noone who's going to work for free is going to do that! hence the suggestion to limit the amount of access, so that a more sensible nda could be used.

as for spinner's pay... do you know how much he's getting?

-mist

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

in that case, it would seem sensible to review the nda. last time i saw it, you had to sign your life away for 6 months after you terminated it - noone who's going to work for free is going to do that! hence the suggestion to limit the amount of access, so that a more sensible nda could be used.

as for spinner's pay... do you know how much he's getting?

-mist

i do know.... but its not really something thats going to get discussed - suffice it to say its a lot less than he would be getting if he was working on something none pa and its not enough to live on - hence the 2 jobs.


and the PA NDA ain't that bad imo - it only limits u from working on PA style games

[Blacknova]

I will start this post by stating this is opinion only, and that this post is not representative of any person or group I am affiliated with. Soon I might wind up putting this in my sig since it seems like that will be the defacto operation for these forums. *sigh*

However, I will respond to a few bits here I find particularly... :eek:

(jolts stuff in bold)

A) Jolt has received an unsolicited offer from an individual recently which we rejected as we felt it wasn't the right thing to do and if we were to receive any other offers we would probably respond in a similar manner.

Translation : The offer was not good enough. PA is not a "crown jewel" in Jolts arsenal so I can't see there being any motivation to hold onto it if a genuine offer involving a realistic amount of money was put up.

A lot of people who seem to believe "the only way to raise player numbers is by making it free again" need a commercial reality check. Everything has to be paid for somewhere along the line.

Congratulations of making "most ridiculous corporate quote" of the year thus far, this puts Steve Ballmers and Darl McBride's rantings in the shade... seriously who thinks up these answers? Whoever it is, do you have a job with SCO? Suffice to say I would put money on Nildram using Linux somewhere in their network (as would any sensible network infrastructure provider), and that's Free as in speech, and Free as in beer. However, no corporation would admit to the possibility of admitting the statement "do as we say, not do as we do" ?

Everything else in the post is pretty stock answers... nothing the community couldn't figure out for ourselves... however I found this last paragraph particularly disturbing...

We also want to strengthen the bond with the community but it seems clear that we need to take some measures to do this. We will always have an attitude of welcoming constructive criticism, but will no longer tolerate people who simply want to flame the game/support team/Jolt for whatever personal reasons they may have. These disruptive elements can have a very negative effect on communities by repressing the voices of others who have valid opinions and contributions to make, plus also engendering a "mob mentality" towards whatever their chosen flame-subject is at any given time. It is likely that these persons seek to deliberately undermine the game for many possible personal motives - perhaps they are involved with our competitors for example. We don't see why we should tolerate this type of behaviour on our own forums. I will remind you again that those with genuine constructive criticism are most welcome to remain, as their motivations are clearly for the benefit of the community.

Hence the need for a disclaimer at the top of my post....

To me this reads disturbingly like the following :

We let the PATeam moderate because we actually couldn't be bothered to get our fingers dirty in some small corner of the internet which whilst generating a minimal level of profit, wasn't exactly high profile. However, this small corner of the internet appears to have a problem with some of our actions and is becoming a potential liability, therefore we will be more actively monitoring the forums and deleting posts / banning users / threatening legal action against specific people who do not fall in line with the image we wish to present to the outside world of how PA should be (sanitised in other words).

Ultimately Jolt wouldn't give a flying *ahem* if the arguments here were purely between users or at worst between the users and the PATeam, since Jolt would be distanced or dissacociated from the actions of said users, however because of some screw ups on the part of PATeam and Jolt which have resulted in the community taking a rather dim view (part of which is justified, part is not) of said owners. Ofc this isn't to their liking... so expect the iron fist in velvet glove treatment

Nova

[G.K Zhukov]

I was going to do as BlackNova, but he saved me the time.

Jolt, please send your workers to a course in retoric ta.

[Chika]

thing is, this is not even a good start. PA will never be free again, and the free accounts are so booty its ridiculous. Take a look around you, in these threads lay the same 200 people you will be playing with until Jolt throws in the towel. The game will never expand at pay to play. There will never be more than 300 or so serious players. And just like this round there will be tons and tons of free inactive planets, and they will mess up gals and rounds for everyone else. Thanks.

