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So, I've recently revived my gaming streak, and for as long as I've gamed, I've always enjoyed interacting with others. As such, I'm curious what games SN folks play. I've been strongly tempted to setup a Minecraft server for SoylentNews, but I don't really want to put in the effort if no one else is interested in playing. So, here's my simple question for the community; what games do you play, and would you want to play on an SN hosted server?
I'm tempted to make any gaming-related things be a subscriber perk, as an attempt to both increase subscriber benefits, and make such a target harder to grief. Not sure if it's a great idea, so I'd love to get feedback below.
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No self-made man ever did such a good job that some woman didn't
want to make some alterations.
-- Kim Hubbard
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:42AM
Heroin. A lot more fulfilling and useful than video games.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 10 2015, @01:29PM
That game sucks. Nothing like going back to the old pay to play arcade style of gaming. Total quarter eater and the jail time for bludgeoning that asian guy for 24 bucks is lame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:22PM
Meh. No matter how hard you try, you can't catch the dragon. It's pretty standard mechanic in games these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:55PM
Guaranteed better gameplay and ending to all players.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:49AM
If game hosting can draw in more money for the site then I am all for it. There may even be people that will pay SN to host their games and provide a discussion system tailored to their wants.
If the cost is really low then I don't mind if it is just a perk or an advertising platform for SN.
Otherwise I think there are more pressing issues to deal with like the story just below this one.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @12:58PM
This was written at almost the same the other one was. We just ran them back to back. And yes, I agree the editor thing is a problem, but we can work on solving multiple things at once.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:46PM
I'd be up for it; I'd like to see someone (somewhere) set up a more easily used IPX over a VPN (GRE or ipsec or whatever; security isn't the issue, carrying the traffic is). Older games like the original Doom and Doom 2, Heretic, Quake 1, C&C, Descent 1 and 2 etc... all used IPX.
Some of those would be great to dust off. I've played a few over the internet via hardware VPN tunnels to carry the traffic, but it can be somewhat overly complicated for people that simply play games and don't know how the underlying communications work.
I am sure what software clients are out there that easily allow for this; so it may just be a pipe dream. (having the hardware, I haven't had to wrap it in some application to transmit the traffic; I just run IPX on the local hardware I am playing with and it has no idea there is an internet out there)
Despite this, there are lots of options anyway. Older IP based games are viable and often didn't even need a specific server. When Quake came about, that was the beginning of game servers (as far as I can remember. Doom, descent, heretic, C&C etc did not need a dedicated server; one of the hosts handled it so a beefy 486DX2-50 or 66 was suggested where possible for better performance with games handling more than just 2 people). A generic VPN connection to a server that places you on the same subnet may be more than enough without needing to worry about specific support for a given game.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:31PM
Heck yah, I would play Quake 1!
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @03:32PM
Routing IPX is a pain in the ass, because you need a layer 2 VPN, and frequently have to also provide IP information (else most VPN clients go belly up). I could probably rig something if I put my mind to it. I'll think about it.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday August 10 2015, @11:52AM
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory [splashdamage.com] - I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if we had an active server for this classic..
Smokin guns [smokin-guns.org] - ditto (although probably never had enough players to consider it a classic for most people, it is to me.. )
Our own chess site [phpchess.com]. I ran similar for years when I was coaching our elementary's club..
Battle for Wesnoth server [wesnoth.org]
Earth Empires [earthempires.com] - successor to Earth:2025 [earthempires.com] - one of the classics of the early web. We could have a clan..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @12:22PM
My former clan's Enemy Territory server just went away from lack of use. 8-(
It is a great game, but you need a large membership to play it. You also need to balance the maps or swap the teams, because most maps are Axis defense. Defense gets old when you are stuck playing Axis all the time. There are also the jerks that always jump on the offensive team, even after they are swapped to the defensive team. The winning offense team tends to map vote for more offense maps. A lot of times, the teams are so unbalanced, that you burn through maps in 5 minutes. The team on defense starts to lose players because there is no fun.
