NationStates Jolt Archive

Hello everyone. As I'm sure you know, Earth TM is the most popular MMO in the world. The entire Developer Team is impressed and surprised at the success of what was, quite frankly, just an inside joke.

At any rate, as the lead developer of the U.S.A. servers, I get the pleasure of announcing what the future holds for our part of the game.

As you may have noticed, California's latest patch included gay marriage, one of our most requested features (besides jumping and swimming. Not gonna happen without a full Z-axis, guys). This brings the total number of gay marriage enabled servers to three. Preliminary tests show this to be a generally positive maneuver and we are looking into getting it into several patches for out other servers--as usual the teams behind the Deep South are lagging behind in production.

I'm aware, however that the U.S. is not as critically acclaimed as some of our sister servers. These range from poor resource management, graphics and less complex A.I. all of which are in the pipeline.

Obviously, the reaction to our last Expansion Pack (Four More Years) was lukewarm at best. This is due in no small part to the Iraq War which, was widely anticipated and enjoyed in 2003, but became tired and unoriginal soon after--much like the Matrix sequels. In retrospect, the entire idea was not well-designed and in addition to our apologies, we resolve to end this plotline in a satisfying manner.

Beyond that, we're also pleased to announce that our next Expansion Pack is well underway. Tentatively titled 2009, it will boast a new slew of features:

Hundreds of New Feats and Skills
A New Class: Socialists (after our ban on them from the 50s)
Major balance reworks
Rideable Mounts
HDR lighting.
We will finally be porting over to the Source engine.


Naturally, I'm not at liberty to discuss everything in the works, but I'm more than happy to answer questions to the best of my ability.

I give my seal of approval to this thread.

OMG

:fluffle:

Awesome thread!

<In before the lock>

correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the servers that have been patched with gay marriage are only two, the Northeast Massachusetts server, and the western California server.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the servers that have been patched with gay marriage are only two, the Northeast Massachusetts server, and the western California server.

They have Jolt admins on the job. Expect completion around 2048.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the servers that have been patched with gay marriage are only two, the Northeast Massachusetts server, and the western California server.

You are, of course correct. The other server I was thinking of was one of our earlier tests where we patched in Civil Unions to see how a beta version of the code affected gameplay.

ROFL

I love this thread.

I like it, but can we change the operating system to Anarchy Ubuntu?

lol, we got the gay marriage/civil partnerships upgrade a few years back now.

i'm still waiting for EarthTM to go over to the open-source LifeTheUniverseAndEverything engine so we can start to develop our own patches.


(big lols, great idea btw :D)

:) Great thread :p

I like it, but can we change the operating system to Anarchy Ubuntu?

We can make it compatible, with Anarchy Ubuntu. But we don't have the zots to spare at the moment.

lol, we got the gay marriage/civil partnerships upgrade a few years back now.

And it seems to have worked.

i'm still waiting for EarthTM to go over to the open-source LifeTheUniverseAndEverything engine so we can start to develop our own patches.

The Source Engine is highly modular, from what I understand so if our talks with Valve go well, we'll be able to release Garry's Mod to the general public.

Hi... Dev... maybe you are not the one to address this issue but we are having problems in the Mexico Server... seems like the NAFTA router isnt working. Are there any plans to patch it?

Hi... Dev... maybe you are not the one to address this issue but we are having problems in the Mexico Server... seems like the NAFTA router isnt working. Are there any plans to patch it?

That's a question better addressed to the Mexico Team. I do know that NAFTA has always had bugs in it that we've never been able to iron out. I'm sure some other users could provide you with a workaround, however.

Hey, I'm a support developer on the Northern Ireland distribution. We had some trouble with the Gay Marriage patch ourselves, where some of our Politician NPC dialogue was corrupted by the script changes. In the end we had to work around this by removing the primary offender from the game, and that seemed to work fine, though with the huge range of custom NPCs that America's distribution has as a result of their Mass Media plotline, I can see where this might prove overly damaging. Fortunately, the provision of new features is a great time to bury temporary hacky fixes, and the temporary removal of free media would go great with your new "Hilary" story arc.

How's the "Tazer" system doing? We're quite interested to see if you guys can implement a decent lossless PvP mechanism, since people here have been getting kinda frustrated at the amount of PKing going on. PvP is pretty much dead, and we could do with something to make it more accessible beyond basic minigames.

