I think that the standard two players isn't enough for serious Ares plug-in making. One good level idea would be one in which all the races are thrown in together, in their respective alliances so that there would be a team, but not one where the whole team loses all at once. It wouldn't have to be made a big deal-maybe the upgrade would be released at the same time as Hera.

What's your opinion?

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No, I'm not that cruel. I don't use the flamethrower on my
enemies. I save that for my
allies.
-caalaklael, the trigger
happy obiard

Unless there are some engine limits Grammaticus hasn't mentioned, you can just cut-and-paste together a new race that could build all the ships involved. Each planet can have a different set of buildable ships, so you could then make a Gaitori planet, a Salrillian planet, etc., each without actually putting in more than 2 sides. The win and loss triggers are not built-in, so you could set it so that each side can only be defeated when all of their planets are overrun/all of their ships are destroyed.

So, with a little time, you can theoretically make a map like that - without ever changing the engine.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

Can you say "lag"?
Can you say "slowing down of the nation's dail up speeds?"

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"Well try to kill them with a fork-lift!"
The Notorious Bounty
Hunter,
Boba Fett
judygeof@ix.netcom.com

Lag? Then how come you can play Starcraft 8 player over the internet? I wasn't thinking of going immediately over 3 or 4 players.

------------------
No, I'm not that cruel. I don't use the flamethrower on my
enemies. I save that for my
allies.
-caalaklael, the trigger
happy obiard

To my understanding, Ares is a lot more laggy than starcraft. And don't mention starcraft, ares is better. (I'm just kidding, I've barely played starcraft and xyrus might start spamming like crazy if i dis starcraft).

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"Well try to kill them with a fork-lift!"
The Notorious Bounty
Hunter,
Boba Fett
judygeof@ix.netcom.com

There is one limit. Each planet can only build 6 types of ship. But with multiple planets it's all fine.

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Commander-in-Chief of the Nijayias Interstellar Navy.

Firstly, there's a damn sight of difference between commercial network code and shareware network code. You can't realistically expect that Nathan working all by his lonesome can match the programming department of Blizzard or Bungie.

Secondly, remember that in Ares you are also sending the movements of a commander's personal ship. These are simplified a bit into packets like 'turn right 4 seconds while firing' or something, but are still more complex and in far more constant usage than the unit commands given, which only require a burst of information for every click of the mouse, rather than every millisecond of holding down a key.

Lastly, it takes three to lag - the program, and two players. You might get a lagless game of 8 - player Starcraft, even with a wimpy 28.8, if the other seven players have some ungodly connection speed that's higher than I can count. Most Ares players use modems, and a latency of 2/5 of a second is standard for modem use, which is just long enough to be noticeable but not long enough to affect play. Multiply that by several players, however, and the game is screwed.

Not to mention that Grammaticus has already said he will not do this.

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Replicant (url="http://"http://www.axis.n3.net")www.axis.n3.net(/url)

(This message has been edited by Replicant (edited 02-03-2000).)