Planet M.U.L.E.

Hi guys, long time no speak/read, sorry had to take a breather!

Just popped in to see if all my screaming and kicking fell on def ears or not... but it's pretty hard to tell since I can't find out what has changed from version to version!

In case anyone missed it, I am a c-64 version fan-boy and could care less about the Atari version or any other version than the c64 except one that recreates it faithfully.  I have hundreds of games played with 4 qualified players on the c64 and just want to be able to continue that using the wonders of the Internet to play with my 3 buddies more often.  And no emulated Atari Mule over Internet will not do it.

Anyway, is there a change log for each version somewhere I am missing so I could at least paste together a "current" feature list?  I could only find this info for some versions and not all and therefore I cannot figure out what the hell is going on.

For instance I am curious about the following things:

- have you switched the game to a dedicated centralized server yet?
- have you fixed the host advantage in land grant, auctions, cheating sobs?
- have you (properly) recreated the auctions: frequency, max values, ties, sync between clients?
- have you put the max price of smithore back to the proper value?
- have you fixed the time and movement of development to match c64?
- have you made the wampus harder to catch like c64?
- have you reduced the high crystite plots back to 3 from 4?
- have you made it so you don't get "credit" for the existing "outfit" of your Mule, for example it should cost 50 bucks to outfit for energy, and it should cost another 25 to change it to food... NOT negative 25.
- have you fixed who is considered first at the line in land auctions that are tied to be RANDOM (land grant and commodity auctions are different of course)

I think I could think of a bunch more but if I had the answers to the above I could decide if I really want to gather my buddies and try this latest version out or not.  Or whether to bother posting any more beefs.

B

PS If you don't hear from me again (ie. you said no to all of the above), sorry but it's probably for the best.  I worry I might permanently scar your egos every time I speak my mind.  BUT please DO add my vote to whatever C64nostalgia says... chances are VERY high that I agree with him.  I don't think I have read one post of his where I disagreed with him.  So in other words, if all the PM fan boys are saying X and c64Nostalgia says Y, please think of it like two players said Y, but one of them got sick of saying it and went away to keep his sanity.  :P

PPS Happy holidays all and give Uschi a big ole' lump of coal for me if you see him, pretty please!

Hey Blitzen,

We'll be sure to give that lump of coal to Akire1/Uschi/Simpla the Best/eumel-123/dontspeakenglish/hello.
or whatever you want to call him, he has more smurfs than anyone else here.

Visit this thread to download an update log

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1169.0 (http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1169.0)

I compiled this myself from the front page (took some time to document these among all the weekly trophy updates)

Hmmm, actually, I'll just upload it on this message, you won't have to read tons of stuff to find it.

Let's address your questions...

Most have these are in discussion in the various forums (feedback, and general discussion mostly)

Still using player hosted games, but timing improvements have greatly diminished host advantage - Still there, but much much better

Again, part of this, has to deal with host advantage and varying pings, there is improvement.
Max value are the following currently...

Smithore: 230
Crystite: 148
Food: 215
Energy: 215

It's more like Atari than 64, and I grew up 64, so I liked the challenges in the 64 version, it has been noted by many that those do make the game more interesting, and many would like to see it like the 64.

No, it's still easier than it was on the Atari, very easy to get the wampus.

It is still 4.

No, but it is in discussion, on multiple threads in fact, so good chance a purest version may come out that addresses this eventually.

Timing improvements have been improved, which was a big part of this issue.  In ties, loser advantage now wins the auction 9 our of 10 times, much better than it was in version 1.2.x  They did there best to ensure this by cause a longer delay in the sale of the first unit to allow for lag time to sync the game properly.

I did notice host advantage played into the land grant in a game I hosted yesterday, but that is the first time I have seen it since 1.3.4 was released, and it's been out for a while, someone had some longer pings, and I beat them out two rounds in a row in the land grant when they were placed 4th and I was 3rd, which isn't supposed to happen, but like I said, out of 30 some odd games, since 1.3.4 came out, it's the first game I saw this in.  (That was a rough game, two players lost connection, and had significant ping problems long before the time out, I was very sad, I've had a great string of games with no abandonment issues, but these were genuine connection problems, nobody purposefully quit I'm happy to say.)

Cited discussions addressing these very questions.

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1150.0 (http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1150.0)
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=746.0 (http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=746.0)
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1140.0 (http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1140.0)
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1119.0 (http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1119.0)

There are more, but as you can see, these points are definately in discussion.

Thank you Chuckie Chuck for taking the time to reply to all my questions I know that it takes a LOT of time to create such a post and I do appreciate it.

I guess I won't be playing anytime soon, asides from the fact that most of my concerns haven't been addressed.

Also, I see from the comprehensive change log you posted the following two things which seem to be steps backwards to me:

From 1.3.0
 * Players must walk all the way down to the start bid to exit the Land
      Auction. The maximum price will also go down when the player backs out.
      This prevents players from blocking the auction by raising the price to
      an amount nobody would want to pay and then back out.

From 1.3.3
 * Fixed so that a tie in the land auction will always blink and sell the
     plot to the player with the lower score.

Neither of these changes are accurate imitations of the original, nor do they add anything special to the game:

1) Blocking auctions should be a part of the game, it always has been in the past, running the price back to original asking price is retarded and backwards compared to the original in every way.