Oh, and we've got plenty of spare code on Socialism we inherited from the Irish build if you're keen on comparing notes. It still needs a few tweaks (we're not quite done balancing offense with defence, yet) but it's fundamentally sound, beyond a few bits of algorithm reworking.

Hey, I'm a support developer on the Northern Ireland distribution.

Greetings!

We had some trouble with the Gay Marriage patch ourselves, where some of our Politician NPC dialogue was corrupted by the script changes. In the end we had to work around this by removing the primary offender from the game, and that seemed to work fine, though with the huge range of custom NPCs that America's distribution has as a result of their Mass Media plotline, I can see where this might prove overly damaging.

On the contrary, leaving the offending NPCs in allows for a greater range of player conflict and more opportunities for RP.

Fortunately, the provision of new features is a great time to bury temporary hacky fixes, and the temporary removal of free media would go great with your new "Hilary" story arc.

I can neither confirm nor deny that Hilary will be the focus of our next arc.

How's the "Tazer" system doing? We're quite interested to see if you guys can implement a decent lossless PvP mechanism, since people here have been getting kinda frustrated at the amount of PKing going on. PvP is pretty much dead, and we could do with something to make it more accessible beyond basic minigames.

We're going to stick to World policy about not sanctioning lethal PvP outside of established warzones. That said, it is still possible to conduct non-lethal PvP according to system mechanics and is still allowed in official matches.

Oh, and we've got plenty of spare code on Socialism we inherited from the Irish build if you're keen on comparing notes. It still needs a few tweaks (we're not quite done balancing offense with defence, yet) but it's fundamentally sound, beyond a few bits of algorithm reworking.

That would be great! We're mostly stuck with code from the 50s, back about six engines ago. We would have restored the Communist class as well, but a former developer deleted the code during the Scare.

Hi, I'm representing the Canada Team.

Could you please quit on the copyright infringement on our natural resource features?

Kthx.

Excuse me, but there is a MASSIVE bug in the system. The "Government" code keeps expanding and devouring all of the "Freedom" code. It's really limiting my gameplay options, will there be a patch for this in the future?

OK, first, I'd like to say that I love this game. I particularly like the player-dominated economy. However, I should note that as oil fields are being depleted, and modernization content hits the Chinese, Indian, and African servers, demand is rising. Adding new oil fields would be good, but the use of oil does have an impact on climate - and changing that would require a fundamental alteration to the source code.

Instead, I'd like to see a new, low-cost electric car. Maybe with the expansion after 2009?

Also, when the hell are we getting nuclear fusion? That was promised HOW many years ago, and keeps getting pushed back? What's the holdup? Here's an idea - pull the pvp devs and put them to work on fusion code.

Also, PLEASE wake up the team running Iraq content. We need progress so we can end the Iraq war WITHOUT the player-run factions turning it into a bloodbath!

*snip*
This isn't so much a bug report as a plea for advice. Maybe you've heard about problems similar to mine.

I started playing in the 1980s. (Or was it 70s? Actually, it might have been the 90s. Anyway...) It wasn't something I was planning on sticking with, not least because of you guy's annoying habit of repeating the exact same scenarios with different names. But I became hooked. I neglected my friends, my job...in short, my real life. Now, it is virtually impossible for me to distinguish between it and reality. Are there any support groups out there, similar to CivAnon, that could help me overcome this Earth addiction?

correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the servers that have been patched with gay marriage are only two, the Northeast Massachusetts server, and the western California server.

Yeah but the California server is prone to "crashing". The frequent on and off again of this server is most disappointing to some folks.

Seriously, you've got to be reaching back farther for that socialist class code than the fifties. Are you sure you aren't merely using poorly commented and slightly corrupted code for the "Adlai Stevenson" NPC?

That's a question better addressed to the Mexico Team. I do know that NAFTA has always had bugs in it that we've never been able to iron out. I'm sure some other users could provide you with a workaround, however.

The problem I see with the Mexican team is they keep wandering over to the USA jobs server and won't complete their own Mexico upgrade. Maybe we need to partition the office off so that they don't wander out of their cubicle.

