Delphi Tournament - Peter

The first Alpha game has finished at Battlestar Command.

All Delphi Tournament results and activities can be follow at the Delphi-page.

Update: Alpha games will now run until turn 61. Scores will then be posted.

PHost - Stefan Reuther

PHost.de has released two new updates of the portabel host.
The updates were applied to both the stable (3.x) and the beta (4.x) version.

You can find the changes here.

Good new year - Peter

That's it for 2004. The year that I lost 2 games, survived 1 and won 1. It was also the first year of my new website and I hope not the last one :)

I wish every planeteer out there a very good new year!

PCC - Stefan Reuther

A new version of PCC is out. PCC is a cliënt program wich you can use to play VGA Planets with. If you are curious what it can do and how it looks then go visit the authors website.

Changes in v1.1.10:

There are two major new features: 
- it can now display util.dat textually. The util.dat decoder can be configured using a special configuration file (utildata.cc) and will by default show all records that are defined by now, including those which PCC does not yet assimilate into its starchart database. 
- there's experimental support for circular-wrapped maps. See readme.1st for details. Warning: this feature can make PCC very slow. I'd like to hear how good it works. 

In addition, there's the usual heap of bug-fixes; most of them apply to the simulator. 

An interesting new feature for some people is that there are now some more operations on keymaps ('UseKeymap', 'Key()').

New hosting site - Steve Murphy

A new hosting site has come on-line. A message from the host: 

Map Wizard - Eugene Goroh

There is a new version of the utility Map Wizard. 
Map Wizards is a map generator, viewer and editor for VGA Planets 3. Visit the authors website for the details.

Changes in v1.42:

NEW!!! Use "Justify" mode for automated "shuffle" poor and rich planets until all the "race koefficients" play up to the given scope. Makes "batch mode" needless to get "equitable" Galaxy.

Changes were made by Roman Zhukov. You can download the utility here.

Enhance your desktop - Peter

Crap! 
That's what I said (in dutch) when I found out I missed a turn in my tournament game.
Since that time I've been working on an easy way to see the time that is left before a hostrun.

And this is the result: Desktop 1, Desktop 2.

The programs I used to create this with are: Samurize (Desktop enhancer), HTTP-Parser (Script), searchfile (example of time search on Echocluster).

If you have any question, just email me. 

Randgen 1.4.11 - Dacian Hantig

There is a new version of Randgen: 1.4.11
This is the release note:

I found out a problem into calculating the desired structures on a planet and fix it instantly into a new version - 1.4.11.

Randgen generates the randmax.ini used by Randmax to automaticly build structures, tax and change planetary friendly codes. It's a very good tool to speed up your turn and to make less mistakes.

You can download it here. 

Ashes of the Old Empire - Peter

We are searching for some players to play an Ashes of the Old Empire game.
If you're interested then let us know at the RcWorld Universe forum. 

We only seek dedicated players that really want to play this game and are more or less experienced players. 

Here you will find the game-settings.

Hope to see you soon!

SETI - Peter

Do you have some CPU time to spare? 

SETI@Home lets your computer contribute in the search of other civilizations beyond our world.
Of course players of VGA Planets are participating in this search and have their own team, founded by Black Shadow. 46 players have joined this team already. Will you?

Some links:
Black Shadows page at Echoview
The VGA Planets team
Our group statistics

Newsletter - Ed Robinson

 The VGA Planets newsletter for September is available to read, you'll find it here

Tournament - Ed Robinson

About a week ago the Delphi VGA Planets 3 Tournament started at Battlestar Command.
At this point there are still some open races you can start with.

The Tournament comes at a right time, now that Spaceport Andromeda is out of service (for a while?).
As to the Andromeda tournament, the Delphi starts with level Alpha and ends with level Epsilon.

It's not clear yet what kind of add-ons and settings will be used to make the higher levels more difficult, but I guess we'll find out after 60 turns.

VPA 3.62b - xeye

There was a silent release of VPA 3.62b on the 29th of august.

This is the changelog.

To download VPA head over to Sourgeforce.net.

Map Wizard - Eugene Goroh

There is a new version of the utility Map Wizard. 
Map Wizards is a map generator, viewer and editor for VGA Planets 3. Visit the authors website for the details.

Changes in v1.41:

NEW!!! Since ver. 1.41, you can use *.bmp or *.jpg picture as a pattern for creating a new map: places filled by black color (#00#00#00) will stay empty, and other areas could be randomly filled by planets...

Changes were made by Roman Zhukov. You can download the utility here.

 My vacation is over and it's time to get to work again. That also means updating this website.
 As you can see the news page is re-designed and I added an easy way of checking if your VGA Planets
 software is still up-to-date.

 Although this site is mainly for the VGA Planets 3 community, I will also keep updates and inform you
 about VGA Planets 4.

 Newsletter - Ed Robinson

 The VGA Planets newsletter for August is available to read, you'll find it here.

Downloads - Peter

 2 new downloads were added to the download section: Vga Planets Assistant, a very nice VP3 client.
 And PHost, the alternative to TimHost.

 Echoview 1.2.24 beta - Stefan Glasauer

 There is a new beta version of Echoview available for download.
 You can download version 1.2.24 beta here.

 If you are wondering what is changed: changelog.

 I intend to place all kinds of replacement pictures and other VGA Planets related  pictures here. I already 
 placed 2 home-made pictures. More will follow...

 For all VGA Planets-rookies: The Introduction & Information section is ready to be viewed.
 

 The Download section now contains all the latest computer players.

 Added Hyperspace and Ion Storm to the science fiction page.

 Also added the latest hosting files to the download section.

 Added Warp to the science fiction page.

 Added 3 more links.

 The download page is ready. It still needs more downloads  but they will come soon.

 The computer player section will be renewed as I discovered  that there are newer versions of some 
 players. 

 You can now find some statistics on player countries on the  statistics page.