Hi All,

Thanks for the warm welcomes and I hope to prove myself to those with douts. Follows is a little information to those who are wonder whats going on.

I'm adoross, I first registered with IC on the 2004-11-18 but didn't play much. I recently return to find everything pretty much the way I left it which is quite worrying. I have more than 5 years experiance with PHP, MySQL, CSS and JavaScript and am soon to start work as a C#.NET developer. I have had plans to start developing my own Browser game for the last few months so a designer friend of mine and I started developing shortly before I revisited IC. I decided it would be more practical to revive a game with an existing user base rather than start again. So via Primo I contacted Stefan who apparently had just started searching for someone to start helping out and so here I am the new developer of IC.

To answer some of your questions:
Q. Have you seen the code yet? If so, any initial reactions?
A. No I will get my first look at the full code base tomorrow morning after it is copyed to a development server.

Q. To follow up the previous question, did you know what you were getting into?
A. I know that it will be hard work but not so much as starting again. Atlest thats what I'm hoping.

Q. Are you doing this for free or are you being compensated
A. At this current time I am not receiving any "compensation" for my work and am not asking for any. I'm doing it because I like IC and its players.

Q. Do you play the game
A. I have been playing but I have informed my family that I will be working on IC and that I will not have time to play anything other than the development server. The are currently claiming my planets.

Q. What experience do you have with programming in general? How about with PHP/MySQL? How about with PHP code that requires register_globals and magic_quotes_gpc to be enabled? How about in an environment where editing code in the production server is the norm?
A. You can see my experience above with both PHP and MySQL. I have experiance with both register_globals and magic_quotes_gpc and I have worked on project that involved editing code on the production server but am able to both run virtually on my own computer and have my own server to test on. Not to mention Stefan is setting up a development server so this will not be happening in this case.

Q. Why have you chosen to do what is essentially free development work for Stefan? What made you decide to do it without having looked at the code?
A. As I said above I believe it better to revive a game I have respect for than to start again and the reason I agreed to work on the code before i've seen it is because I've experiance with really really bad code so it can be anything I've not handled before/

Finally, I have alot of spare time now and will be spending most of my free time when I start work activily developing IC and monitoring the forum. If you have further questions please feel free to ask but remember the time it takes me to answer them is time away from fixing bugs.

Best Regards,
Adoross

>> Keep having fun! <<

Ditto.

As my post in Ideas thread - feel free to contact some of the more active people, in regards to game changes.

There may have not been that many, from a developers perspective - but there's been a tonne in terms of player mindset.  Deciding which changes are relevant or worth implementing and which are totally redundant you may need help with.

The offer of help is always there.

Q. Can you be more specific about your experience? For instance, could you list some of the projects you've worked on and explain what your role in them was? This is just my curiosity about your background going in.

A. Not really, I have worked on a number of different projects in a range of languages but I can't give you details without giving you my name and that not going to happen I'm afraid

Q. Stefan has been notoriously reticent about giving up any control of IC's code to anyone. You've expressed an interest in creating a game like IC. Were there any trust issues involved?

A. No, The game is solid but the code is old so he doesn't believe there is a risk any more.

Smartys is scorned.

Hint of jealousy there guys?
I am sorta, I admit But then again I never really offered my services or told anyone if also do this stuff. Nor do I have the time!

I am kinda surprised that Stefan finally accepted for someone to help, but it will be a good thing!

So good luck and congrats Ado

good luck

i guess we expect to have a few downtimes and rollbacks in the coming months......

hope this guy can be trusted. as he says he didnt play much, all it needs is a few multies to say the same thing in ideas forum and some stupid idea would get implemented, what im saying is -  i hope there are safegaurds against this like asking the rest of us before changing things (read up on camaar changes topic in uni news for a bad way of changing things)

@thisyearsmostopen, Don't worry all major changes are going through Stefan and the mods are supporting me with all the rests so its no likely that anything drematic is going to be changing.

The development will not affect current game play and I hope for as little down time as possible.

What Bekko said.

Surprise? Yes. Skepticism? Yes. Jealousy? No.

I should have went with the longer version of my message

---

"Hint of jealousy there guys?"
Of course! Every programmer dreams of working on a project for no compensation while simultaneously making money for another person! The old, poorly written legacy code that nobody has touched in years is just icing on the cake.
</sarcasm>

Surprised? Yes. Skeptical? Yes. Jealous? No

---

So yeah, I don't know why I would feel jealous. There's nothing to be jealous about.

looking forward to this

"lol your become stalker like now smartyz"
Huh? I'm a little confused. Ignoring the fact that you spelled my name wrong, you're accusing me of being a stalker based on...the fact that I asked some basic questions of a user in a position of prominence in the community?

"I found/find it a little bit hard to believe - being web'programmers or something (whatever you guys do) and somehow still attracted to this game - that you wouldn't like to be involved."
Really? You find it hard to believe that volunteering for IC is less alluring than paid freelance work?
Programmers don't want to be involved in every website they use, just as doctors don't want to treat every person they meet on the street. Just because I have programming experience and post in the forums doesn't mean I want to dive into almost decade old, terribly written code for free. You highly overestimate the allure of IC.

"On top of that, your way of being surprised and your scepticism could be seen as jealousy."
Well, all I can say is that my questions are fueled purely by curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism. There is no jealousy involved, though I'm sure I won't change your mind if you're convinced already.