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Post by Admiral Kirana on May 15, 2012 1:21:41 GMT 10
Another quick suggestion for the mining area: With the 0.6 bonus sector being a mining sector and being all less combat-ish than the regular Jameson via no freefloating hostiles, perhaps it could be branched further from the regular game by instead of freefloating hostiles you run into small convoys of a few ships mining and dropping their mined ore by some kind of large hauler to take it somewhere? Just a thought to make it less of a feeling you're the only one really out there in space, it could also open up some neat opportunities. Commerce raiding, anyone? xD (or you could always just trade ore with them or something, idk)
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Post by Farbs on May 15, 2012 9:31:34 GMT 10
Another quick suggestion for the mining area: With the 0.6 bonus sector being a mining sector and being all less combat-ish than the regular Jameson via no freefloating hostiles, perhaps it could be branched further from the regular game by instead of freefloating hostiles you run into small convoys of a few ships mining and dropping their mined ore by some kind of large hauler to take it somewhere? Just a thought to make it less of a feeling you're the only one really out there in space, it could also open up some neat opportunities. Commerce raiding, anyone? xD (or you could always just trade ore with them or something, idk) That'd be great from a thematic and immersion perspective, but it'd also bring the gameplay back toward combat, making it more like a regular sector. Thanks for the idea though. From 0.6 onwards there won't be any bonus sectors, since the game will instead have many interlinked sectors. The mining bonus sector was released yesterday as part of 0.5.1!
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Post by superpirson on May 15, 2012 9:57:02 GMT 10
on the topic of a mineing licence, that would be a good way of implementing a sort of pirate intimidation/protection money mechanic. right now the pirates aren't particularly intimidating mainly because they have no character. giving them a big gluttonous attitude to go with their guns would add a lot of depth to the game, and it would feel great to finally give those pirates a well deserve whipping once you'r strong enough to beat them.
on a separate note, I find the new cursor very distracting. I don't mean to be insensitive, after all it does look pretty awesome, but when I'm in gameplay, seeing the far sides of the cursor in my peripheral vison as I rotate my ship just drives me mad. maybe you could make the lines fade into the background more, or even just make the lines shorter? oh, also: HOORAY FOR 0.5.1!
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Post by zomgman on May 15, 2012 13:16:33 GMT 10
I agree with the lines being a problem, toggle them in the options?
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Uzguz
Charlie Rank
Posts: 29
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Post by Uzguz on May 18, 2012 15:24:22 GMT 10
A few questions about the upcoming wormhole mechanic: - Will wormholes simply replace beacons, or will beacons act as their gateways?
- What kinds of variations on map generation behaviour to differentiate sectors do you currently envisage?
- Given that the player is often piloting a Juliet-class warship capable of effortlessly demolishing lowbie ships by the time they reach a beacon or wormhole, how will class progression work in linked sectors?
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Post by Darkond2100 on May 18, 2012 16:46:15 GMT 10
I've found the new mouse very useful. I like it.
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Post by crossroads on May 19, 2012 6:13:17 GMT 10
I really love the asteroids mining! Great job Farb! Now I can clear out those things and earn credits at the same time . However, I can earn credits at a disproportionately faster rate with scrap mining than with asteroids. I did about ten rounds of silicates-only mining (Yes, my cargo is a little 8x4) and earn roughly 80k credits in thirty minutes. On the other hand, four rounds of India scrap mining gave me 400k. It seems a little off-balance. Actually, I didn't expect silicates to be the most precious mineral when I first saw their prices Maybe you could increase mineral prices? Or lower scrap prices. Also, another thing, I have some trouble when carry too much ore with me. Whenever those ores collide, they tend to glitch and overlap with my ship or spill out of my cargo. Is it possible to configure the physics engine anyway to prevent this?
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Post by Admiral Kirana on May 19, 2012 23:36:59 GMT 10
Alright, back from playing 0.5.1. The mining is very nice, made myself a huge barge with over 70 tons of carrying capacity for it. The only issue, probably a personal issue, is that berserk AI applied to Needlers can really ruin someone's day. Was attempting to kill a slow-turning Delta guardian that would have been a walk in the park, except two Needlers with sprint boosters charged right in, jammed themselves in between my weapons and took out both chrono gears my ship used very quickly, which blew up every single one of my weapons and also most of my modules and propulsion. The only gripe I have that isn't probably personal is that when I try to move my ship, the keys stick making my ship wildly overshoot or overturn what I'm trying to do. Made trying to save certain parts on a ship highly aggravating. Buuut other than that, the update is awesome. Especially mining.