[Kal]

the game is expanding, and there will be changes to free accounts for next round. There shoudl be an announcement soon giving the gist of what we aim to do with round 12

[A2]

Originally Posted by Blacknova

A lot of people who seem to believe "the only way to raise player numbers is by making it free again" need a commercial reality check. Everything has to be paid for somewhere along the line.

Congratulations of making "most ridiculous corporate quote" of the year thus far, this puts Steve Ballmers and Darl McBride's rantings in the shade... seriously who thinks up these answers? Whoever it is, do you have a job with SCO? Suffice to say I would put money on Nildram using Linux somewhere in their network (as would any sensible network infrastructure provider), and that's Free as in speech, and Free as in beer. However, no corporation would admit to the possibility of admitting the statement "do as we say, not do as we do" ?

Everything else in the post is pretty stock answers... nothing the community couldn't figure out for ourselves... however I found this last paragraph particularly disturbing...

I have to say that at 3:30am I'm intrigued how the Blacknova plan which seems to reject the concept of any form of paid planets, intends to raise enough money to finance the servers and the bandwidth used. Please elaborate before slagging off the system that is currently keeping the game in existance. Linux/FreeBSD may be free software, but the hardware required to run them is by no means free. PA is also on a hefty connection which is unlikly to buckle under the pressure of users, and the bandwidth used, as well as locating the servers in Telehouse (London Docklands) all costs money.

(all opinions in this post are mine, and not necessarily the views of PATeam / Jolt)

[Achilles]

All opinions expressed in this Post and other posts made by my should not be taken to represent those of Lupine Crux/PATeam/Jolt/God/The Man From the Jif Ad.

They should in fact be taken to represent my view, which while markedly close to God's, mightn't bear the same weight amongst the devout. I thought everyone would have taken this for granted? Or is that just plain silly?

[Smudge]

Well to be honest, Jolt are being "silly people", so I will be launching Smudgetarion onto the internet at the end of this calander month, which will be free and easy to play, and will also have a sexy picture of the creators on the main page

Did I say its free? That means no P2P, no credit card

FREE

If a student can do this who is going to university in September, why cant a huge company do it for free?

Smudgetarion - ITS THE FUTURE!!!!!

[wakey]

Because your an individual, you dont have wages to pay, investors to please ect ect. As such you can get away with only covering the costs, costs which are alot lower than PA's. PA has its costs to cover and has to turn really turn a profit

[Forest]

I have seen a remarkable improvement in Jolts attitude towards PA, over these last few weeks.

The upturn in playerbase, has left them willing to invest now more than ever, and we sould see some solid developments in this area very soon.

[G.K Zhukov]

Originally Posted by wakey

Because your an individual, you dont have wages to pay, investors to please ect ect. As such you can get away with only covering the costs, costs which are alot lower than PA's. PA has its costs to cover and has to turn really turn a profit

Exactly what wages do they have to pay? Spinner as a part-time employe, and a 2-3 more the same? The rest works for free, dont they.

[Kal]

that can actually add up to quite a lot in wages u know - even if people arn't paid much

[TheRat]

This post represents my views and my views only. (But since people seem to think God is in all, these might also be the views of God.)

Kal, I know a lot of coders would be interested to help out. But first I must point out something; Start using a proper language, for the love of god. Asp.net, PHP = great languages. Hell, I would even do JSP over Perl. And with the amount of technically blessed people this community has, finding a coder willing to help out for free would be zero problemo.

-TheRat

[Leshy]

As far as I know, the other people are on Jolt's staff list regardless of Planetarion; as such it's not an extra expenditure.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by TheRat

This post represents my views and my views only. (But since people seem to think God is in all, these might also be the views of God.)

Kal, I know a lot of coders would be interested to help out. But first I must point out something; Start using a proper language, for the love of god. Asp.net, PHP = great languages. Hell, I would even do JSP over Perl. And with the amount of technically blessed people this community has, finding a coder willing to help out for free would be zero problemo.

