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[Schilcote]

Update is uploading now. Information is (or will be, once it's done uploading) on the GameTorpedo page.

[Orb]

Hm. I've tried multible times to download, and every time it says it can't find the "page". I've tried on two differant browsers and even signed up for the website. I can't think of anything relevent that might be causing this.

[Schilcote]

Hm. I've tried multible times to download, and every time it says it can't find the "page". I've tried on two differant browsers and even signed up for the website. I can't think of anything relevent that might be causing this.

Downloads fine for me.

[a1s]

Yes, the game downloads for me too...
edit: however I can't start it- there is no error it justs starts and never shows any picture (I can still see it running in task manager).

Generally, people are all like “Here is a vomit of features I want but I have no programming ability! Someone make it!” whereas you are saying “Here is my programming ability, someone tell me features they want”. I am not really saying it is bad, just surprising.

Just to clarify: what you are doing- writing an alpha and looking for feedback- is the right* way to do it. People just tend to not do it like that.

__________________
*a bit more fore-planing would be better, but that's just nitpicking.

[forsaken1111]

Just to clarify: what you are doing- writing an alpha and looking for feedback- is the right* way to do it. People just tend to not do it like that.

I couldn't agree more.

[evanvolker]

I gave this game a go and I have to say its very charming. I couldn't figure out the trading system however. I couldn't find information on the cost of the items, the amount of space they'd take up in my cargohold, or how much space was actually in my cargohold. I managed to buy 10 units of food, fly to some empty systems, win a fight with some pirates and got some coinage for a bounty, beam down to a planet and fail some riddle-like thing, and die horribly on my way to the next planet to some mobs. Combat is do-able, but clunky, and I didn't see any way to heal your ship or upgrade to a less getting-your-ass-whooped ship.

Lemme know your thoughts on this, and maybe some things I missed/didn't figure out.

[Schilcote]

I gave this game a go and I have to say its very charming. I couldn't figure out the trading system however. I couldn't find information on the cost of the items, the amount of space they'd take up in my cargohold, or how much space was actually in my cargohold. I managed to buy 10 units of food, fly to some empty systems, win a fight with some pirates and got some coinage for a bounty, beam down to a planet and fail some riddle-like thing, and die horribly on my way to the next planet to some mobs. Combat is do-able, but clunky, and I didn't see any way to heal your ship or upgrade to a less getting-your-ass-whooped ship.

Lemme know your thoughts on this, and maybe some things I missed/didn't figure out.

When you select the trading screen it gives you a list of what you can buy and what's in your inventory, you must have missed that somehow.

You can only upgrade/heal on planets that are TLevel 5 or higher, you'll notice that they have a [S ]hip Services option in the main menu. That's where you go to repair and upgrade your ship. It costs less on higher TLevel planets. You can find out the planets TLevel by selecting the [I ]nformation option in the planet menu.

You'll generally want to run [C]argo [M]issions in the beginning, they pay well for little effort and they're a good way to map the local galaxy so that you can get back to civilzation fast when your ship is hurt. You should also try raising your captain's engineering skill, so that you can do field repairs.

[yamo]

have not yet played the game but i'll tell you what i miss in most games like this...

a living universe/economy.  I like to feel that things are happening that i need to adjust to.  I'm usually a miner/trader type so i like the economy to make sense in some semi transparent way.

resource production, manufacturing, building...

Turn based combat is much better than real time for me-no thumbs.  I loved the hex combat in the Space Rangers games.  That in 3d would be heaven.

Adjustable font size...yamo is both old and thumbless.

[forsaken1111]

I'd love to be able to hire NPC crews or automated cargo drones to carry my cargo around as well.

[Schilcote]

I'd love to be able to hire NPC crews or automated cargo drones to carry my cargo around as well.

Uhh... you can hire NPCs as crewmembers, unless you mean NPC ships...

Once I implement NPC ships, hiring them will come naturally. Cargo drones... Hmm... They're an interesting idea, but what exactly would they accomplish?

[forsaken1111]

I'd love to be able to hire NPC crews or automated cargo drones to carry my cargo around as well.

Uhh... you can hire NPCs as crewmembers, unless you mean NPC ships...

Once I implement NPC ships, hiring them will come naturally. Cargo drones... Hmm... They're an interesting idea, but what exactly would they accomplish?

Yes I meant NPC crew in other ships. Cargo drones could run pre-set routes for you or simply follow you around carrying some cargo beyond what your ship could carry normally.

Also later on when we can start building things like space stations, cargo drones could be useful for large-scale delivery of materials. You could program a fleet of 30 drones to go out to the nearest 30 planets and buy all Space Metal of less than X credits per unit or whatever so you can use the metal on construction. Saves you personally going to 30 planets.

[Schilcote]

I'd love to be able to hire NPC crews or automated cargo drones to carry my cargo around as well.

Uhh... you can hire NPCs as crewmembers, unless you mean NPC ships...

Once I implement NPC ships, hiring them will come naturally. Cargo drones... Hmm... They're an interesting idea, but what exactly would they accomplish?

Yes I meant NPC crew in other ships. Cargo drones could run pre-set routes for you or simply follow you around carrying some cargo beyond what your ship could carry normally.

Drones that run cargo for you might be interesting (they'd be expensive, and you could only run them short distances so that they don't get attacked by pirates), but extra storage seems redundant. Is 100 slots not enough?

EDIT:

That last point sounds like a very good idea, I'll keep that in mind.

Plus there's a whole lot of interesting potential for those things in a sandbox game. You could ruin your enemies economy by completely devaluing/buying up all their metal.

EDIT:

Lemme just ask you all, out of all the features I've talked about, what would you like to see right now? I'm thinking more complex economies right now, it's probably the easiest out of all the major features I've discussed so far.

[forsaken1111]

When I play these games I tend to find an underdeveloped corner of the galaxy and 'claim' it, using my wealth to build up my own infrastructure and economy there. I build from the ground up, mining my own materials and establishing colonies for factories and workers to build everything myself. I want to be able to do that.

Like if I could run missions for a while to save up money for an automated mining station, or even a manned mining facility which would then output ore that I could run back to civilization to sell. Later on I could buy a cargo drone or crewed vessel to run that ore for me and use the profits garnered to expand my operations. Refining fuel from hydrogen nebulae, skimming gas giant's atmospheres for exotic gasses... etc.

[Schilcote]

That wouldn't be terribly hard.

Most of the time, the more existing code I have to modify, the harder it is to implement something. Code to build space stations wouldn't interact with any existing code at all (with the possible exception of the navigation controls), so it shouldn't be too hard at all.  And with GameScript, you could even code your own sort of station.

Making colonies on planets will be slightly harder, but I have a few stubs on the planet code that should make things a little easier. I can definitely add a "Survey/Mine" option to the Away Team menu.

[forsaken1111]

An essential part of these sandbox games is enabling the player to (eventually, and with sufficient work) do anything that the NPC's can do. If you plan to go that route, you may want to keep it in mind as you code to avoid large rewrites later. A space station shouldn't be a special case, just a stationary object in space. Ships can dock to it because it has a docking bay, and if I build a ship with a docking bay it should be able to accept other ships for docking. I don't know if you plan to get into customized ship entities but that would be awesome as well.

Basically, as few things as possible should be 'special cases' which are hardcoded to act a specific way. Most things should be mutable and handled by the engine, which allows the player to impact the world and see the effect of his actions at a very deep level.