So, where does that leave us now?

So a few of us made it through the 500's, now what? If we don't act fast, what little we have saved will be lost. Above we have all the options I currently find even remotely workable. Below are my thoughts for each option.

Option A, stay here on this forum. Here is good, we've already got forums and IRC is an easy thing. I do worry about active players here, there's not much besides Werewolf to bring them in. I'd be much happier if we had something more to offer then a simple forum. There are lots of Werewolf sites that have more then us.

Option B, Move to Nova-Initia. I like this option the most because it is both easy and has a high chance of gaining us players. We move to a game that has active admins and is being actively coded. They have a PM system, forums and, most importantly, players. I have already asked, and they are very willing to allow us on there playing Werewolf. The way they see it, active forums brings players just as a well coded game does. We help them; they help us. Win - win!

Option C, Stay on TNN. TNN, as we've seen over the past few days, is very fragile. We have no leadership and most of the stewards are on NI. We can stay on TNN, but this is bound to happen again. And next time, it may not be up in a day and a half.

Option D, Create Our Own TNN. Not the easiest thing to do. And this is where we start needing money to keep running. I believe the TNN servers cost ~$200 per month to keep running, though I'm sure if we're careful and make the most of everything we have we can cut that to, say, $100 a month. Probably less until we get a bunch of players running around. But as with the option above, TNN can be buggy, do we want to live with that?

Option E, Create a New Game. This is the hardest option. It has all the costs as Option D, but will also require a few months of coding - at least - to get up and running. The only two benefits I see in this are (a that is IS a new game. We can make it what we want, and have full control to change it whenever and however and (b that is OUR game, we coded it and we know how it ticks. If something breaks, we are far more likely to be able to fix it. Just don't underestimate the enormous job of coding a game from scratch.

Anyone with any other ideas, please, post here!

Update: TNN is back, but we still need to choose where to go. TNN may or may not be the answer.
Update: We have decided to seriously look into making our own game with the help and support of Nova-Initia.

what exatly is Nova Initia?

so, it's like TNN?

I think that moving to NI for the time being is a great short term solution. It will allow us to keep things rolling in the Werewolf / Mafia worlds and introduce new players to the game at the same time.

I am also completely for creating something on our own, either by using TNN's source code (with their permission, of course) and changing it to suit our needs and desires, or creating our own from scratch. Since either of these options would be a time-consuming project, moving to NI for now while we develop something else seems to me like the best thing to do.

I like the sci-fi theme and think we have or could recruit enough talent to make things work, provided we are patient and willing to take the time to do it right. I am more than willing to learn whatever is needed as far as coding goes, but having or finding another person or two would certainly help. I think there are plenty of ideas to power the storyline and GiGi, being a writer by trade, can certainly mold and guide things in the right direction, keeping things fluid and relatively believeable/workable.

Those are my initial thoughts, for what they're worth.

I strongly believe that we need to get TNN back up at least briefly. Probably for a week or so - long enough to let people know what alternatives and exodus options are available. Right now, if you're here, it's because of IRC; we need to get the people who don't use it gathered somewhere. I'm personally in favor of Options B & C. For one thing, people come for the game first and get involved in the community second.

I'm happy to use NI's forums, since we'll probably get a more active crowd. But I'm not a fan of their interface and frankly, they need to get their act together. They've been up and running for several months now and still don't have missions up (or if they're up, they're buggy), the layout is so not user friendly and their FAQ is only half done. That said, showing up and making noise is a good incentive for them to get to work.

In the matter of fixing TNN, my understanding is that one of the major problems it faces is funding. I believe Joe once said that the servers cost about $200-250/month. That's $2400-3000 a year - a significant investment. Yes, the Devs are gone but the devs are gone because it was too expensive to support and the community they enjoyed had left. So from my perspective, TNN needs three things. 1) Money. No money, no servers. No servers, no TNN. 2) A Dev. Just one, and not even often. Just occasionally, to fix something if it breaks and maybe for some special occasions. 3) Mods & Community Events. We used to have these. Prime Minister elections. Special events. TNN News posts.