I love the game. However, even if you have active management on an Enemy Territory server(higher levels that can swap/balance/kick/ban), it is a rough job trying to keep everyone happy. This comes from my experience having the highest admin level on my clan's server.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday August 10 2015, @07:02PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday August 10 2015, @07:17PM
Check out Splash Damage's latest game Dirty Bomb, it's F2P and pretty fun
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday August 10 2015, @07:36PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday August 10 2015, @07:48PM
Aww shucks, maybe wine? Looks like a lot of players are ex ET players, at least the game comes up quite often. Shame
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:31PM
Nope. [codeweavers.com]
-- gewg_ (who is not a gamer at all)
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:42AM
I have been wanting a chess game like that for awhile. At freechess.org, every game is like 1 minute. Chess with friends is like what I want but comes with a bunch of facebook crap. I'm going to try to install it on my site but don't know if it will work on my crappy host provider.
It would be totally awesome if SN had it on their site!
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:31AM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:56PM
Didn't there use to be an internet chess server somewhere maybe a decade or two ago? It would match up people who wanted to play. Where is it now?
(Score: 1) by Drake_Edgewater on Monday August 10 2015, @12:03PM
Long time ago I used to play quake deathmatch.
No rules, no teams, just shoot at everything that moves. It was hilarious, perfect for stress relief. Now the servers are mostly empty.
On the other side of the spectrum, I started playing FlightGear [wikipedia.org]. I hope to join a multiplayer server soon since I can finally take off and land an Airbus A320.
(Score: 2) by broggyr on Monday August 10 2015, @01:08PM
We used to have a quake server at my first helpdesk job in 2000. The manager would often come in to watch us play.
PAINKEEP!
Taking things out of context since 1972.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 10 2015, @01:46PM
Now the servers are mostly empty.
Well, they have made a few new shooters since then.
But seriously, pure DM is pretty niche nowadays. Perhaps, you could try out Quake Live, though it's Windows only.
Blizzard is readying Overwatch, its answer to TF2. TF2 and counterstrike are still pretty big along with Arma 3. Though, I haven't played CS in years (only up until 1.6, the pre source version) and never touched Arma 3.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday August 10 2015, @01:59PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:26AM
QuakeWorld, the successor to Quake which was released in 1997 (a year after original Quake) with better net code for multiplayer, lives on!
http://quakeworld.nu [quakeworld.nu]
I'm top5 in the USA come at me
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:20PM
Feel welcome to check out our hightime vanilla ffa (deathmatch) servers for openarena and xonotic :) We are still testing the latter, but it is basically the same deal as the former [openarena.ws].
Happy fragging!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 10 2015, @12:39PM
I've been strongly tempted to setup a Minecraft server
There's so many possibilities. I run FTB DW20 pack at home. Works fine under linux, both user and server.
Vanilla is boring, and I totally see the point of other people being addicted to other packs, I went thru a bad stage of terrafirmacraft and a bad stage of Crash Landing and Agrarian Skies and I played Hypercubed for awhile, I'm just saying any decision made will probably result in only a fraction of the population being interested. I'm not sure crash landing or agrarian skies translate well to having maybe a hundred people log in, although that might be entertaining to watch.
if no one else is interested in playing.
Well see thats the thing, given an infinite amount of spare time, I'd nostalgia over some things, but is there really any time?
Thirty years ago I played tradewars2000 as a BBS door game, that does wonders for making people visit daily. That's the first MMO I remember, well, massively multiplayer by BBS door game standards. Text mode EVE Online, pretty much.
About twenty five years ago I played a couple MUDs, the main one was the Glass Dragon.
Maybe twenty years ago I burned out on FPS, they're pretty boring now, but maybe for nostalgia's sake I'd play again?
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @12:53PM
I'm familiar with FTB, and I won't object to running it as a server. My biggest headaches with FTB is the modpack is so heavy, my laptop (circa 2007) simply falls over dead trying to run it. Beyond that, it adds so much that its pretty difficult to get one's head wrapped around doing anything without having the wiki constantly up.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 10 2015, @02:20PM
Beyond that, it adds so much that its pretty difficult to get one's head wrapped around doing anything without having the wiki constantly up.
It can also suffer from analysis paralysis because there's so many alternatives.
So do you start early game ore doubling by enderio, minefactory reloaded, or other? There's Big Reactors or IC2 nuclear reactors? Buildcraft pipes or enderio pipes? Traditional Forestry beekeeping or gendustry beekeeping? AE2 or steves factory manager or something else? I can't keep track of how many logic gate mods there are, there's at least project red vs emulating logic gates using Lua code in computercraft? For automated spawning/farming you've got EnderIO and MFR of course, but you could also do at least some stuff with computercraft, AE2, SFM, hmm maybe more.