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Post by Farbs on May 20, 2012 14:35:58 GMT 10
UzguzYep, you're right, just flying through to a new sector in a Juliet class ship would leave the game a horribly unbalanced mess! I feel like delevelling your ship wouldn't be much fun either, since you'd still effectively lose your awesome vessel. My current thought is that instead of travelling to a new sector, you repair communication to it, allowing you to start a new ship in that area via the remote terminal. This leaves your old ship intact, so you can still go back and tool around with it or use it to find other network links, but also allows you to explore new sectors. What do you think? @mouse comments I'm thinking about making the cursor alignment optional. I'm not sure what the default should be though. Thoughts? crossroadsOh cool, I'm glad you like it! I think I messed up mining balance a little bit, though the intention was to have it be most effective in the middle game, so judging it by end-game results isn't a perfect measure. The biggest problem I see at the moment is that I forgot to account for different mineral shapes. I assumed everything would be roughly circular, however the triangular silicates are often very thin slivers of little value. I think I'll rebalance things a bit, but also adjust the mineral shape algorithms so that silicates aren't so thin. That should help the collision code a lot too. @admiral Kirana Wow, that sounds frustrating. Maybe needlers shouldn't have sprint boosters. Hmm. My guess about the stickiness is that it's a flash plugin issue. Most browsers run a single process for the flash plugin, so if you keep other tabs open with really heavy flash components then all flash games will perform badly. That's just a guess though. Can you tell me which browser and OS you're using? I've been hearing some things about OSX and chrome...
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Post by crossroads on May 21, 2012 5:17:55 GMT 10
Starting a new ship in new sector?Resetting your ship upon entering a new sector sounds strange to me. That's just the same as having a bonus sector, the only difference is that the players will need to unlock it. For me, this is like restarting the game and play it again on a different map. When I built an awesome ship, I don't feel like starting from scratch again, especially if you really worked hard on it by spending hours to gather chrono gears and oxy tank. Keeping the ship in its sector won't be much use either. I would like to see my amazing ship discover the new, unexplored space and meet new challenges. Up to the topic of imbalance...I think ship balance has always been a problem. Once I get Juliet modules and built a perfect ship design, I'm almost invulnerable. After that I came back to lower-class space and scavenge for oxy tank and chrono gears. I don't have to worry about getting killed at all. I think that's already imbalance. For the new sectors, I think you could remove the rules how lower classes ship/stations stay in the middle and higher classes are at the border. The player's ship is not a new ship anymore, there's no need for a easy station in the middle for you to progress up. And another suggestion: Increase the dangers in the new sectors. Enemy ships in the sector may have stats modifiers like 1.5x fire rate, 2x health, nx damage, nx booster power but the modules are still the same when dropped. There might be new dangers in the space itself like meteor storms, black holes, radiation, fewer stations, etc. I suggest this because I think that: if new sector do not contain new challenges, what is the point of adding them? At least this could lower down the imbalance mess up to some point . However, the imbalance with lower class always exists. The difference between each module class is too great. For example, if one sector has 100x stats modifiers, Alpha ships will pose some dangers but Juliet ships will vaporize the player in no time. You can't simply balance them when they have 512x difference in power. Like what Uzguz asked, I also want to know how will you differentiate the other sectors. Some of my opinions and viewpoints are still limited since I don't know an answer to that.
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elvengod
Alpha Rank
I didn't make this, but i deem this image to be worthy of my approval :)
Posts: 4
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Post by elvengod on May 22, 2012 6:36:26 GMT 10
Cool, just one comment If we cant move the pieces around with our mouse, could we at least have a tractor beam?
