BNT new version

[Bogomip]

Dear players of BNT,

I am a long time player of Blacknova, playing originally on the Rednova game which has, apparently, long since disappeared from the tubes. I also happen to be a 'hobbyist web developer' with similarly significant experience in web design and particularly web programming.

I intend to make a brand new version of blacknova, working to the same gameplay elements that made the original so popular but adding and removing features to enhance the experience for the new people on the internet.

It will be staged, so the first game will go up when the UI is sorted. This will be what we currently know as blacknova traders.

- If you are interested in this game please drop me a PM with your email, or leave it in this thread. I will send out an email to all when the first version is ready to be played.
- If you have any other suggestions for what you would like to see added or removed please put the suggestion in this email.

Thanks!
Bogo


Some of the features I am implementing are (these are in the first full release):

- Brand new UI with a much smoother user experience (getting rid of things like "are you sure you want to move" etc).
- Modifying the map in several ways:
o Resource zones, and the cost of resource depends upon the distance from the zones (makes it more than, "find ore, find goods, trade" and adds depth to the later game trade game). This also makes some sectors more desirable than others adding another dimension to the game as a trader.
o 3d map of much larger size -200x200x25 map (disc galaxy style).
o Each system has a probability of having a star which is related to the distance from the core (100x100x13 location). Planets exist around stars, and are not created by genesis torpedo’s. Planets can be moved to non-star systems by use of a very powerful ship.
- Warp trails. This will aid captains in tracking users in an expanded universe.

What I want to keep:

- The basic way you play the game needs to be the same, this is why BNT was so good! If the game was big as well there was always a chance of toppling the top players.
- Resources, Trade system, Ship systems, Cost and size formula, battle system
- Timing system (ticks etc).

What I will remove

- The log. This information will be kept but disaggregated through the game in other ways.
- The current banking system. Its generally useless, and poorly balanced from the players respect. This will be implemented again in a much different way in a later release.

Considerations:

- Tech trees for each of the play styles. Traders with big hulls can easily overstock planets with fighters so the trade and interest game is the best way to win. Tech trees will try to rebalance the later game. An example might be that warrior players might be able to control three ships, or retain tech info through destruction for example.
- Use of the good/bad system more. This might include for example the government assisting players in good standing in toppling a ruthless dictator.

[thekabal]

Congrats and welcome!

I am a long time player of Blacknova, playing originally on the Rednova game which has, apparently, long since disappeared from the tubes.

While there is no longer a playable version of Rednova on the web today, the original code is still hosted at sourceforge, in case there were features you enjoyed: https://sourceforge.net/projects/rednov ... =directory

- If you are interested in this game please drop me a PM with your email, or leave it in this thread. I will send out an email to all when the first version is ready to be played.

Of course I'm interested! thekabal@gmail.com

- Brand new UI with a much smoother user experience (getting rid of things like "are you sure you want to move" etc).

Nice! Keep in mind that some of those were added based on player feedback. In fact, the "are you sure you want to" prompt was literally a player request because they clicked on a RS move that cost them most of their turns. They felt that wasn't right, that the game should have warned them. Your mileage may vary, and you are welcome to try new approaches, but just a heads-up, some of the logical things turn out to be counter-intuitive to what players want.

o 3d map of much larger size -200x200x25 map (disc galaxy style).

Our challenges in the past were rarely the display or management of a larger map (we regularly tested 10k sector galaxies during creation, and at times even 100k). The bigger challenge was presenting that information in a meaningful and useful way to the player. The galaxy map isn't fantastic, but I've not yet seen a better presentation that made sense for the player. I'm very hopeful you can find a good solution! Also keep in mind that the larger the galaxy, the more time/chances there are for players to reach max credits/resources, which causes a world of problems. A key problem in BNT is we need (desperately) to add more money sinks, ways to remove credits in a productive and gameplay-meaningful way.

TKI had a spiral-arm galaxy model also.

o Each system has a probability of having a star which is related to the distance from the core (100x100x13 location). Planets exist around stars, and are not created by genesis torpedo’s.

In TKI, we (once upon a time) had variable star sizes, which dictated/controlled how many planets could be in a sector. There were definitely challenges in documentation and making that clear to players. My suggestion here is to focus on how to present that information to the player in an "obvious" way. We didn't succeed very well in that regard, so I again wish you luck!

- Tech trees for each of the play styles. Traders with big hulls can easily overstock planets with fighters so the trade and interest game is the best way to win. Tech trees will try to rebalance the later game. An example might be that warrior players might be able to control three ships, or retain tech info through destruction for example.

There was a different fork of BNT, that had quests. While it wasn't a tech tree, there was definitely a path to making that from the code they used. I forget the name (it was a naval/sea-based variant that wasn't intended to be space-based), but they were rather ahead of their time in that regard.

