Hazeron Starship

[Haxus]

Hi everyone. Wow what happened? It's December?

I got my little computer center all set up in town at the beginning of the year with plans to work like crazy on the game. Life overwhelmed me like a tide and Hazeron was gone like so much flotsam. For the past few months my office has been completely inaccessible, filled with furniture from other parts of the house due to renovations. I only regained access to it last week.

Luckily the servers did pretty well during that time. I mostly ignored them. There were a few problems that required restarts but all in all they ran well enough all summer. I missed the uninterrupted power of the computer center. It seemed like every time a big thunder storm blew through town the servers lost power briefly, enough to reboot them.

When I set up the servers in town I paid all of the expenses for the first year. That year is nearing its end. It has become too expensive to operate them. I am going to shut down the servers, likely in January 2023. The rent on the office space is trivial so the servers will remain there, with only the web/email server powered on.

The game servers will be down indefinitely. If the Steam version brings in any significant amount of money I might consider reviving them, just for fun.

My efforts will now focus entirely on making a good complete Hazeron Starship game to release on Steam. The software is about 99% ready for that. I also want to add a little more story content and design more building and ship models. Those things take time. 

I considered adding LAN play capability. It would not be difficult. It will take time to get it right and it isn't needed for the solo game. I decided to save that for a future update.

Some people already have access to Hazeron Starship on Steam. The about box will show Software Engineering, Inc. as the owner. That version will no longer receive any updates due to the change of owner to Hazeron Freehold LLC.

If you would like to continue getting updates to Hazeron Starship, or if you would like to become a beta tester, send email with your Shores of Hazeron account name. If you do not have a Shores of Hazeron account you are not eligible to be a beta tester.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Haxus

[Rockinsince87]

Merry Christmas! Haxus! Good to hear your alright. 

I completely understand your desire to take down the servers. 

LAN play would be excellent! Self hosting is fine with Static NATS/PATS so having it hosted like that is fine. I hope the max connected player count is left configurable? ((Please please please   ))


I'll send my e-mail right now to continue testing Harzeron Starship.


Again, glad to hear your alright. 

[Paladin]

LAN or Riot! 


Also,

My Hazeron Starship reports Hazeron Freehold LLC as the owner, am i safe


Anyways, Marry X-Mas. Amen  ←

[Deantwo]

Luckily the servers did pretty well during that time. I mostly ignored them. There were a few problems that required restarts but all in all they ran well enough all summer. I missed the uninterrupted power of the computer center. It seemed like every time a big thunder storm blew through town the servers lost power briefly, enough to reboot them.

There were plenty of times over the past months when the servers crashed or at least a lot of them were in "limbo", and then a random server reboot a couple days later saved us all. The thought of those reboots actually just being because of thunder storms and not your doing is both amusing and shocking.

I considered adding LAN play capability. It would not be difficult. It will take time to get it right and it isn't needed for the solo game. I decided to save that for a future update.

A lot of people will be happy to hear that you are still considering it. While it has been joked many times that Hazeron is a singleplayer game with IRC, it think multiplayer is still one of the best features.

A simple optional IRC integration would be fun, so we can have a version of Galactic chat in Hazeron Starship. Maybe rename it to "Multiverse chat" or something.

The game servers will be down indefinitely. If the Steam version brings in any significant amount of money I might consider reviving them, just for fun.

We will all have our fingers crossed.

Until then, when LAN play is potentially implemented, we have a lot of people saying they would love to host a massive community server for it. Not sure how it would work out, but the idea is interesting at least.

[Vooker525]

Support Deantwos IRC idea. Global chat and exchange would be nice addition to hazeron starship. This way people would have access to existing blueprints and be able to get support from in game. Exchange should be global only, no need for storing empire only blueprints and sharing with others. Running mail/chat/exchange/account server shouldn't be expensive. I believe simple PC is fully capable of that, given unlimited internet traffic.

LAN game could be done in different ways, where players can connect to each other universes through global chat, steam or game menu:
Through Steam P2P;
By connecting to internal LAN server which runs with client;
By connecting to dedicated LAN server which runs independently;
Last two methods are preferred, second one is more realistic right now, third one would be a nice addition, but it will require some verification, which could be done through steam too.

God-mode features would be nice for testing purposes.

