By ‘popular’ demand, The Outer Reaches – The Second Beginning is going to be reset while we are finalising season 3. The reset will be taking place on Friday 19th June. The database will be reset and signups opened. The restart will take place 1 weeks later on Saturday 27th June.

UPDATE:- After further discussions with players, this planned restart will not now take place. When agreement is reached regarding a restart, we’ll post details on The Nebula

If you’re a vBulletin administrator (like me) and you want to stop people from using older smilies, here’s a quick tweak that seems to stop them being used in the post editor.

A word of caution before we continue. This tweak involves editing one of the vBulletion system files. If you aren’t comfortable doing that, then don’t do it!

I should perhap also state that because this involves editing a system file, you will have to carry out a similar modifcation the next time you upgrade your vBulletin installation. This mod was done on the codebase for version 3.7.4 with no patches applied.

So, on to the modification.

Locate the file includes\functions_editor.php, and go down to line 558. It should read:-


$smilies = $vbulletin->db->query_read_slave("
SELECT smilieid, smilietext, smiliepath, smilie.title,
imagecategory.title AS category
FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "smilie AS smilie
LEFT JOIN " . TABLE_PREFIX . "imagecategory AS imagecategory USING(imagecategoryid)
ORDER BY imagecategory.displayorder, imagecategory.title, smilie.displayorder
");


All we’re going to do, is to add a condition to this SQL statement that will allow you to manage which smilies are visible to users in the editor. To do this, add the following where clause to the SQL.


WHERE (smilie.displayorder<>0) and (imagecategory.displayorder<>0)


If you’re unfamiliar with SQL, then this is what your code should look like after you’ve made the change.


$smilies = $vbulletin->db->query_read_slave("
SELECT smilieid, smilietext, smiliepath, smilie.title,
imagecategory.title AS category
FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "smilie AS smilie
LEFT JOIN " . TABLE_PREFIX . "imagecategory AS imagecategory USING(imagecategoryid)
WHERE (smilie.displayorder<>0) and (imagecategory.displayorder<>0)
ORDER BY imagecategory.displayorder, imagecategory.title, smilie.displayorder
");


Simple enough, no?

Now, assuming everything is fine, to hide a smilie (or whole category of smilies), set the display order of the item you want to hide to 0, and hey presto, they won’t appear in the editor, but posts that use older smilies will still be able to use them.

And that as they say, is that

You know, I’ve had this site for a while and whilst there is a link to it in the blogroll, I’ve never actually mentioned anything about it on here (that I can recall)… I am of course talking about The Outer Reaches – The Second Beginning, the browser based space strategy game Spirit and I created.

First off, I guess, the web address… www.outer-reaches.com.

Its a real time space strategy game that needs nothing more than a compatible web browser to play. You start off with a home planet (this cannot be lost) and by way of researching and building stuff, your aim is to conquer the universe. Although the game itself is realtime, time is only moved on once every hour when the ticker fires up and runs a ‘tick’.

We set out trying to create a game that was better than the majority around at the time we started (2001). In our view, we succeeded as we thoroughly enjoy playing it… even if we don’t get to do that too much on the live system. It has a fully clickable tech tree, on-line help, graphics to accompany everything you can build, configurable fleet strategy allowing you to control how your fleet operates in battle, nice planet images (window dressing I know, but they look great) and even a weekly lottery draw PLANET LOTTO.

If you like space strategy that you can take your time with, then you may want to check it out. Its free to play, but you can purchase account upgrade code to unlock some extra features.

If you do sign up and check it out, I hope you enjoy it. But be warned… I’ve know some very disciplined people who have ‘just tried it’ and then they’ve let the game consume all their time… still… they must have enjoyed it

Overview

• 45 ships
• 4 ground units
• 9 probes
• 37 buildings
• 25 weapons
• 9 special projects
• 150+ items of research
• Tick based space strategy – Hourly ticks
• Research and build queues for easy account management
• Comprehensive on-line help

Browser Compatibility
The best browser to use to play is FireFox, although if you want to (we would recommend you do) use a graphics pack, you do have to do some jiggery pokery with your preferences to allow the use of local stylesheets and images, but onces thats done, I would say its 100% compatible with FireFox.

Screenshots
Here are some screenshots from season 1 to give you an idea of the game and its interface. We are currently running season 2, with season 3 in the pipeline.

At the start of the year, I was convinced to enter the Pascal Game Development “Big Boss” Competition 2006. The aim is simple, to develop a game, starting on the 15th January and ending on 7th May. You must use Pascal (the flavour is up to you) and the game must conform to some basic requires (levelised, mini bosses at the end of some levels with big boss to fight to complete the game)

Sounds simple enough, but wow what a stress maker. Yesterday was the deadline for stage 3 goals and it was tough. But overall, its proving to be a fantastic experience. We’re making a retro RPG based in The Outer Reaches universe. The working title at the moment is ‘Rise Of The Raiders’.

Check out this post and thread on the PGD forums for an idea of how we and some of the other competitors are getting on. This is the first time we’ve ever participated in anything like this, but we’re both thoroughly enjoying it and its opening our eyes to the possibilities of making our next big Outer Reaches title a client based game. The web is fine, but theres just so much more you can do with a client.

For anyone thats interested in using Pascal to develop games Pascal Game Development is a great place to checkout.