Excuse me, but there is a MASSIVE bug in the system. The "Government" code keeps expanding and devouring all of the "Freedom" code. It's really limiting my gameplay options, will there be a patch for this in the future?

I believe some are working on the OBAMA savior patch. However I personally think it is going to be a disappointment. I figure only a few slight changes but overall the program will run the same. I guess we could toss out the whole code and start over. However that would require us to execute the civil unrest order.

Hi, I'm representing the Canada Team.

Could you please quit on the copyright infringement on our natural resource features?

Kthx.

The Canadian team consists of an Eskimo, a hockey player and an angry French speaking guy. How do you guys get anything done? Oh well I guess we can say you guys never do anything wrong or really anything at all. :D

Are there any plans to add in decent nanotechnology anytime soon? We've been asking for this for a long time now and we haven't got an answer.

Also, I'd really like it if we could get a patch that would add in at least a half-decent counter to the Parkinson's and Alzheimer's conditions. As it is, once you get these your character is essentially broken and you're forced to start over, which is not that much fun.

Excuse me, but there is a MASSIVE bug in the system. The "Government" code keeps expanding and devouring all of the "Freedom" code. It's really limiting my gameplay options, will there be a patch for this in the future?

I believe some are working on the OBAMA savior patch. However I personally think it is going to be a disappointment. I figure only a few slight changes but overall the program will run the same. I guess we could toss out the whole code and start over. However that would require us to execute the civil unrest order.



You're right. This is a tremendous problem. I think the developers simply overlooked it. I took a look at the SDK, and I suggest the following simple fix:

Revolution r = thePeople.getPopularRevolution();

while( theState )
{
r.start();
r.purgeReactionaries();

if( !r.isPermanent() ) {
r.refresh(); }
}

Hi, I'm representing the Canada Team.

Could you please quit on the copyright infringement on our natural resource features?

Kthx.

What the hell? We carried you for like the past fifteen years and now that you've finally pulled your shit together you think you can boss us around?

You just wait until I get LIVE. You're fucking murdered.

Excuse me, but there is a MASSIVE bug in the system. The "Government" code keeps expanding and devouring all of the "Freedom" code. It's really limiting my gameplay options, will there be a patch for this in the future?

I'm afraid I can't tell you unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement first.

This isn't so much a bug report as a plea for advice. Maybe you've heard about problems similar to mine.

I started playing in the 1980s. (Or was it 70s? Actually, it might have been the 90s. Anyway...) It wasn't something I was planning on sticking with, not least because of you guy's annoying habit of repeating the exact same scenarios with different names. But I became hooked. I neglected my friends, my job...in short, my real life. Now, it is virtually impossible for me to distinguish between it and reality. Are there any support groups out there, similar to CivAnon, that could help me overcome this Earth addiction?

Scientology, I believe.

OK, first, I'd like to say that I love this game. I particularly like the player-dominated economy. However, I should note that as oil fields are being depleted, and modernization content hits the Chinese, Indian, and African servers, demand is rising. Adding new oil fields would be good, but the use of oil does have an impact on climate - and changing that would require a fundamental alteration to the source code.

True. However we're running into some issues. See, the resource pool we've given the world isn't currently able to sustain the energy needs we now have. So now we're really working hard to figure out a way to power everything and still maintain a good suspension of disbelief.

Instead, I'd like to see a new, low-cost electric car. Maybe with the expansion after 2009?

That's a Merchant's Guild thing. They're player-run. Our 2009 expansion will be able to bring this closer to reality, however. That's my hope, at least.

Also, when the hell are we getting nuclear fusion? That was promised HOW many years ago, and keeps getting pushed back? What's the holdup? Here's an idea - pull the pvp devs and put them to work on fusion code.

Also, PLEASE wake up the team running Iraq content. We need progress so we can end the Iraq war WITHOUT the player-run factions turning it into a bloodbath!

Now see, here's the thing. PvP and the Iraq War aren't just things that affect our servers. PvP is a universal standard as far as mechanics and the Iraq War involves the Iraq server--as well as others. So I can't just decide to pull zots off of those. I'd need to get authority from my boss, which I haven't been able to get.

Seriously, you've got to be reaching back farther for that socialist class code than the fifties. Are you sure you aren't merely using poorly commented and slightly corrupted code for the "Adlai Stevenson" NPC?