-TheRat

i'm actually finding perl easier to learn than php, as its much more similar to C. Perl's big problem is that not many people know it theese days, but a langauge is a language and tbh anyone who knows php etc shouldn't really have any problems learning perl.

[mist]

basically, and i hope i'm not giving anything particularly exciting away here, jolt's general line is that planetarion doesn't *have* to make a profit, but does have to break even. however while doing so it must pay the 'opertunity costs' of the equipment it runs on - so jolt do want to make the same amount as they'd make selling the boxes as counter-strike servers or something.

i should probably hasten to add at this point, that pa does infact make a loss - including the aforementioned opertunity costs. i should also point out that imo it's a pretty reasonable way of doing things. expecting the game to pay for itself seems fair enough.

anyway. the uberserver thingies that jolt sell seem to go for about £100 per month, and i believe pa uses something like 3-5 servers (used to be 5, but i hear things cut back?)

so that's £900 - £ £1500 per round for servers
given that spinner's apparently not being paid much, i'd add £1000 per round for his services
then ther'es biffy's time etc etc, but no idea how that's being billed

so, that's around £2000 per round in costs, guestimated.

which, i believe, translates to 4000 signups? did pa get that many this round?

-mist
ps, anyone wanting to correct my figures, go ahead. however, if you're going to just say they're wrong without any justification, it's probably not worth the effort

[TheRat]

Anyone paying £2000 per round in hardware should be shot imho. I did some calculations with BlackNova once, but I cant remember them exactly. £2000 is probably listed in some lawbook as a crime.

Back to you Kal, how on earth can you claim that Perl is more like C than PHP is? Ive done a little perl, a lot of php and some c/c++, I clearly find php to be a lot more alike C than perl. Anyways, the problem is as you say not that many people know perl, which was my point exactly (Im sorry for not making that clear in my initial post). PHP has a huge community, and between all those who know how to include( "pornBanners.php" ); there are actually a few very decent coders, and a lot of them have a nice home here on netgamers. Listing myself would get me flamed to death, so I wont. I will however give a short list of a few people here on netgamers I find extremely quallified PHP coders;

Kaos
XtoTheZ
Chip
Theory
MT
Sandman

And I am sure you could list twice as many.

Switch to a better (personal view), and more common language and you will find a lot more coders willing to help you out.

-TheRat

[Kal]

for example if statements and for loops are identical in C++ and perl.

The other issue of changing to another language is that it has been tried before and failed. The coders are unwilling to sign the NDAs in some cases for example. You also ahve the issue that you are basically recoding for the sake of it and probbaly adding in new bugs at the same time.

atm there are still some perl people around, so we don;t need to switch to php yet, although some will say it is inevitable.

[TheRat]

Hehe, I would love to see someone chosing a language over another for the syntax of the for loop

Why would coders be willing to sign NDAs for coding with perl and not with a language such as php?

And if there are currently enough perl coders, why do people complain about lack of manpower?

-TheRat

[Kal]

The enough perl coders was for the futre rather than for now - i.e. round 12 development is as it is with spinner coding. During this time some new coders MIGHT start to look through the code and get to know how spinner does things. Then with round 13 we will probably have a coding team rather than a sole coder, this however might nto improve development speed, but it will certinaly spread the load so no single person gets over worked.

a switch to php would take even longer than the switch to more perl coders, so isn't really an option until we decide a full recode might be "fun". In which case we would probably allow 2 rounds for the devlopment e.g. start coding round 15 php when round 14 perl development starts for example

[mist]

arn't for loops and if statements in C also the same as for loops in php?

changing to another language failed because jolt decided against it. the game was already well in to production at the time. however, shockingly, people who work for a web design company, didn't want to sign jolt's nda - 'cus it sucked. tbh, i can't see you getting coders to work for free, and to sign something saying they'll not do anything that might compete with pa for 6 months.

out of interest kal, do you know what happened with the first round of ndas? if you did, you might have a better idea why we wouldn't sign them...

