There have been so many awesome posts here, and I'm terribly sorry to be so slow in responding. I'll give you guys a quick update on where things are and where things are going, and then I'll respond to some specific questions and feedback.
Again, I'm sorry that I haven't posted a reply in a while, but some high-priority matters needed to be resolved here at Voyager Games. As a bit of background on the project, Outer Colony had been in full time development from February of 2015 through May of this year. Significant technical aspects of the game were just too complicated to build working part time. The engine, most of the human behavior modeling, the networking infrastructure, and some of the other parts of the system required my complete attention to build. While only the core of the game is finished at this point, it's up over a third of a million lines of code (and I think it's rather lean and well-architected at that). It's just hard to build out a system like this working on it a few hours in a stretch.
It probably would've taken me over a decade to design and implement all this if I had only worked on it part time, in the evenings and on weekends. So, I made the choice to work on Outer Colony full time. Of course, one doesn't receive any money for sitting in a room and programming around the clock, and that's basically how I spent the last two years of my life. If you live like a weird, cloistered hermit, rarely spending money on anything other than bare essentials, you can stretch your savings pretty far. Eventually, though, they're going to run out. That's what happened this summer, and a solution to that problem needed to be found.
I've spent the last month limping my 17 year old car up and down the eastern seaboard, trying to find the right opportunity for a software engineering consultant. After almost a dozen interviews, I finally managed to secure an offer that's just right. It's a very cool opportunity, and I'm stoked to do a great job for my new employer. The tie is going back on, and I'm headed back to the cubicle farm shortly, so the development of Outer Colony is about to shift gears into a part-time phase.
That's OK, though! Work is going to continue, because of what the project is for me.
Madman198237 asked a great question on the last page: what sort of users am I trying to attract? Is Outer Colony being made for more of a mass market, or is it made for hardcore, Dwarf-Fortress type players?
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On some level, the answer is kinda' neither. When I first started development, it was all about experimenting with my ideas on comprehensive, low-fi simulation, human behavior modeling, and dynamic, plan-generating AI. It was about seeing what kinds of behaviors I could coax out of these little number-driven entities, perceiving worlds as vast collections of discrete states and pathing their ways through graphs of potential actions to achieve the things they wanted, and not just doing so in a context-agnostic way. So much dynamic AI gets screwed up by lack of common sense, by lack of context for making all their decisions, and much of the Outer Colony experiment is about building as comprehensive a human data model as possible and using it in a way that gives these humans the necessary context for making decisions.
The project was about seeing how well these ideas might actually work. Not just in some contrived, tiny, proof-of-concept prototype that exists only for academic purposes. Not just as white paper fodder to win a grant. But to build the thing out, as actual, working software as far as I can carry it. That's what the core of the project is really about.
On top of this baseline goal, I have two very good friends with whom I've played computer games for more than a decade. We hit a point in the late 2000's where there just wasn't anything we wanted to play anymore, and without getting too deep into my thoughts on the video game industry, we kinda' just started talking about the sort of game that we'd like to play. I started talking with them at length about the core ideas behind Outer Colony, and they added their own thoughts and ideas. "What if we had feature X?" "What if soldiers could do Y?" "You know what I loved from StarCraft? Can we make X?" In this way, as Outer Colony was being developed, we started expanding its core and adding subsystems for various types of gameplay.
Some of these subsystems are further along than others. Some are only implemented in superficial ways.
The Scout is totally right: butchery completely sucks right now, and there's not nearly enough utility from farming livestock to justify the immense pain required to capture, breed, tame, and feed animals. The gameplay-type mechanics are wrong all over the place, and there's tons of testing and refining needed to get this stuff working properly in a fun way. But a great deal of the core programming needed to get these subsystems operational is in place.
Over the course of the last few months, as we've started to post more about the game online, we've started to get some new users outside myself and my personal friends. This is fascinating territory for the project to get into, and I'm kinda' humbled to think that there are people around the world who are downloading Outer Colony and giving it a shot. As you guys and others have shared your thoughts and feedback, this has started to drive development, too. Frankly, a lot of the ideas coming from external users are way better than what I think of on my own. I'm too close to the project, too used to playing the game, so I don't think of new feature requests or usability improvements the way that you guys do. Sometimes I'll read a post here or on the OC forums and think, "Jeez. Why didn't I make it work like that to begin with?"
So, this has been a bit circuitous, but I can now answer
who the game is made for. It's made for myself, it's made for my friends, and it's made for you guys, the people who have freely donated their time to downloading the game, trying it out, and playing it! At the moment, I'm not really trying to attract specific users. It's not in a stage of development where it's ready for that, anyway, since it's so far from being properly completed. Maybe someday it'll be polished, smooth, and maybe even for sale as a real game. For now, though, I just want to keep fixing it, keep improving it, and maybe if things improve enough, you guys can have some fun with it!
