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[ChrisLeJohn]

The stasis chamber hisses softly around you. Artificial fluids built up inside your ears begin to retreat as the cryoplasm drains slowly.  Breathing comes naturally, at first. And then the tickle of a hundred nanites filtering your oxygen forces a cough or two of surprise. Beneath new skin a fresh infusion of blood pulses with the cadence of tribal drums. Your thoughts cascade and it all makes sense again. You open your eyes to the dull interior of a starship.

Various small icons flicker to life in your peripherals.  Location, vitals, people?  You look around and see no one. But can tell by the social activity in your skinfeed that there are others, both near and worlds apart.  In your ears, a local A.I chimes in softly with an introduction to the ships systems, emergency protocols, lunch menu and array of ordnance.  A copy of the Voyagers Handbook has been allocated space and stored in your read-only memory.

Apsis Online operates entirely within the command line.  The game environment is presented in ASCII and each planet and landing site visited by players are procedurally generated. Combat is currently not the focus. But ground combat will be a real-time/turn-based hybrid system inspired by TomeNET and DF Adventure Mode in time. Space combat will operate within the scope of Classic Battleship (in space).  Which should lend well to how I plan to handle conflicts on a larger scale in the future.

The engine uses a combination of real-time features to handle things like chat and animations, making the world feel a lot more alive. Having a built in forum and social system was part of an idea to have a self-sufficient platform for players to operate in as well. I went into a lot more detail in the devblog for version 1 if interested.

The game has been very recently ported to Windows (64-bit for now) with the current server being very much a test server. I'll need to work out a way to get something more proper than a shared VPS if I'm going to re-enable things like chat which badly clogs up precious bandwidth. Forget it if there are multiple users on one ship.  So these features are temporarily disabled.

Additional Resources:

Gamejolt

Discord

First Paradise Wiki

[ChrisLeJohn]

V2 has been released for Windows.  This build hasn't really been tested outside of my dev machine so feel free to drop your issues under bug reports, or whatever it's called, in the in-game forum.  Full recap on the process of developing V2 can be found here.  The actual release was a month ago but was restricted to Linux.  Special shout out to people pointing out any issues as well as the one crash that occurred (patched!).

This latest version simply lays the groundwork for building structures as well as exploration via the "embark" mechanic for post-landings. It also builds on existing features like broken ship engines.  Now that the initial test is over you can now fix them and be on your merry way. I'm generally pretty limited resource-wise so both the Linux and Windows binaries are currently only 64-bit compatible. Which flies in the face of what I originally set out to do with this engine but I do have what sounds like a lawnmower that I could try to get another compile on.  I had this covered in V1 but the broader the compatability is the longer it will take to get that deep layer of hardware support.  Working on it!

Shouts out to MassivelyOP for the mention this month. Next up, V3.

[ukulele]

Surprised this went unnoticed, seems really interesting ill be giving it a try!

[quinnr]

This seems interesting, posting to support / watch!

[George_Chickens]

Sounds awesome. Will definitely check this out when I upgrade to a more stable connection.

[ChrisLeJohn]

Much appreciated! Feel free to throw out some ideas too. This project was one of those “engine first” situations and was a tually never supposed to turn into a game. It was a big experiment in writing a social layer for an older existing engine.  So that got repurposed and here we are.

New patch incoming. I still need to optimize for windows a bit, backspacing and warping seems to be a bit funky at times.  It could be the default terminal (it definitely is its fault) but I haven’t run too many tests yet.

[Retropunch]

Much appreciated! Feel free to throw out some ideas too. This project was one of those “engine first” situations and was a tually never supposed to turn into a game. It was a big experiment in writing a social layer for an older existing engine.  So that got repurposed and here we are.

New patch incoming. I still need to optimize for windows a bit, backspacing and warping seems to be a bit funky at times.  It could be the default terminal (it definitely is its fault) but I haven’t run too many tests yet.

This sounds absolutely fantastic, and exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. I know that you've said combat won't be a big focus, and I think that's great - there are tons of combat RLs but few that really manage to do space exploration/4x/etc.

In terms of ideas I've got two at the moment:
I think it'd be great if you could do a lot of ship tinkering. The more you're able to make the ship 'yours' the better - with this I'm not really meaning in terms of re-configuring the layout of the ship, but more in terms of configuring the internals.

A 'translation' mechanic for chat/etc. could be cool. If the Voyagers could start off as different clans/races/etc. you could start off only being able to talk to your 'clan' over chat/forums. You could then have an in game way of getting access to others - that might be through NMS style 'learning' or building translators etc. Obviously you'd need a number of people playing for it to be worthwhile, but I think it'd be a great way of giving an early goal to players.

As an aside, will tiles ever be possible? I'm an ASCII fan, but I'm thinking long term some tile support would go along way to getting more people interested. No problem if not, but if it's something you can build in, I'd really recommend it.

[ChrisLeJohn]

This sounds absolutely fantastic, and exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. I know that you've said combat won't be a big focus, and I think that's great - there are tons of combat RLs but few that really manage to do space exploration/4x/etc.

