End of an era

That’s it, the IOResort server is no longer responding as of 15:00 AEST (+10:00).

I grabbed a copy of the rankings about 4 hours ago, which I’ll post later today. If anyone has a newer version let me know.

Farewell TLF & TLR! It’s been a blast!

On a related note, Space Tryant has also disappeared.

Tactic #1: Know your game server(s)!

Here’s the first post in a (hopefully) ongoing series of hints and tips…

What do you do if the game server doesn’t appear to be working? You try to browse to IOResort.com and your web browser times out or gives you some type of error message.

Unless the server has completely died or the hosting ISP has gone out of business, there’s a good chance it’s only a minor problem with DNS or a rogue process on the server.

That’s where this handy table comes into play… it’s got all the info that a player needs to access the games directly! 😀

Game Server IP Address Http Telnet Client
TLR ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 80 23 666
TLF ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 1880 1823 1866
ST ioresort.com 69.55.229.31 N/A 9999 N/A
ELF starshiptraders.net 207.191.194.245 1080 23 N/A

 

Note: The problem this past weekend on ioresort.com only affected the TLR game… TLF & ST were still up and running, you just needed to remember what ports they use!
Note: I’m unable to confirm the ELF information as I still seem to be banned/blocked… 😛

TLR/TLF/SpaceTyrant game client

I’ve been promising this for awhile now. A few players have been running the client on window systems. One on Windows 2000 and another on XP. There’s a link at the bottom of this article, to download the client. Nothing fancy like the installer for Art’s client and not much eye candy either. I’m more interested in what you can do with client than how it looks. Also, it’s not nearly as automated as some of the other players clients/bots, except for score collecting which I occasionally do. I’ve retired my bots more than 2 years ago. You’ll need to unzip the files into whatever directory you wish to play from and do a full install of mono from the Novell website http://www.mono-project.com/Downloads. Just select the appropriate stable release for the OS you’re running. Works on any OS, as long as you’re running Windows 2000 or above, or a Linux distribution on which you can install mono 😉

Once the client and mono are installed, on windows start the mono dos box and switch to the directory where you’ve unzipped the client files. Type “mono GameClient.exe” to run, and that’s it. No instructions are included to run client. Anyone out there care to write a client manual? For Linux, consult your distribution’s help for how to run mono.

Online graphs problem

Something strange is happening over at ELF… the number of logged in users is jumping all over the place which makes the graphs look very strange.

I’ve done a quick workaround with the graphs, so they look a little saner.

Sane Graph
Sane graph
Crazy Graph
Crazy graph

I’ve sent Dragelet an email about the strange figures, as I think it’s something that should be investigated.

If (and when) the figures come good, I’ll restore the ELF data from a backup, which will remove the bogus data…

Space Tyrant Results – Round 1

This last round was ended abruptly by Ray due to a major glitch I found. With 3+ Scanners, you scan ships, which takes up fuel. It is possible to get negative fuel. Then after waiting 1 minute, you get 50,400,000 grams of fuel, or half a games worth. Repeat as desired.

You get the picture. This led to some major scores. Here’s the results (My ship, spiral, would be up near Bestark’s [test] but he killed it twice, and due to another glitch, test’s score appears to be negative, also, for some reason, pathological is ranked at 450, which is very odd because his score was around 11,000,000 before I destroyed it, such a large drop)