At any rate, I wish you the very best! I'd suggest open development, so you can benefit from fast feedback cycles - it has helped BNT over the years, and TKI in turn as well.

[brandonlamb]

Hey all,

I came across this as I was pinged on my YouTube video of an in-progress game I am developing which is heavily inspired by BNT.

https://youtu.be/HkeQNsK9FRs

When I was googling a year or two ago I had not really found any maintained web sites or games, but I figured there must be some users who would be interested in this type of game.

I will say that doing a re-write or developing a game in general is a naive amount of work, lol. I have had this same pipe-dream for years (I think 2005-era when I came across this PBBG).

Now that I am a Java developer with a heavy programming experience, I have the skillsets past just PHP to develop server-side stuff so things like action-points to do things can be replaced with real-time multi-player stuff.

Anyway, figured I would pop over here to comment and say hello.

Brandon

[Bogomip]

Thanks for the suggestions and the backstory particularly to things that have been tried and the challenges posed. I hadnt really considered some of the problems posed by past implementations.

The 3D map thing is largely a presentational issue, however with Web GL being much better supported in 2017 than it was even in 2012 I think there should be some way of making an interesting and interactive map to make it work.

There will still be turn use confirmations by the way, it will just not be a whole webpage, more of a confirmation box or something with an option to remove them altogether from your play experience (increased user options).

[TheMightyDude]

Thanks for the suggestions and the backstory particularly to things that have been tried and the challenges posed. I hadnt really considered some of the problems posed by past implementations.

The 3D map thing is largely a presentational issue, however with Web GL being much better supported in 2017 than it was even in 2012 I think there should be some way of making an interesting and interactive map to make it work.

There will still be turn use confirmations by the way, it will just not be a whole webpage, more of a confirmation box or something with an option to remove them altogether from your play experience (increased user options).

The thing with WebGL is that its still new and you will run into issues where some browsers perform better than others and also might not support all features of WebGL.

Its a bit like how browsers have / had issues with HTML5 and CSS3 where some browsers supported certain functions / features and another didn't / doesn't, this was why a lot of browser based games started using Flash and not being a fan of Flash I stayed away from it, this was a good choice due to the current Flash Plugin is now being phased out from the browsers.

That's why I was trying to move away from browsers.

[Bogomip]

I agree with your choice not to use Flash, it was terrible and was not intuitive in how it could interact with the browser.

WebGL has been around for a while though and works much better in the browser. All newer browsers support it well (even Edge) enough that a simple app might work fine for it. But I do take your point, maybe plain HTML5 is better.

[retrodigital]

I agree with your choice not to use Flash, it was terrible and was not intuitive in how it could interact with the browser.

WebGL has been around for a while though and works much better in the browser. All newer browsers support it well (even Edge) enough that a simple app might work fine for it. But I do take your point, maybe plain HTML5 is better.

HTML5 would probably work fairly good as most browsers handle it decently. (except Internet Explorer) but I think that browser is probably a waste of time to worry about at this point anyways.

Thanks
Mike

[retrodigital]

Also, If you ever need somewhere to host this game in whatever form you make it take throw me a message and I can set you up with a web hosting account. I haven't had time to play BlackNova Traders much but I have enjoyed the bit that I have spent playing it. I run the install at https://oddware.org.


Thanks
Mike

[Bogomip]

I agree with your choice not to use Flash, it was terrible and was not intuitive in how it could interact with the browser.

WebGL has been around for a while though and works much better in the browser. All newer browsers support it well (even Edge) enough that a simple app might work fine for it. But I do take your point, maybe plain HTML5 is better.

HTML5 would probably work fairly good as most browsers handle it decently. (except Internet Explorer) but I think that browser is probably a waste of time to worry about at this point anyways.

Thanks
Mike

Yeah, im not catering to Internet Explorer. That might be bad web devving but I dont care

Thanks for the offer of hosting, but I have my own hosting I use for a bunch of other sites. Also thanks very much for helping me out the other day, im 'Bogomip' in your oddware game getting all stressed about the bug! Appreciated your help, that was weeks of careful plannng and trading gone wrong in one tick!

[retrodigital]

Yeah, im not catering to Internet Explorer. That might be bad web devving but I dont care

Thanks for the offer of hosting, but I have my own hosting I use for a bunch of other sites. Also thanks very much for helping me out the other day, im 'Bogomip' in your oddware game getting all stressed about the bug! Appreciated your help, that was weeks of careful plannng and trading gone wrong in one tick!

No problem at all. Glad you like to use it.. If you feel like anything on the Oddware site needs improved please toss me some suggestions.. I don't fully understand the game so it is an unmodified installation. But the server its on is now solid and the site wont be going anywhere.. Lots of bandwidth and resources for as many users as gets thrown at it.

Thanks
Mike