In terms of ideas I've got two at the moment:
I think it'd be great if you could do a lot of ship tinkering. The more you're able to make the ship 'yours' the better - with this I'm not really meaning in terms of re-configuring the layout of the ship, but more in terms of configuring the internals.

A 'translation' mechanic for chat/etc. could be cool. If the Voyagers could start off as different clans/races/etc. you could start off only being able to talk to your 'clan' over chat/forums. You could then have an in game way of getting access to others - that might be through NMS style 'learning' or building translators etc. Obviously you'd need a number of people playing for it to be worthwhile, but I think it'd be a great way of giving an early goal to players.

As an aside, will tiles ever be possible? I'm an ASCII fan, but I'm thinking long term some tile support would go along way to getting more people interested. No problem if not, but if it's something you can build in, I'd really recommend it.

I don't have a problem saying I'd even like to replicate some of the best things done in ASCII Sector as well as Prosprector for good measure.  Those guys did much better design prep than me so feedback like yours is invaluable. I'm not sure what happened but at some point I got uncreative. Still, hell if I can add anything to this game.

There was an AO-specific podcast from a few years ago (before the actual game existed!) I did with a friend who was around for the initial idea. And we actually did discuss ship module customization in some detail. Although that would entail the layout itself.  I definitely want to touch on customization overall, but funny enough I think it will begin with being able to add and remove modules.  If you want to help work on the internals, you're hired!

A translation mechanic would be cool and wouldn't even be that hard based on how the engine already processing input/output.  Races will be added pretty soon, clans/guilds will probably be corps but I feel like that's too generic. But again, ya'll tell me.


As far as tiles go it's definitely possible.  A mobile reskin has been in the pipes as well.  Thanks for the feedback! And no seriously if you or anyone wants to see a feature in the game just post it somewhere and I'll probably see it and add it to the list (needs to be updated).

[Retropunch]

This sounds absolutely fantastic, and exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. I know that you've said combat won't be a big focus, and I think that's great - there are tons of combat RLs but few that really manage to do space exploration/4x/etc.

In terms of ideas I've got two at the moment:
I think it'd be great if you could do a lot of ship tinkering. The more you're able to make the ship 'yours' the better - with this I'm not really meaning in terms of re-configuring the layout of the ship, but more in terms of configuring the internals.

A 'translation' mechanic for chat/etc. could be cool. If the Voyagers could start off as different clans/races/etc. you could start off only being able to talk to your 'clan' over chat/forums. You could then have an in game way of getting access to others - that might be through NMS style 'learning' or building translators etc. Obviously you'd need a number of people playing for it to be worthwhile, but I think it'd be a great way of giving an early goal to players.

As an aside, will tiles ever be possible? I'm an ASCII fan, but I'm thinking long term some tile support would go along way to getting more people interested. No problem if not, but if it's something you can build in, I'd really recommend it.

I don't have a problem saying I'd even like to replicate some of the best things done in ASCII Sector as well as Prosprector for good measure.  Those guys did much better design prep than me so feedback like yours is invaluable. I'm not sure what happened but at some point I got uncreative. Still, hell if I can add anything to this game.

There was an AO-specific podcast from a few years ago (before the actual game existed!) I did with a friend who was around for the initial idea. And we actually did discuss ship module customization in some detail. Althought that would entail the layout itself.  I definitely want to touch on customization overall, but funny enough I think it will begin with being able to add and remove modules.  If you want to help work on the internals, you're hired!

A translation mechanic would be cool and wouldn't even be that hard based on how the engine already processing input/output.  Races will be added pretty soon, clans/guilds will probably be corps but I feel like that's too generic. But again, ya'll tell me.


As far as tiles go it's definitely possible.  A mobile reskin has been in the pipes as well.  Thanks for the feedback! And no seriously if you or anyone wants to see a feature in the game just post it somewhere and I'll probably see it and check the list (needs to be updated).

Really awesome to see how open you are to ideas. I think this is one of the things that everyone has been wanting for a long time, so I'm sure you'll get a lot of support and feedback.

Re: Ship customisation; Adding and taking away modules/layout is great as well, and any internal stuff wouldn't need to be anything fancy, but just something where you can do something like, say, boost engine power at the cost of durability etc.

Re: Translations; I think corps are fine - it doesn't need to be anything too groundbreaking. In fact, it may be better to keep it as something that everyone can get their heads around so that they understand what they are joining up to.

Knowing that tiles is possible is fantastic news - I know so many people that are just automatically turned off by ASCII and it's a shame when games just can't reach a larger audience because the engine they've used is stuck in ASCII. In terms of feedback, I'd honestly consider making that something of a priority - you'll get a lot of people on this forum saying that it doesn't matter, but elsewhere it really will. As it's a multiplayer game, the key is reaching that larger audience as otherwise things like corps etc. won't really work.