Rank ________Player Name________ Team_ Ship_ ___Score___ _____Galaxy_____ _Tag_
   1 test                        [Q&A] Huntr  -2123412843 Algol               77
   2 spiral                      [ACE] L.Cru   385963889 ~ship destroyed~   309
   3 Fleet Tender                [WDM] L.Cru   327568354 ~ship destroyed~   433
   4 bloodquest                  [ACE] Freig    27626634 Sabik              184
   5 Ghost                       [GST] L.Cru     4531355 ~ship destroyed~   392
   6 Bestark                     [Q&A] L.Cru     3033705 Algol                2
   7 mirari                      [ACE] L.Cru     2852344 ~ship destroyed~   157
   8 Phantom                     [GST] L.Cru     2101810 ~ship destroyed~   419
   9 Jackpot!!                   [ACE] L.Cru     2073563 ~ship destroyed~   439
  10 Target Drone                [~~~] L.Cru     1154822 ~ship destroyed~    10
  11 blackjack                   [ACE] L.Cru     1127105 ~ship destroyed~   437
  12 shadows                     [ACE] L.Cru     1101706 ~ship destroyed~   417
  13 Star Trader                 [~~~] L.Cru     1064951 ~ship destroyed~     1
  14 Star Ranger                 [WDM] L.Cru      924747 ~ship destroyed~    33
  15 Shadows of the Past         [ACE] L.Cru      693380 ~ship destroyed~   436
  16 reflections                 [ACE] L.Cru      667289 ~ship destroyed~   408
  17 kirshaw                     [~~~] L.Cru      511555 ~ship destroyed~   378
  18 ace of spades               [ACE] L.Cru      437205 ~ship destroyed~   438
  19 unsigned int                [~~~] L.Cru      404070 ~ship destroyed~   447
  20 SSSS                        [~~~] L.Cru      379337 ~ship destroyed~   449
  21 sssss                       [~~~] L.Cru      379287 ~ship destroyed~   448
  22 Aji                         [~~~] L.Cru      309841 ~ship destroyed~   445
  23 hydrogen                    [~~~] L.Cru      293537 ~ship destroyed~   444
  24 papercut                    [GST] L.Cru      256037 ~ship destroyed~   422
  25 conquest                    [ACE] L.Cru      212822 ~ship destroyed~   159
  26 jimun                       [~~~] L.Cru      162855 ~ship destroyed~   443
  27 Talon_Jasra                 [~~~] L.Cru      148305 ~ship destroyed~     8
  28 praveena                    [~~~] L.Cru      120305 ~ship destroyed~   442
  29 pravi                       [~~~] L.Cru      120105 ~ship destroyed~   441
  30 mark420                     [~~~] L.Cru       85905 ~ship destroyed~   440
  31 carter                      [~~~] L.Cru       73205 ~ship destroyed~   446
  32 aasd                        [~~~] L.Cru       73205 ~ship destroyed~   450
 450 pathological                [GST] L.Cru       27021 ~ship destroyed~   393

I destroyed every single ship except my own, which is probably why bestark came after me 😉
Next round Ray is promising changes. The bug will be fixed and another glitch causing people to run out of time will be fixed. The biggest change will be that wormholes will interlink the outer galaxies with others of their kind (bar, irregular, cluster, etc.)

*lets out a little ‘woohoo’ for getting the format right for scores

New 70-Day Game

A new space tyrant game has started. Unfortunatly, you can’t view the previous game’s results. For the most part, the order was (by player name, not ship name)
Bestark, Mirari, Ray, M.O.G, Star Ranger
I’m looking forward to seeing more people in this next round. Look out for my ships: Conquest, Mirari, Bloodquest, Spiral (cheating ship), Reflections, Shadows, Shadows of the Past, Blackjack, Ace of Spades and Jackpot!! on team [ACE] Starship Trader’s Casino (my unnoficial title while under g’s wing)
Laters, Mir