-mist

[Kal]

i know i signed one of the old ones rather than the new ones

the new NDAs only restrict you from working on "Planetarion Style games", which I actually think is quite reasonable. The ides being that after 6 months anything we did ion pa that was clever will be implemented in competitors so there are no risks etc. And yes I understand why that would put some off as if they are coding for free they don't want future earnings affected, but its how it is and I personally don;t have an issue with the NDA.

as to the for loops, i think the syntax in php is slighlty different, not by much though.

[TheRat]

For loops:

php

for ( $i = 0; $i < 10; $i++; )
{
   logic;
}

C

for ( int i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
{
   logic;
}

foreach loops:

Php

foreach ( $array as $key => $value )
{
   logic;
}

C

foreach ( item in array )
{
  logic;
}

(I dont know if you can extract the array indices in C using foreach loops)

Foreach loops are a bit different, true, but I prefer the PHP way :-)
Also, PHPs array handling is superior to that of any language I have seen so far.

-TheRat

[Kal]

it must have been ifs that were different, its been a while since i bothered to look at php - and yes i do like what php can do very easily with arrays and strings etc.

also worth noting that the php for loop looks ideitcla to the perl for loop - so now we ahve established all lanaguages are pretty much the same it shoudn;t matter what we code pa in

[TheRat]

How on earth can they make if statements different?

 

if ( boolean expression )
  logic;

elseif ( another boolean expression )
   logic;

else
   logic;

(Breackets are optional on one-line expressions.

[Phil^]

ooh was unaware of a foreach loop in c / c++ . here i was doing a while ( counter <= items ) { counter++; ...
you learn something new every day

[Forest]

People keep saying about NDA's.

However, as Jolt/PaTeam have shown that the user agreement is uneforcaable, does that mean the NDA is also.

[TheRat]

Phil, looping through arrays with while loops is bad mkay? :-)

I generaly dont like for/foreach, but for some arrayhandling its a lot better than while.

Also I love php list/each function, dunno if C/C++ has something similar:

while ( list( $val, $anotherval ) = each( $array ) )
{
   logic;
}

Quite nice :-)

[mist]

Originally Posted by Forest

People keep saying about NDA's.

However, as Jolt/PaTeam have shown that the user agreement is uneforcaable, does that mean the NDA is also.

some points of the nda, imo, are uneforcible. however, some of them appear to be.

either way, i've yet to hear a problem with the paying someone to look after a core body of code, and then allowing others to code bits that interface with that.

also, 6 months seems hugely ott for an nda. pa runs on a 3 month development cycle, more or less, so any ideas are going to be implimented within 3 months - why the 6 months, when some ramdon muppet could put them in a clone after 3?

-mist

[Blacknova]

Originally Posted by A2

I have to say that at 3:30am I'm intrigued how the Blacknova plan which seems to reject the concept of any form of paid planets, intends to raise enough money to finance the servers and the bandwidth used. Please elaborate before slagging off the system that is currently keeping the game in existance. Linux/FreeBSD may be free software, but the hardware required to run them is by no means free. PA is also on a hefty connection which is unlikly to buckle under the pressure of users, and the bandwidth used, as well as locating the servers in Telehouse (London Docklands) all costs money.

(all opinions in this post are mine, and not necessarily the views of PATeam / Jolt)

*All liabilities disclaimed, this post is opinion only, and should be treated as such*

The level of ignorance displayed is pretty worrying tbh. Put it this way, I can assemble a system that could withstand the load for less than a grand, with running upgrade costs of say £500 a year (and that's assuming I upgrade every year without fail to close to leading edge components). Let's say we go the whole hog, and have a seperate DB server from web, which is fair call, so then you double that. As TR said, 2 grand a year on hardware is positively criminal.

Bandwidth in the UK costs a *ton* ... whoever decides to host here either needs to be made of money or have screws loose, you'd be best served hosting from one of the scandinavian countries where bandwidth is dirt cheap (it's sth ridiculous like 100 mbit for say £60 a month, I am not utterly sure of prices, but I know people out there with insanely cheap and vast levels of bandwidth, uncapped).

2000-3000 users on a system is trivial given all you're asking the system to do is page accesses and DB queries (I have seen *forums* under greater pressure than that). Alright, so you may want a forum as a central repository, again, you can do that off of trivial hardware and on the same pipe, hell, you can use the hand me downs from your upgrades each year and still have a pretty damn potent forum server.

