Chat Discussion with Richard "Faustus" Lyle of the Darkspace Developer Team
on June 27th at 1:00 PM CST (8:00 CET):

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "when will the open Beta start?"

18:00:34 BB Faustus: "the purpose of this chat is to get everyone informed on the open beta..."

GER_Samweis Sent "do u know the exact date when the open beta will begin?"

18:01:22 BB Faustus: "first question, when will the open beta start... the open beta is scheduled to start the first week of July, however it will only start once the server backend and the code is done, but it looks like it will happen."

Yidam Sent "will there be a repack of the client so the newbies do not need to download the previous updates"

MoA_Pogo Sent "Do we need to download the game again to get on the PS-Server or do we get only a update to come on the PS-Server?"

DoomDragon Sent "Are we able to download the software ealier or only after the servers are done?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Was GameCQ ever tested before?"

18:02:19 BB Faustus: "I'm shooting for July 9th at the very latest... the client will go online for download at www.palestar.com"

GER_Samweis Sent "is the information correct that everyone can host own games?" Merlin24 whispers "you have said, that the game will have many action: Must I be a very fast on the Keyboard, mouse or will it be playable with more strategic depth and less action?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "is there a lobby? like BBGC?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Whats about GameMasters/GameAdmins ?"

Meltro Sent "faustus what would newcomers to DS expect to find gameplay wise when they first get into the game?"

18:03:36 BB Faustus: "the open beta will require a new download... however for those who already have been in the closed beta, you can download a 1mb client... and copy your data directory from the previous install, this will save you alot of downloading."

18:04:01 BB Faustus: "new players can download the full client, estimated size will be about 30mb..."

PolarBer1 whispers "Faustus how will bug report sending work? Should we use the forums?"

18:04:42 BB Faustus: "GameCQ.... is based on what I wrote for BB, basically it will be newer and better than the BBGC, and will have a lobby just like this one."

BlackPhoenix Sent "How much players can play on your Servers at the same time?"

18:05:09 BB Faustus: "bug reports... the bug reporting tool will be fixed by then, currently it's disabled because of a security problem."

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Whats about GameMasters/GameAdmins ?"

18:05:53 BB Faustus: "GameMasters... yes, I will make some players moderators for the forums, and within the game, they will have the ability to kick players from a server and keep everyone nice."

Gladiator_gag Sent "the modes from BBGC or new mods?"

MoA_Pogo Sent "Which PC/Connection do u need to open youre own game?"

DoomDragon Sent "What happens until the new server are up? Can we still play here or will this lobby go down 1.7. too?"

BeerGuy whispers "Will the last task of the closed beta be testing the new backend code and lobby client?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "the mods from BBGC or new?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "and of course they should have an advisory function for new players!"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "and what is with the other parts of the game?" PolarBer1 whispers "it might be a good idea to mention to us vets that would should be kind and courteous to newbies asking questions" radarrider Sent "will you be able to see a list of who is in servers?"

18:07:23 BB Faustus: "Player run servers... yes, we will be allowing players to run their own servers through the beta test... security is an issue, during the open beta you will be able to gain rank/prestige on player run servers, however in the end probably not because of the hackers.. ;)"

Sir_Toddi whispers "what will the server capacity be? (numbe of players/server)"

TGG Paradox whispers "wil there be a ney llobby like the BBGC system ?"

BlackPhoenix Sent "How will it be with the registration. With your nick, prestige ...."

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "GameMasters: How will they be choosen? (other Players asked me this)"

TGG SUNSHINE Sent "who long is the open betatest ?"

18:08:50 BB Faustus: "Server capacity... after some improvements to the networking code (which is planned) we should be able to see 32-64 players on a player run server... hopefully closer to 200-500 for a dedicated server will a high-bandwidth line."

GER_Hero Sent "faustus i am interested in both Gamemaster and Server"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "and what is with the silver combat dreads ok but cruisers too?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Will there also be a possibility of Lan-Gaming?"

18:09:22 BB Faustus: "Open Beta Duration... the open beta will last for 60 days, after that we may extend it, we may not... "

Merlin24 whispers "Can I use a masquerading router (based on linux) to play over GameHQ?"

PolarBer1 whispers "and after that? if its not extended, then will even the people who did closed beta be outta luck?"

18:10:24 BB Faustus: "How are the moderators choosen... we will put a moderator application on our website, that's how they will be choosen."

TGG SUNSHINE Sent "when will darkspace be released ?!"

Hydronix Sent "faustus after the game is released, how will there be clan games. on your servers only?"

GER_Samweis Sent "this means everyone can be a moderator?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "why not the mods from here?"