Space Tyrant for Dummies

With Space Tyrant now online, I hope that more people will try it out. But before people get into it, there are a few hints that can help you. First off, there is one thing you need to know over all others. Upgrades / Ship Customization are PERMANENT. When you launch your ship, you may find yourself in an unfamiliar type of galaxy. The main galaxy is an Elliptical galaxy. I can best describe it as a 1-way with direction. If this were a physical object, it would resemble a young child’s attempt to cut a strip of paper. The exit numbers are random in legnth, but always go up or down. With the only way to play in telnet, Ray decided to make it even simpler than the other telnet interfaces. Each exit has a corresponding number, and by typing in that number, you can travel to that sector. Becuase S.T. is in real-time, the autopilot had to be reconfigured. To use the auto-pilot, type 0, then enter your destination. The next thing you need to do is upgrade your ship. Trading posts are located at sector 1, then 2001, 4001 etc.. The trading posts have a large neutral fig cover, so they are great early on for hiding. Uprading is one of the most important parts of the game, as this action is irreversable, and will decide how you play the game. Buy you holds last, for if you have empty spaces that could be filled by devices, they will instead be filled with holds if you are not careful. There are 5 spaces for devices and 95 spaces for holds, if you have more than 135 holds, then the extra holds will be taken from you device space. Hard-core traders will want to buy 5 Tractor Devices. With one and two tractor devices, you can nudge only ports. When you get 3, you can warp planets. With 4 tractor devices, you can nudge ports and planets into nebulas, and with 5 you nudge ports and planets out of nebulas. Combat computers give you a .1 and .2 defensive bonus with 1 and 2 of the uprades respectively. When you hit 3, you get a .3 defensive AND offensive bonus. With 4 and 5 Combat Computers, you get a .4 and a .5 bonus in offensive and defensive. The next feature is truly original. Ship scanners are just what they sound like: they automatically scan for nearby ships. Unfair? Well, they made the decision to get them and you didnt 😛 With only 1 or 2 of these devices, they are useless. If you get 3 of them, they can search the nearest 600 sectors, 300 in each direction for nearby ships. With 4, that number jumps to 1200 sectors, or 600 in each way. The ultimate scout has 5 of these devices, which allows that person to search 1800 sectors for ships, 900 in each direction. Doing this action takes up about 2.5 kg of fuel. To make it fair, Ray made it not fully efficient, so it is MUCH more difficult to find someone with scanners under neutral fig cover or a starbase. Which brings me to hiding. Starbase prices are always changed to confuse us, but this time, they also decided to make a #1 starbase have a defensive power of 25. The starting price for a #1 sb is 9375. (See the starbase chart at the end of this post) To get starbases and fighters, you can’t “make” them, you buy them, which takes away the need for hardware and iron. Grafitti beacons have been eliminated as well. On to making money. Sure the main galaxy is good, but there’s much more to be done than the elliptical. If you explore enough, you find out that there are other galaxies. You can find out what sectors have galaxies in them because they have a ‘~’ next to the sector #. To travel to that galaxy, type the button ‘t’. There is one seperate galaxy every 2000 sectors, with a size of 8000 sectors! The galaxy types are not always corresponding to the ones in TLF. A bar galaxy is the same as a bar in TLF (that appears to be the most common type.) Giant Globular is like a giant cube galaxy. The cubes are 100 sectors. The Dense Clusters are the same as back in TLF, but not as dense. The biggest change is the Open Clusters. These galaxies are the same as 6-ways in the main game. This is by far the best type of galaxy. The reason is the simplicity. Just type in ‘x’ to find the nearest planet, then ‘/’ to travel there, then ‘x’ to scoop the planet, then ‘/’ to go to a random neighboring sector. The last thing is productivity. Always, when in a seperate galaxy than the main one, check the productivity of the galaxy. It ranges from 700%-1000%, compared to the 500% of the elliptical. I was lucky enough to find a 959% Open Cluster. Watch your productivity per kg of fuel, a good amount would be 2000 and a great amount will be around 2400. Fuel is abundant, with 1kg being issued every minute! Other hints: Access the player statistics by pressing ‘p’ you don’t need a stastics module. Locate a planet with ‘l’ or ‘x’ Type in ‘?’ to view the other commands. So take a look around…What’s to loose?