I am still not seeing these massive costs of what you speak A2... most of this sounds like it could be done inside £5 grand a year. There's a lot of unnecessary "fat" going into this atm that could be very easily trimmed off. PA does not *need* to be hosted on huge fat connections unless the code is generating so many queries that it's nuking bandwidth, it doesn't *need* top spec servers either tbh. I seriously doubt you are getting the kind of load which really demands flash hardware or massive wide pipes (me and TR did a fast estimate and figured out you could host the damn thing atm on a 1mbit pipe and still have room to spare, so Telehouse or LINX is goofy). Essentially the size of PA makes it at most an overgrown "hobby" project (see Pia / ss / DG / LH), and Jolt is over resourcing it in areas it really doesn't need it, and under resourcing it in areas where it genuinely should.

Idler had come up with a viable plan which even despite the ridiculously low levels of advertising revenue in existence, actually sounded vaguely viable by using monthly subscriptions to remove banners / provide benefits / unlock advanced features which would sit "on top" of the free account. Rumad also made a suggestion a LONG way back that the money is not in the game itself, and I am inclined to agree with that, the money is in retailing to the customer base which you hold captive within the game (a lot of people in this game have disposable income and I am sure you could create profitable means of getting them to part with that if you thought about it).

The level of money needed to actually pay for the running costs could be raised pretty easily through a few hundred monthly "premium" subscriptions paying £5 a month. If you're going to go P2P the level of cost becomes a lot less relevant, you've already placed the barrier to entry there, and by hobbling free acounts in the manner that has been done, you're using the "push" method of selling as opposed to the "pull" method... and very few companies can get away with that (as a rule only monopolies can get away with "push" sales -see microsoft for an example- and PA sure as hell isn't one of those).

The current payment model generates on average say £4 per subscription, which then gets spread over 2 to 3 month. Not being funny but if you're going to make people pay you might as well go the whole hog. Even given that as the case you're generating an avg of saaaay... £6-8000 per round which if it were limited to 7 weeks with a 1 week "recycle" period for the new round you could generate a fairly good level of income. So then the question is, where's the money going? 1 round could pay for the entire year in hardware costs, and if we were being seriously lavish 2 rounds could pay for the hardware AND the bandwidth.

You could comfortably generate the same level of income with "upgrade" subscriptions if enough was offered to make them worthwhile on a PER MONTH basis. Planetside / City of Heroes both take an avg of £5 a month to pay for... and both of those use FAR more bandwidth, coder time, and hardware than PA EVER will, and they offer free trials where people can play the *gasp* entire game for free for 30 days... and we don't hear them complaining of money troubles... I wonder why?

Solution : Make the basic game free (watch the player numbers start climbing back up), but introduce "premium" subscriptions which give more over and above the basic facilities (things like WAP access, SMS alerts, etc), things that even newbies will appreciate. Develop partnerships with vendors and sell to the community things that they are likely to appreciate and buy. Some geeks here will probably even pay for custom PA merchandise (esp alliance stuff).

Nova

[mist]

ok, his post is a lot better than my attempt

however, you did neglect a beta/speed games box. probably a small niggle tho, and the speed games would probably pay for it

-mist

[Kal]

we also don;t have as many rounds per year as he implies, and he neglects coder costs and the fact that we are using expensive uk based servers for whatever reason.

just bare in mind that pa team and jolt have probably considered all of that at some point, so there are probabyl good reasons for not having done something simmilar. time will tell what changes come in the future.

edit: uk based servers will be becuase for all of jolt's other products low latency is important

[Smudge]

Solution : Make the basic game free (watch the player numbers start climbing back up), but introduce "premium" subscriptions which give more over and above the basic facilities (things like WAP access, SMS alerts, etc), things that even newbies will appreciate. Develop partnerships with vendors and sell to the community things that they are likely to appreciate and buy. Some geeks here will probably even pay for custom PA merchandise (esp alliance stuff).

^^^^

best idea, but will be stopped for making a divide in the community. Planetarion T-shirts rocked!!! And the mugs!!!