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Post by Admiral Kirana on May 23, 2012 1:20:53 GMT 10
@admiral Kirana Wow, that sounds frustrating. Maybe needlers shouldn't have sprint boosters. Hmm. My guess about the stickiness is that it's a flash plugin issue. Most browsers run a single process for the flash plugin, so if you keep other tabs open with really heavy flash components then all flash games will perform badly. That's just a guess though. Can you tell me which browser and OS you're using? I've been hearing some things about OSX and chrome... I always run Jameson on a Windows XP system using Mozilla Firefox 12. The bug doesn't affect Successor and Impostor but it does cause problems in Jameson and Forever (which seems kind of unusual). Also: Still have yet to recover from that needler attack, probably should go back to using a mining barge in the meantime.
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Post by squidbush on May 23, 2012 22:02:45 GMT 10
@admiral Kirana Wow, that sounds frustrating. Maybe needlers shouldn't have sprint boosters. Hmm. My guess about the stickiness is that it's a flash plugin issue. Most browsers run a single process for the flash plugin, so if you keep other tabs open with really heavy flash components then all flash games will perform badly. That's just a guess though. Can you tell me which browser and OS you're using? I've been hearing some things about OSX and chrome... I always run Jameson on a Windows XP system using Mozilla Firefox 12. The bug doesn't affect Successor and Impostor but it does cause problems in Jameson and Forever (which seems kind of unusual). Also: Still have yet to recover from that needler attack, probably should go back to using a mining barge in the meantime. I'm actually having the same problem with controls sticking. I use Vista Home Premium and Firefox 12.0 (I never have anything else tabbed and run full screen) Also, I've never had this problem before this latest build. ***Update*** I installed Chrome and used that for a few minutes (The problam always shows up for me almost immediately) and the controls worked perfectly both in normal and full screen. Also, firefox controls work fine as long as I don't go full screen. I can only replicate the problem when using Firefox in full screen mode and with the game window zoomed so that the comm bar is all the way to the bottom and the oxy/nav/money bar is all the way to the top of the screen.
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Post by Darkond2100 on May 25, 2012 13:57:57 GMT 10
I've had problems with the controls sticking and freezing my Safari browser one two occasions. Restarting the browser didn't work, I had to restart my computer for it to work itself out.
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Post by Farbs on Jun 19, 2012 10:04:20 GMT 10
Progress progresses! I can now play and save/load multiple sectors from the same .swf file, which turned out to be less of a technical nightmare than I'd imagined. I couldn't figure out why my savegames wouldn't load, 'till I realised I'd left a debug flag on which intentionally deleted them. Whoops! I've also run a few fullscreen tests and figured out how to effectively run at a lower resolution. Flash's software renderer has a really, really high per-pixel cost, so playing fullscreen in 1920x1080 on my ancient PC is gorgeous but unbearably slow. Luckily, playing in 960x540 looks pretty good and has 1/4 the number of pixels to render, so is much faster. Better still (IMO) is playing at 640x360. It's zippy, but what's even cooler is that VMEDS fills the whole height of the screen Fullscreen is currently only worth using in standalone builds, since the web player doesn't allow most keyboard keys to be used in fullscreen mode. That should change in the next version of the flash player though, so once that's out and has a decent takeup I'll look into updating the web version too!
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Post by Farbs on Jun 19, 2012 20:38:16 GMT 10
Oh wait - that version of the player came out already! I looks like I have some work to do
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Post by bigjohnpalmer on Jun 26, 2012 9:03:52 GMT 10
I have been absent for some time due to real life stuff, and I come back to find that mining has been implemented into the game. I was so ecstatic to see that! I haven't read through all of the comments and conversation here yet, but I have to agree with just about everything I have read. I'll put my thoughts here in a somewhat organized manor. I am sure most of this has already been voiced. Pros: I rather like the one Guardian per station cluster update. The ability to destroy asteroids = totally awesome! Cons: I'm not a fan of the new cursor. I don't feel it should stretch across the entire screen Trying to collect asteroid debris is way too tedious and not even close to being cost effective. Ramming spikes don't work on the asteroids. Before mining was a reality, I created a thread (link below) about a new module type that could aid in destroying asteroids. I understand that once a ship is equipped with high level weapons the ability to destroy even a large asteroid becomes passe. Having a new specific module to play around with is just so exciting though! And I've already started the artwork for it! cptforever.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=jameson&thread=116&page=1I also want to reiterate this other idea that has been mentioned. Having a cargo module or even being able to click and drag the valuable pieces of destroyed asteroids would make a world of difference for such an awesome new feature. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK FARBS!!!