I can't keep up with all the ideas for quarrys/ore, off the top of my head you've got enderquarrys or MFR mining lasers, and if you use frames, DW20 has plans for multiple quarries using mining pumps and AE2 annihilation planes and other ideas too.
Then there's magic, thaumcraft or blood magic or botania or all of them?
Something missing in DW20 is the AEv1 addons for liquid storage and the giant storage modules. Not motivated enough to find out if its a licensing thing or a game balance thing or a AEv1 vs AEv2 thing. Liquid storage in AE was always a little weird. As was having 16M of memory cells in AE.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday August 10 2015, @07:10PM
I've run FTB-pack servers before - Unleashed, Monster and Lite. I would suggest, rather than analysing which one is "best", go for a big all-in-one pack - FTB Infinity seems to be the multi-purpose one right, throw Towny on the server, she'll be right. If enough folks with lower-end rigs want one, do an FTB Lite server as well.
I'd be up for doing YouTube vids and Twitch streams for whatever we end up doing, Minecraft or not.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @07:44PM
It's mostly finding people to GM beside me. I go through phases where I play a lot of minecraft, and then don't touch it for months.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:58AM
I'd be happy to help GM. My last spawn site design was based on the provincial gladiatorial arena Maximus solo'd before his "Are you not entertained?!" rant in Gladiator. I'm thinking something along the lines of The Glade / The Maze from the Maze Runner film next...
(Score: 1) by meustrus on Monday August 10 2015, @01:30PM
Have you heard of Gamemode 4? It's a vast collection of command blocks in vanilla Minecraft (and custom resource pack) that create a huge variety of new dungeons, special mobs, crazy bosses, and an entirely new crafting system. All in vanilla. I've only seen it played, but it appears to keep more of the do-it-yourself feeling of Minecraft while making many tasks possible (but not ultimately trivial) to automate.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 10 2015, @12:49PM
ARK: Survival Evolved [playark.com]
It's an early access survival game. It's brutally hard at the beginning. And it has dinosaurs. Dinosaurs!
(Score: 2, Informative) by drgibbon on Monday August 10 2015, @12:57PM
I was looking for another method of procrastination recently, and I came across 0 A.D [play0ad.com], unfortunately discovering that it's a great RTS game. Admittedly I haven't tested out the multiplayer functionality yet (I'm still struggling against the AI), but they already have an online game server so maybe it wouldn't make much sense to host it on SN. Still, it's good.
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Monday August 10 2015, @03:38PM
I'm a fan of 0ad, the main downside is not knowing anyone else who plays it. I don't ways win against the AI but learning probably doesn't help against real people as much.
The main other cross-platform network game I play is hedgewars. It's a worms clone with short gameplay, but custom maps are easy and I know people who'll get drunk and play it with me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @06:56PM
It looks good but is it ready to play (Alpha 18)
(Score: 1) by drgibbon on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:30AM
Yeah, you can safely ignore the "alpha" status. The thing has been in development for years, it's pretty impressive.
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 1) by acp_sn on Monday August 10 2015, @01:10PM
since you are gaming anyway might as well make it into a product
you have a built in audience just by putting a link on the front page that shows when you go live
then if you do host multiplayer subscriber servers you could stream games from them as a cross promotion
and as a subscriber perk you could host the streams of subscribers when you are offline
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday August 10 2015, @01:19PM
But I don't do online games and I'm not a paid subscriber so I'm out.
I have a game I have considered doing online, torchlight 2, but I probably won't.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday August 10 2015, @01:25PM
I don't think it's a good idea, you'll never be able to keep up with the flux of games.
I run CS:GO, TF2 and Altitude servers already. I did have a Minecraft server but either nobody used it (when it had restrictions on) or people just griefed on it (when it didn't have restrictions).
I've run CS:CZ and CS 1.6 servers in the past and, although my servers were always popular, it was because I was always on them managing them. Expected the password for a server not to leak out to non-subscribers and/or for subscribers to be any different to random people on the net is probably a mistake.
I think it's away from the core purpose and will take a lot of time and effort (not to mention CPU and bandwidth), and you'll get whinged at the second it doesn't update or there's a suspected cheater, and it won't be much fun any more.
By all means have a list of servers, but having them as subscriber perks gives you an obligation you probably don't really want. Have a look on the server lists for the games you're interested in. Either they are commercial for individual websites and basically empty, or they are public and full to the brim, or quite often public and empty!