I have a proposal on the money front that involves making pings buyable while also allowing them to be earned in-game. ­It'd be a way to split the difference between being totally free and Not Being Bacon. For example, $1 gets you 100 pings, $10 gets you 1000 pings. (Or maybe 1200 as a bonus). But you could still earn them the normal way by posting and making contacts and clearing out rivals' minefields and such. Perhaps thwarting a rival or aiding an ally earns you slightly less than it used to - 3 pings instead of 5, so there's an incentive to buy.

I don't know how easily this could be coded in, but it's probably something to consider in Options B-E, as money in any of those options will have to come from somewhere.

TL;DR - Fix NI or fix TNN, but have a PMOG-style base in the background to keep drawing people in. And make sure it has funding. (Also, I actively vote AGAINST Option E, simply because I've seen what happened with NI. I'd rather get permission from GameLayers to run a modified TNN on new servers.)

For the record, dav2 did some digging and found that the error (and crash) was caused by the TNN server running out of hard disk space. This is a really easy issue to fix, we just need someone with the access to do so.

I've tweeted Justin Hall (the original idea), Merci Victoria Grace Hammon (did a lot of the creative work), Marc Adams (the sole, volunteer, remaining programmer), and let's-blame Burdenday.
I've contacted the stewart Salmontickler.
NI is well aware by now, that includes formidable people like stewart Mortmer, programmer FesterCluck, tree HolzOnkel, stewart Shyiskhar/DarthZos, powerful players Letofski, Hotpockets, Celes, drudge` .

There are two programmers, at least to contact, as well as up the ante with a certain post I'll hope to make today.

This happened before, last fall. snowcrsh and Vendretti put together a tnn-refugees site on Ning (evaporated now.)
Then in a surprise move, after declaring tnn gone forever (ask me), tnn came back New Year's eve 2009 - seemingly to take the wind out of the sails of ni, but I am being just paranoid.


@Sgt.Widget
We have/had on tnn two stewarts left and ran an election of Soulathyia for steward(ess).
tnn is open source, no permission needed, just someone who can read it!

...semi-official as i'm only speaking for myself here, but... well, yah. I'm a bit mad. Scratch it. Seriously mad.

SgtWidget wrote:
I'm happy to use NI's forums, since we'll probably get a more active crowd. But I'm not a fan of their interface and frankly, they need to get their act together. They've been up and running for several months now and still don't have missions up (or if they're up, they're buggy), the layout is so not user friendly and their FAQ is only half done. That said, showing up and making noise is a good incentive for them to get to work.

< sarcasm >Well, nice to see someone wants to drop by and leech away players. Thnx a lot.< /sarcasm >
Easy to see that some people are severly underestimating the task of creating a new game - yes, new, as in "creating something from the scratch". Also as in "doing so in your own precious spare time". As in "we don't get paid for doin this, we do it for fun". As in "we sacrifice hours in the evenings to coordinate people on a couple of timezones to get stuff done.".
Also as in "if you don't know what you're talking about, why don't you just be quiet?".
I don't see you in the list of active testers, so on what are you basing your comments on? Gossip? Yellow press? The guts of freshly opened chicken corpses, as old time seers did (the "real" ones, not the TNN type).

Our game starts on a different base, as does our development. We don't want to be a copy of PMOG/TNN. We never said so. If we would have just wanted to copy stuff, we'd probably be done already. But we do NOT want to copy stuff, we want to create our own. It might look similar, but hey, so do IE and Chrome, and no one would say those are the same. Even if they do the same.

I don't want to start a "NI is better than TNN" or "TNN is better than NI" or "the old PMOG is better than anything" debate here.
All i'm saying is: if you don't like our game, nice. Do so. It's your priviledge. But don't tick off people by downgrading their work and saying "they didn't do anything", if you don't know they didn't.

Oh, and, btw, about "showing up and making noise to make people work". There's a word with "F" i'd like to say, added by another starting with "y", but i guess it's not worth doin so. You want to claim something for you? Get a base for doin so first. Before you can tell me something about the time i have to get my work done, you'll have to pay me first. Which clearly, you didn't, neither in money, no in respect, help, or anything else.

Just to mention that. If you get TNN up and running again, folks, yay, i'd be happy, and i'd show you some credit. You want to play your games, and i'm cool with it. Good luck and my best wishes! Have fun!
But if you want to slander someone else's work, that's just not cool.

Fair Post, HolzOnkel

Some of these are newbies and did not see the fall and struggle last year. Or the coöpting.

