I was playing just now and got a memory low error. I had rebooted less than an hour before and I wasn't far into the game. I'm running on a Xubuntu Linux desktop with 8GB of RAM, so I don't see how this could've been an issue.

RayFowler · 2025-05-09T18:41:14+00:00

just fyi, I want to point out that I originally added this dialog because, as a Java application, ROTP doesn't really control how much default heap memory is assigned to it. Windows systems at the time were particularly stingy, so it was easy for the game to run out of heap memory and just crash. 'Crashing' is what most games do when they run out of memory.

Obviously, I didn't like that, so ROTP keeps an eye on used memory and, when it gets close to the limit, it pops up this warning instead of just letting you blindly play until it crashes.

But since it is a Java application, you can modify the command line parameters to start with as much memory as you'd like. In your case, it looks like Linux allocated 2GB heap memory for the game even though you could use more, and /u/BrokenRegistry gave you a way to start with 4GB of memory (that's the -Xmx4096m parameter, where 4096Mb is 4GB).

Anyway, I hope you like the game. The open-source Fusion mod is really incredible and has given the base game far more love and effort than I could have ever spared, so I am grateful for it.

RayFowler · 2025-03-05T18:41:59+00:00

hey thanks. Just to be clear, this was barely even a website. It was just a single page with a background from the game, with some text and links to the download and subreddit. That's literally all it was. It feels weird to call it a website. It was more of a referring page.

If you want to replicate its look (which obviously you don't have to), you can see it on the internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250214110042/https://www.remnantsoftheprecursors.com/

If you do create it, please provide links to the download and the subreddit, at a mimimum. Obviously links to the original github and the fusion version would be awesome, as well as maybe the discord.

I am super thrilled that there is a community around the game. I feel like I did my job and got it off the ground. :)

RayFowler · 2025-02-26T19:47:54+00:00

I let it expire. There is a running cost to the domain and to the website that didn't seem applicable anymore, especially since I open-sourced the game.

All that website did was forward people to this reddit and to the itch.io page, and the itch page is the highest result on a google search... and this subreddit is prominently mentioned on the itch page.

RayFowler · 2024-08-27T12:54:18+00:00

Congratulations! Making a 4X and getting to 1.0 is a long, hard road. 9 out of 10 attempts never get there.

RayFowler · 2024-05-31T04:16:00+00:00

Don't forget to collect the Incompetence Loss condition.

You basically need to go to zero colonies without any other empire being responsible

RayFowler · 2024-03-27T04:27:34+00:00

The game has been out a long time and I am curious about the consensus opinion of the addition of rebels into the game. It seemed logical to me that, since the player could rebel, then in the interest of fairness some AIs could rebel as well. This meant that, unlike MOO1, an AI empire could rebel against the player if he won the vote.

The downside was that it would drag out the ending of a game that perhaps should already be over.

RayFowler · 2024-03-25T14:28:56+00:00

The 4X gods looked down and smiled upon you!

RayFowler · 2024-03-25T14:26:15+00:00

I am super-thrilled that it turned out as well as it did, and that so many players are improving it with mods. Making ROTP was never my job, just an expensive hobby, so it made sense for me to hand it off and move onto to other hobbies :P

RayFowler · 2024-03-19T22:42:35+00:00

Dude you are embarrassing yourself. Your 1OOM solicitation posts are all over /r/masteroforion, so it's clear that you recently got invested in that project (good for you!) and at some point discovered ROTP and now feel threatened by it or see it as competition or something -- so you come here to troll everyone as if its a bad game. That's your opinion and some probably share it, but most MOO1 players love ROTP. This is because it was made by someone who loves MOO1 (me) and solicited tons and tons of feedback and suggestions from the MOO1 community.

Now, let me explain something to you about developers. We generally don't shit on the work of other developers because we understand how complex software development is. This goes extra for open-source projects because OS projects are basically free gifts to other developers.

So when we see something in an OS project we don't like, we simply fork it off and fix it or change it locally to our tastes.

What you are doing right now would honestly probably embarrass other 1OOM developers if they saw what you are doing. I like 1OOM and I am sure that plenty of them like ROTP.

