Planetarion News Update

[biffy]

Hello all and welcome to my first post here at Planetarion.

To introduce myself my name is David Angus, forum nick biffy, and as part of Jolt's recent expansion of services I've been taken on as their Community Manager. One of the first responsibilities I have been given at Jolt is to become the main Jolt point of contact for the PA Team, ensuring that they have the tools and support to make this game a success.

One of the first things I feel I should do is apologise for the recent lack of news on the game's development. As I was only introduced to the PA Team and the current Planetarion situation about 10 days ago I've had to spend a bit of time getting to know the team, assessing the state of the game and determining how best to proceed. This has also meant holding discussions with the PA Team on a number of topics and these talks have raised some key issues we have had to tackle. The main problem I have encountered is that the PA Team have been unhappy with the lack of Jolt interaction and support in recent times, this mainly due to Jolt being very stretched in terms of staff resources.

Unfortunately the experience of the last few weeks meant that the PA Team had significant concerns about signing the new NDA that we require all people who are given access to Jolt systems to sign as part of the safeguards we have when dealing with volunteers. With this being crucial to allowing Planetarion development to proceed (no NDA means no server access) the past 7 days or so have seen some very open and, at times, heated discussions with a number of topics being talked about at length. Thankfully we have now managed to reach agreement on these matters and can start moving on with the game once more and also start to inform you, the loyal Planetarion players, what our plans are for the game.

We are aware that it has been a fair while since there was a Planetarion for you to actually play so with this in mind we have decided to recall legendary Planetarion creator Spinner from retirement. His main role will be to make some changes to the PaX code that will correct what significant bugs we know of, remove some of the aspects that have been criticised and generally allow us to tighten things up so we can use the code to run some Speedgames. This process is already well underway and we have provisionally penciled in the weekend of February 7th/8th for the first of what hopefully be a Cup style series of Speedgames that run throughout the month, culminating in a March final. Details will be confirmed in a few days so that players, alliances and administrators all have sufficient time to prepare for these games.

In addition to this Spinner will be providing advice to the existing PA Team as they seek to continue their development work on Round 11. This work has been progressing well and we are intending to go into beta in a matter of weeks, although it may be necessary to run some havoc games in addition to the Speedgames in order for us to ensure that we do not suffer such a gap in Planetarion gaming as has been the case since PaX finished. If this happens we will use the same modified code that will run the Speedgames and look at altering the tick speeds and/or roid income rates, as well as perhaps using different stats.

One issue that has been mentioned a lot on the forums is that of charging for Planetarion, especially given the gap in time since PaX. Whilst we cannot offer completely free versions of Planetarion, it simply costs too much money to run, we do intend to revamp the pricing and credits structure so that to participate in Planetarion is significantly cheaper than it was in PaX. Those of you with existing credits will be able to use these to participate in the games.

I think this is enough for my first post and the above should have helped to explain why things have been as they are for Planetarion during the last month or so. If you would like to ask me some further questions feel free to do so by replying to this forum post or by using the email function of the forums. You can also find me on IRC in #planetarion.

regards
Biffy

[Blixxard]

Lovely someone new on the scene :gollum:

Thanks for the long awaited update :-)

[Flayer]

I may not like the game, but planetarion is still the best reality-tv around

[Kal]

so it won;t be free then

[Bashar]

biffy, have you ever played planetarion or been part of the community?

[Mendosa]

Well thankyou for the big update, I wish you the best of luck with what sounds like a very promising plan to bring things together nicely. Glad to know people have been paying attention

[asd]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

so it won;t be free then

no, so go code the game awesome, else it wont be worth

[DrunkenViking]

\o/ we're out of the loop

[Mav]

Although new to team is a good thing, you really need to listen to the members of this game in order to reform it, you just need to look at the numbers leaving the game to see that.

