Unloading at a refinery

If you’d like to mine some asteroids – and I can’t think why you possibly wouldn’t – you can do so right now. That is, you can do so right now if you’re a captain forever supporter. If you aren’t, you can rectify that right now also!

<3 Farbs

Boom!

Boom indeed! For years people have asked me to add asteroid mining, and for years I’ve thought yes, that would be great, as soon as I finish the critical features of the game. First I wanted to finish alpha 0.6, wherein players can explore a vast network of sectors rather than the one or two I’ve been releasing with each update so far.

While planning 0.6 I read a book on quest narratives, and realized the value of part of the archetypal hero’s journey – the return home. The way I see it, the point is to show the hero’s metamorphosis by contrasting how they interact with their original environment before their quest with how they interact with it afterward. It also bookends the story nicely, much like a melody returning to the root note or a sitcom episode ending with a reference to the first joke. So, now 0.6 will end with a return to the origin station. Seems good.

The trouble is, by the time the player returns to the origin station their ship is substantially larger, and probably won’t fit back through the cracks and crevices of the first asteroid belt (*cough* threshold *cough*).

So I added mining.

<3
Farbs

I’m holding a sale!

The perceived value of indie games has dropped, so I’m trialling a lower price point. For a limited time only, Captain Forever supporter access is discounted from $20 to a mere $9. That’s a saving of 55%, and a perceived difference of an entire order of magnitude! This is an as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, so as soon as income (sales x price) drops below regular levels the sale will end. If the games sell well enough then the sale could go on indefinitely, but it could also end tomorrow. Buy now or you might miss out!

If you’re already a Captain Forever supporter then you’re a paragon of humanity, a model of perfection to which we all aspire. You’re probably not interested in the $9 as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, unless you’re one of the incredible few who asked for a Gifting mechanism. I’ve added gifting to the payment system, so now you can purchase supporter accounts for family and friends, each at the probably-temporarily low price of $9.

The third barrel in today’s announcement holds a bullet marked 0.5. I’ve just released the latest build of Captain Jameson – the massive RPGish successor to Captain Forever I envisaged when I first started the CF project. This build smoothes out a hundred rough edges, eases the first step in the difficulty curve, adds another two ship modules, and opens up three new sectors of varying size for you to explore. If you’re already a supporter then you can play it right now, otherwise, you know what to do.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

<3
Farbs

Remember this? I do!

Three years ago I released ROM CHECK FAIL, and it’s haunted me for three years since. Not only is it a fantastic game and debatably the high point of my career, it’s also an idea crying out for further exploration, and a litigation timebomb. I want to do more with it, but I also want to retain ownership of the shirt on my back, the pants I sometimes wear, and the house they all live in. After much ponderance I’ve decided to set the idea free. I don’t mean free as in beer, since it’s freeware already. I mean free as in Free Software Foundation.

Here, download the source code for ROM CHECK FAIL.

To use it simply grab the game from my Games page, install it, extract the source file into game’s install directory, and edit away. You don’t need to compile it or anything, any changes you make to the game source file should be detected and picked up automatically the next time you run the game.

I should warn you – this code be dragons. I wrote ROM CHECK FAIL over two and a bit weeks outside my fulltime job, so it really was just slapped together. Lowlights of particular note are my own atan2 function (because somehow I’d never discovered atan2), several virtual subclasses – and I use the word “virtual” to mean I never bothered to write the superclass, collision detection that works more often than I’d expect but less often than I’d like, repeatedly loading images from disk because it involved less typing, and the fact that the entire source code for the game resides in a single file. I’m so proud. If you’re looking for sample code, either to help you learn to make games or to evaluate my abilities as a programmer, then please, please look elsewhere.

I think I’m all out of disclaimers, and all out of excuses for lingering. Please take this file somewhere crazy. Be awesome, then tell me all about it.

Goodbye ROM CHECK FAIL. Have a good life.

<3 Farbs

Clickage invokes zoomage

In the two months since my last post I have released Captain Jameson 0.4, taken a holiday, ported most of Captain Foraxian to XBLIG, abandoned Foraxian XBLIG because ports of games in unpopular genres and unpopular styles are, unsurprisingly, unpopular, and devised a wonderful plan for Captain Jameson 0.6. Oh, and I’ve been working on 0.5, which is the subject of this post.

Captain Jameson Alpha build 0.5, to use its proper title, is not a major milestone. There are no sweeping design changes and there are no amazing additional features. Instead, 0.5 contains all the little adjustments, tweaks, and bugfixes that I’ve been putting off for the past year. It won’t make the game substantially different, but it should make it substantially better. Of course I couldn’t help making a few visual adjustments, as illustrated by this screenshot. Items of note are:

Snipe laser targetting
These show where a snipe laser will fire, and make the module feel a lot more snipey. It’s surprisingly fun to use.