Some may have just been provoking - it seemed to have worked.

And finally, it just takes a while to get used to the similar but different agenda and style of ni. I remain a fan....

dav13 wrote:I remain a fan....

*click* *whrrrrrrrrrrr*

I obviously support the move of the players to Nova Initia (http://www.nova-initia.com/remog). We were asked if you could play werewolf on our forum and we have heartily said yes.

The NI team, which has ranged from small to very small, are working on a new (as in ground up) version of a PMOG. It will be open source, it will eventually be skinable (so, if you don't like the look you can make your own), it will have the basic functions of the original PMOG.

We have been working on this project on our own time, with our own resources, since TNN first went down. We have coordinated the efforts of people in many countries and time zones to produce what we have gotten so far. At the moment we feel we are about 90-95% away from having basic functionality in our game.

I won't lie, it has been a TON of hard work. We all have different visions of what the game should be, most of us speak different languages though use English as a common means of communicating.

Ultimately TNN, as it is, is not sustainable. As I understand it what is left of the money will eventually run out and, to my knowledge, little if any money is being added which means staying there isn't really much of an option. Honestly, it pains me to say that since I *really* enjoyed TNN and will be sad to see it finally die. This forum is a rehash of what happened when TNN originally went down.

Option A, IMHO, is a great way to play werewolf but you're going to lose people over time. The game (PMOG/TNN) and the forum built the community. If you lose one the other will follow.

Option C is a valid option. The code has been released as open source and you can download and play with it if you want, if you can find a server to host it, if you can pay for that server and if you don't mind eventually running into the same problems TNN is having now. This is why we elected to start from scratch.

Options D&E... Hello, been there done that. If you can't find a free place to host your servers as we did, good luck. The people who are willing to pay to support the game and the play of others who don't want to pay will eventually get fed up and stop paying and most people want things for free. Sorry, that is just a fact of life. No, it isn't horribly expensive but, it does add up. After you sort the money issue out you need to find coders with a wide range of skills, artists, moderators etc.. who all have to be willing to work for free. Since I've been responsible for doing most of that recruiting for NI I have to tell you, it isn't easy to do that so, good luck if you go that rout. Seriously. If you need help with that you know where to find me.

As for those who think we at NI 'need to get our act together' I invite you to get involved with us and see just how together we are. Considering we are a team of maybe 10-15 at our strongest working across time zones and language barriers I am really extremely proud of the work we have done. Do a bit of reading about the original PMOG and how long it took them to sort stuff out, find out about the horror stories of their Betas. We are an open beta. We are still developing and testing our game.

We have invited everyone to come and test our game. A few of you have. We hope more of you will. If you do then post your thoughts in our forum. We are dedicated to being responsive to our players needs and requests. if you have something you like, let us know, the same goes for things you don't like. We want to build the best game possible.

We started our project with the goal of an open source, free game and we will continue on that path with or without you. We hope you will come and join us.

I must agree with you on several points, Holz. There is a growing rift between TNN players and NI for some reason, and I can't figure out why or who. I am reminded of several people who have a dislike for NI without (to my knowledge) so much as visiting the site, and of that 'TNN is shutting down September 1st' rumor that spread like wildfire for a while. This kind of gossip (yes, I said gossip) can only serve to damage TNN, NI and their respective player bases. Just because someone told you something is not cause to spread it, but to (at least) check it out first.

I won't question where Widget got her feelings about NI and I don't see anything wrong with the opinion, but I do urge everyone to make sure they are checking up on what others say. I'm not trying to bash Widget or anyone else here or on NI, just doing my best to prevent any form of damage to the good relations these two games have had in the past. GiGi and I both believe that the best way to have success in a new project would be to do it hand in hand with Nova-Initia.

Cheers!

On a lighter side:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/robofan.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.retrothing.com/2006/07/robot_fan_nes_r.html&usg=__ZuIsd706mj_eYBFcbAcOaHJlb8M=&h=393&w=350&sz=48&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=9Go84qSLFKl5qM:&tbnh=149&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfan%2Brobot%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1235%26bih%3D445%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=292&vpy=65&dur=4027&hovh=238&hovw=212&tx=112&ty=110&ei=-ke3TNm6NI70tgPUhczqCA&oei=-ke3TNm6NI70tgPUhczqCA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=11&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0

I would like to re-iterate what Rainboy said.