[derry]

welcome 2 the *wonderfull* world of PA buffy

hope you have a good time here

[Stifler]

an update at last would be nice to see a more permanent date given asap so ppl who want to play can make sure they have the time

[Rocklobster[Dok]]

so we might get some ticks back for the summer hollydays or so :/

[biffy]

Originally Posted by Bashar

biffy, have you ever played planetarion or been part of the community?

In the past couple of years I've not played the game at all or had any involvement in the community. I've been involved in Online gaming by way of working full-time for GAME since early 2001 but Planetarion style games was not something we focused on there, it was mainly FPS stuff.

Prior to working for GAME I was however an employee of BarrysWorld, the company who you will recall hosted Planetarion for a time during 2000 and early 2001. I played the game both before and during the time we hosted it, although since about mid-2001 I've not had the time to play it really.

[Kal]

biffy: are you working on a plan to try and retain some of the players that played round 10 in the free universe?

[Assassin]

All i say is welcome back Spinner

[biffy]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

biffy: are you working on a plan to try and retain some of the players that played round 10 in the free universe?

This may be difficult as far as the SpeedGames go, although we are hopeful that the new pricing structure will allow people to get their friends playing fairly cheaply. With regards to r11 the p2p aspect is still in development but as far as I know it will be possibly to play in a "free universe" there.

[Aer]

spinner just couldn't leave.... the good vessel the lolly roffle hadn't sunk quite yet

[kaos]

How do you expect the community to pay for a game developed by semi professionial coders and support from a semi professional team ? Or do you finally hire a professional staff team instead of suppressing the ones who code and manage this game for YOU for FREE with those ridiculous ndas ? And then you say it costs so much to run ? I wonder when Jolt will change that A**hole attitude ...

[Darkness]

hmmm
/me stays tuned

[Mistwraith]

Originally Posted by kaos

How do you expect the community to pay for a game developed by semi professionial coders and support from a semi professional team ? Or do you finally hire a professional staff team instead of suppressing the ones who code and manage this game for YOU for FREE with those ridiculous ndas ? And then you say it costs so much to run ? I wonder when Jolt will change that A**hole attitude ...

Well i'm guessing running costs are the servers.. and the stuff that goes with that..
Jolt i've no doubt wish to make a profit... you dont run a buisness as a charity.. unless you actually want to run a charity.

I dont think thats fair to the present or past pa-team members kaos, they have been trying to do an impossible job... keeping pa players happy.. Respect to everyone .. amateur or proffesional that has coded and helped run pa over the years.. i certainly wouldnt want to do it...
Proffesional coders run beta tests for months to iron out bugs in any game b4 it is released into the market place.. anyone want to wait up to 6 months for the next round.. yer i didnt think so

Admirable rightous indignation from you kaos .. but has anyone in the team said to you they are being repressed ?

ohh and welcome to Hell Biffy :-)

[Doorsdown]

welcome biffy

[Leshy]

Can I be the first to say Thank the Gods?

Originally Posted by biffy

Hello all and welcome to my first post here at Planetarion.

Hello biffy and welcome to the Planetarion community and forums. I certainly hope you will be making many more posts to come - this was exactly the kind of stuff we were waiting for

Jolt and the Planetarion Community aren't really on speaking terms, and as such Jolt's reputation isn't exactly at an all-time high. I can only hope that you being here is a first step into bringing the two together. As such, please don't let any 'hostilities' scare you away, should they occur. Some people on the forums can be quite vocal (myself included)

Well welcome to PA Biffy I hope you can find a way through the maze of Planetarions history and come up with a way to pull things together. Hopefully you can connect the dots and show us the chicken.

How about a pretty and fast front end for PA...thin client download? massively multi player PA? Now surely that would bring in the dough

Regards,
Chameleon

[Flavius]

first 'wb Spinner' in a sucky sucky thread

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by kaos

How do you expect the community to pay for a game developed by semi professionial coders and support from a semi professional team ? Or do you finally hire a professional staff team instead of suppressing the ones who code and manage this game for YOU for FREE with those ridiculous ndas ? And then you say it costs so much to run ? I wonder when Jolt will change that A**hole attitude ...

