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Post by Farbs on May 15, 2014 23:57:30 GMT 10
In response to some great forum discussion I’ve moved back to wide sectors, rather than the tiny string of ‘em we have been playing through since wormholes appeared. There’s still plenty of work left for me to do here, including having the sectors persist their save data between games. Here are the changes for this week’s build: Returned to giant sectors, one of which is playable here Added first pass title screen Added first pass wormhole effect. Shaders are fun Fixed arrival station moving around each sector load (whoops!) Reduced player’s command module thrust, so it’s easier to control Reduced player’s command module weight, so modules help more Quick and scrappy station ping out on rescue/reboot Added background flipping and scaling Fixed warehouse collection area bug Play the new build hereTell me things about this thing! <3
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Post by Foohman on May 16, 2014 1:07:44 GMT 10
I can't wait to try out the giant sectors! I'm just loading up now > I love the main menu! Now all it needs is a title song to complete it > The wormhole effect is fairly awesome, might need more shiney things to add to it, as it seems a little plain. Either way, I like how it's actually coloured like the event horizon, that's a cool little touch but as I said, it still seems plain > The new thruster movement is far nicer. It does make the ship seem a little heavier, but I think it's much easier to control, especially when you have to hit that one spot on the enemy ship without damaging those precious modules, so it's all good! > Definitely noticing the boon those initial modules give you, but I think I miss having an ultra quick, strong and powerful command module now... It's most likely because I'm still not used to it Possible bug: Cruise control doesn't always initialise forward thrusters. It's kinda annoying > Loving the basic responses from the stations. Basic, but a nice touch. I feel like I've done something! > Further kudos to the background scaling. I can't wait to see more art, but this is a nice touch. > Thank god you've fixed the warehouse bug. I've just reached one and I can actually use it! Further noots: Totally not liking how asteroids fade to nigh nothing in cruise control! Otherwise, loving all the additions and bug fixes!
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Post by Foohman on May 16, 2014 2:26:05 GMT 10
Another buglet - once you've died (from asphyxiation) any static playing in the background plays in a constant, unending loop when you return to the title screen.
EDIT: I was ploughing into Persephone, firing point blank and the Guardian kept twitching with each shot, I'm not sure what's going on there - it's nothing terrible, it's just a thing
EDIT DEUX: Mother of Methuselah, the jump from nothing to Bravo is insane! One moment I was sluggishly farting around with a couple of Primary boosters chucking me around the sector when all of sudden I spot a prime Bravo target - I take aim and take the two uniboosters. as soon as I add them I leap from safe and slow to vomit-inducing g-force trauma.
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Post by Ozzatron on May 16, 2014 3:50:29 GMT 10
Preliminary analysis: Pretty damn good. However, the game feels a lot slower than it used to. With less oxygen safety nets, you're forced to spend a lot more time going back to them. That doesn't bother me all that much. The two warehouses I've seen contained only various numbers of Laser Bravos (they were both Bravo tier though, so I suppose that's okay). I just thought it might be a bug that there's only ONE kind of module in each warehouse, and that it's the same across two of them. While the command mod's lower initial power helps when it's alone, as soon as you chuck a few modules onto it, your ship can easily become unflyable if you don't have enough thrusters. Given that the command mod can function alone far better than it used to (due to having 8x the DPS and being more controllable), this isn't as much of a problem as it could be. The command mod can hold you over until you get enough modules to have a real Alpha ship. Then again, the first ship I saw besides the intro guardian was an Alpha merchant equipped with two Decks, 5 Missile Launchers, and 4 Primary Boosters. He charged at me from offscreen, twirled out of control, and faceplanted into an asteroid, incapable of moving or turning thanks to the massive weight his command mod was carrying around. After I killed him, I tried to haul his scrap back and, unfortunately, inherited his merchant-y disease. I almost asphyxiated ( ;>_> ), losing 16 liters of oxygen just trying to TURN MY SHIP (it was going like < 1 deg/s). I had to jettison everything. Literally, all of it. The primary boosters were far too uncontrollable for such a small design, the decks made me a sloth, and the missile launchers weren't sht compared to my Charlie-tier command mod blaster. It was a sad first encounter. Thankfully I then killed an Alpha guardian with said nude command module and went on to get myself started just fine.