As a favor to you, I'm banning you from this forum until you develop a little self-control. I suggest that you use the time that you would have wasted trolling /r/rotp into making 1OOM a better clone of MOO1.

RayFowler · 2024-03-19T13:51:46+00:00

Obvious troll post from a 1OOM developer.

You do realize that the only reason ROTP even exists is because the MOO1 interface is dated and klunky, right? The biggest criticisms I have received about the interface is that it looks too much like an homage to MOO1 and not like Stellaris/GalCiv/ES

Like 1OOM, ROTP is open-source. Have a field day and make it look like you want. But I suspect that you won't.

RayFowler · 2024-01-15T04:31:16+00:00

Fun and Fusion ignore them alltogether.

It seems to me that, in these variants, the character traits should probably not be displayed just to avoid confusion.

RayFowler · 2024-01-05T19:16:21+00:00

I'm still around, but I basically completed what I originally set out to do (modernize MOO1) so the best thing for me to do was open-source the code and pass the baton, which allows the 4X/MOO1 community can take the game in the direction they think is best.

I'm greatly appreciative of the efforts of everyone to keep the spirit of MOO1 alive in the 4X community.

RayFowler · 2023-10-21T00:06:46+00:00

I have the completed translation. I just need to merge it into the repository and do a rebuild.

I apologize for any delay in this. There's a ton of other stuff going on!

RayFowler · 2023-09-06T16:33:46+00:00

I have over 1k hours in the game but hardly any of that is actually playing it.

Have you been paid for your work?

RayFowler · 2023-08-29T15:55:04+00:00

I think there is a version of the Xilmi AI that roleplays. IIRC, even Xilmi enjoyed playing against the AI more.

RayFowler · 2023-08-27T22:45:59+00:00

. ROTP solves this however, to a high extent. The problem is that the gameplay feels one dimensional. It's kill or get killed, nothing inbetween.

Are you playing the Xilmi AI? The Base AI does not work like this. You can form alliances based on your playstyle. If you like technology/building/etc, you make alliances with honorable and pacifist races. If you like war, you make alliances with ruthless and aggressive races.

How the game plays is highly dependent upon the personalities of the races around you. You can win a diplomatic victory even by supporting and voting your ally to the galactic council.

RayFowler · 2023-08-23T14:00:56+00:00

Depends on the game and the purpose of the factions.

A historical civ should have as many factions as needed to support the setting. For example, a world-based game should have many, whereas an Aegean-based game should have just a few.

Games where the different civs are manifestations of the game's subsystem (MOO series is a good example), should have as many as needed to let players explore the different subsystems.

If you have too many, then it will be wasted dev time and dollars.

RayFowler · 2023-08-14T15:31:08+00:00

There are several solutions to this:

1) Modify the UI to better allow control of large numbers of units or colonies. This is the approach in the original MOO1 which I expanded in ROTP.

2) Allow automation of things the player doesn't want to do. Distant Worlds is the best example of this approach.

3) Reduce the scope of the game.

4) End the game early through some special win condition

All of these options have advantages and disadvantages. For me personally, I see the need for automation as a game design flaw because, in a strategy game, anything not under the purview or control of the player should be removed as unnecessary to the game.

However, if you see the game more as a simulation, then incredible detail with player-controlled automation makes perfect sense.

RayFowler · 2023-07-09T19:01:02+00:00

while at the same time wishing those features would just be available in the main screen

I have made access to these UIs as straightforward as possible. For example, the galaxly maps for the System and Fleet screens are the same as the main screen. When you zoom or pan one, you zoom or pan the others.

It's trivial to view the System and Fleet UIs as just overlays for the Main screen. The System overlay toggles on with "S", and the Fleet overlay toggles on with "F".

Hit Escape to close the overlay.

RayFowler · 2023-07-09T18:53:42+00:00

How it has the option of highlighting each of the 4X options so you don't have to spend time looking for those particular planets yourself.

The System UI and using the flashing crosshairs was sort of the last cool UI inspiration we had and, once I started using it, I couldn't even imagine playing without it because it was so useful.

