Altered Alterations

Finally, after a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, holycrap, long time, phpBB 3 was released yesterday. For those out of the loop, phpBB 2.0.x has powered the Altering Time Forums since 2002, and is somewhat buggy. I followed phpBB development fairly closely for a couple years, into 2004, which was supposed to be the “Year of phpBB 2.2″. In 2005 it was renamed 3.0, and has now finally been released.

Now that 3.0 is out, I can evaluate it against building my own Forum system, or switching to a different forum package. Unfortunately, phpBB 3.0 still has no plugin system, which means making custom modifications is a chore. So much has changed that upgrading will be almost as big of a chore as making all our custom modifications was in the first place. Also, without plugins, upgrading to point releases (i.e. 3.0.1) will continue to be a pain. That said, I waited 5 years for it, so I should at least take it for a spin. I’ll keep everybody informed.

A dedicated Altering Time news blog is now live! Here you will find updates and thoughts on Altering Time, Faith, the Forums, and other site features. For those who have been watching, it took a few steps to get here:

• 2002: Sarcastic News blog launched
• 2004: Engineering Faith news blog launched
• 2006: General (mostly tech) commentary blog launched, merged with Faith blog
• October 2007: Commentary blog merged with old Sarcastic News and spun off into Antipode.
• November 2007: Altering Time finally gets a dedicate site news blog, restored with old Faith news

Before, some Altering Log readers would be bored/annoyed when I went on about non-AT topics, and some would be bored/annoyed when I went on about AT. Now I’m free to go on about my AT-related dreams! Topics I’d like to cover here soon include the Forum upgrade to phpBB3, when is Faith going to be finished, and a site redesign I have in mind. Stay tuned.

I’ve gotten back into playing Faith again recently, and have realized how much I missed it. According to Google, lots of people are really excited for Faith. Search results like “create your own religion” and “engineering faith” are a lot more frequent than I expected. Although I’m always thinking about how to finish it, I’m now back into the thick of things.

However, one of the things that has been bothering me about Faith for years now is there are too many numbers. Balancing is hard, UI is hard, learning is hard, and everything just seems a bit messy compared to Asylum. Others have said the same thing: it doesn’t feel enough like a game.

A major reason for this, I think, is that it isn’t abstracted enough. It forces on the user things like the subtleties of Economy vs. Income, which in the end aren’t all that different. So, Instead of just polishing what I have now (the easy way out) I want to make it right, and to do that, there needs to be fewer virtues.

And so, I propose a refinement from the 10 Virtues to a new 5, as below:

Devotion: Their loyalty to the faith and their community.
Economy: Their ability to produce wealth, and their willingness to share it with you.
Health: Their fortitude and ability to reproduce.
Strength: Their ability to maintain order and fight for what they believe in.
Zeal: Their passion for life and the word of their religion.

This will mean a fair bit of rebalancing and tinkering, but I think it will actually make it possible to properly balance things. An example of what the effects of the new virtues would have would be:

• Births: Health + Strength
• Lifespan: Devotion + Health
• Belief: Devotion + Strength
• Conversion: Devotion + Zeal
• Production: Economy + Health
• Lawfulness: Devotion + Economy
• Donations: Economy + Strength
• Science: Economy + Zeal
• Attendance: Health + Zeal
• Military: Strength + Zeal

Probably the worst thing about all of this would be that I’d need to make new icons. As well, the laws, traits, and most other facets would need to be looked at again. However, I think it would make a huge huge difference that would be worth it. The game would be more of a game and be less a sea of math. So, what do you guys say? Does my proposal make sense? Are you with me? Shall we kick some butt?