Hunting Blix
Captain Impostor (Click for larger)
What’s like Captain Successor but faster, shootier, and in every way pew-pewier? It’s Captain Impostor!
This new episode in the Captain Forever series wraps up the Captain Successor story arc and experiments with an alternate construction mechanic. Forget the drudgery of module-by-module construction – now with a tap of the SHIFT key you can steal a nearby vessel’s entire configuration! Has your ship become damaged or uninteresting? Tap SHIFT again to discard it, then find something better to copy.
DISCLAIMER: The level of cloned modules is determined by Clone Power (CPW). Clone power is reclaimed from nearby command module destruction accidents and consumed through activation of the clone drive. It is recommended that the clone drive be used sparingly to maximize CPW.
So that’s it for Captain Forever, right? Of course not! I’m already planning the next episode. I expect to bring back construction and to add some larger game systems that span multiple playthroughs.
Supporters can play Captain Impostor RIGHT NOW, and non-supporters can consider it another reason to register.
<3 Farbs
JAAAAAAAY!
Heading over there RIGHT NOW!
nice, taking a bit to get used to the new system.
Very neat. Played it for a while now – surprised me when I went for another CS session
Im impressed.
YAY
please, for the love of god, mmorpg.
Hey, so I’m a supporter of the series, and I love all the games, but I have a quick question about the text in captimposter, anytime I read an info buoy or pause the game, all the text flashes and scrambles…its still…”readable” but its hard to look at. Anyone else having this problem? Any suggestions?
It’s supposed to do that.
Anyway, this game is definitely good, but I am absolutely terrible at it. I have yet to get my CPW past Delta level. Seems something always comes out of nowhere and forces me into cloning before I’m ready.
…I’ll play some more once my frustration wears off…
whats with enemies running away, so annoying when you almost have them taken care of then they go an zip away, not just like wandering away but more like a straight vector out of the game area.
Yaaaaaaay!
<3
“whats with enemies running away, so annoying when you almost have them taken care of then they go an zip away, not just like wandering away but more like a straight vector out of the game area.”
Yeah, that’s screwed me over on multiple occasions
At first I was like “where is my survivor package?” then I thought my “tail” was a weapon. Very very fun Mr. Farbs. And BoshFlimshaw, its a design feature. Its supposed to be scrambled and messed up, just like your ship.
Just tried Impostor, but on first impressions, I do not enjoy it anything like as much as previous versions. Control with the tail is awkward. The pre-designed ships tend to suck and control poorly (Often WAY too twitchy). I find as a result the difficulty in the game comes from the controls not the gameplay.
I am left wondering why you abandoned such a wonderful mechanic for something much less sophisticated?
Captain could be so much more. Personally I would have kept the original mechanic, but created a “net” that you could put pieces in. The net is an on-screen (Shootable) item so you have to place your gathered bits somewhere safe out of the fight. Then a mechanism like the tail to drag the net back to a “base”. At the base, you can build ships and store them, with the option of maybe sending them out as AI wingmen. This would allow you to scale the difficulty of fights more too.
THAT to me is the kind of direction I would like to see captain take. This would lend itself very well to multiplayer play I think. It would possibly be a route towards monetization also – you could allow subscribers to trade parts or maybe even have a parts shop (ie micropayments).
Imposter is a frustrating game that depends on primarily on luck, which is in exceedingly short supply. Ship designs often render the controls all but useless, and when you *finally* find a type worth cloning it is invariably compromised by the inability to balance any damage that renders it unmanageable. Aiming is near impossible due to the necessity of maintaining a zoomed out view (for survival) and vehicle handling. I’ve run up as far as Echo a couple of times only to find myself back at Alpha level pretty quickly.
Sorry, but this is NOT fun. Pretty, yes, but not fun. And even the prettiness is not without problems. As has been noted before, the fluttering text effect is highly annoying.
If you’re interested in feedback, I’d like to provide my perspective. Got a few things need sayin’.
1. Enemies are kamikaze insane. They have that habit of acting without fear or awareness. The player has to be careful and skilful, repeatedly changing configuration and adapting to every threat. Enemies just rush you and start firing. It’d be nice if they were just a little less mental.
2. Damages matter when you can’t be resourceful. If you lose balance, you cannot restore it without having the enemy destroy the modules that aren’t symmetrical. While the ability to re-arrange the modules would be nice, I’d settle for just the ability to disconnect them.
3. Aggressive enemies diminish strategy. One aspect of Forever/Successor’s appeal is that they won’t always attack you first. The pace allows you to either analyse your enemies or go in guns blazing. Now they’re psychopaths. It’s funny for a bit, but in terms of gameplay, you have no idea what you’re dealing with until it’s deconstructed half your ship. Added to the high consequence combat and these other issues, that’s a problem.