Hey, you seem to have a very chronic condition of "Biggus Mouthus". Please have it rectified immediately. Preferrably by the related form of amputation.

Good luck to ya biffy Don't imagine that this job is going to be a pleasent one for ya, but good on you for taking it.

-Squids

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Chameleon

massively multi player PA?

What do you think PA IS? (or was, if you're being 'lol the game's dead hahaha')

Whilst the arrival of someone from Jolt to properly keep tabs on the public domain (as it were) is nice (it should stop the traditional 'Jolt told me not to say it' reply), it does make our 'PR' department somewhat redundant. Will they get other jobs, or just sit there and bask in their own 'power' whilst not having anything to do?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by kaos

How do you expect the community to pay for a game developed by semi professionial coders and support from a semi professional team ? Or do you finally hire a professional staff team instead of suppressing the ones who code and manage this game for YOU for FREE with those ridiculous ndas ? And then you say it costs so much to run ? I wonder when Jolt will change that A**hole attitude ...

By the look of it, biffy here's role covers most of jolt, so it's not just the game covering the overheads. Furthermore, from figures posted by people who run similar games, it's quite probable that even with reduced user levels, jolt is turning a healthy profit without anyone being paid in the team (Spinner and Fudge being 'departed').

Furthermore, NDA's would be required by most business concerns, if you have people without a professional tie to the company using your servers remotely, I suspect an NDA or some other kind of contract would be signed.

Finally, I don't think jolt could particularly be said to be 'supressing the ones who code and manage the game'; the only person who's had a (non-NDA) complaint with Jolt when dealing with internal business was Spinner, and that appeared to be because he misunderstood his contract. Talk inside the team is free, and they chose to perform that role, in any case (more so, given the recent minicoup)

[Catwoman]

Hi Biffy great to see some one has finally remembered us and I hope you will keep us updated often on new happenings, cheers.

[Rumad]

first hardy with a few sporadic posts, now someone called angus. I wonder who will be posting next week

[cbk100]

Welcome Biffy

Nice to see that something is finaly hapening...

Although I don't think PA can survive without making it posible for new players to play it for free (I will give you a few ideas for how this might be posible on IRC when I get my internet back in the end of this month) it is very nice to see that something is going on in HQ.

Biffy let me just give you one advice: Never lie to the PA comunity...

That is especialy when we talk about dates... Too many times HQ has set a date and not kept it (well actualy I don't think they have ever kept it) so its better to set a date a few weeks later than you really think you can make cause then you have a margin and you avoid lieing to the comunity...

cbk
speedgames=fun :-)

[JC]

Originally Posted by Aer

the good vessel the lolly roffle hadn't sunk quite yet

That was the name of my fleet last round .

Welcome again Mr Biffy.

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by biffy

Prior to working for GAME I was however an employee of BarrysWorld, the company who you will recall hosted Planetarion for a time during 2000 and early 2001. I played the game both before and during the time we hosted it, although since about mid-2001 I've not had the time to play it really.

Firstly welcome to the Planetarion Universe and its good to see a jolt face

You meantion you worked at Barrysworld before it became GAME, I never knew a biffy?? Did you go by any other nick? Its just I'm sure if in BW I'll know you is all, great bunch of guys the BW ones were, where gaming was born

[biffy]

Originally Posted by kaos

How do you expect the community to pay for a game developed by semi professionial coders and support from a semi professional team ? Or do you finally hire a professional staff team instead of suppressing the ones who code and manage this game for YOU for FREE with those ridiculous ndas ? And then you say it costs so much to run ? I wonder when Jolt will change that A**hole attitude ...