New blurst shield visuals
The original blurst shield (in Captain Forever) was an ultra-rare component. Very few people ever saw one, so I didn’t think much about its appearance. Now blurst shields are relatively common, so the bizzare vibrating sausage graphic has disturbed many a player’s vision. In response to forumite prompting I’ve redesigned it.

New mouse cursor
I may still fiddle with this, but so far I like it. The crosshair is oriented in the same way as the player’s ship, which makes some sense when you then use this cursor to attach modules.

CJ0.5 is still some way off, but for now you can still play 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, and even 0.1 if you’re particularly sentimental or masochistic.

Enjoy!
<3 Farbs

Also: New shields! (Capt Jameson 0.4)

Vaconcovat, who you may know as the administrator of a rather successful Captain Forever forum, is running a fan video contest. If you create a 1 minute Captain Forever/Successor/Impostor/Jameson related/themed/inspired video that garners the most views, you’ll win three supporter memberships as gifts for friends/family/pets, and possibly have your name appear in Captain Jameson*.

Sounds great, huh? Check here for more details.

Thank you for promoting my games sharing your creative and artistic vision with the world.

<3 Farbs

* Maybe some stations will be named after you? Or perhaps some pilots? I really haven’t figured out the details yet. Most likely I’ll just talk with the winner and we’ll try to figure something out.

Since last I wrote I’ve released two new builds of Captain Jameson, each more incredible than the last. If you want to read the fascinating details and play the new builds then click here, otherwise you’ll have to trust me when I say that the game is coming along great. The game is coming along great.

The forums are also doing well, with Vaconcovat’s board swelling to 40 members and 270 posts. The efforts to map the Jameson universe are utterly spectacular, and well worth a peek if you’re having trouble finding your way around.

With 0.3 out I’m now considering what to do for version 0.4. Suggestions?

A deal’s a deal! This afternoon three forums and a reddit subforum all came online. Please check them out, register for any you like, and join in the conversation. If you’re wondering what to talk about, why not start with the Captain Jameson Alpha? I’d love to hear about bugs, suggestions, and stories from the final frontier. All players should find themselves exploring the same map, so it might be helpful to start sharing route tips and mapping data. If you get stuck in the game it might also be a good place to ask for help.

Since Jameson is still in alpha I wasn’t comfortable posting it in the main site menu, but you can find it tucked away in the community page as CJALPHA.BAT.

Enjoy!

<3 Farbs

Hi folks,

I have a proposition for you. I hope you like it, because otherwise I’ll feel like a bit of goose. Here’s the deal:

If you¹ create a Captain Forever forum², I’ll release³ the Captain Jameson alpha⁴.

• ¹By “you” I mean the community. Anyone. Possibly several people. Ideally multiple forums will emerge. If you want to build a forum then don’t let the efforts of others disuade you!
• ²The forum must be dedicated to or at least heavily feature the Captain Forever games. This would be a place for players to find release notes and announcements, trade mapping and exploration notes, post feedback about the games, and generally hang out.
• ³The alpha build will be released for play by all Captain Forever supporters, ideally within 24 hours of me being notified about the first forum, but possibly up to a week later if I encounter unforseen technical disasters.
• ⁴The alpha is an incomplete version of the game Captain Jameson. This means that it may be missing some features of and contain more bugs than the final version. You will have the opportunity to play the game before it is complete, and help fine-tune it. I still plan to finish and release the game, regardless of the presence of an alpha build.

I’m very excited about sharing this game with you, but I really need there to be somewhere for everyone to discuss it first. I hope someone out there can summon up the pony to pony up and get this pony (forum) on the road.

<3
Farbs

As promised last post, I’ve been building a replacement menu system for Captain Jameson. I’m not finished yet, but I think it already communicates its use and evokes both the NASA MEDS systems and the mainframe and BBS interfaces of times gone by. I wasn’t actually online during the BBS era but I’ve had a blast learning about figlets and sysops and FBI raids. Hopefully I’ll sneak some of this into the gameworld.

I’m nearly ready to resume testing on squishy humans, which is lucky since the PAX10 deadline is only a few weeks away. Hopefully these tests will see more players break through the shell (pun intended) and into the game.

In other news I’ve created a @CaptainForever twitter account for 280-byte-sized Captain Forever updates. This blog will remain as active as ever, but the twitter account might see a few updates too.

What do you think of the new menu?

<3 Farbs