4. Stop. Running. Away.
5. Please stop firing enemies at me! It’s as if they’re being loaded into cannons from off-screen. I had a ship with 12 guns and no thrusters thrown into me, which then tore me a new one and reset the CM. Would have been less annoying if I hadn’t just spent the last hour getting to pink (level 7, I forget the word for it).
6. The cost of using your Clone Drive is restrictive. One of the things that works so well about the module design is that it offers a chance to play and experiment. There’s no cost for moving or changing modules apart from the possibility of being ambushed – which is a gameplay driven decision. The CD punishes you and limits your progress for needing to use it. I’m sure there’s a solution to this… can’t explain it just yet though.
7. OR! If you’re going to run away, give me a chance to chase you before you de-spawn and disappear into thin air.
It’s less to do with the individual flaws themselves and more to do with the product of those flaws. Increasing difficulty while decreasing player interaction, changing the mechanics to be more reliant on luck and less related to skill, it all makes the game more frustrating.
Other than that, the core mechanic is amazing. I love the idea of cloning a pre-baked ship and having to make do with whatever you get. It’s also very satisfying to see different gameplay mechanics built around a familiar concept. The subtle narrative stuff is gorgeously detailed as well… the little radio transmissions and the graphic style and the farbs.log, nice to see all that in full swing. I’ve had some really cool moments in this so far as well, being frantic as well as resourceful make for some awesome little vignettes. So, lots of fun, a bit more frustrating than the last two iterations, but a great deviation from the series nonetheless.
Whoa-ho-ho. Sweet. Amazing. Although, like people have been saying, I don’t like the running away, but still. Sweet.
Yeah, sorry Farbs but I have to chime in with some others here. While the gameplay seems faster and a bit smoother, more like a game of asteroids(which is good), everything else leaves me a bit cold. I honestly haven’t given the game much of a chance yet, but that’s part of the problem, I didn’t find my initial experience compelling enough to want to. The mechanic that made the first game fun and innovative is gone. Keep the faster, smoother play, but bring back the building.
I would rate this a 4/10. The previous two games are roughly 8/10.
Module-by-module construction was what made the game fun for me. Now that it is gone, I have to force myself to play. The ship is too difficult to control. I would like to have seen the game go in a direction like evilC describes. To me, Impostor is completely different than the first two and not in a good way. Sorry, I am sure you put quite a bit of work into this, but it simply didn’t turn out well.
I wish this was some kind of a joke, but alas, it isn’t April yet. However, with the name Impostor, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were just messing with us. If this is for real, I wish I would’ve spent my $20 on Mass Effect.
The ideas here are all great, but I just can’t dig it. Being unable to rebalance an unbalanced ship without almost completely destroying any progress you’ve made and the difficulty of finding a balanced ship, just ain’t diggin that dog.
I can’t wait til I get home and can try to play this. Even with the criticisms, a new Captain * game excites me. Hopefully all the game needs is a few adjustments to make it as enjoyable as the previous installments.
Wow, some pretty mixed reactions here.
I think I mentioned it before but I’ll say it again here:
This is an experimental diversion from the core gameplay. It is not indicative of the design for future episodes. Construction and less frantic flight/combat will return.
Oh hey – has anyone beaten it yet?
Got to Juliet and got killed by a single bomb.
Awesome! I still suck, but even with no building-block mechanic I’m having fun. Frustrated, but having fun.
Keep up the good work.
I’ve only had time for 3 attempts so far but I’m really enjoying it. The focus and pacing is vastly different to the first ones whilst still having the same underlying theme of “salvaging” (constantly trying to maximise incoming resource while minimising outgoing resource). In the original pair you “salvage” by maximising quality and number of components gained to components lost, primarily by focusing fire on the enemies command module. In impostor however you advance by killing ships and cloning superior ships. This shifts the focus to two tasks killing as many ships as possible before needing to re-clone and finding a ship worthy of cloning. Worth is measured by how many enemy ships you will be able to kill with the ship based on your current upgrade level.
This has several repercussions, the game is less about constructing the perfect ship (limited by available parts) and more about responding to enemies by either destroying them, fleeing or cloning, whilst taking into account your current ships capacities. This leads to what feels like an ever accelerating pace. Although it starts off slow as you take down a more advanced ships several more powerful ships appear forcing you too quickly turn their own firepower against them (cloning avoiding them while you form and then returning to destroy them) so on and so forth.