Jolt had professional Planetarion staff in the past but ultimately they couldn't make it work with those kind of cost levels, this reflecting in the rather expensive PaX prices. If Planetarion can get back running regular and at a large enough level then perhaps there will be full-time positions we can offer in the future, but this very much depends on what goes on in the next few months. Having said all that we have take on Spinner in a temporary paid position to fix the PaX code and make it suitable for running with Speedgames, this we view as an investment in Planetarion that we hope will be rewarded with some excellent Speedgames and also giving the current development team sufficient time to fully test r11. My own involvement is as a part of a wider Jolt role as their Community Manager and, whilst I've spent a significant amount of time on Planetarion in the past week, this has been mainly due to the stage the game is at. Once r11 is underway I doubt I will be around much because the PA Team should have all matters in hand.

The charging aspect is something that I've seen debated to death on this forum but I will add my view on it even though ultimately I doubt anything I can say will change your opinion. With regards to Planetarion on a monthly basis there is an opportunity cost to Jolt in the servers that the game uses as they could be sold for £X as Clan Servers on the FPS side of the business. In addition to this there are bandwidth costs associate with all aspects of Planetarion. These costs have to be recovered and it is worth remembering that they do vary with users so although more users = more revenue it does also inevitably mean more cost. PaX was costly because there were other development costs which had to be developed, we realise that it was perhaps too costly and this is why we will be revamping the pricing policy to a starting level of £10 for 3 credits, these credits being usable in both Speedgames and Normal games.

And the NDA issue. Well, I fully appreciate the problems the PA Team had with this despite the fact that we've had no similar issues in the FPS side of Jolt where all of our volunteer admins have either signed it and sent it back or are in the process of doing so. I tried to put the case as best I could for the NDA as it was but when it came down to it we accepted a more Planetarion specific version was required given the unique nature of the game and ultimately common sense prevailed. Despite having some disagreements the PA Team people I've met have all been very friendly and appear to have a real passion for the game. I'm hopeful we can put this issue behind us to ensure that they, with the help of Jolt, produce a r11 that does Planetarion justice.

[biffy]

Hi Zeus. You will know me as bigfoot (perhaps, we exchanged only a couple of mails), I chose the name biffy for this forum because its the name I had to use on Netgamers.

[Zeus]

Originally Posted by biffy

Hi Zeus. You will know me as bigfoot (perhaps, we exchanged only a couple of mails), I chose the name biffy for this forum because its the name I had to use on Netgamers.

AH! Bigfoot old bean, how to feck are ya?

Good to see you helping out here and I wish you well, its a steep learning curve compared to the FPS scene, but Im sure you will excell in the challenge.

Still keep in contact with the old BW crew? If, what everyone doing nowadays?

[biffy]

Ted and Dbs are at http://www.freddyshouse.com with most of the BW people. Sort of like a BW rebirth. Ted is working for Sony's Online stuff whilst DBs has remained with GAME as a network / infrastructure bod.

[Smudge]

yey for spinner!

[kaos]

Originally Posted by Pookie

Well i'm guessing running costs are the servers.. and the stuff that goes with that..
Jolt i've no doubt wish to make a profit... you dont run a buisness as a charity.. unless you actually want to run a charity.

Originally Posted by biffy

The charging aspect is something that I've seen debated to death on this forum but I will add my view on it even though ultimately I doubt anything I can say will change your opinion. With regards to Planetarion on a monthly basis there is an opportunity cost to Jolt in the servers that the game uses as they could be sold for £X as Clan Servers on the FPS side of the business. In addition to this there are bandwidth costs associate with all aspects of Planetarion. These costs have to be recovered and it is worth remembering that they do vary with users so although more users = more revenue it does also inevitably mean more cost. PaX was costly because there were other development costs which had to be developed, we realise that it was perhaps too costly and this is why we will be revamping the pricing policy to a starting level of £10 for 3 credits, these credits being usable in both Speedgames and Normal games.
I dont think thats fair to the present or past pa-team members kaos, they have been trying to do an impossible job... keeping pa players happy.. Respect to everyone .. amateur or proffesional that has coded and helped run pa over the years.. i certainly wouldnt want to do it...
Proffesional coders run beta tests for months to iron out bugs in any game b4 it is released into the market place.. anyone want to wait up to 6 months for the next round.. yer i didnt think so

as i said in another thread i think that the costs of the servers + bw are 500 euros per month max (i know this stuff, because i work for a company providing similar services as jolt )
i could do this calc stuff again, but i think you can imagine the gap between income and costs quite easily alone (tho this calculation was based on _zero_ employee costs, which was the case until a few days ago ...)