Like I say, for me, Outer Colony is a bit like writing a book; it's expressing some of my ideas in software. Software can be a mode of expression, just like the written word, or a painting, or a sculpture. This might sound a little bit pompous, but it's sorta' how I view my work on the project.
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With that said, what's coming up for the project next? Over the course of the last month, there have been extensive internal conversations about the direction we should take things from here. A lot of people despise the visuals. I kinda' dig 'em. Maybe it's the SimEarth player in me. Maybe my liking the look is tied to a piece of nostalgia that isn't there for most people. Don't blame our pixel artist, though, because he made these sprites exactly the way I told him to! Haha, so the current appearance is absolutely not his fault, but rather, mine.
Still, after all this discussion, the conclusion we reached is that the game is going to look cooler if it's shown in three dimensions using isometric sprites. It will just fit better with the real, three dimensional nature of the world. It's going to make some tasks much easier. It's going to make understanding the world's structure easier. It's also going to make some things much harder, as rendering true three-space in isometrics creates some weird situations that we're currently considering and designing our way through. Still, we think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
If we can get a more pleasing aesthetic in place, it should make the game much more visually stimulating. This ought to increase Outer Colony's fun factor naturally. Building something that looks really cool is just plain satisfying in a way that the current abstract, quasi-representational graphics can't facilitate. So we're going to do it! We've got to find a pixel artist with a very particular skill set to make it happen, as we really want the best of the best working on this. We're going to have to dump a truckload of cash into the effort, since there are literally thousands of sprites that have to be remade. But with money coming in once more from my day job and continuing to live in a somewhat spartan manner, I should be able to pay a contractor to produce a couple hundred sprites a month.
With a bit of luck, the graphics overhaul can be done in a 12-18 month timeframe. As an aside, do you guys know who built the Stonesense sprite sheets, because that is
exactly what we need. If any of those guys would be up for some contracting work, I'd be excited beyond measure to employ them in this effort.
The good thing about the long timeframe for the graphics overhaul is that it'll give us a lot of time to keep playing, testing, and improving. We don't necessarily need the new visuals to fix things like the balance issues with butchery. We don't need new graphics to add mortar crews and snipers and more advanced infantry combat mechanics. The underlying world model / programming doesn't care at all how the rendering happens, so I can keep chugging away, adding features and improving the game while we gradually get the sprites we need to improve the game's aesthetic. This is the kind of work that'll fit well with my nights-and-weekends approach moving forward, as it doesn't require the longer release iterations and surgical focus as the hardcore, earlier work that was done on the project. That's kinda' cool that things will (hopefully) come together like this.
Hopefully, that gives an overview of where things are going from here. The downside is that I'm going to be brutally time-strapped moving forward, trying to facilitate continued development and the graphics overhaul in my free time, while working all week in an office. Since I'll have to prioritize my tasks and focus on only the most critical things, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to communicate in this thread, but I'm going to do my best to post once a month or so in here to keep everyone up to speed. I'm going to try to hand off some of the communication responsibility to one of my good friends, forum user Torvus on the OC boards. If he can help to post updates, that'll take one more thing off my plate and free me up for development tasks.
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I'll respond to a few of you guys' questions and feedback, but it's all rock solid. Huge thanks again to everybody who's put their time into testing things out. Out in the industry, whole teams of people are paid to test software in vast QA groups, and I'm always thrilled when people are willing to do this kind of work on Outer Colony for free. So seriously,
thank you!From: dennislp3TL;DR version: Visuals need upgraded, UI needs more intuition, hotkeys
Agreed, and most users similarly struggle to pinpoint exactly why the visuals don't work as well as they'd like. I think it's about building a coherent aesthetic / color scheme. It may owe in part to the piecemeal work chunks I gave to the project's pixel artist, but it's a mistake we'll aim not to repeat in the next iteration of development.
Hotkeys are also probably a borderline must, and the UI could use smoothing out almost across the board. There are lots of things that could be done with fewer clicks. The mouse-driven nature of almost all interaction was designed to make the game easier to learn, but it becomes cumbersome for advanced users. Your assessment is pretty much spot on across the board. We're going to go through each interface, one-by-one, to try to find ways to improve them and make issuing orders faster and more keyboard-centric for advanced users. I don't know when this will happen, exactly, but it's a long-term goal for sure.
5. Why can't I maximize the screen? Why would I want to play a game on a high resolution monitor if I am stuck in a windowed mode in a resolution far below my screens resolution? Maximizing the screen would make the game more enjoyable.
This owes to a peculiarity of the way the engine is built. The whole structure is constructed on top of JavaFX, and while there are ways to full-screen it, I haven't had a chance to explore it. This is the downside of building a custom engine. I have to handle every piece of functionality myself.
As for why larger resolutions aren't supported, I have two tiny monitors. I can't currently test with anything bigger than what I have myself. This is a sharp example of one of those things that separates the project from what it is now with a proper, actual game.