2) C64 made it so it was random who was considered first in land auctions.  Why?  Because the price could only change by about 1k, so the guy in last,  late in a game, say after everyone has dumped smithore for the first time, would of been buying the next 2 or 3 plots, likely paying 2k, 3k and 4k for them.  THIS IS NOT AN ARGUEMENT TO INCREASE THE MAX PRICE RISE IN LAND AUCTIONS!  Just make it random who is considered first in a tie, like they did in c64... for very good reasons.  Guess what the guy in last who bought those plots for 2k - 4k, is STILL in last cause only values the land at 500... this is a HUGE advantage in its current form and represents a broken aspect of play.

I really hope my PM next birthday they have stopped trying to fix the original and finally started trying to emulate it faithfully.  Maybe by their 3rd they will be tweeking version 2 but honestly at their current rate they are never going to make a decent version 1 at all.

Sorry to be pissing in the cereal bowl again but how will you guys know if no one speaks up???  Start reverse engineering the original c64 version and stop guessing and going back and forth trying to take the short and easy route.

B  :'(

PS See you again in a few more months I guess!

This rule was made because people were intentionally running the price up and then not purchasing, hurting other players that truly wanted to by, it was especially abused by the same people who are known for unethical hosting, go figure, this forced them to keep the price more fair (but so would changing the timing so the largest the bid increase can be is $880 or so like the original M.U.L.E.


This was done mainly because of latency issues, it was one of the things done to attempt to make the land auction sync issue go away, but it has proven to be easy for people to abuse on the 1st round land auction along with the combination of the $972 factor (if anyone outbids that, they won't be able to develop a plot the first round of play)

So, yeah, probably another solution to those issues that would ring truer to the original.  I personally can't verify the claim that the original was random on ties in the land auction, I have only played the original against the AI.  Never had a group of four friends to play like many people here.  Until about 3 years ago, I didn't even know the keys for player 3 and 4 on the commodore.

Personally, I'm quite happy with P.M. for the most part, as I only played against AI before it came along, it's a treat to play against other people, and I don't have a base to compare it to in that aspect (but if I choose to play against AI "training mode", I'd rather play the old mule, the AI in P.M. is horrid, and it wasn't all that well done in the original, but I had fun beating it.)

I appreciate your comments re. the reasoning behind those differences, and the fact that we all do have the chance to play a similar game despite great distances or a lack of human opponents/original hardware.

I am sure I would rejoice if I were in your situation too, but I am a very lucky and discerning consumer and I want to spend my free time with high quality entertainment whenever possible...

So here is the long and the short of it on these few issues as I see it.

The argument that the auctions will continue to be blocked and abused is invalid if the rate of increase in land value is limited (as it is now); it should only be a problem in late games with the kind of guys n gals I like to play, as we all know the true value of land very well.  3 - 4k is not unreasonable in rounds 8 or less and blocking when you have the money to buy is probably a deadly mistake more often than not.  Again, blocking someone is a part of the original, a very important part, it just wasn't as easily abused as it was before the land auction price increase was brought closer to spec.

In addition getting credit for outfits and allowing more mules to be switched to different markets per round (time to outfit might be additional source of this issue?), is decreasing the advantage in establishing the proper production in the proper plots early.  It should be somewhat hard to have 12 plots outfitted, let alone switched several times more than the original.  Thus making smithore even more dominant than ever. 

Why did they decrease the smithore's max value to try to fix what something else broke?  You aren't going to make food and energy strategies any more sound than they were... that being mostly unsound and relying on shortages, mistakes and incredibly bad fortune by all your opponents for any hope of a victory.

The original game scales very well from beginner to expert play, with an intricate and very well developed set of early, middle, and late game tactics.  It was played to death by the testers and even had a rerelease on the c64 which addressed a few issues in the even more played to death Atari version.

A surface observation, especially a cursory one, will never capture it properly.  Currently it is going back and forth in baby steps towards a seriously compromised imitation of the original and it bothers me to no end because I don't think the hammer time approach to this project is going to be successful at either being a full featured modern 2.0 version or a "near" flawless reproduction of the original.  Either of which being the only possible avenues for "success" as I see it.  Something in between modern and old doesn't sell well to the new kids on the block.

You must build programs on the right solid foundation or it will just fall over like a cheap house.  ~QED

We can only testify to so much and even then we make mistakes and forget things, some things we never understood properly until we looked at the decompiled parts from kroah, and not everything is decompiled either.... most of the good ideas can hardly be heard over the roar of the crowds, so why would I bother you know?  Why would anyone?

I mean consensus of the masses hardly makes for a good elected goverment, why should it make for good game dev?  I know that breaks QED somehow but it still feels right.

Dan himself said sometimes you can't listen to the players at all, no matter what their consensus is... just think of some of the bad breaks in Mule and how much bitching is done about them, noobs and vets alike, they add something and their absence would simply create a void without filling another or improving anything else at all.  All it would do is increase the players perception that they are getting a fair cut, mechanics wise it would add nothing to gameplay to remove it or soften the potential for bad breaks. 

When they put 3 high crystites instead of 4, for their 4 player game (unfair isn't it?), a similar decision was made.  It works very very well at creating competition and alliances among different players since not everyone can be doing the same things. Both fine examples of the art of the genius behind the original game imo.

I should try to record a game of the original c64 being played this xmas w/4 guys, I'll need to order the right damn cable this time!  Anyone know a good sound capture app I could use to capture the dialogue?  I'm on WinXp.

Its still got to be cheaper and easier to just decompile the original than to try to get a forum community to agree on the right way to do it but I'll make a video that showcases a complete 1.5 hr game with 4 veteran players on original hardware!

