Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!bernina!neptune!iiic.ethz.ch!cfranz
From: cfranz@iiic.ethz.ch (Christian Steffen Ove Franz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Looking for Comments/Suggestions for Spaceward Ho! Version 2.0
Message-ID: <29190@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 4 Jun 91 11:12:43 GMT
References: <1991May30.185345.10261@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch
Reply-To: cfranz@iiic.ethz.ch (Christian Steffen Ove Franz)
Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich
Lines: 71

In article <1991May30.185345.10261@neon.Stanford.EDU> commons@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Peter Commons) writes:

>
>Things I'm curious to hear about (but please don't limit yourself to these):
>
>1. Multi-Player Games. What can be done to make them easier?

There's nothing to add that nobody mentioned before...

>2. Message Passing. Do you want to send messages to other players? If so,
>   what do you want to send? And how would you do it?

Yes, I really would like that. How about another windoid where you select the
player you want to send a message to? Then a dialog appears and you type in 
your message, click OK and off it goes. The recipient doesn't HAVE to answer,
but in (yet another) windoid called "Communication" or the like, the message
will appear.

>3. Battles. Does it make sense that every battle is fought to the death? Would
>   you like to retreat, fuel remaining? What would you like in a battle 
>   summary? What would make a battle more fun to watch?
>

How about making a more detailed battle optional? like little icons fighting
each other (see below in fleet organization)?. And yes, PLEASE add a battle
statistic which tellst you how many ships of what type you lost.

Then I would like to see a different way of organizing your fleets. Instead of
using lists, use a window for each fleet. In this window you would place an
icon for each ship and much like moving files to different folders in the
finder, move these icons from one fleet-folder to another (or, maybe make this
optional). Of course, there should be only two fleet-folders open at any time.
This of course requires that you also supply a different icon for each shiptype
one can create, but maybe you do this by writing the stats at the top of each
icon or (again the finder analogy) below it (like filenames).

Then, how about some random global events, like "World abc lost because of 
epidemic, every one died" or "World xyz declared independance"? These events 
would happen at the end of each turn.

And then I would like to see the possibility of alliances with other Players.
These could be talked about with the communication facility and if both 
players choose "Propose alliance with..." at the end of the same turn, in
the next turn, these players will have an Alliance until at least ONE of them
chooses "Break alliance" from the menu.
In an alliance, the other player may land on a planet that belongs to his 
partner. He stays in command of his fleet(s) but will be refueled. If the 
alliance breaks, each planet with fleets from both players will have to 
fight it out.
I think it best to limit alliances to two players, i.e. no player can have
alliances with two or more players, only with one.

>Thanks for the input. The new version will probably be available in August or
>September. As it will be a "major" upgrade, we'll probably ask a minimal 
>upgrade fee for current users.
>
>-- 
>Peter Commons		
>commons@cs.stanford.edu	
>Computer Science Department, Stanford University

OK, so maybe these changes are to big to implement. Anyway, i just *love*
the idea of being able to suggest improvements. Here's to You, Peter!

Christian.

---
Christian Franz  cfranz@iiic.ethz.ch  
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Christian S. O. Franz                 |                   cfranz@iiic.ethz.ch
ETH Zuerich, Swizerland               |                     vismgr@rz.ethz.ch