I'm happy to play, host, admin servers for myself merely because it gives me an irrevokable - and absolute - right to kick the idiots that I see while I'm trying to play a game and have everyone enjoy themselves, but I don't think it's something you should delve into behind a fun hobby that we can post a link to.
Oh, and I'm a subscriber, but I don't really think I'd ever use servers from here... nothing personal.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:49PM
I don't think the idea would be to keep up with the current games, I agree that would be a sidetrack from our efforts. But hosting something kinda retro (like Quake 1), or something nerdy/popular (like minecraft) might be fun.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday August 10 2015, @01:51PM
I used to play Quake III Arena in the uni's lab. Good times.
Freeciv could be nice, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:07PM
I still play Quake 3 botmatches regularly; such a perfect thing to play when you only have about 30 minutes of free time. That, or some single-player levels from the original Dooms and Quakes.
The first-person shooter genre has effectively driven itself off a cliff, in a similar fashion to the way that adventure games drove themselves off a cliff in the late-90's and early-2000's. The new Doom project shows some promises of not being crap, but for the first time in over a decade, I'm casting doubts on whether I even want to build another Windows gaming PC. Other than Flying Wild Hog's work with Shadow Warrior, there are no upcoming releases that I'm confident about. I never was a Battlefield fan, and I'm not much of a Star Wars fan after the prequels, so Star Wars: BattlefieldFront is out. Call of Duty is a hollow shell of its former self. I saw a UK site (Eurogamer? Rock Paper Shotgun?) recount the intelligent level design of the 2003 release's maps in WWII France. Twelve years later, it's a superannualized console-first franchise with very little focus on anything aside from microtransactions and the Baysplosion-fest roller-coaster railshooter experience. CoD:Ghosts in 2013 was a downtick in audience perception, due to the worse quality and campaign authoring that couldn't even escape the notice of the normally desensitized, catatonic mass market brahdience. And Epic Games has stayed so far under the radar after selling off Gears of War and watching most of the Gears producers run off and either chase Gears or do their own thing (Boss Key's project sounds a lot like a microtransactional twist on the same old drill). UT4 is effectively an indie project with detached support from Epic. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about Tencent shutting things down and demanding an endless conveyor belt of phone games, a la Konami.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Monday August 10 2015, @02:25PM
Guild Wars 1 is/was a great game from the game mechanics perspective. Many like to praise Guild Wars 2 for doing away with the Holy Trinity, but the fact was Guild Wars 1 wasn't really based on the Holy Trinity from the start. In both PvE and PvP there were far more possible roles than Tank, Healer, DPS. There are shutdown builds, PvE minion masters, PvE runner, PvP split builds[1], PvP flag runner, frontline, linebacking, later on there was stuff like PvE spirit spammers, shadowform assasins and so on.
Problem was/is Guild Wars 1 was not so great from the community and social perspective (you can't send messages to people who are offline, no auction). And you can't queue up for PvP matches while doing PvE or other stuff. And it's still quite expensive for an old game.
PvP:
Guild vs Guild:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_versus_Guild [guildwars.com]
The objective is to kill the other side's Guild Lord or do more damage to it after the time limit of 28 minutes is up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyQRSg-aTEk [youtube.com] (one team using a ranger spike build)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIX8auXd-Po [youtube.com]
http://www.twitch.tv/koodikoira/v/9938926?t=2m38s [twitch.tv] (mesmer doing shutdown)
PvE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_30KeT8f-I#t=1m30s [youtube.com] (in PvE you can use Heroes - which are like semi-autonomous player controlled NPCs)
[1] Split ele with shadowstep/teleporting skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM4M5Tla6Hw [youtube.com]
Split dervish with teleporting skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdyOx7v0CJQ [youtube.com]
Split ele with self heal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFckwi7k-VU [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:27PM
eve online, with an exclusive established group there
sql injection.. no, we shouldnt play that game on this site(!)
dwarf fortress... has no multiplayer component.
imo, minecraft, like dwarf fortress is only fun until a certain point.
the long term challenge becomes to keep on playing... meh.
i dislike minecraft :)
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Monday August 10 2015, @03:12PM
Eve alone can suck all your time up. Or you mean Minecraft while waiting for that super to login? :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:35PM
Invisible, Inc. It doesn't have network modes, though.
I haven't played online games in a long time. I might if there were fighting games on Linux, but there isn't much to look at at the moment.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 10 2015, @03:40PM
From NCommander's last BBQs playing EU4 and DwarfFortress, I would suggest Tropico 5. It is a humorous take on a city builder. I don't have the patience for the true City simulators, but for some reason I really enjoyed the campaign of Tropico 3, 4, 5 (same game engine for all three, 4 is effectively an expansion of 3, but 5 changes some core mechanics).