This is where I'm at right now!
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Post by Perez on May 16, 2014 4:08:18 GMT 10
Hey, this brings back memories from 0.5.1, these wide sectors! My point is that you've been successful recreating/bringing back the old sector layout! It's a nice "combination". I'm enjoying these builds a whole lot, and every update is an awesome treat whenever you're bored -- not necessarily with Captain Jameson. Still, Captain Jameson has always been a game that remains fun because of its re-playability. Great to hear the warehouses are fixed, too! I rarely use them, but you never know when they'd come in handy. Also, a less powerful command module thrusters is a good investment. Bugs:- Foohman mentioned the Cruise Control bug; Whenever entering Cruise Control whilst pressing the forward key, the boosters deactivate when the key is released. I assume the same problem occurs when using the two other options with the Cruise Control found in the system menu. - When sliding across asteroids, the bump sound repeats insanely quickly. Doesn't seem to be correct. Possibly not a bug. - Attempting to reattach a close by module to your ship makes the ship move away from the module, like it's being pushed or the ship tries to avoid this module. This has been an ongoing bug, and I assume it's been mentioned, but just as a reminder I'll write it down here. However, it doesn't seem to happen all the time. --- Anyway, keep up the brilliant work of yours! The game is better for each update that comes out. We can all safely assume the final product will be fantastic!
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Post by Ozzatron on May 16, 2014 10:54:56 GMT 10
I've got two new bugs to report! By the way, the new cruise control functionality I could almost consider a feature, to be honest: I'm (ab)using it to be able to effectively be able to choose between All Stop Cruise Control and Headway Cruise Control at will without needing to open the options menu. I can see why it'd be annoying, though, so I'm going to ask to change it anyway.
- Exporting the map lets you see sectors you shouldn't be able to see inside the sea of X's... this could probably be used as a pretty severe exploit - I managed to see a low-tier merchant spawn somehow embedded into an asteroid. I couldn't get a screenshot before he blew himself up though (presumably from being jammed in said asteroid).
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arien
Bravo Rank
Posts: 18
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Post by arien on May 16, 2014 19:04:20 GMT 10
Goodbye weekend
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Post by Foohman on May 16, 2014 20:12:11 GMT 10
^ that
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Post by Ozzatron on May 17, 2014 23:50:55 GMT 10
I notice that I don't have very much feedback on this one... I've been playing for several hours but I'm still stuck on Delta tier. I don't know where to go from there (no one tell me!) but I followed an SOS signal through some hot asteroids and found a Golf-tier station! Thank god I had the credits to turn on its atmosphere, but I still almost suffocated trying to get back through the asteroids.
Really though, I'm stumped. The SOS points to an India-tier station somewhere really far off to the west, so it's kinda no use to me. What decides what the SOS points to, exactly?
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arien
Bravo Rank
Posts: 18
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Post by arien on May 18, 2014 22:17:28 GMT 10
Ok, had my first tragic death...
Firstly, I am digging the large sector of Aculassae-Major.
**(spoiler alert, Ozzatron)**
The thing that saved me early on is grabbing a golf laser from a factory. That was basically the only reason I could progress from there. The slim amount of scrap places does make it more fiddly. I too was stuck on delta level for a long time. Farming the delta's for scrap til I could build up enough to venture to the "wild west" and try to level up. The nav bubble over east was fun but still annoying not having scrap higher than delta. Was verrry dangerous only with delta/echo shields. Over west when I finally found a hotel scrap place I could settle down a bit. Those fox-india guys are brutal!! Way more deadly than any guardian I've come across. Mainly cus they seem to come out of nowhere and blast you to bits. But I hung on for longer than I ever have in the past. I was trying to save up 20k to get an india bubble shield (safety first). SO I found myself lurking in the asteroids trying to lure off the fringe foxtrot/golfs one at a time. I was doing well until one of his friends caught wind of it and blasted me to bits in about 3 seconds with no chance of escape. NUUUUUU!!!