Might be a hoot if you guys don't mind flagrant use of explicit words. I think it might be educational as hell for the devs and the apparent hordes of noobs around here... or should I say smurfs? :)

Any interest out there?

PS I wonder how much longer those systems I have will last... sad days are looming for me. No pressure guys.  Honest.
_______________________________________
Death to all smurfs.  Even the pretty one.  ;D

Best way to capture old 64 to demo video is, output it to a digital camcorder's analog inputs (usually the same cables that hook to a tv for output, will do input mode too when the camera is in playback mode, then you can digitally transfer the tape/sd card, or whatever your medium is, into you favorite movie editor, and compress it to a net viewable format for posting)  It could be difficult to play on the tiny 2 inch screen, so if you have a monitor with passthrough outputs, to forward the signal to the camera (most newer tv's have a monitor out feature) you can still play on a decently viewable screen while recording.

May be difficult to find a site that will let you post a continuous video of one full game, so perhaps you can break it up to to 20 minute segments or so (most sites allow videos of around 20 minutes unless you pay to have something longer.)

Other option (I haven't seen this work well, but it's suppose to function) is have Vice64 capture to AVI during game play, this function seems buggy in Vice64 in my experience though, and the emulator has issues just doing one or two players with joystick emulation, I don't think the keyboard buffer on most PCs would accept enough simultaneous key presses to be viable.

One of the awesome things about the 64 was, it didn't use a keyboard buffer, it had a very well done realtime keyboard interface, with many more wires in the keyboard connection to the motherboard, so the computer could receive input from many more keys at once, and also, you have real joysticks, also a big help.

If you're confused how to pull off the camera thing, I might be able to help you with that (I can make a short how to video, could be fun, something I was meaning to do just because I'm such a nerd anyways.)

I need the right cable to output from the c64 monitor port to standard RCA composite video with color, currently my C64 monitor cables will only work with the two channels for color and light.  So I get black and wipe when I use them with modern equipment.

I have an ATI Theatre 550 to capture the video, what I also need is a solid wave/recording application or some kind of additional capture tool to get just the conversation that's going on the whole time too.

I simply don't trust the simplistic Windows recorder application to catch 1.5 hrs of input without a glitch.

Simple fixes

Y-Cable can bring those yellow/red cable together to a high quality composite most equipment can handle,  you can get some unwanted scan lines and some senstive equipment won't sync with it properly, or you can attempt to purchase a 5 pin din and rca plugs and some wire and make a true composite cable of your own, or you can make an adapter to turn that red/yellow on the eight pin into S-Video (this is the best option short of the next option if you have equipment that supports S-vid), or you can buy a pre-made cable for composite or s-vid if you hunt around the net a bit.  I would definitely consider buying or making the 5 pin pure composite cable though, because that will plug into any modern composite input, you would be able to play your good ole 64 on the big 42 inch LCD tv in the front room instead of being stuck on that little 13" 1702/1803 you've used for 20 plus years.  (Getting ready to bring my 128D out of storage, and I will probably bring the 1902 out with it because of the CGA capability for 128/80 mode, but most the time, I'll probably just run in 64 mode hooked to my 27" widescreen tv with my 5 pin composite cable.  Perhaps I'll tinker with my old sx-64 some too.)

Basically what the 1702/1802 monitor cable you have is, is an S-Video Cable, before they invented the mini din S-Video Cable we know and love.  Separating the Lumanance/Chroma signals allows for a clearer crisper image, that is what S-Video is.  Ironically, that cable was created for the 1701/1702 monitor, which is manufactured by JVC, ironically, JVC created the S-Video standard that we see implemented on more modern equipment.  It's the exact same signal, just different cables.

The technique was carried into the 1803 line of monitors, not sure who manufactured them.  When the 1902 and 1084 displays came out, Commodore came up with a totally different cable, to accommodate a version of it that was integrated into those monitors by their manufacture, Magnavox.  There were several variations of the same Magnavox monitor, some were composite only, some were composite/cga dual mode, and the nicest were composite/extended composite (a version of s-video)/cga (and commodore had some of the last branded 1902)  A stereo version came out, and was dubbed the 1084s by commodore.  All used the same monitor housing, you could punch out the missing ports and add them, as long as the monitor's circuit board had all the necessary circuitry.  They all used the same CRT tube, so you could mix and match parts if a board died (and they were prone to cold solder points on the high voltage transformer, I have 3 of those 1902 style currently, and have had 2 open to solder those points, and two of them are in need of that service currently.  Been low priority cause I haven't needed them lately, plenty of high end stereo TVs in the house for the same use, sometimes they come out to work in remote video production, they make great camera monitors, when they aren't cutting out.

(reportedly sharpness goes up from about 300 lines to over 400 lines of resolution, but it's still analog composite video, and a y cable virtually combines them back together, almost as if they were not output separately, I say almost, I have done this method in the past, and it works, most the time.  The sensitivity in some equipment is because you are without any filtering, pushing 400 lines back into 300 lines, you can visually see the lines between the pixels more than if you had a standard composite signal, and some equipment doesn't sync right under that circumstance.)

Digital camcorder suggestion involves using a camcorder with a solid state drive, hard drive, or recordable dvd, or miniDV/digital 8 tapes.

All but the last of these can import directly into the computer without any chance of dropped frames.

miniDV/digital 8 on a decent computer with a firewire port will not have any issues either.