Unrelated to Tropico, I would suggest adding a "Suggested Servers" or "Games Running" page to the wiki, and include a link somewhere on the main page. There are Soylents who already run game servers who would appreciate other Soylents joining their server. By supplying a wiki page, it has little maintenance for SN staff.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @05:10PM
I have it, but I honestly am not a huge fan. Election mechanics seem completely random, even when I have good standing with all the factions. Making any change to the constitution seems to have a disproportional effect on those who it upsets (i.e., if I require soldiers to have education, then all my soldier get fired, unemployment skyrockets, and no one attends the high school).
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday August 10 2015, @03:46PM
I personally would play Minecraft on a SN server. Be it vanilla or a popular modpack (preferred but more hardware needed).
Pros:
* Community team spirit (?)
* We-maed-dis!-Is-our-serverz! achievement
Cons:
* Hosting. It costs reources. Minecraft is a memory hog, the more concurrent players, the more the RAM. Also you need bandwidth.
* GM/moderator(s) to prevent griefing. Also logs who did what and whatnot (plugin). And eventually some property-locking plugin.
* Need rules and somebody to enforce them ("No redstone clocks", "No world anchors while logged out", "PvP only here" etc.)
* An admin ready to restore from backup when the world goes wrong.
At some point in time people will ask for TeamSpeak or other voice chat server.
What happened with the idea of DF played for one year per different player? We can use DF2014, it is pretty stable now and multi-level trees are very nice. I still think that would be awesome. However, most important is to track somehow progress and make it visible to the others. Because while one person plays all others wait and want to spectate.
P.S. About the subscribers thing: SN requires me to create a PayPal account, I cannot do with card only. Yes, I know it is supposed to be there as an option but it is not. See my email to admin@SN from 7 Oct 2014 titled "Can I subscribe without PayPal account?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @05:01PM
Hi, I recall talking to you back in October. I called up Paypal for you (again, finally) and I'm still kinda frustrated with the answer they are giving me but it boils down to this: Paypal's policy on accepting "guest checkout" payments with a credit card (and without a paypal account) is that they accept it for some countries but not others. I pleaded with the CS representitive that we will look elsewhere for another payment processor as we need to be able to accept credit card payments WITHOUT a paypal account and he said "there's nothing we can do, this is a company policy that has to do with chargebacks in specific regions". So I asked him to point me to a list of countries that could accept 'guest checkouts' and he said he'd be happy to send that to me. We ended the conversation and I awaited the email. A few minutes later I got an email with a this link: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-country-functionality-outside [paypal.com]. It is not a list of countries that accept 'guest checkouts' but instead a page with a dropdown where you can select a country and view the available payment options. However, 'guest checkout' is not one of the options it displays and I'm having trouble deciphering their language so I'm again frustrated. Of course I'm now motivated to check with the devs on how we might look into another credit card processing company but I know that's a big task. I do have your email (I went and found it in the archives) and I promise that when we do setup credit card payments (probably through someone like swipe), I will send you an email.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Monday August 10 2015, @07:53PM
Great, thank you very much! I assure you this is nonsense the PayPal is giving you because I've paid to other places without creating an account. Anyway, I don't want to be too much of a hassle. If I'm the only person with this problem and it's too much work you can leave it as it is. Maybe I should try with bitcoins but I'm not familiar with it.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @05:16PM
Spigot isn't as bad as it used to be. I'd probably recruit people from the community to act as mods/GMs, and help define the way its all going to work.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday August 10 2015, @07:16PM
I'm not sure which server mod it is, you can disable the creation of pretty much anything on a case-by-case basis. So, no IC2 quarries or chunk loaders keeping huge numbers of chunks up and hogging resources, that kind of thing. Although, Personal Anchors are handy incentives when fund-raising comes about.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @07:43PM
It's built into the mod itself as part of Spigot. I'm fairly sure setting up a server probably the first thing I'm likely going to do once I have access to non-shit internet, I'm just on the fence if it will be vanilla or one of the FTB modpacks (and if its the later, what a proper spawn site should look like)
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:00AM
True Vanilla gets old very quickly these days, while the mod-heavy packs can take quite a lot of work to admin. FTB do a Vanilla+ which looks pretty good, and Lite 3 is actually pretty sophisticated now.