Meltro Sent "faustus how if at all will being firewalled affect gameplay?"

18:11:43 BB Faustus: "After the open beta is complete, we will release the game most likely, everyone should be able to keep their prestige."

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "is there anything planned how we can pay for ds when its released it will have a mothly fee or not?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "or have the mods from here an advantage?"

18:12:15 BB Faustus: "Firewalls are an issue if you plan to run your own DS server, otherwise DS will work find through a firewall because all the connections are outbound."

GER_Samweis Sent "keeping prestige if everybody can host their own server in open beta?"

DoomDragon Sent "How about the costs?"

GER_Hero Sent "faustus what about the old usernames pw´s and the current prestige ?"

Sir_Toddi whispers "do You already know the monthly costs for the game?"

Vampyer whispers "whats about the prestiges. 1 kill one pretige?"

PolarBer1 whispers "since youll be controlling the servers, youll have more direct controls over the databases to make adjustments here and htere, correct?"

MoA_Pogo Sent "will u make in the ALPHA a costfree internetserver like the battle net?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "costs / month?"

Meltro Sent "faustus how will disconnects be handled during gameplay?"

18:13:43 BB Faustus: "Palestar is keeping full control over the servers this time around, so we should see everything run much smoother for the open beta.."

18:14:10 BB Faustus: "how will disconnects be handled, your ship will be put under AI control and fly back to the nearest jumpgate."

18:14:22 BB Faustus: "The next question is costs..."

Gladiator_gag Sent "great"

TGG SUNSHINE Sent "are new features includet in the open beta ?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Will AI Units be active in the Open Beta?"

18:15:14 BB Faustus: "cost... so much of this is up to our future publisher, however, we would like the game to have a low initial cost of 20-30 US, then a recuring cost of 5 US.... "

TGG Paradox whispers "Will there be a new lobby like the BBGC or what do you plann to code there :-) ?"

18:15:51 BB Faustus: "GameCQ will be somewhat like the BBGC, however I plan to make many improvements... "

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "only with creditcard?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Isnt it possibly that you pay yearly for DS?"

DoomDragon Sent "You say when we disco the ship gets over AI control, when we get back into the game we start at the gate or jump into the ship again?"

18:16:16 BB Faustus: "I may make it all in-game and fullscreen... dropping the windows like application..."

18:16:45 BB Faustus: "I haven't decided as of yet... ;)"

Vampyer whispers "Do you choose an other System for getting Prestiges?"

PolarBer1 whispers "youre busy as it is coding, wont adminning the open beta, coding, and messing with GameCQ a lot really spread you thin?"

18:17:36 BB Faustus: "payment will require a credit card most likely... however, our publisher can probably provide other means of payment..."

18:17:54 BB Faustus: "boy I wish I could cut and paste ;)"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "You will lose many german players if a credit card is needed!!"

GER_Samweis Sent "hehe"

hilgner whispers "whats with fighters and bombers from carriers? will they be able at open beta?"

DoomDragon Sent "Does our prestige get saved every time we fly into the jumpgate or how does you handle it?"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "if its only with credit card you will loose some of the german fans"

18:19:20 BB Faustus: "The question, "new features in the open beta"... fighters, space monsters, and new server backend / frontend are my primary issues at this time all of which I would like to have working within the next month."

18:20:27 BB Faustus: "Question, credit cards, chances are that who ever we find to publish DS in germany can provide other forms of payment.. or perhaps the game costs would include a full year of play on our servers..."

Meltro Sent "faustus will you be allowed to create multiple profiles/characters on one account?"

18:21:18 BB Faustus: "Question, types of servers, Palestar will run the fully persistant servers (several servers linked together by jumpgates), players will be able to run Deathmatch, Clan, and Scenerios based servers..."

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "yeah thats good do it like mankind (only payment not the game *g*) that was a really cool way of paying"

18:22:01 BB Faustus: "Question, multiple/profiles, yes, on the palestar MetaVerse you will be able to have multiple accounts under your username, each will different prestige/rank/affiliation..."

Gladiator_gag Sent "Clan servers wow great make clans in the GQ...?"

18:23:32 BB Faustus: "Question, Clans, yes yes, I plan to build Clans into GameCQ from the beginning, you should be able to admin/create/modify your clan from our web pages or possibly inside of the game itself..."

Yidam Sent "will we keep our names (or even our stats) for the open beta or must we register newly to the GameCQ"

MoA_Bumblebee whispers "what is about designed ship`s/ship`s design?"

Teager whispers "will the Chatlog be aviable for people who just joined? *ggggg*"

MoA Spiritofthenight Sent "Faustus Is the prestige reset sure?" Geo whispers "For Webmasters: Will there be tools we can implement into our Websites? Like a Ranking-List or things like that?"

