Wow, Phytotron's actually right about something.
We *did* used to spend a lot of time on physics, trying to make the game exactly the way we wanted it. Last time I checked, people didn't do that any more, they *do* just dream up a game mode, slap some boilerplate physics on it, and go.
Wow. The Lobster Shack, Breakfast in Hell, Swampland, Armagoshdarnish, Tigers, all servers with completely different physics settings (and mostly derived from a common lineage, afaik). So what is classic play, then?
Well, BiH tried to solve the problem on Breakfast Burrito where people would camp out near the walls and not attack. Or they'd fight a bit, but it was easier to run. So I made a smaller grid where you couldn't run to.
Bugfarm Pit looks like a similar idea, only by using zones instead. (Anybody remember me suggesting we make Sumo the default game? It's been a few years....)
Anyway, Phytotron, I think you're wrong about HFCS. It was already in everything even when you were a kid.
On wall shrink, I think you guys are missing something. If I hit someone's wall near the tail, and his cycle is moving, then the wall will recede. If the end of the wall passes me before my rubber runs out, I will start moving again. If I do that on my own wall, then the wall will stop receding, because my cycle will not be moving anymore. Wall shrink is supposed to make it so that my wall will behave in that situation the same way someone else's wall behaves. Why it was done is irrelevant, and what effect it had on fortress play is irrelevant. In *this* thread we were talking about a situation drawn in a picture where the poster said that without wall shrink, the two cycles have the same choices, and I'm contradicting him to say that wall shrink is what gives the two cycles the same choices. Without wall shrink, the owner of the wall in the middle has different choices than the non-owner, because once the owner hits his own wall, it'll stop receding.
And finally, Phytotron, I've been talking trash to people resisting change since even before the cycle width thread.
I loved that change because it made so many people angry, wailing about how it's ruined their favorite game and that things should be changed back to the "old" way for what was basically a new and experimental game.