Your other points are also rock solid and I'm in the process of translating them into specific, actionable tickets in Mantis now.
From: EkatonPerhaps you could try to develop it along the similar lines that Toady has chosen for DF - F2P with donations by a loyal fanbase? I would certainly chip in.
Hey, thanks, man! That's extremely generous! I think everything is alright on the funding front for now, but I really appreciate such a nice suggestion. If you guys can keep providing feedback and suggestions as new releases are published, that's way more help than I could possibly ask for at this stage in the operation.
Also, your forum avatar is freakin' awesome.
From: ( Tchey )Don't go iso, it only makes the screen harder to read for 3D stuff like towers or pits.
Hahaha, I'm so sorry dude, but I think we're going to go with it! We're going to try to implement things in the smoothest, most intuitive way possible to deal with vertical structures like towers and pits. I've never actually tried Stonesense, but I've heard that it has elegantly solved many of these problems already. Perhaps I can get some ideas on how to do so from that.
You need to change the tiles however, for something clearer and fancier at the same time (RimWorld is close to perfect, Prison Architect is great too, in that domain).
I know those titles are popular, but for me, the look of those games is one of the reasons I've never tried them. Everyone likes different things, I suppose, and I definitely don't want to take anything away from them! I know those games are both amazing, but I just can't imagine trying to employ that sort of style with Outer Colony.
Also i tried to register on your forum but my account is on hold since 2-3 days.
I'm terribly sorry about that. I get so many spambot registrations that I sometimes have difficulty telling real users apart from the fake ones. If anyone else has registered an account, but I've failed to activate it, I've probably mistakenly labeled you as a spam bot. Feel free to send me a DM here, and I will correct my mistake.
Also, giant thanks for the testing you've done so far, Tchey. Those Linux UI issues you've found are excellent bug reports.
From: The ScoutButchery isn't useful, leveling the terrain prevents you from growing plants on it and the quick buildings are weird. Trying to put a one story building with doors in my level area to prevent animals from eating my food turned into a three story building that was only accessible on the 2nd floor.
Absolutely. The game's riddled with features that range from *needs improvement* all the way down to *barely functional*. We've got a long climb until we reach the top of the mountain. Every time a player uses the game in a slightly unexpected or untried way, a new bug may be unearthed. The more you guys find, the more I log, and (hopefully) the better the game eventually becomes. I appreciate all your posting here, man.
From: AsgarusI didn't try butchering or even hunting anything yet, but my farming plots tend to disappear after they got harvested instead of being replanted.
Auto-replanting is something everyone craves. This function is supposed to be handled by one of your bureaucrats, the Minister of Agriculture, but we're considering removing that and just making it happen automatically.
BTW, is there a way to increase the elevation? Like filling a hole with dirt for example?
Right now, the only way to do it is via construction. You can build stone walls, for example, over an area to increase its elevation. Dirt kinda' semi-disappears following excavation, as another weird violation of underlying rules. It's an exception case I created, because NPCs spending so much time clearing mounds of dirt was killing productivity on the mining front. It's sorta' offensive that the dirt materials disappear magically, and it feels extremely game-y to me, but that's how it works, for now.
Edit: Also, I don't know if that's intended, but you can only download version _46 with the download link on the frontpage.
My bad. I need to fix this.
From: dennislp3 / AsgarusAnd what I'm really curious about: Are all the animals running around randomly generated or pre-defined?
Ohhhhhhhhhh, man! We've talked internally at great length about potential ways to implement real speciation in Outer Colony. Dennislp3 is exactly right that populations change their properties over time as selective pressures are exerted on them. It's so peripheral to core gameplay that most people would never notice it, but we've conducted experiments that have yielded some very, very cool results here. Most of the time in actual game worlds, creature populations are too sparse and small to properly evolve, and this is an extreme bummer to me. We intentionally keep creature population densities low to limit their impact on processing resources, but when I've set up worlds without humans and lots of creatures, just to see what would happen, you can see stat changes across populations over many generations.
In a lot of our tests, though, if a predator and prey species occupy the same environment, the predator group winds up reproducing to a point where its numbers become too large. They then hunt the prey species to extinction and die off themselves. We need better mechanics for things like hiding to better equip small numbers of prey to survive the collapse of predator populations and to rebound thereafter.
I could play with creature / ecosystem dynamics ad infinitum, and there's so, so, so much cool stuff we could do with proper speciation and truly random creature generation. I had to put it off to the side, though, because it's so peripheral to core gameplay, and even if I implemented all the wildest ideas we've come up with, 99% of users would never even notice it. Maybe someday I'll tackle these features more thoroughly, just because it'd be immensely fun to do so.
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Sorry this reply is so long, and I'm sorry if I missed replying to anyone. Hopefully this all makes sense, and I hope I can keep improving OC moving forward!
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Topic: Outer Colony (Read 71014 times)