Like I said, we're a little strapped. One of our former leads, McCarthy, deleted most of the code for both Socialists and Communists during the Scare. If you think you could code it for us though, we'd appreciate the extra help.

The Canadian team consists of an Eskimo, a hockey player and an angry French speaking guy. How do you guys get anything done? Oh well I guess we can say you guys never do anything wrong or really anything at all. :D

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you, what the hell happened with the Nomination code? We still don't have a Democratic Candidate! When I C/Ped the Bush code and renamed it, that was for flavor. I didn't actually expect him to be the only contender in this race. Reviews'd go unkindly.

Oh, and as for the Parkinson's disease question, Find Out In Game.

Here's a suggestion: plant a Ghawar-class oil field somewhere that hasn't been properly searched before. Perhaps the North Pacific?

Hey, I'm one of the players on the Australia server (started playing in October '94 and have been hooked ever since). I have a minor suck - I think some of the code for the Queensland game area is broken (others to a lesser extent as well), since the weather function only switches over to Precipitation and its subtypes something like once every six real-time months. This only happened relatively recently - I'd like to know if the 2009 expansion will fix it.

Also, great work with the smooth switching over of the Australia server's adminship. Kevin07 looks to be doing great, although there have been rumours that his group, the "Australian Labour Party" (political-based clan), incurred a bug in the FuelPrice variable.

In his defence, though, the previous admin, JH, installed the Iraq War expansion on the Australia server, so it's not totally K07's fault.

Anyway, great work and keep going with it, guys.

Also, PLEASE wake up the team running Iraq content. We need progress so we can end the Iraq war WITHOUT the player-run factions turning it into a bloodbath!

Honestly, I don't see any way to do that without a complete server wipe with the developers' NUKE software, which would piss a lot of players off because of the risk of corrupting data on other servers. In my opinion the only way to deal with the Iraq server is to cut off all tech support and prevent transfer of items and characters between them and the rest of Earth. Maybe the USA dev team could allow players to port their characters over before the server is shut down? We'll probably see a few illegal player-made patches to make the game still playable, but they'll probably limit gameplay an awful lot and delete remaining characters, like what we've seen on the Iran and Rwanda servers respectively. Hopefully in a while we can reopen Iraq - the place was one of the first well-populated Earth servers and it's a shame to lose it. Otherwise this is just a waste of the USA dev team's time and money, who I understand have taken over leadership of the Iraqi content team. That would be better spent improving content on the USA servers, I reckon.
Sorry, I had to.

My issue is that there's so much activity on the US servers, and there's like 2.5 billion extra potential players in China and India who are fairly idle right now, that temperature control is becoming a mess.

Either we make the servers more efficient or we just relocate the entire lot into a data centre with some freaking air-conditioning.

Typically IT is ignoring this problem because it's 'too much work, it's really difficult' etc., etc., and I know I sound like Chicken Little here but the whole system is likely to crash.

Hey, I'm one of the players on the Australia server (started playing in October '94 and have been hooked ever since). I have a minor suck - I think some of the code for the Queensland game area is broken (others to a lesser extent as well), since the weather function only switches over to Precipitation and its subtypes something like once every six real-time months. This only happened relatively recently - I'd like to know if the 2009 expansion will fix it.

I'm afraid not. 2009 is a U.S.-only expansion. I'm not entirely sure what the Australia Team's release date is planned for, but off the top of my head I'd say somewhere in the 2010-2011 range.

I'm experiencing problems involving the American Idol and Britney Spears side quests. They keep popping up while I'm trying to play along with the main plotline. Is there any way to disable them?

I'm going to provide feedback in this thread from now on.

A) I'm having problems with the in-game "YouTube" interactive content system. My character seems unable to stop watching it; I think the StopInternets function is broken for me.

B) Is there a way to display a character summary, or does one have to go to the various Non-Player Characters to find out about one's attributes?

i am DONE with this stinking game. the lack of jumping and swimming is bad enough but now i find out that there is a superior user upgrade that will allowing FLYING, lyre playing and eternal bliss? what possible justification is there for me continuing to play this bug-filled mess for another 50+ years instead of moving up to the perfected version NOW?

what possible justification is there for me continuing to play this bug-filled mess for another 50+ years instead of moving up to the perfected version NOW?