Starbase Costs
(These costs are from scratch, to find the upgrade cost, just use the previous cost)
#1 – 9375
#2 – 18750
#3 – 37500
#4 – 75000
#5 – 150000
#6 – 300000
#7 – 600000
#8 – 1200000
#9 – 2400000
#10 – 4800000
#11 – 9600000
#12 – 19200000
#13 – 38400000
#14 – 76800000
#15 – 153600000
#16 – 307200000
#17 – 614400000 (Ray told me it’s been done before)

I hope to see you playing. My ship’s name is Conquest and has the top spot 😉
~Mirari~

SpaceTyrant.com now online

It’s finally happened! Ray has been talking about setting up the spacetyrant.com domain for some time. When the project was started, he registered the domain name. The site has been up for a few days now, and contains a few articles describing the game. The actual game is still being served on port 9999 at ioresort.com Anyone interested in playing the game or programming the game should check it out!

Clients released

Bestark has released a client for Space Tyrant. This client is aimed at those users who don’t like the telnet interface. Download it here

Also Artemis has released a fancy GUI client for TLR. Still a bit buggy (sorry Art, I crashed it within 10 minutes!) but it has a lot of advanced features… Download it here
I just have to work out how to get a screenshot or two 😉

Here’s the official announcements


Message: 2  Mon Oct  2 22:35:12 2006  (Public)
To:      ALL                     
From:    BESTARK                 
Subject: Space Tyrant                                                    

For those interested in trying out Space Tyrant, but don't care about telnet
an experimental client is available which will allow players used to a browser
a way to play from windows based machines with a clickable interface.
A zip file of the program with source can be downloaded from here:
http://pages.videotron.com/sst/wintyrant.zip, just unzip the exe into a folder
and run.  Client basically provides buttons to click for most operations
so you don't need to learn all the telnet commands to play the game.

Message: 4  Sun Oct  8 05:04:03 2006  (Public)
To:      ALL                     
From:    ARTEMIS                 
Subject: Client                                                          

I have a new TLR client that is available for download. I am still updating
it, but most all the features should be working. There is no documentation for
it at this time, but it is pretty straight forward to use. One thing I might
mention, is that you must turn off hotkeys in game for it to work. 
you can download it here. http://home.insightbb.com/~jmjones/Art100906.zip
Let me know if you find any major bugs..
~ Art ~

Space Tyrant Needed!

Looking for a new challenge? A brave new universe awaits you. You’ll receive a shinny new corvette equipped to locate planets and a scooper to make trading easy. There’s a catch however. You might not be the only one seeking new riches! Conflicts over territory may arise. We’re accepting applications for new captains at telnet://ioresort.com:9999 and an experimental windows client to play it, is available for download here wintyrant.zip.

The universe for space tyrant is divided into 2 areas, the main galaxy and the outer galaxies. Main galaxy is 1/5 of the map, while the outer galaxies take up the remaining 4/5 of the map. There is one spaceport at a random location, every 2000 sectors which has a wormhole leading to the first sector of an outer galaxy. You’ll also find in the main galaxy a tradingpost in sector 1 and another one every 2000 sectors. These can be good places to stay early in the game before the other captains build figs, as these locations are protected by neutral figs.

The main goal of the game is to accumulate microbots (credits used to purchase upgrades, starbases and figs) by using the antimatter you’re given every minute to move your ship around and trade with planets and ports. The more holds your ship has, the more efficiently it can trade, and the more microbots you can make.

Upgrades can be obtained at the tradingposts located throughout the main galaxy. There you can purchase homing beacons, holds, tractor devices, combat systems or scanners which are briefly explained below:

Homing beacons can be picked up by ships when entering a sector. Once attached to the ship, they are powered by the eddies generated by the ship’s movement and will report back the location of that ship to beacon’s owner in real-time.

Tractor devices allow you to nudge ports and warp planets. You’ll need at least 3 to move planets, 4 to move a port or planet into a nebula, and 5 if you want to move port or planet out of a nebula.

Combat systems provide defensive and offensive capability to ships. They augment the defensive and offensive strenght of your ship’s figs not deployed. You’ll need at least 3 of them before your figs get an offensive boost on attack.

Scanners provide your ship with the ability to spot enemy ships. With one or two they only work passively but will detect ships in adjacent sectors. With 3 or more you can also actively scan blocks of 600, 1200 and 1800 sector blocks.

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