Nova Inita was started before TNN came back with the goal of providing the players a place to go and play something similar to TNN (at the time the TNN code had not been released). When TNN came back I personally spoke with Burdenday since he was running TNN then and talked to him about the NI project. He fully supported our project as shown by his creation of a section on the TNN forums for us to post updates about NI.

We at NI have never held anything against TNN, we do not think we are in competition with TNN, we do not think we are better than TNN. We are different, we are carrying on Justin and Merci's idea of *many* PMOGS.

Yes, there are similarities between the two games, it would be hard for there not to be but, there are also differences. Think of it as different flavors of Linux. They all work, they just do things differently.

To my knowledge no-one involved in the NI project has ever said anything attacking TNN or starting any rumors about TNN's imminent death.

We have also worked very hard to make sure our game doesn't conflict with TNN at all. That means you can run both addons and play both games at the same time.

If there is any animosity between the two it wasn't started at NI and it isn't held by any of the NI team members.

Holz - I think you misinterpreted what I said. I've been frustrated by NI's interface and a few other things for a variety of reasons (which Mortmer, HI!, I'd be happy to go all feedback-y on you); I'm suggesting that the remaining TNN playerbase migrating to NI (and staying there) would help boost the level of gameplay over there and in turn help get things done more quickly.

@mortmer - I am fuzzy on the details surrounding the TNN closing rumor, and I apologize if I in any way suggested that it started with or was encouraged by any of your people.

@Rainboy - No worries I didn't think you were.

This just seemed like as good a place as any to try and put that to rest once and for all.

/me asks 'Can't we all just get along?'

I feel like at this point I need to make a public statement in regard to the Ni or Not To NI issue that apparently has developed.

Point 1: Several members of Ni have graciously offered their assistance should we go forward with our project. They have generously offered to share with us their data, answer any questions, fill us in on their mistakes and what they would like to have done differently, and to lend a hand when we run into a snag ourselves. The fact that they are still willing to be so helpful and forthcoming after the mudslinging that has occurred only proves to me their generosity and professionalism. Frankly speaking, if we build this thing from the bottom up we are going to need assistance, and what they are offering to provide will save us months of work, and possibly from digging ourselves out of a major snag or three down the line.

Point 2; We will not tolerate any drama on this team towards NI or any other company. You don't have to like them, you don't have to play them. But you do have to play nice. It has been brought to my attention that some people have gone over to the NI IRC and stirred up trouble in an attempt to "speak on my behalf". Please allow me to speak for myself unless I ask you to do otherwise. This person had no idea that at the same time this was going on I was in the midst of a talk with someone from NI and promising them that there would be no drama or unnecessary "games" between them and my core team. This person's actions could have potentially shut us down before we even got off the ground, and the fact that NI is willing to overlook it proves to me they are professionals and are people I would appreciate having as a business ally.

This is business, and if we start dividing into factions of NI vs. Non-NI, not only will we damage the relations between NI and our team, but we will also destroy ourselves into bickering camps before we ever get started.
So to sum up-- if you want to play games go nade somebody, but leave the drama on your toolbar.

Point 3; Any objective criticism (and let's stress objective here) of NI or any other similar game is welcome. In fact it is encouraged as long as it is done in a polite way. We are not going to be an NI clone, and so knowing things that we like but wish to tweak, or don't like and want to change would be beneficial.

Point 4: Any members who want to play NI are welcome to do so, and there will be no backtalk or backstabbing of those members. In fact, I would like to have several members of our team play NI so they can compare the differences between TNN and NI and see if these changes are a direction in which we wish to follow. Once again, we will not be an NI clone. Our model will be different, our target will be different, and frankly I believe the internet is big enough for both of us, but we can't move forward until we know the direction in which we wish to go.

In closing: I understand that some of you will have problems with what has been said here. That's fine. If anyone chooses to leave because of it, we will understand and please know we will still consider you friends. Like I said-- this is business. I think you all know by now that when it comes to business I play it straight and I play it fair. I also think you all can see where we want to go with this and can see the potential it will bring. I trust that all of you will be fair to one another. Please think about what has been said here, and after a few days let us know if you would still like to move forward with us. And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me personally.

Very well said GiGi