According to the dev team, extremely high and constantly changing system requirements, and failure to meet them, even once, is sufficient for a permaban from the servers. And there are rumors that it's really just vaporware.

According to the dev team, extremely high and constantly changing system requirements, and failure to meet them, even once, is sufficient for a permaban from the servers. And there are rumors that it's really just vaporware.

i heard they use some spyware called G.O.D. to keep track of your in-game movements and compare that with the requirements for the upgraded version.

though i also hear (not sure if this is true) you can bribe the churchServers to get round a permaban, which sounds cool.

Help! I can't uninstall the Four More Years Expansion pack! :(

Will I have to transfer servers?

Following the "Iraq War" event, which was received with mixed feelings by the international player community, there are rumours of an "Iran War" event, organized mainly by some players high up in the hierarchy of the United Servers of America.

What is the official developer's team position on this?

The previous event failed miserably and brought much instability in the Middle East servers IMO.

According to the dev team, extremely high and constantly changing system requirements, and failure to meet them, even once, is sufficient for a permaban from the servers. And there are rumors that it's really just vaporware.

no that can't be true. i have heard it from several sources that this VIP upgrade exists and that i can get in on it. true there are several different versions of just what the system requrements are but they are supposed to have been set somewhere between 4000 and 1300 game-years ago. computers SUCKED back then, unless it requires a 5.25 inch floppy drive, im set.

Also, I recently got my character through the Go to University expansion pack (which took me forever, it seemed. I had to uninstall, wait it seemed for years, and re-install), but I don't seem to be able to properly download the Get a Job expansion pack and the Have a Relationship PvP expansion. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm pretty sure I meet system requirements.

When you get around to it, could you guys introduce more of the Oil resource? It's now costing me way too much gold to get from zone to zone.

Any plans on the UK dev team to finish coding the conservative 09/10 5 year patch? Any ideas how many more betas it has to go through before its opened to the general public?

I'm experiencing problems involving the American Idol and Britney Spears side quests. They keep popping up while I'm trying to play along with the main plotline. Is there any way to disable them?

You could always simply not take part in them. It's an annoyance I know, but after thousands of emails from people asking how to get involved in those quests, a decision was made. Sorry.

i am DONE with this stinking game. the lack of jumping and swimming is bad enough but now i find out that there is a superior user upgrade that will allowing FLYING, lyre playing and eternal bliss? what possible justification is there for me continuing to play this bug-filled mess for another 50+ years instead of moving up to the perfected version NOW?

Various post-Earth servers exist, (Heaven is one for those interested, Hell is one for users that annoyed the hell out of us, etc.) but these are currently for character storage mostly, and will not become fully functional until a few years after the "Apocalypse" Expansion pack is launched, and then after the plotlines are wrapped up completely.

I'm going to provide feedback in this thread from now on.

Sure.

A) I'm having problems with the in-game "YouTube" interactive content system. My character seems unable to stop watching it; I think the StopInternets function is broken for me.

Yes, there's a glitch in the code that results in addiction sometimes. We're either going to end up fixing the code itself, or provide an In-game solution.

B) Is there a way to display a character summary, or does one have to go to the various Non-Player Characters to find out about one's attributes?

Some stats (HP, MP) can be viewed by pressing 'C'. Others, such as Charisma may only be determined by socializing with others, or by the lack of it.

Following the "Iraq War" event, which was received with mixed feelings by the international player community, there are rumours of an "Iran War" event, organized mainly by some players high up in the hierarchy of the United Servers of America.

What is the official developer's team position on this?

The previous event failed miserably and brought much instability in the Middle East servers IMO.

True. But it was also a way of replacing the Iraq Team. Currently, I have temporary control of the servers while we sort out the new Iraq Team.

I can't comment on the rest.

Also, I recently got my character through the Go to University expansion pack (which took me forever, it seemed. I had to uninstall, wait it seemed for years, and re-install), but I don't seem to be able to properly download the Get a Job expansion pack and the Have a Relationship PvP expansion. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm pretty sure I meet system requirements.

You got scammed. There is no have a relationship XP in this game. We couldn't resolve the concept with the existence of the MMO, so the project was scrapped early on.