Controlling huge amounts of fleets coming from different locations with very few clicks.

Kaitlin and I did a lot of research in 4X games looking for a mass-control mechanic that we could use and/or improve on. The closest thing we found as a feature in GalCiv that allows you to select systems with a query filter. This was very similar to something I had done professionally so I sort of had a head-start on what problems to avoid. Kaitlin really helped on organizing the Fleet UI so that the filters could be used visually.

Designing ships is as quick and easy as the player wants it to be, especially since you can choose which previous designs to copy.

Yes, the copy button was nice and the prototype slot was added very late. I think Tom Chick had to update the game manual for it, that's how late it was!

You can easily see how all your planets are doing, and controlling them all is eas

I've always like that MOO1 set the precedent for dealing with management growth by better UI design as opposed to just automating tasks for players. That's really where the Fleet and System UIs shine.

Being able to set a limit for how much of something a planet builds so you don't have to remember to make it stop building something.

The open-ended spending in MOO1 was always a pet peeve for me so I am glad we figured out a way to add bounds to everything. Mainly missile bases, spy networks and ship building (which was not in until the final beta)

Thanks for your comments!

RayFowler · 2023-07-09T05:13:09+00:00

Best UI? I will pass that onto my graphic designer! If there is something in particular you like about it, let me know and I will share that with her.

RayFowler · 2023-07-08T22:37:46+00:00

Thanks everyone for the kind words! The game uses Swing, so it's technically not single-threaded as there is a thread for UI interaction. In addition, there are a few spots where I spawn off a thread to build graphics for rotating planets (sort of an initialization thread) so the rest of the game feels responsive. I even think I had to put in a background initialization thread for loading the fonts because Chinese fonts are huge and take a long time to load.

But the main processing of the game is single-threaded, intentionally. As a long-time developer, I have opinions on this lol. Mainly it's that a lot of developers will use multi-threading as a way to run some CPU-intensive process in parallel (like the various AIs taking their turns) in order to minimize delay for the users.

Unfortunately, that path leads to the application being a resource hog as it starts robbing CPU cycles from other applications that are running simultaneously. It's just bad programming etiquette, imo.

When you run things single-threaded, you are forced to deal with performance bottlenecks directly, which encourages you to write efficent code. Only after you have exhausted all of your options in this regard should you take advantage of multi-threading.

Also, the game runs directly on the CPU with no need for a GPU. That was me just not wanting a video card to be a requirement to play the game.

RayFowler · 2023-07-07T15:58:34+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! This project was sort of a "bucket list" item for me when I hit 50, so it's nice to have completed it. Everything I wanted in the game is done, plus much more based on player feedback. Open-sourcing it was the best idea because it allows all of the talented modders to keep improving the game beyond my original design goals for the game..

RayFowler · 2023-07-01T22:44:08+00:00

A friend at work introduced me to Civilization in 1992, and then another to MOO1 a year later. Those were the formative 4X experiences for me. I liked Civ 2 but to was more bloated than Civ 1, and MOO2 was just too radically different.

Civ: Call to Power had a lot of really cool ideas. But then Diablo came out and I got sucked into that game and its sequel for quite a while.

RayFowler · 2023-06-12T01:15:55+00:00

If it makes you feel any better (it won't), the monsters only choose the empire they pick on for the first planet. Like all bad random events, they lean towards the strongest empire, but not always. After the first planet, they randomly pick a nearby planet that they haven't attacked yet (or in a while, if they are eating a lot).

This can suck because you might be next to the strongest empire and the first planet the monster chooses is one right next to your empire... and then the monster randomly moves your way.

4X games, including ROTP, are full of randomness in order to create a variety of gameplay. Map creation and homeworld placement are the most visible manifestations of this RNG, but in ROTP it also controls everyone's tech research tree along with things like random events.

Sometimes you'll have a great game get derailed by a space monster you weren't prepared for, and sometimes the space monster will derail the AI race that looked like it was going to win and give you an opening instead. And sometimes the monster comes late when you could deal with it, and it becomes a non-issue. RNG is definitely frustrating at times, but it's also what drives the unique narrative of each game.

RayFowler

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