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Ryk
Alpha Rank
Posts: 1
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Post by Ryk on Jul 7, 2012 6:57:22 GMT 10
I've always thought that the autofly blur is irritating, as I can't see where I'm flying. Maybe it could be optional?
Maybe to indicate ship orientation add brighter / flashier Nav lights or headlights.
Space is dark.
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Post by bigjohnpalmer on Jul 16, 2012 6:53:53 GMT 10
There are two main issues that I am coming across with the new 5.1 map.
1) Having the same enemies in the same spot every time isn't such a wonderful thing. Having the same enemies in the same spots every time makes it impossible to find certain modules at specific class levels. In the newest map I am finding that just about every Juliet level ship has the same stuff no matter which far corner of the map you find them. In previous versions I would constantly dock and farm an area because there would always be a nice variable amount of modules I could find. I like lower level blurst shields (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie) for their size and weight. I have yet to come across a single spawning area that provides these. To me, the randomization of enemy types was always a good thing and not something that needed to be corrected.
2) What is the deal with factories and stations in general. So far, in the entire 5.1 map I have only found one upgrade station and it is in the middle of nowhere in the upper East corner and it's only an Echo or Foxtrot level (I forget which one). I would be much less annoyed by the first issue I listed if I could upgrade a low class MKII booster to Juliet class. Also, having two Juliet NAV stations within a few ship lengths of each other, in the upper West corner I believe, left me a little puzzled. Overall, it seems that there is a serious lack of really useful Juliet material in 5.1. The super large map in one of the previous versions was what I played the most.
And one last thing to add. Maybe in the spelunk map there could be a bank station in the cluster at the origin dock with a usefull amount of credits preloaded. Trying to break even the smallest asteroid with the 5 starting WAR station Alpha lasers gets very boring, not to mention transporting the nominally sized, practically worthless, rocks back to the Refinery.
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Post by Farbs on Aug 10, 2012 17:05:58 GMT 10
Stuff I've been working on:
Multiple sectors! I'm still deciding whether to make 0.6 a testbed for multiple sectors, with ~ half a dozen places to explore, or an epic voyage across 200 of our nearest stars. I probably won't have time to build the end-game, so 200 stars with no end might be a bit disappointing. Not sure. Thoughts?
Fullscreen! The final impediment to this was removed in a recent update to the flash player, so I currently have it hacked in to my local build. I'll have to create a prettier interface for it, but the fullscreeniness works well. On slower machines you can lower the resolution, which looks rather cool.
Voice acting! I figured out how to synthesize voice using the same techniques as the old Speak & Spell toys. This also allows me to change a bunch of vocal characteristics on the fly, so different NPCs have different voices, speak at different speeds, and use slightly different intonations. It also packs data down to a minute size (currently ~10% the size of an equivalent mp3, but I could probably go to ~20%). This means I can add real voice acting to the game, and I have someone lined up to record it already. All I need is a script... which turns out to be a huge amount of effort. I might just use the current lines for now, along with some ad lib work, and do a full script rewrite later.
Manual Docking instead of telnet When I watch new players, they always try to connect w/ stations by nudging them with their ships. They want to dock manually! In the interests of helping people understand the game I figure I'm better off ditching telnet and just letting people dock. At present this means you save at every station too, which is nice. I'd really like to rewrite the savegame system to continually autosave, so you would survive browser crashes, but I think that's better left as a later feature. Now, without telnet nav stations are a lot less useful. If you have to dock to see the map then you can't use them to find your way back. Unless...
Nav Program ...I finish adding a new feature, which is an always-available onboard mapping program. Each time you connect to a new nav station it uploads data to your map, so you can only see what you've seen, but you can see it whenever you like. This means you'll probably never get lost in space again, which is a shame since that was a particularly cool experience, but I think it's worth making the change. Also I'll keep the old builds online, and old-timers like yourselves can swap stories of having to intuit your way around asteroid fields, or write down map coords on a piece of paper.
There's still a heap of work left to do, most notably the linking parts of the multisector system, and a couple of early hand-crafted sectors to introduce people to the game, but it's coming along. I'll get there eventually.
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