Far Horizons: The Return

[ravenzachary]

Hi everyone,

I have Far Horizons compiled and running on a Linux server at Digital Ocean and I am starting to wrap my brain around the rules and the GM tools to get a game started. Ramblurr from the PlayByMail.net Forums added some useful Python tools for the GM that I plan to use, as well. My plan initially is to run a very small test game to see whether all orders will be processed properly by the server code. Any failures I'll attempt to fix in the C source code and recompile. This will also give me a chance to test the GM tools with actual player data instead of me making fake accounts to validate, which is actually a lot of work for one person to do alone.

Based on the postings in this sub-forum, there was a game at some point many years ago and some of you who are reading this may have been involved. I need your help...

1) Did any of you keep the files you downloaded from Ramblurr's Far Horizons server? In particular, he had a Beginner's Guide and a Strategy Guide to Far Horizons that were lost in a hard drive failure. These guides were not included in the GitHub repository because they were lost in the hard drive failure before Ramblurr put the code on GitHub. Any files you may have for Far Horizons other than the standard GitHub source code files would be greatly appreciated. I'll take anything. I'm trying to piece as much knowledge of this game back together as possible.

2) If you are interested in helping me test the orders and processing in a pre-launch test game (it's really an order submission test more than a game), please let me know and I will get you added. The good news is that there will be no pressure to submit orders. I will run orders probably once a week and whoever has orders to submit and test the code, I will process. Those that don't will get skipped over that turn and they can submit orders the next turn. At some point, we'll have tested all the orders over the course of some number of turns, identified the problems, and be prepared to fix them before starting a real game.

3) If you are interested in playing Far Horizons once it's up and running for the real game, but you don't want to participate in the test game, please let me know so I can get you on the waiting list for when that is ready.

You are welcome to participate in the test game and/or the real game even if you were not part of the original Far Horizons game organized on the PlayByMail.net Forums many years ago. I'll take anyone. The games will be free.

For any of the items above, please email me: raven@rinzai.com with Far Horizons in the subject line so it doesn't get lost in the sea of inbound email. Feel free to reply to this Forum post, too, with any information if you prefer.

For those are you who need a refresher on Far Horizons or have never heard of it before, I am linking to the rulebook here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nAgH4ir...sp=sharing

Thank you.

PS: I believe that Ramblurr had some web tools for players when the game was run before. My plan is for this to be email-only initially. Should there be a strong interest, I could add web tools later, but this is not a short-term goal.

[Fungus]

definitely interested, and offering to help on the technical front (coding etc).

[Fungus]

I note the game is fixed length in terms of turns (20 to 100 is mentioned early in the rulebook). Does anyone know if this could be evolved into an open ended game?

[ravenzachary]

I am not seeing any forced ending in the code, although I could be overlooking it. I would prefer to run it as an open-ended game. I suspect I can force it to keep running as I read that the GM can extend it.

[wraith]

This is the code from https://github.com/Ramblurr/Far-Horizons ?

[ravenzachary]

The test game has begun! 12 players and 6 NPC positions to accommodate late player additions.

[ravenzachary]

This is the code from https://github.com/Ramblurr/Far-Horizons ?

It is, although, there are modifications I will be making once the test game is complete. I may host an updated copy of this code on my own GitHub account soon.

[ravenzachary]

Ok, I have forked the Far Horizons source code and am going to be making improvements here:

https://github.com/ravenzachary/Far-Horizons

I also have discussions, a wiki, issue tracker, and project management tool up and running on my GitHub code fork. NOTE: all of these tools should be used for communication about the code itself, not the test game I am running. We have a mailing list for the test game.

[GrimFinger]

One area that you may want to place special focus on is making it as quick and as easy as possible, for new players with no experience to get up and running successfully.

[Fungus]

One area that you may want to place special focus on is making it as quick and as easy as possible, for new players with no experience to get up and running successfully.

yeah, I'm brand new to it. The rulebook is GREAT, but large. I've been summarising it as I go along as a series of mind-maps to capture the concepts and categories and rules etc. 

Raven's provided an example first move, and a movement spreadsheet. These are all very welcome but don't really go far enough to give a newbie an overall summary of strategies, considerations etc. Eg should I invest in my local star system, maximising production capability before reaching out to other systems? How many turns might it be before I might meet another player? When should I consider investing in defense? How might alliances form? I.e. what happens to make a group consider themselves better protected (and from who?) by working together?

I'm personally happy that all of this can be discovered through play, but some players might want a better summary of these aspects to understand and feel effective from the outset.