I shoot wedding video, my cameras run miniDV or digital8, I have imported hours and hours of video in a constant stream with no dropouts, but you have to dedicate the computer to that process and nothing else until it's done, screen savers off, power management off, chat programs off, everything off, just the capture program (currently using Roxio video import for my captures, not the best, but def not the worst.)

Using a video card with analog capture support is very unreliable, you're right about that.  Have a Radeon 7200 with the feature, it's very glitchy, but I've had fun using the computer as an analog source monitor.

The nice thing about the digital camera is everything will stay PERFECTLY sync'd and even using a digital tape cam, if done properly, you won't have to worry about manipulating the audio separately.

 :o

Wow awesome info Chuckie, thanks!

I'll try it next week when I'm back home with my equipment for a test run.  Maybe I won't have to buy a new cable after all.

Thanks again for the tip re. creating an s-video connection for use on modern equipment.  It looked at least as good as it ever did on the Commodore Monitors on my 32" wide screen -- we turned off stretch though it just messed with us...  absolutely awesome!  You da man Chuckie!

Re. video capture, turns out the Theatre 550 adds a little too much lag to play from the output of its captures... so no video was made this year.  I'll work on getting something that will let me split an s-video signal so that I can capture and play at the same time without creating an unplayable delay.

Any tips on what one of those might be called?

PS  I think I posted somewhere else that second never gets good breaks -- boy was I wrong, in our 3 games, second place got 2 good breaks... rare but not impossible.  My bad.

The pretense that the original game was perfect and cannot be improved on is flawed.

Land auction blocking was a complete disaster. That it is no longer possible is good. That the current system has everyone that joins in joining in from the lowest possible price, no matter what the "bottom number" currently is is bad -- it means that if one person starts at t=0, you either also started at t=0 or you have no chance at all. Specifically, there's a "sniping" play style -- one person puts in a low bid, no one else comes in, as the time runs out, someone tries to run up and catch the sole bidder by surprise. Whether or not it's proper play style isn't the issue. Since I know that I can prevent anyone from sniping like that by bidding a little more -- as they have to spend the full time climbing from zero -- I do. Since everyone else knows that the only way to have a chance is to run from time zero, they do -- the result is that if all players are knowledgeable, everyone is charging from the start. But more importantly, if someone isn't knowledgeable, they will think that this auction works just like all the others -- when you start running up, you are running up from the current low price -- only to be surprised and find themselves hopelessly out of the running.

Smithore's dominance is entirely different. Food and energy's pricing will go DOWN if you try to produce large quantities to take advantage of a shortage. Smithore does not.

In other words, in Planet Mule, you cannot create an artificial shortage of food/energy and then profit. You can only benefit from artificial shortages of smithore. And guess what -- that's what all the top players do.

Crystite's add of a 4th high spot doesn't even come close to making it dominant. And while I actually asked for longer games, only to have people tell me "Right now everything is balanced, longer games would make it crystite only", the truth is that right now smithore trumps everything. More accurately, manipulating smithore trumps everything.

Want to make the game better and more balanced? Have smithore's price adjust based on production. Everything else does -- even Buterol in the new version.

Keybounce you're statement that the original is not perfect is completely groundless.  It is in fact as perfect as you are going to make it without some far too distract changes.  As you illustrated for us, you want to change everything around to make all markets equally dominant and all auctions equally exciting.  I would love to hear about some actual imperfections though... do share.

While I would love to try your Buterol enhanced version, I really just want to play M.U.L.E. (c64 style).

I play this game on c64 still.  3 games this past xmas, always with 3 other quality human players.

IMO, what you really need is some competent competition and a chance to discuss what you have/haven't learned each and every single game you finish...

All your arguments about dominant markets, adding more than 3 crystite plots, and even the auction sniping comments fail to convince me.  The smithore market can be kept dead by any single player, 4 high crystites only increase the likelihood that everyone has an equal advantage, auction sniping still happens later in the game when plots are very expensive and someone is trying to get a deal for it.

Now, let me be clear, PM is in need of massive overhauls.  But c64 M.U.L.E. is awesome, all they have to do is figure out Internet play.

Why do people keep trying to convince them they also need to do anything else, or that anything else is even remotely required/advisable???  WTF!

Think of it like this:

Ever see how they made Monopoly for the PC/iPad?

They changed nothing mofos, oh wait the banker is automated... 1 thing, they changed one thing... they even put in animated rolling dice!!!

Ever hear of Monopoly 2.0?

Didn't think so.  Why not?

No one wanted it. No one needed it.  Monopoly 1.0 was perfect.

I fucking hate Monopoly, always have, nothing you can do except maybe completely changing the game will change that...

I fucking LOVE M.U.L.E. c64.  If you were me, what would you want? Say? Do?

Alright, first, lets get two things clear here:
1. I am not saying that I have a "buterol enhanced version". That's something new in Mule 2.
2. You have now twice claimed that the original is perfect, and given nothing to back it up. At best, you can say that you like the original. You can even say that you're good at it.

Being good at manipulating smithore does NOT mean that it's a good game.
One person cannot keep smithore down. Not without making so much, and forcing it so cheap that you are forced to lose.

Can you give me one reason why the computer should pay a fortune for large quantities of smithore? Can you understand how almost all colony wealth tends to come from selling smithore to the store, sometimes multiple times?

Here at PM, I tend to find lots of competent competition. I've discovered that crystite, which got me up to around 200th place, is great against beginners, and a loss against the people at the top.


"None so deaf as those who will not hear" :-).

Correct me if I am wrong...