[ChrisLeJohn]

I'll follow up on V3 over the weekend.  In the meantime here's a new devplay (part 2) going over some of the features present in V2.  Thanks!

[ChrisLeJohn]

This will be a short update!  But I'm excited to announce the latest major release for Apsis Online.  Which includes:

• A new user-interface for @Space.
  
• Cryptocurrency wallet integration (although disabled for now).
• Refactored interact mechanic (took 6 years but I did it).
• Minor but broad gameplay patches for offline mode (First Paradise).

A lot of the management features being worked on are very MUDdy.  So I'm going to start calling this a multi-user roguelike (MUR).


Some of you might recall that ridiculous bug in which the interact icon would erase things as you moved the cursor.  This stemmed from an old piece of code I wrote back when I had no idea what the hell I was doing.  And thankfully, a lot has changed since then!  The fix required a lot of patience considering how tangled up that code was with the base game (First Paradise) and how many things broke in the process. But dammit it worked and now functions a lot more like it should have in the first place.

Cryptocurrency integration was added but I needed full-access to the game server to utilize this feature effectively (and securely).  Having a server sponsor is great until you need root access.  That said, I have been exploring options in regard to financing a beefier VPS or dedicated server.  This includes Kickstarter, Patreon or an exclusive crypto partner.  We'll see, but in the meantime I have re-enabled the ability to donate to this project.  Any additional support would be appreciated!  But what would mean the most to me is you just signing up and checking out the progress overall.  Everything will get sorted out in due time.

Sandboxing it up on planets is painfully slow right now as we're live only through the generosity of Vineyard and beggers can't be choosers.  But I'm committed to 24/7 uptime from here on out.  I'll see you in-game.  And thanks for playing.\

PS: Posting and commenting on things may take a few seconds as well, stick with it! It'll go through. 

Play!

[ChrisLeJohn]

This latest release has caused some data loss effecting users who signed up on 2/9/20 as some accounts didn't get backed up for the hard-upgrade to V5.

 Now was the best time to move over to this sort of version verification system, meaning that clients older than the most recent authorized build will no longer be able to connect.  This is for security purposes as the backend will now be handling crypto balances.  So players are now given a cloud wallet at signup.  I plan to re-enable the auto-updater to handle patches more easily in the future.

The game also has a new overarching plot (which you can read on the main page) and is the first revision to the game timeline in at least two years.  In addition there are some new notes on game economics which will be getting a lot of my attention  as I work to continue looking for better hosting.  Many thanks to the folks who have already donated!

[gomez]

I'm trying to run this on windows 8.1 and am getting the following error

pthreadGC-3.dll is either not designed for windows or it contains an error.

[ChrisLeJohn]

Apsis Online V6 introduces the #Marketplace board to @Space. Now players can buy and sell in-game items while the system functions as a sort of public ledger for these transactions. I'm also excited to begin development on what I'm calling the World Seed. Which is the algorithm that intends to "awaken" the game "world" despite there being many. As such it would more aptly be titled the Big Bang or something similar!

Planets will come alive with weather systems that affect player settlements and other AI built habitats and their inhabitants. There will be a greater emphasis on mechanisms that allow for cause and effect. The latter of which may vary as is the nature of what should be dynamic gameplay. A generated summary of some events will be automatically reported via some space news agency I haven't decided on a name for yet. These reports will be published in the #Frontier board under the username of that agency.

Shouts out to Dwarf Fortress Legends mode.  I can only aspire to that level of detail.

Looking Forward

I tossed around the idea of spaceports and putting one above Bromius II. But would prefer player feedback regarding the purpose of such a thing before committing. Since I'd rather add most of what would be in a spaceport to the array of tools planned to be available aboard your own spaceship.

The game currency, TETRA has been created and tested against minor transactions like buying and selling pickaxes. In the past I had implemented cloud crypto wallets - a feature that can be entirely ignored - in order to allow players to swap the native game currency for a partnered cryptocurrency. This wallet is still active and has been tested as well. Although swapping and withdrawals are disabled as I continue to iron out any issues behind that tech.


Lore Changes & Other Features

New changes to the game canon include the history behind @Space itself, being a more meta edit. The built-in social network was created as a way for crew aboard sleeper ships to engage with each other across different sleep cycles. Like a sort of Facebook for space-farers to communicate. I find this to be a charming idea and one that I'd like to continue expanding on. The social features present are at the core of the game engine after all.

Another interesting and previously-present feature is in drone operation. In the past I had allowed players to scout planets before landing and subsequently embarking. This and other ship-oriented activities will be the focus of the subsequent V7. As well as performance upgrades when it comes to leaving the spaceship and walking around planets. It remains to be seen whether or not this issue can be instead solved by upgrading a dedicated server (an expensive proposition). But all tests have proved this to be the case so far.

If Apsis Online interests you do feel free to check out associated projects like the short story (WIP) Winternet on Wattpad based in the AO universe. Or drop a line in-game and say hi. We're always looking for more voyagers!

The game, currently V5.2 and only available to Linux testers, can be found here if interested.