So that was my first agonizing run. The placement of baddies and resources does make the difficulty curve quite sharp (and time consuming). I think next time I need to build up more over east before risking it all over west next time. And I hate needlers with missles!! But I guess that's the point... So yeah, it was enjoyable but kinda overshadowed by the placement of things. I think I'm just too ballsy when approaching those aggressive fox/golf's. Not worth the risk!
***EDIT***
Ok after seeing the map of the sector (thanks Ket!) a lot of what I said is kinda irrelevant. Didn't realize just how big it was. I'm sure if I plan out a different route of progress it won't be as frustrating.
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Post by Ozzatron on May 19, 2014 1:36:35 GMT 10
Eh, don't worry about spoilers, Arien. I don't care anymore, I've pretty thoroughly embedded myself into India tier, and I'm cruisin' around like I own the whole place XD
I mean, I threw down some coords and data into the shoutbox so I'd remember it for later. That Snipe Launcher Juliet factory... *drools* I need credits!!
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arien
Bravo Rank
Posts: 18
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Post by arien on May 19, 2014 1:56:02 GMT 10
Yeah I copied those co-ordinates down too I got the whole map, which feels slightly like cheating, but my sense of direction is so bad anyway it really gives me the motivation to keep exploring if I have a rough guide of sorts. I really didn't know I could go north at first! Everything down south kinda sucked for a while, slow to get going.
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Post by Foohman on May 19, 2014 2:35:01 GMT 10
Ozz, I'm actually stumped as to what the SOS signals indicate at times - I know there's uppcase "SOS" and lowercase "sos", but they can point to either oxygen or bases, I can never decide which.
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Post by Ozzatron on May 19, 2014 3:05:21 GMT 10
As Ket and I discovered in the shoutbox, 64-bit mirror sectors are no more. It must have been a change that occurred with the new generation Farbs put in with the wormholes and multiple sectors and whatnot. Couldn't have been an update to Flash itself, as the 64-bit sectors still exist in 0.5.1 and older -- but come 0.6 and wormholes, they're gone.
As for SOS signals... Uh, what? I never saw any lowercase SOS's (although I may not have been paying much attention). As far as I know, though, SOS signals can come from one of two things: a deactivated atmosphere station, or a station set with a guardian. Station sets that are unguarded will never transmit SOS signals if they have no oxygen station, which can make them extraordinarily hard to find.
I have no idea how The Dawn Star chooses which oxygen station or guardian emits an SOS signal. It's not always the nearest one: I've bumped into deactivated oxygen stations and guardians while my SOS marker was way off somewhere else. But it does change as you fly around. It might be trying to be the nearest one, but only picking the nearest of a subset of all possible SOS signal emitters due to a bug? I'm not sure.
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Ket
Alpha Rank
Posts: 5
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Post by Ket on May 19, 2014 6:31:13 GMT 10
Pretty sure the SOS signals only point to Oxygen stations(in this build), and not all of them at that. While mapping the east area of the sector by following SOS signals I got one that was all the way over at the far west of the map, even when I knew there were several oxygen stations left both to the east and south of the sector. Ended up being the last SOS signal too, with a lot of the sector left to map. Here is the link to the map I posted in the shoutbox earlier today with a small update, added a DS for Derelict ship where Ozzatron found one: pastebin.com/J9TUhMz4 copy paste the raw into notepad or similar and make sure word wrap is off. Also First post! I really should have registered sooner considering I became a supporter back in early 2010, and followed it quite a bit until a break in captain jameson updates in 2012
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Post by Ozzatron on May 19, 2014 6:44:26 GMT 10
Hah! Yeah you probably should have.