Originally Posted by biffy

Jolt had professional Planetarion staff in the past but ultimately they couldn't make it work with those kind of cost levels, this reflecting in the rather expensive PaX prices. If Planetarion can get back running regular and at a large enough level then perhaps there will be full-time positions we can offer in the future, but this very much depends on what goes on in the next few months. Having said all that we have take on Spinner in a temporary paid position to fix the PaX code and make it suitable for running with Speedgames, this we view as an investment in Planetarion that we hope will be rewarded with some excellent Speedgames and also giving the current development team sufficient time to fully test r11. My own involvement is as a part of a wider Jolt role as their Community Manager and, whilst I've spent a significant amount of time on Planetarion in the past week, this has been mainly due to the stage the game is at. Once r11 is underway I doubt I will be around much because the PA Team should have all matters in hand.

professional ? you MUST be joking. some points for you that show the [i]professionalism[/b] of that "professional pa team"
1. You ever played pax ? You ever saw the bugs which where in there ? those bugs were the result of the disregard of the most basic rules in programming (never trust user input). even a 10 year old "cracker" could have found those bugs
2. Pax was so good that it has do be redone now again.
3. spinner has to help now to get this old code ready for speedgames. in the "professional" projects i worked yet, there was something like documentation
4. Those professionals are still employees of jolt
5. For the price of pax i would have expected a product which can compete with the ones for free on the market. and there were enough better "clones"

Originally Posted by Pookie

Admirable rightous indignation from you kaos .. but has anyone in the team said to you they are being repressed ?

Well an NDA is _always_ repressive (thats the nature of ndas)
but the fact that it already took over 3 weeks to get _simple_ ndas signed leads to the impression that there must be something _wrong_ with the ndas, else pateam would have just signed them

and jolt still have to explain to me why they need an nda for ppl who develop a game for them, for free in their private, free time. and for pure server axx you don't need ndas. because the nda usually protects the companies ip (intellectual property). The only ip i can atm think of is the pax code (which pateam had access to even before the ndas were signed), and they need to protect the ip of the new code ? (which is mits ip actually ...)

Originally Posted by Squidly

Hey, you seem to have a very chronic condition of "Biggus Mouthus". Please have it rectified immediately. Preferrably by the related form of amputation.

full ack :P

[Kal]

i think the point abotu server cost is that the servers need to make as much money as they would make if they were being used for other things, otherwise its mkaing a realworld loss.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by kaos

Well an NDA is _always_ repressive (thats the nature of ndas)
but the fact that it already took over 3 weeks to get _simple_ ndas signed leads to the impression that there must be something _wrong_ with the ndas, else pateam would have just signed them

and jolt still have to explain to me why they need an nda for ppl who develop a game for them, for free in their private, free time. and for pure server axx you don't need ndas. because the nda usually protects the companies ip (intellectual property). The only ip i can atm think of is the pax code (which pateam had access to even before the ndas were signed), and they need to protect the ip of the new code ? (which is mits ip actually ...)



full ack :P

I think the point is Jolt want to own the planetarion IP which is fair as they own the game. This is perfectly standard stuff, jolt cna;t have Mit running off with the code and using it for his own game for instance.

[Crazeh]

Originally Posted by biffy

Hi Zeus. You will know me as bigfoot (perhaps, we exchanged only a couple of mails), I chose the name biffy for this forum because its the name I had to use on Netgamers.

bigfoot \o/

I sure remember you

I rampaged BW Q3 in -No Compromise- with BadKarma, Sturty & crew! Good old days

Glad to see you're still around, and Welcome to PA

[SYMM]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

i think the point abotu server cost is that the servers need to make as much money as they would make if they were being used for other things, otherwise its mkaing a realworld loss.

