Now the graphics may be dated on this game but believe me it is incredibly fun. This is the Quake in space that we were supposed to get a decade ago but never happened. Get a few buddies together, go online and beat the tar out of each other for 20 minutes, go back to life. No massive investment of time like todays games, just a quick tension relief.

Enjoy.

Relevant links:

• OpenParsec website
• OpenParsec Binaries (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
• OpenParsec Github

What’s changed

• Moved from SF to github! 
•  All weapons and powers up now function. Newest editions being Photon cannon, EMP and upgrades, Invulnerability
•  Stargates function and allow in game server jumping
•  Master server functionality has been created
•  Basic Starmap created (needs texturing but functions) for server selection

I have outlined these changes in an update video which shows off the game in its current state. Please keep in mind the release will be a 0.2 beta so there is plenty of room for future polish and on that same note it is also amazing that we managed to digg this game out of its grave in the first place!

There is no safe distance.

Meet the TCS Victory:

I hate manufacturing or crafting or whatever you want to call it to be honest, too much of a grind I believe in any game. But in this case it is the only way to get a capital vessel in VO so I took my time and only did a little bit of work at a time and I bought from players what I could. Technically took almost a year but as I said, I hate Manufacturing so I worked on it very sporadically.

My 10th year is January 13th and hopefully I find some time to take her out for a scrap that day.

What does this mean?

It means a player can travel between servers without entering any commands, they just fly into the stargate and end up on a new server. The Parsec universe is one step closer to existence, all we need now are some planets and asteroids!

As if it were a swarm of bees you should avoid the swarm missiles

What’s happened recently

• In early October I sent an e-mail to Openparsec-devel stating “Summers over back to work!” To try and get attention again back to the project so we could again move forward and it worked. Several people from last year and a couple new lurkers chimed in and gave some ideas
• There was some debate on an IRC channel for collaborative work and the #OpenParsec channel on slashnet was created in late October
• All channel conversation is archived similar to a mailing list so it can be viewed by people who weren’t there
• Uberlinuxguy got the SDL client working for all platforms
• Slime got Xcode and Visual studio projects set up for Mac/Win32
• Slime began improving the video engine on the client as it is obviously ancient, including some rendering enhancements and resolution handling
• I improved the client side bot to be more fun
• Network code seemed to die after 6 clients, fixed it to allow up to 16
• Particle system simulation implemented server side (necessary to add some of the more fun game elements)
• Peer 2 peer system restored for local lan play
• Helix cannon works on game server

Anyways it has been a busy month. Feel free to join us on IRC or Sourceforge or compile the client and join the battle!

Network testing with bots

The plan

I am looking for a group of volunteers to come along with me in this tour to provide their own review and perspective so that it is fair and unbiased. You can let me know on this blog if you are interested.

After we have established a “group” we will select a day/time in the week when we can go review the restaurant of that week. Those unable to make it on the designated time could go at any point during that week and submit their review.

Once a day/time is generally agreed upon all members can submit restaurants for review and the group can agree/disagree on the choice and start setting a schedule.

Why?

I really enjoy fried chicken and you would be surprised about how much variety there actually is in this area. It isn’t all KFC you know, some of the smaller chains like Chester Fried need to be thrown into the light with all their glorious deliciousness.

The goal is to hit at minimum one of each major brand but for the smaller more diverse brands more than 1 of each type could be visited as their side dish, service and refreshment offerings could vary and impact the overall experience in a positive or negative manner.

Brands:

• KFC
• Popeyes
• Broaster Chicken
• PC brand
• Mary Browns
• Chester Fried

For the most part because things almost never break it is the education and vApp creation that takes up the bulk of my time.

I don’t know if you have ever used vCloud Director, but creating a vApp requires going through a series of questions, What do you want to call it? What vApp templates do you want to add? Do you want to make new VMs? Do you want to add networking? Do you want static, DHCP or manual Ips? Do you need to configure the vApp network services? Is this all correct?

In any event, I created a standard I follow when I build these environments and I almost always answer the questions the same so that 5-10 min of answering questions can be time consuming over the course of a week. Around a week ago I encountered a slow period where the questions and environments slowed to a drizzle so I decided to take the time to explore the vCD API and see if I could create some tools to make things a bit more stream lined.