I haven't found anything off of what we knew yet, but I'm working on it. I'd like to ask if Photon Lances are on the factory product list, because I've seen plenty of Primary Booster factories but none for the Lances.
::repeated edits as I think:: Several comments about anything and everything. - I probably haven't been looking around enough, but I haven't found any Chrono Gears besides the very first one, and I've checked all the Alpha ship clusters (my first Chrono was Alpha, so I figured it must be in one of those). - Apartment stations don't scale up in size to match other stations. I understand that it'd look weird to have gigantic gymnasium-sized apartments, but it looks even weirder to have tiny little apartment stations next to enormous Hotel-tier factories. Perhaps make higher-tier apartments simply have more apartments? I dunno. - Ramming Spikes of tiers with higher-than-base fire rate (i.e. not Alpha, Delta, Golf, Juliet) "reload" faster while also doubling in damage. Since Hotel spikes or higher pretty much instantly annihilate anything they touch, India spikes are outright better than Juliet because they recharge faster. Similarly, Foxtrot spikes are better than Golf, etc. - Photon Lances get longer with every tier upgrade, not every 3 tiers. I assume that's intended, but like the spikes, it means that the weapon is scaling in effectiveness in more than one way. - Shooting a Photon Lance's projected lance destroys both the lance and the projectile? It happens too fast for me to really examine, but I think Photon Lances act as pseudo-shields against just about anything. Which is awesome. - Similarly, shooting a Ramming Spike causes the spike to emit a damage-dealt explosion, presumably because it's "ramming" into the projectile. I think the Spike still takes damage, but the issue is that you can easily stop incoming spikes by forcing them to recharge after they "ram" into a laser beam. - Colliding a Ramming Spike with an enemy's spike vaporizes both unless they're far apart in tier, in which case the higher tiered one might survive. Amusing, but annoying. - I'm pretty sure that Photon Lances' trigger zones can trigger on each other, resulting in a whole lot of nothing (except for a spam of musical notes) - Some stations are hard to dock at. This is very minor. - I think some of the AI quotes are mixed up or jumbled. For instance, merchants can say "Ha! A lively one" but only upon death.
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Post by Farbs on May 19, 2014 9:11:08 GMT 10
Also First post! I really should have registered sooner considering I became a supporter back in early 2010, and followed it quite a bit until a break in captain jameson updates in 2012 Welcome aboard!
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Post by Ozzatron on May 19, 2014 10:47:07 GMT 10
Excuse me, Farbs, for my disbelief, outright challenging of your programming skill, repeated pestering, or any number of other things ( ) but as I've said in the shoutbox, I'm really curious: Does Aculassae Major contain any Juliet content at all? The FI's producing Juliet parts doesn't count, obviously. I've hunted to the ends of my oxygen -- quite literally, having almost asphyxiated myself on no less than three occasions so far -- but the only pearlescent white beauty I've seen anywhere is mounted on the front of my ship and was bought from Vaughn Point for the hefty price of 20,000 credits a piece. I ask because I know that with your new multi-sector generator, you can make sectors that go from any tier to any other; so I'm wondering whether we're all really unlucky or whether Aculassae Major only goes from Alpha to India.
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Post by Farbs on May 19, 2014 15:12:10 GMT 10
Haha, no worries. It looks like the stations and ship spawns really do only go to India in this build. Not sure what happened there...
Regarding the bug reports earlier in this thread - I've fixed a bunch of this today, so the next build should be a bit tidier. Thanks to all for reporting them, it really helps me a lot.
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Post by Ozzatron on May 20, 2014 0:04:32 GMT 10
Huh. I thought so! How do you control the aspects of a sector, by the way? I'm curious how all the gears turn and click behind the scenes.
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