There are 44 plots on the board, that's a need of 44 mules.  Since it takes 2 smithore per mule, the store really only needs about 100 units of smithore (ya 6 extra mules for the losers who keep letting them run wild).  However, the store starts full (16 mules) and further has 8 units of smithore in stock...  that's 20 mules, so now the store only really needs 60 units (30 mules) of smithore over the course of an entire game.

I'll say it again, 1 person can totally fuck up smithore but since you don't see it, look at it this way.  1 triple mountain plot will produce about 3 units per turn.  Let's say over 9 turns, that's 27 units.  Not enough to satisfy the colony granted, but sold at just the right time, your ~20 units will totally mess up smithore.

Now, if its 3 guys against 1 it might not be so easy but it is doable, just have to have some good timing... for example after they all buy plots and can't afford to keep your smithore out of the store.  Or when its on its way up to 255 but only ~150... rarely can they afford to buy them.


Let me just clarify what I mean by the original Mule was perfect... the game logic, the initial numbers, stepping values, random breaks, limits, etc... etc... are perfect.  You cannot tweak anything without changing everything; you will not make any improvement.


Since you are very bothered by the store wanting smithore in illogical numbers I suggest you stick to reality where people don't want things in illogical quantities... oh wait what's the current value of gold? copper? silver?  And they are nearly unused except for their brilliance as jewellery, and only needed in tiny quantities for anything of any practical use at all.


"None so deaf as those who will not hear" - I should of probably opened with that one a few months ago...  I will have to remember that for the next time some upstarts are butchering a classic!  :D

Blitzen, you don't know much about gold, silver usage do you?

Anything with a circuit board has gold in it.

It's used for wiring most modern circuit boards internally.  Used in the microchips that are placed on the boards, it's very widely used metal.

Similar with diamonds.  They are used in manufacturing on a wide scale.  True most diamonds used in manufacturing these days are made in a lab (CZ) and not as brilliant and not worth as much, but natural diamonds are still the last word when it comes to being able to cut the very hardest materials in the world.  CZ is imperfect, not as pure as natural diamond, and therefore, can't take quite as much stress before it fractures when used as a tool.

I guess I'm stupid or something, but I really can't figure out what's so different in smithore manipulation in the new version.  Seems about the same to me, what's really different is food in the last round dropping to basically worthless.  Of all the things you pick apart, I don't see smithore as one of the dissimilar things in the remake.

Let me turn around and ask this:

If the store only needs to purchase about 60-70 smithore over the whole game, why is it prepared to pay 230 per unit for 200 units?

If there is a large supply of energy, more than needed, the store will lower its price, right?

If there is a large supply of smithore, and the only possible use of smithore in game is to provide mules, and the store knows that it will be selling mules at 80, and stuck with lots of worthless ore, why does it pay so much for it?

The only external input of funds into the colony is crystite mining. That has value elsewhere. And it varies. It can be stolen.

Smithore has no value except for mules, but the store will pay a bundle for it.

===

If you really think that you can keep smithore down by yourself, then I give you this challenge: Play 3 people who are into smithore manipulation. Keep the price down below 100 per unit the whole game.

Doable? Probably. I bet you'll be 4th.

Can you get to first place against smithore manipulators? Frankly, I don't see how, unless you have some way to starve them of energy. Not likely to happen.

Egads, no. God no.

The PC versions of monopoly I've seen have been complete bleep-ups.

- How bankruptcies are handles is broken in every version I've seen. All of a sudden, out of no where, you get trade requests. Want to examine the board and consider? Want to see if you can make another trade with another person first?
- Trading, in general, is broken. Every computer player I've seen overvalues their property, and undervalues yours. None are willing to make fair trades.
- The complete inability to say "Hold the dice". In real monopoly, you are allowed to make trades, or build property, between your opponents dice throws. Even on doubles -- you can build/trade before they take the next throw. Haven't seen a computer version yet that let you.
- While there are many "house rules", notably free parking money, in the computer monopolies, there is not one I've seen that lets you auction property before the game starts.
- An absolutely simple "turn 1 last move fix" for monopoly is to say "If you land on a space already occupied, roll again and move additional space". That's an actual rule in Fast Food Franchise, and it solves all of the "starting order curse" of monopoly. Not one computer version supports it.

House rule? Sure, but so is free parking -- I can find that on computers. Auctioning property? One of the variants in the rule book is "deal N (suggested 2) properties to each player" -- it's not hard to extend that to deal many, nor to auctioning.

Let me ask you: Is monopoly a game of "who is lucky to land on what space", or is monopoly a game of "who can make good trades"? Is a good trade "something no one will agree to unless they are dying", or a trade you can make while the game is still early? Is auctioning property the single best way to handle property skill better than randomness?

Every play an 18xx family game? Everything is all about the auctions (stock market).

Does a game play a certain way? That doesn't make it "perfect" -- that just means that's how someone else played it. Is Chess perfect? Should queens have the knight move? Did they, at one point? Has the game been changed over time? What makes one version better than another?

What about Go -- there's been changes to how you score it, even if there have not been changes to the ruleset.

===
1830, the computer version, added in every sort of optional rule -- even new ones -- that are easy to implement on a computer. In particular, there are only so many physical tiles in the paper game. So, there is a rule that you can run out of ways to build railroads. Realistic? Not in the least. Does it make a better game? Is the computer's optional rule of "no limit on tiles" better? Is an artificial shortage better?

I score better with the artificial limit on tiles, because I know how to run out the useful tiles. That doesn't mean it's a better game -- that means I know how to exploit those rules and physical limits better.