Exactly biffy's point. If they were using the PA servers for Counterstrike, or doom or whatever, they'd be making a lot more profit than they do from PA.

[Appocomaster]

Welcome biffy! Many many many thanks for the post, I think (as you can see) we were all waiting for something, just a date and an idea of what was happening in the future, which you provided.

Jolt expansion of services was "Clan Server Rental" - or so the page was entitled. Does this mean that alliances ('clans') of Planetarion can rent out servers for private speed games, as has been considered once or twice on various places on the forum? If so, what sort of prices would these be? (Assuming say a weekend's rental for the game) and what abilities would the people renting the servers have? Some way of, for example, changing some bits of the code through a GUI, to change ship/structure/research stats + costs?

[kaos]

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

i think the point abotu server cost is that the servers need to make as much money as they would make if they were being used for other things, otherwise its mkaing a realworld loss.

the real world loss is maybe 200-300 euros per server more each month (you gotta count support for that stuff + bw, and gameservers produce LOTS of bw [and those 500 euros are already _lots_ for a game like pa] if they don't put an insane amount of servers on 1 machine) still makes a quite large gap between income and costs.

Originally Posted by KalVirtus

I think the point is Jolt want to own the planetarion IP which is fair as they own the game. This is perfectly standard stuff, jolt cna;t have Mit running off with the code and using it for his own game for instance.

this has nothing to do with the nda. if mit WANTED to he could do this even with an signed nda (they would need an extra contract for that, because thats a _bit_ different, because its still mits copyright and he would have to grant jolt an EXLUSIVE, LIFETIME license [which in fact is not anything noted down in ndas usually ])

[Qdeathstar]

Lo Biffy, and welcome to PA...

IT is interesting to have some one new post of the forum.. and you have much better communication skills that keef... thank god for that.

Anyway, thanks for the update... sounds interesting. Just keep communicating..because one long post, and nothing else... still means dis-communication...

I guess PA team did keep its promise after all.. and its good to see that jolt is starting to put the time into PA that PA needs...

Deathstar.

[Colt]

Welcome biffy and goodluck

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by kaos

2. Pax was so good that it has do be redone now again.

Thats not the reason, the reasons are explained in other threads.

Originally Posted by kaos

3. spinner has to help now to get this old code ready for speedgames. in the "professional" projects i worked yet, there was something like documentation

If documentation takes 25 to 35% of the time, guess what is reduced/dropped first when resources are low ... I would say it would be rather unlikely to have a lot development- or even function- based documentation for such a project.

Nevertheless - even if the documentation would be great, the original creator of the whole stuff would still have an advantage. But even if he had none, getting Spinner back payed to make fixes,changes and PaX ready for speedgames means that Mit can develop the new rd11 code in parallel. So less time wasted and both ppl work on what they know best.

Originally Posted by kaos

Well an NDA is _always_ repressive (thats the nature of ndas)
but the fact that it already took over 3 weeks to get _simple_ ndas signed leads to the impression that there must be something _wrong_ with the ndas, else pateam would have just signed them

Or it was the simple fact that they never before ran into a NDA. I dont know anything about the NDA Jolt required, but i know ppl can be surprised when they first run into NDA's. The legal system and lawyers did a great job in creating contract language and a legal situation where it's hard to overview what the real implication(s) of contracts are (if you are new to them).

[Miner]

To biffy:

Well done for making what sounds like one of the most dedicated, explainitory and thought out posts in a while.

However, you're half way now, and I think the other half is showing the players that you can deliver what you say. I'm sure you can.

[CrazyConrad]

Planetarion Round 11 - Return of dah Spinnah!!

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by biffy

In the past couple of years I've not played the game at all or had any involvement in the community. I've been involved in Online gaming by way of working full-time for GAME since early 2001 but Planetarion style games was not something we focused on there, it was mainly FPS stuff.

I work for GAME right now. The humility of an ex Fury Executive working in retail.

Welcome, nice to see you.

PS: What area of GAME did you work in?