18:24:57 BB Faustus: "Question, AI units in the open beta, yes... however getting dropping from the BBGC has forced us to address the server backend again, taking our focus away from the game itself and working on SQL databases and server code... once this is all done, we'll get back to finishing alot of the game getting it into a final state."

18:25:13 BB Faustus: "Question, Chat Log, yes, I'm saving it to disk as we speak..."

Gladiator_gag Sent "me too"

GER_Samweis Sent "will the ingame help work soon? maybe the newbies will need it :-)" PolarBer1 whispers "btw there is copy+paste in this typing window, but of course not in the channel"

18:26:11 BB Faustus: "Question, Ship design, Nimby and I were dicussing this yesterday, it's very hard to make this work right because of balancing issues, however we plan to try ;)"

PolarBer1 whispers "are the company servers secure?"

TGG Paradox whispers "Will you code new featuers after the release of the game ?"

Gladiator_gag Sent "can we make prototyps or design own ships?"

18:28:12 BB Faustus: "Question, new features after release, Absolutely.... DarkSpace is unique in that we don't plan to stop adding features after the game is released, we will continue to add new weapons, devices, ship types, scenerions and more to the game on a continuous basis. We are even thinking of a more complete economic system allow players to trade goods from planet to planet... including the ability for players to become pirates, etc..."

18:28:52 BB Faustus: "Question, Company servers secure, YES COMPLETELY HACKER PROOF ;)"

PolarBer1 whispers "oh come on you know that i meant to a practical level of security"

18:29:20 BB Faustus: "Question, can we design our own ships, already answered above... but that is planned."

MoA_Bumblebee whispers "knok on wood :-))"

Gladiator_gag Sent "buy months or years or 3 months paks ? get then new key? or how do you handle this?"

MoA Spiritofthenight Sent "Faustus is something known about which connection type is required for a player hosted saerver? will ADSL be enough?"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "including own ship modells?"

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "may i try to get into you servers ? :-)))"

PolarBer1 whispers "have you been reading the posts doomdragon, bumblebee, and myself have made regarding stations? we brought up some interesting suggestsions for change"

TGG SUNSHINE Sent "is there a plot given, or are we playing one scenario after the next ... , i.e. icc wins, next icc map ; ugto wins, next ugto map"

Hydronix Sent "will the prestige system stay the same, or will it be changed? 1 kill = 1 point"

18:31:36 BB Faustus: "Question, needed bandwidth for player run servers, I have no hard numbers, but I'm currently running pluto on a cable modem from my house and I think everyone has been getting a good connection. I think ADSL should be more than enough for players. Keep in mind, I've planned some major changes to the networking code, which should 1/2 the required bandwidth."

TGG Paradox whispers "Under Which systems can you set up a DS server .. also ein 2k ?"

TGG Paradox whispers "win2k i meant"

18:33:11 BB Faustus: "Question, will the prestige system stay the same, NO, we plan to continue to tweak this system until everyone is happy. I'm sorry about the last couple of months, but I have been REALLY busy just trying to deal with UbiSoft, now that we have a contract I can get back to writing code and getting this game done."

MoA Spiritofthenight Sent "Faustus Will the ship requirements be changed to the suggestions we make/made ? (esspecially the ICC MC was discussed in the forum)"

Gladiator_gag Sent "ähm can we make a battlefest after the chat were yoe will be play with us? *g*"

MoA Spiritofthenight Sent "Faustus ok was answered this way ;-)"

18:34:18 BB Faustus: "Question, what kind of system does the DS server require, we will provide two flavors of the DS server, a stand-alone executable that will run under 95,98,2k,NT... and as a service that can be installed into 2k or NT."

MoA_Bumblebee whispers "do i understand you well - all beta`s will be reset before open start`s but at the end of the open we keep our pres. ?"

18:35:05 BB Faustus: "the server will be self-updating just like the client, meaning it will automatically download any code/data updates."

TGG Paradox whispers "do you have to pay both or are the bopth included in the release package ?" MoA Spiritofthenight Sent "Faustus How many Players will the open beta be able to handle? I think we can expect a lot of them"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "how is it with self made ship models or clanflaggs on ships or so?" PolarBer1 whispers "all company servers will report to a master server for game listings, but will the player run servers have the option of not registering on the master server?"

18:37:09 BB Faustus: "Question, will you have to pay for the servers, no... HOWEVER, Although palestar would like to let players run deathmatch and clans servers, while we run the MetaVerse servers, we might change our strategy... it's really up to our future publisher, but we are going to push for this type of networking model."