The 1830 game lasts long enough by default that you reach "stability", and get to see who actually has the best position. There's an optional rule that lets you play with less money, and the game ends before stability. In Planet Mule terms, that's like ending at turn 12 -- where smithore is still being manipulated, and crystite has not come to dominate -- and ending at turn 18, where smithore would always be flat, and crystite income dominates. Does a 12 turn game really make a better game in mule?

You seem to be insisting that "one specific version is absolutely perfect", and cannot be improved on. Yet that one version has many flaws -- one abusable market, a game that ends before the colony has really finished becoming a mining colony, with "who is making the best materials" not really answered yet.

How much of the rules in M.U.L.E. are based on "There's not enough memory to write something better; there's not enough time to write something better; we'll just release what we've got and let it be what it is"?

Reality is though, that manipulation could occur in the original, the game mechanics are the same, the store will pay that much in the original if you manipulate the same way.

So then your fricken argument is that you don't like the play style in mule.  Sorry you don't like it.  Not anything wrong with the game in that regards, it's the players.

The argument doesn't hold much water as far as the game not being written well.  I will say the AI in the new PM is horrid compared to original, but the playability with four human players is really not very different at all.  Minor differences in speed here and there, the random events are a little screwy, but play function in auctions isn't terribly far off (no not exact, but very close)

* You could manipulate ALL of the items in that way in the original *
* Planet mule only lets you manipulate smithore. *

The original game did not have the ability to accurately alter the store's perceived value based on production.
The new game does, but only for food and energy -- artificially limiting that adjustment.

Either remove that restriction from food and energy -- letting people manipulate 3 types of commodities -- or add the realistic pricing seen on food/energy to smithore.

===

If I were to make a change to something, it would be the pricing range of the store for food/energy. Right now it is (I think) +10 to -15. Frankly, I think that range is too narrow, and since it doesn't move/scale as the price moves and the money supply changes, it's broken -- in the sense that there's better systems, that are too big to fit into a small computer's memory.

===

We are back to one basic point: You seem to feel that a certain rule, no matter how illogical, or crazy; no matter how much it funnels all game play to one winning strategy; no matter how it was originally developed -- is the best possible rule.

You feel that letting the smithore market behave differently than the other markets, in an illogical manner, that makes it the only winning strategy at the high end -- is best.

Some people feel that the best solution is to mimic the original game as closely as possible -- not because it's the best way, but because that's the goal. No problem with that -- it means that the game will fork at some point -- but that's not how the current version of planet mule behaves.

If you want to mimic the original, then change PM's handling of food/energy. Adjust PM's timing behaviors. Etc.

If you want to make a better game, then have smithore behave differently. Make the game longer. A couple of other things.

If you want to make a new game based on this, then you have the mule2 fork -- a new resource, a larger map, some "same time" behavior, a better land grab system, the ability of players to be different from each other, with potentially different winning strategies, etc.

So, three options. Which do you want:
1. Modify PM to match the original M.U.L.E. better
2. Modify PM to make a better M.U.L.E.
3. Modify PM to make a better game similar to M.U.L.E.

The designers have stated that they want 1.
I want 2.
The mule2 team is going for 3.

You seem to want something else -- "what we have now" -- regardless of whether there is a better game design or not.

Actually, if you're refering to me, I'm in 100% agreement, on most your points Keybounce.

I am one of the people that wants this version to match the original.

I'm just stating that Blitzen's arguement makes no sense to me, that this current version is playably very close to original, with the acception of some minor timing issues and the food and energy auctions.

He's battling the wrong direction if he wants this to match the original.  (Which is what he claims to want.)

I do want Mule 2 to be a better version with more complex concepts and better math than the original, with options to even change the rule book at will to make the game play more challenging or simpler based on the taste of the host.  Mule 2 should rightfully take advantage of what the computer can actually handle now.  The original was definitely limited due to the computer it was written for.  I don't want to loose the original, and that's what P.M. 1 is all about, preservation, but Mule 2 should by all rights incorporate new ideas and functionality and be more real.  So call my goal a combo of both points 1 and 2.

Ahh. Ok.

Then add back in the ability to manipulate the others. And let food have value on turn 12 :-).

Blitzen seems to want the game modified to force everyone to play the way you'd play if you were playing against the AI in the original.  I say if that is what he wants, let him play the original in the emulator or the real Atari/c64.  You can't force people to play your style.  On the other hand, if he plays 4 player with buddies that he played it with as a kid, then his rule book should work just fine in this version, he just needs to play with his original peeps.

Just stopped by to drool on this in public:

http://www.amazon.com/Prograde-S-Video-Distribution-Amplifier-Analog/dp/B004AJLILC

I'm close to a capture from the original hardware, might speak louder than words.

I survived without this but it does screw up the sound on the 4 player game we got captured.  I crash and burn so you all should enjoy it.  :'(

Not sure about the audio from the players, we used a headset to trap that.  Might be a while before i cut it up, fix the intro music, respec!, hopefully its not all interlaced to hell... gimme a month or two...

Re. smithore being too dominant in the new game, I think it is a result of the rate at which mules can be switched.  Now guys can be in crystite or smithore late in the game and switch to another one in the last 2 turns, where it used to take more turns to switch 100%.  I haven't played this version in months and stand by any other differences I may have brought up about this, the details are getting vague.  They still refund the cost of outfitting on switches??