First I created a reporting script, it shows me each org, the VM’s within the ORG and active users (an active user counting as a user with a running vApp deployed), VM count, powered on state and datastore usage. After getting my feet wet I decided to dive a little deeper and create a script I could use to deploy a vApp from command line.

Day 1, I was able to create a vApp and add VM’s of my choice to it
Day 2, I was able to specify Isolated, Routed or direct networking
Day 3, Provision networking features such as Firewall, DHCP
Day 4, Handle repeat VMs, power on vApps after creation, an option wait flag so I would know when the whole process was complete, an easy to modify table of templates linked to hash flags for easy expandability, code clean up with some helper functions

In essence, it worked beyond my wildest expectations.

Here is a sample output of the usage screen and a run time of the script:

Usage:
$ deployrepro -o Org -v vApp --win7 --win2k3 --win2k8 --vsa --ad --sql --vc50 --vc50u1 --vc41u2 --lan

[vApp]
-o|--org  <orgname>     [req] Name of Organization for vApp placement
-v|--vapp <vAppName>    [req] Name of the vApp to create
-p|--on                       Power on vApp after it is created
-w|--wait                     Script will wait for running operations to complete before exiting

[Vms]
--win7=     <OptionalName> add Windows 7 template to vApp
--win2k3=   <OptionalName> add Windows 2003 template to vApp
--win2k8=   <OptionalName> add Windows 2008 R2 template to vApp
--vsa=      <OptionalName> Add VSA storage template to vApp
--ad=       <OptionalName> Add Active directory template to vApp
--sql=      <OptionalName> Add SQL 2008 template to vApp
--vc50 --vc50u1 --vc41u2 Add Virtual Center template to vApp
--tools=    <OptionalName> Add the Tools VM template to vApp
--rhel=     <OptionalName> Add Red hat 6.2 template to vApp
--centos=   <OptionalName> Add CentOS 6.2 template to vApp
--ubuntu=   <OptionalName> Add Ubuntu 12.04 template to vApp
[Networks]
--lan       Add vApp network of the default 192.168.2.x range to vApp
--landirect Add vApp network of the default 192.168.2.x range connected to the Org direct
--direct    Add direct Org network connection
--dhcp      Enable DHCP server
--firewall  Enable Firewall

phil@somehost:~$ deployrepro -o SomeOrg -v "pspencer example" --win7 --rhel --landirect -w -p
deployrepro 0.3 by Phil Spencer
vApp Compose initiated
Waiting for vApp compose to finish...
vApp power on initiated
Waiting for the vApp power on to finish...
Operation completed

I have also made some other helper apps such as lsorg, lscatalog, lsvapps to ease some of the repetitiveness of the day. If you use a vCloud environment make sure you take the time to explore the API it is well worth it. In the above scripts I was using the PHP SDK, there is also a Java and C# SDK available and you can also work with the REST API directly if you so choose to do so.

Check it out.

I’d like to see if we can break that record so I am going to try and address a long running issue that has always plagued the game. In the first several days you play, unless you are very aggressive there is generally nothing to do other than research and explore. The fun doesn’t start until a few days in and many aren’t patient enough for that. This needs to be addressed.

Lets get to the game plan

Planned changes for next version of Doomsday:

• Daily quests:  These quests would be automatically generated once a day and would require the player to navigate a sort of dungeon with traps to somehow find the ending. The ending would contain a reward of some kind, either basic cash, scientists, units or land and also rare research items not possible to acquire through the research tree
• Random map generator: To generate the maps for the quests, the randomness means there would never be a repeat in game play
• north, south, east, west, fight commands, lets party like it’s the 80′s!
• PvP inside the dungeon, you may encounter other players (the fight command will be used here) kill them to knock them out of the quest! (limited to 1 quest attempt per hk)
• Attack and defense levels inside the dungeon based on research levels of your nation

We’ll see if this has any impact on player retention, it will add another interesting layer to the game. I already wrote the map generator this weekend, an ascii rendered output can be viewed here: http://philtopia.com/~spencep/showmap.php

# is path, S start, E End, * trap, . nothing