MoA_Pogo Sent "U cant copy our profiles,can u?"

18:37:55 BB Faustus: "Question, will player run servers register will the master server, yes.... you will need a valid user account to run your own server..."

18:39:41 BB Faustus: "Question, how many players for the open beta, this is why we are allowing players to run their own servers... we know we may get alot of players attempting to play DS during the open beta, and we simply don't have the servers to handle 5000 players.."

18:41:02 BB Faustus: "Question, copy our profiles, no we can't because BB has encrypted all the passwords into the database, meaning they cannot be reversed. We are encrypting your passwords into our database as well, but we're using MD5 which is a standard ecryption method, BB is using something different."

DoomDragon Sent "To play on the player run servers you have to pay too or is it free?"

Macana whispers "what if you still have the old beta from BB...is that still available for use or will the beta be new?"

Chromix whispers "noo, not standard md5... ascii value x2, then +5 and finally md5 =)"

Gladiator_gag Sent "we must make a new account?"

Macana whispers "this is James from the old BB by the way..."

ThreeJay DSIT Sent "Why cant you give every player a new pass? Thats really NO Problem!"

Teager whispers "well...I coukd tekk you my Prestige and kills....and you write it in my Profile ;)"

18:42:52 BB Faustus: "Question, will you have to pay to play on the player run servers... hehe, we plan to allow anyone to play no matter if they pay or not... however, to move up in rank and gain access to the bigger and better ships you will have to pay."

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "how is it with things like suddenly apearing wormholes or giant black holes or something like this?" You whisper "hola... sir" to Macana

GER_Samweis Sent "you want some ressources for it? ;-)"

MoA_Bumblebee whispers "oh MM Bumblebee :-))"

Chromix whispers "or some Ad-banner for the not-paying ppl aswell ?"

18:43:50 BB Faustus: "Question, suddenly appearing wormholds, yes... this is planned, we just haven't had time as of yet ;)"

DoomDragon Sent "So you can move your rank from the official servers to the player run servers but not back, right?"

Macana whispers "I am glad Ubi has given DS life" You whisper "Correct" to DoomDragon

PolarBer1 whispers "wow.. so what if we are a playing player and get to, say, capt level but hit hard times and dont have money for awhile. can we stop paying and play while staying at that level until we have enough to keep paying?" TGG SUNSHINE Sent "will we be able to chat with the enemy team ?"

18:45:20 BB Faustus: "Question, chating with the enemy team, you can always chat with the enemy, use the /send command ;)"

DoomDragon Sent "When will the prestige get saved? Everytime you fly into the gate or only when you leave the game through the gate at the end of your session?"

MoA Spiritofthenight whispers "will come a login center where u can see where which player is so u can choose the right server and side to play with your friends?"

TGG SUNSHINE Sent "oh, good to know ;)"

Lord_Binary whispers "faustus server program wont run on linux machines ?"

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "do you plan someting like missions for the 2 sides or for players or something like that?"

18:46:10 BB Faustus: "Question, how often will your prestige be saved, I'll make sure the server sends an update every 5 min.... ;)"

Teager whispers "the /send command doesnt work ingame :("

MoA Spiritofthenight whispers "the send does not work on the moment - we try it from time to time, you see the message when u return to the forum but not in the game"

Yidam Sent "can you please announce battle festival 3 that will start after the chat here has ended ;))"

MoA_Bumblebee whispers "what`s about the ingame voice-chat?"

DoomDragon Sent "Must we later decide us for one faction or can we play all 3 with one pilot?"

hilgner whispers "whats with LAN Games?"

18:47:26 BB Faustus: "Question, Linux, as you may or may not know I'm a big FreeBSD/Linux supporter. We are actually runing our website on FreeBSD, with apache and PHP... I'm looking into ways to port our server code over to U*nix... but time as always is an issue, if I have time to port the code later possibily.."

18:49:02 BB Faustus: "Question, Lan games, the big problem with LAN games is if we allow them then we open DS up to pirates big time, if DS is internet only we assure everyone pays for the game and it allows Palestar to continue adding to the game, so I doubt LAN play is a feature we will ever add."

18:49:52 BB Faustus: "Question, voice chat, some bugs in the chat server forced us to disable this feature for now, we will get this fixed and back into the game before release. "

MoA Evangelion01 whispers "how is it with one version with lan support and without internet support and one version only internet the lan version hasn´t to release so early *g*"

18:52:28 BB Faustus: "ok.... I guess that's about it for the questions, once the open beta begins the flood gates on DS will really be opened... I truely hope to see 5000 players in DS ;)"