Whereas I have played c64 games with 3 other guys on two occasions about 10 times now since then, probably restarted another 5 games around the 4th turn due to various reasons... RL interuptions and games that get fubar for various reasons...

...things like some dummy didn't hit their button to the game just hit someone with a radiation mule and lose a plot on the same round in the 2nd or 3rd turn, with near 0 spread from 1st to 4th...

Cheers and thanks again for the s-video construction tip, if nothing else its made us much more likely to play now.   8)

Further to your previous post Chucky what I want is a game that matches the original, not in vague ways like the scope of the rule book.

The truly meaningful way would maintain the original balance and course of the game flawlessly.  I only play with real opponents, and only when 4 of us are available to play.

Further, I personally see nothing wrong with the original sound and gfx.  Skin it up if you must but please let the original artwork speak for itself somehow.  Again when you do part 2? surprise me please.

The real life interaction must be facilitated by the remake when played over the internet, this would be a meaningful addition in a faithful remake.  Where are those parts of the plans for part 2 even?

You guys don't support 4 player sit down for the times when we are all together either.  We don't want 4 laptops around a table, we have a TV on the wall... a computer can is hooked up to it.

There are two critical things I would of added to the original, internet play is only 1 part of the improvements NEEDED.  But in terms of changing the rules, to fix "it"... "it" ain't broke.  Get over it.

But why change anything you do not have to?  Remake it simply exact and then make part 2, show us all how its done.

M.U.L.E. is dead!  Long live M.U.L.E. I say!

I'll come back and try to respond to everything else later....

I like the idea of four player on one PC, but the interface would need a complete rewrite, to function by design with four game controllers rather than keyboard, PC Clone keyboard buffers won't support the input of four players on the keyboard simultaneously, so the solution would have to be, multiple USB based input devices, and the interface was not written for that, I hope they might eventually create such a version, but I'm imagining that being the low budget production that Planet M.U.L.E. is that is way way on the back burner.

If there was demand for it from a market that would purchase the game, and make it profitable, I think you'd have a winner.  So far, the admins/programmers here seem to be interested solely in internet free play with a decent, but not exact approximation of the original, and that means limits on how far they will go with realism and making it a single PC interface.

Like the idea, but unless someone gives some seriously financial backing for such a project, I don't see it happening, and we'd loose a lot of the things that do make the current version so great, unless they do in a commercial effort, keep customization tools in mind to create our own skins/sound schemes.  This free effort is already endorsed by the people with the rights to the original programming, so that seems unlikely.

Darn its not just the audio in my 4 player video but the frame rate keeps dropping to 0 here and there and there... blame my silly mistakes in Virtualdub... something about overlay being on while recording, even with preview off doesn't jive...

Oh well I'll get one eventually, maybe I'll have a distribution amp too so we can play and hear properly without fudging the capture.

I'll see if I can get up a communist game of 2 guys playing all 4 positions for the time being.  My uncle and I plan on playing one of these sooner.

Composite capture devices still have imperfections.  Best solution is to capture the analog source with something digital that is dedicated (not a multitasking computer)

example - I'll hook the output into a digital video camera (most newer camera's can capture through the output ports - the ports go both directions, just takes a few mods in the settings in VCR mode for it to recognize that it is receiving input.

Then if it's a taped based digital camera, you can capture using firewire, or if it's a newer solidstate or hard drive based cam, you can just copy the file and compress to a format suitable for internet.

If you are trying to capture realtime with the PC and an analog capture device and even with firewire/usb, it is very important that you shut down all processes not related to capture (IM proggies, browsers, screen savers, power management all need to be shut down, sometimes even the antivirus)  These programs steal CPU time, and data needs to moved very fast and fluidly as a stream during capture, any interruptions, even on the fastest computer, can cause a drop in frames, simply because for just a few milliseconds, the CPU went to another task.

All great suggestions, my bug is literally driver related, VirtualDub triggers it with Overlay turned on while capturing (even though it stops showing it during captures).  I have the solution now for a smooth loseless 720 x 480 capture.  My CPU usage is about 40% I think, 0 dropped frames, audio is +-1ms sync, hardrive is about 20% of its throughput.  Because of the debugging I had to do, I had almost every service disabled including networking, its a fresh build with old stable drivers only video editing required software is installed at this point.  Its also disconnected from da dubia dubia dubia, what a pita.

Sys. ~specs.  P4 2.8c w/ 1gb ram @ pc2700, sapphire ati radeon 9800se, a sapphire ati theatre 550 (capture),  sata-I connected 500gb seagate and 2TB western digital both @7200 rpm, 16x lg dvdrw, some chezzy onboard Sis sound.  She has plenty to go for capturing the 2TB is brand new after I figured out another 500GB drive I had would be taking a dirt nap... <<=15mb/sec @ 65 degress celcius.  Thank you tuneHD.

The only issue I see with your strategy is you can't play off a camcorder, and if you can the output might be delayed.  If the damn capture device has a passthrough output as well your laughing... so in our case we do need a split amplifier to pull it off properly, especially for the audio as my splitting it to the stereo and PC seems to destroy the quality most efficiently.

A truly digital capture would be awesome but I don't have those kind of skillz.  :P

I'm on an NTSC c64 so I'm capturing at 60 fps progressive (now) and going to need to deinterlace it with a bob filter (TFF) to get nice square pixels and to get rid of the dreaded combing effect.

I also need a separate machine to capture voice for 2 - 3 hrs, with an omni mic of some quality preferably tied into a half decent sound card.  Even a laptop 486 would work if its harddrive was big enough. 