(Score: 1) by rigrig on Monday August 10 2015, @05:06PM
Mostly Discworld MUD [starturtle.net], a multi-user game based on the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett.
This game has thousands of hand-written rooms, I've been playing for almost ten years and even now I regularly walk into something new.
Or the roguelike Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup [develz.org] (they make a version with graphics as well, if you're not a fan of ascii-art).
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:26AM
What's your name on Discworld?!? Not that I play, or have ever played...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @05:30PM
There is great web and app based game called Space Uncharted. Its a slow MMO RTS with games that span weeks or months.
http://spaceuncharted.com/ [spaceuncharted.com]
(Score: 1) by Meepy on Monday August 10 2015, @06:04PM
Go is the only game worth playing. How can it be otherwise?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:07PM
There used to be an internet GO server a decade or two ago, using the internet GO protocol.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:56PM
Currently kgs [gokgs.com]is still popular.
However if SN are to run a server then NNGS [xmp.net] might be worth looking into (also, the protocol igs and nngs use is simple and telnet-friendly and quite easy to implement)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Monday August 10 2015, @06:13PM
As an overlord, shouldn't you be dictating which game we'll be playing this weekend : ) But really, a good option is a game where meta-gaming is possible and your group is supposed to carve out a piece of the world. It can be event based and not persistent too. Take minecraft for example. There are already so many servers. Instead of having a permanent SN server you can have event weekends where you post the ip:port of a public server and we all join together. This gets more people on at the same time and a (probably) under-utilized server gets some use.
Event based and episodic style play adds variety and could keep people interested. TF2, Mount & Blade Warband, Agar.io, or whatever steam sale is best that week. Plenty of free-to-plays out there too.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:31PM
Well, at the moment, I'm out of town, on a internet link so slow, SN takes 15-30 seconds per page load, so streaming is basically impossible. I may stream some other games from my library + occassional DF/Minecraft stuff.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @06:14PM
Space Empires IV
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 10 2015, @06:59PM
see subject
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by VanessaE on Monday August 10 2015, @09:43PM
I'd suggest setting up a Minetest server rather than Minecraft. Everything's free open source software (written in C++, built around the Irrlicht rendering engine, with Lua for the content), with a small but decent community of coders, artists, and players.
The main website is at http://minetest.net [minetest.net]
Source code for the game engine is at https://github.com/minetest/minetest [github.com]
Base game content is at https://github.com/minetest/minetest_game [github.com]
Plenty of add-on content to be had from the Minetest forums, https://forum.minetest.net/index.php [minetest.net]
(Sorry for the link spam)
Maybe a bit of bias here since I am a modder and I run several servers. :-)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday August 12 2015, @01:51PM
Never heard of Minetest until now. Seems like a rather complete clone of Minecraft just browsing through the wiki, and handles some things better, like creating a bone block instead of killing your entire inventory (I can't remember the last time I managed to recover mine after meeting my end after a creeper), as well as mods for handling stuff like redstone and the like.
My biggest concern is its always difficult to get people to play something they're not familiar with, esp. if its an "inferior" (in the eye of the beholder) clone of the original. While I may be willing to switch to Minetest for my block building needs, I'm not sure others would.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:34PM
Bitfighter is free, multiplatform, low on the server resources. Kind of lame solo, but with 3-4 (or more) players it's a blast.
(Score: 1) by CyprusBlue on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:15AM
Check out www.factorio.com. It's a VERY well done alpha stage fully playable industrial game where you start with nothing and build huge factories from basic resources. Multiplayer / Mod support as well as headless server implementation.
The multiplayer / twitch community around it is quite interesting.
(Score: 3, Informative) by juggs on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:50AM
Just dropping this in here... there is a nascent SoylentNews Steam group, set public last I checked. :)
Getting some co-op action going would be great. Any excuse to evade cussing teens and just getting on with things.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday August 11 2015, @06:45AM
If you go with a Minecraft server be sure to use the Ruins mod.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/1282339-ruins-structure-spawning-system [minecraftforum.net]
It adds a ton of structures to the world maps, everything from simple stone shrines and ship wreaks (with chests) in the oceans to multi-level Battle towers.
And its easy to add custom structures to the mod, the file is in plain text and there is an in game tool to create the file as well.
I don't play vanilla MC anymore, got too boring. Ruins made it fun again.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:03PM
Why not run servers for OpenTTDX and/or FreeCiv?