I have some decommissioned PC with broken screen that lays on top of cabinet. With quad-core i5-3470, 8GB DDR3 ram and small SSD it acts as 1U dust collector and can run most game servers for small parties just fine. Hazeron Starship wouldn't be an exception
Image here

[Xantheose]

There were plenty of times over the past months when the servers crashed or at least a lot of them were in "limbo", and then a random server reboot a couple days later saved us all.

This

A lot of people will be happy to hear that you are still considering it. While it has been joked many times that Hazeron is a singleplayer game with IRC, it think multiplayer is still one of the best features.

A simple optional IRC integration would be fun, so we can have a version of Galactic chat in Hazeron Starship. Maybe rename it to "Multiverse chat" or something.

Also, a feature of universe syncing with ppl would be great. It will not be as good as multiplayer, but you'll still can access to others empires and designs.

I mean, this is not to replace LAN games, this is to enhance the universe of theses LAN games.


Also, I think that if the multiplayer is removed from the game, it has to be replaced by something else.


In multiplayer, you had to prepare yourself to war, by hiding, building huge warships and developing advanced technologies. But if this threat is removed, there is no much interest about it.


I don't know how to replace this aspect of the game. You can sure create some dumb pirates or asteroids, but it will not be a big deal compared to smart, players who successfully weaponized their autism to have a good strategy.


We have to find something to do, a goal to aim.


Maybe terraforming planets, which require some state-of-art technologies and many military grade resources?

It could be interesting, in a very hostile universe in which habitable planets are very rare, where outers and inners are no longer habitable and natural ringworlds don't exists. Other type of planets can be created; radiated planets, desert planets or else.
Now, every planet looks mostly same, with the only difference is the climate, except moons and gas giants. Most planets have an atmosphere, oceans blue/red/violet, and green grass, which, imo, make every colony basically the same and are very easy to colonize in; 30 minutes and the city is built.


Also, there is no "side quest" to the game. Once you have your designs, it's the exact same pattern each time: explore->build 3 buildings to colonize->broker->explore

Imo this pattern should be randomly interrupted, with for example, pandemic threads in overpopulated areas, having to win elections for democratic systems or restore peace in insurgents systems in dictatorships. It could be a lot of things actually; I'm sure here, many players will have a ton of ideas.


To finish, I don't know if it is feasible in the current state of the game, but I think the game would be much more appealing if the UI have a refactoring. Currently, most of UI looks quite old or unclear, and since Hazeron is a game in which we spend a lot of time in menus, it would be a great thing for new players to have something clean.

[Kami]

Does this mean people who have the Hazeron Starship beta already have to get another key if the old version isn't being updated?

[Zensras]

Personally,  I have been way too busy to play Shores as I used to since I started at a day shift job in IT.  I'm also aware how pricey server hosting (and shit in general) has gotten over the past couple of years due to rising prices and issue in supply chains with actual hardware.  

Honestly think a combination of both Vooker's and Dean's ideas would be great.   It would satisfy those who want to see multiplayer continue in some form and keep server costs lower. 

Of course Starship is more SP focused and I'm sure there is other stuff to do first.

[Rockinsince87]

Honestly think a combination of both Vooker's and Dean's ideas would be great.   It would satisfy those who want to see multiplayer continue in some form and keep server costs lower. 

Yeah that's the way to go. In addition I would like to see some control over the server/game universe would be nice. General admin tools/commands and the ability to specify how many active galaxies there are and more.

Right now, Hazeron Starship runs quite well. However once you dead-head to a galaxy core, your save file bloats quite a bit. Example, a test I did from sector 150,0,0 in the shores galaxy traveling to 0,0,0 bloated the save to about 500+ MB. This does not hurt performance while playing (from what I can see with my hardware). When you load the game up, it takes longer and longer to load everything. Not a huge issue at the moment but it could become a problem over time.

Hence one of the controls should be garbage collection frequency. Sectors you are traveling through should be dropped from the save after x amount of <time> by using discovery time stamp. If it has no flags or capitol present, then drop. By keeping a tight rein on compute resources, hardware costs can be much lower.

[Haxus]

Oops I forgot the last beta update had Hazeron Freehold on the about box. That program will not get any more updates.

I read through all of your comments. Thank you.

I'm not quite ready to post a new update. Just finished updating OS on build machines. Got everything up-to-date and building smoothly. Almost ready to post an update.