Hopefully I can clean up what I otherwise can't technically pull off.  An iPhone works ok I think, but it's not capturing loseless, or decompressed so it makes cleanup and edits a total bitch.

I'm learning but its not easy to get a perfect capture.  A perfect digital capture will have to wait until I am better funded and some sorta idiots guide comes along.

...its also going to be a pain to clean out all the pausing we do in a game sometimes.... 1.5 hrs will be long enough lol....

However all that said I am extremely pleased with the quality I know I will get in the end, I have tried some SID plugins with WinAmp and the sound you get just isn't right -- the emulators can't quite get it right or my available sound cards aren't sufficient.

I will make a post in the general area and post a capture of the intro music I cleaned up a little and made into an mp3.  Roy Glover rulez I hope no one minds me showing it off?!

Thanks again for all you help.

You have much to learn about capturing with Digital Camcorders.

You can use a digital camcorder just like any VCR/DVD Recorder.  You don't have to use the Lens and Mic inputs.  Every port on the camera is bidirectional (in VCR/Playback mode, the outputs can also be inputs, all you have to do is hit record, you're in VCR/Playback mode so the lens and mic are off.)

The same ports that send output to a composite TV will accept input from an output device such as your commodore, and that method won't capture any ambient noise, since it's using direct audio in from the commodore as well, and you can output to multiple devices so you can still have a tv or monitor hooked to the commodore.  (that's what that nifty toy you linked from amazon does) and most newer tv's have a monitor output, and you could send that to the camera.

I've captured my commodores output directly with my video camera and shot it into my video capture software using the I.Link 1394 Port on the camera.  Some software will let you do that directly, and other software will want to control deck playback and so you would need to record it onto tape first, but either way, there is zero quality loss.

As far as audio sync issues, sounds like you have bad codecs with the capture software.  Try something different to capture, even windows movie maker will capture in perfect sync if you're capturing from a twain compliant source or firewire/i.link/1394.

Of course trying to play a game on the camera's internal screen is ridiculous, and transport over firewire does have latency of about half a second with most software capture apps, so yeah, there needs to be a full size analog screen somewhere along the line, but I personally find something that is able to do the analog to digital conversion independent of the computer, and then the result transfered to the PC after the fact, works much more reliably, than a software driven USB conversion or Analog capture card.  That's why I suggest a DIGITAL video camera, it can do that conversion flawlessly to whatever type of medium the camera uses, and then digitally transferred to the computer in a native format that the computer already speaks (MPEG or AVI depending on what language the camera speaks, tape based digitals use uncompressed "DV AVI" and HDD/HCSD based cameras used high quality compressed AVI or MPEG depending on the model, some are even high definition. (720P, 1080P, etc)

Link to my C64 capture using my Sony Digital8 Camera as transport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlGwJvfr12s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlGwJvfr12s) (Some quality loss in this youtube due to compression to WMV format.  The original DV AVI is awesome.  That's to big to post on youtube.)

Ok I think I'm just going to ignore most everything you and keybounce had to say earlier, either you guys don't read my stuff or you don't understand it.

I want the game to be EXACTLY as the original and all this bullshit cry baby arguments about "fixing" it to disappear.  I don't care why the store buys more smithore than it needs, that's the way it was in the original and that's the way a "close as possible remake" should be also.

Yes, yes I know you guys think you can make it better, good that's what Mule 2 should be all about, best of luck to ya...

Obviously you guys want ME to say Planet Mule IS "close as possible" and it really pisses you off when I say "not even close."

If you want me to lie to you I can: "PM is the greatest remake ever, it honors the original in every way and should stand as an example for all who come after to remake classic video games.  Personally I can't even tell the difference when I'm playing PM instead of C64 Mule."

Happy now?  :P

PS I thought when you captured with a video camera like that Chucky, it wants everything to be 24 frames progressive... so its dropping frames from an NTSC C64 left and right... I think that's why your example capture panels so badly when the train is moving.  Try capturing something with a lot of motion and you will see what I mean.

PPS You know there is less gold in a 1000 circuit boards and chips than in 1 gold tooth right?

I'm in the U.S. my video cam is NTSC, everything I use is NTSC.  Fuzziness is do to compression after capture and editing, my raw AVI is flawless.

The trains lousy movement is exactly as it is on the commodore.  Tape based cams, digital or not still run 29.97 FPS.  The newer High Def HCSD Card based cams running high def Mpeg formats may be using 24 FPS progressive I suppose, but my stuff is still pre high def, the actual resolution my cam supports is actually just about 500 lines (so the closest digital format would be 480i)

I have seen the results of changing frame rates during capture and editing (I've accidently on a project or two, rendered an NTSC capture into PAL and then back to NTSC without realizing it, and the horitontal scan issues that result make it difficult to look at during high speed left to right movements, that issues does not exist here, but do know the effect that you're talking about.)

I posted a copy of the somewhat choppy capture I have but I sped it up by 1200x to hide the issue.  I don't have any player audio for it so I dubbed in the latest soundtrack version I had cooked up.  I figured the audio actual game I had wouldn't sound very good at 1200x since it was fugly to begin with.  Next time hopefully I'll get something worth of a longplay with player audio and break into 10 videos for posting.

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1382.0

PS Re. crashing the smithore market by yourself, I try to do just that in the game but fail miserably for several reasons... I buy all the smithore early to drive the price up quickly but never produce any forever (never take a mountain ffs)...  I totally screw it up but I tried to show the general method, maybe I'll be better next time.