Combat is now less about perfect aiming to carefully destroying the command module (resulting in tactics like small ship sneaking up on behemoth’s module) and more about quickly eliminating the enemy as safely as possible. This allows the combat to be a little more reckless and so more fast paced as it’s now in your best interest to take out the enemies most dangerous weapons first before moving in for the kill.
I think once people come to grips with the changes and the pace they will find the game quite enjoyable though perhaps for different reasons than the previous two.
I do have two concerns though,
1. The round non accelerating thrusters (the ones that let you move up, down left and right equally) allows ships to fly straight through one another. I assume this is due mostly to the increased velocity of all the thrusters interacting with the collision detection code in an undesirable fashion.
2. I find my self often accidentally ejecting my newly acquired clone due to pressing shift multiple times in quick succession. This could just require me to train myself to stop doing this but perhaps a cool down on ejecting a clone after cloning could aid in reducing this from happening.
Anyway cheers heaps for this exciting new take on the series.
Heh just watched the trailer, it capture some of the changes very well.
So yea, I actually find this one to be the most balanced, and If you’re willing to look for a little while, you can usually find a perfectly appropriate ship (not by chance), just make sure its not firing in your direction when you snatch it..
There is one DEFINITE GLITCH: when you fly into another ship going a moderate speed, you can get stuck INSIDE the solid blocks (not just stuck in spaces between modules) of the ship you flew into. It would be cool if that was fixed. It also seems like you can just stick to other ships as if you were merging or something, donno if thats supposed to happen or not..anyway love you farbs and I will continue having my way with your captains…
You cannot add parts to your ship.
See that gun floating in space? Yeah, the one from that huge ship you just spent a few minutes trying to kill. Well, you can certainly click on it and view the stats. However, sadly, you cannot pick up your reward and add it to your own ship. You just have to stick with your little guns until you can find a ship to clone. Once you find a ship, be prepared to clone it quick, because they tend to fly away faster than you can keep up. Oh, you caught up? Well, have fun attempting to fly your newly-cloned ship, as about half of the ships you’ll see are not symmetrical. You know what happens when you used to be able to add multiple boosters to one side of you ship… that’s right, you pretty much travel in circles. And, did I mention that you can’t move the parts around on your own ship? Yep, that means no more translational kinematics for you. Oh, so you got tired of traveling in circles and found another ship to clone that is perfectly symmetrical? That would be nice, except…you had to use your clone a second time, so you’ve just depleted the clone power that you spent the last 10 minutes building up by killing Alpha and Bravo level enemies. Repeat what you just did all over again, and then repeat again, and again, and again…
Delta is as far as I’ve gotten, and I get too frustrated to continue.
One more thing. Your unequipped ship cannot shoot. You can’t shoot until after you clone a ship that has guns.
On the plus side, the changes you have implemented are aesthetically pleasing.
After my criticism, I still feel that $20 is very fair despite what I said earlier. I am just eagerly awaiting the day that construction returns.
i have to admit that I am disappointed in impostor, and sadly so. I was really confused at what you were going for here. I don’t want to play a game that is 90% trying to fly an unbalanced ship, and 10% combat (i mean randomly firing and hoping you hit something). The reason why CF is so great is because you have control, and any frustration you may have is rewarded by being able to learn and make progress over time, which gives it great replay value.
1. make the AIs, parts, stations, and kinds of ships more equally distributed across a game so that there isn’t an oversaturation of a certain type of ship or weapon or engine
2. put a cloning drive component/girder/tail in captain successor **as one of many strategic choices** which is the key to the greatness of CF, personalization of ship as strategy. Perhaps it could be earned through a points system of some kind, like there is in impostor, or maybe you can clone allies or spawn parts based on how many kills you have.
3. make sure that when you are cloning the parts do not get blown up on the way to your ship,
4. come up with some new weapons and girder shapes (maybe a stun ray and a gatling gun that has a burst and then a reload time)
5. give the kilo girders the graphics of successor, make it so that you cannot be destroyed by the weapons that you fire yourself (that goes for missiles, torpedoes, and if your guns are pointed at your own ship parts, they should not fire)
6. make it possible to have infinite levels of ship strength
7. cores should always have a base weapon (even the enemies’)
8. and make it an mmo. Please. You have no idea the opportunity you are missing here.
This game series has so much potential. Please take these points as constructive criticism…i love the concept, and I just hope you take some of these suggestions to heart.
edit…make kilo girders the graphics of *forever*
One other problem I just noticed, all of the thrusters have had their speed upgraded however the none of the projectiles have. This makes missiles and photon torpedo thingies extremely hard to use as you’ll either hit yourself with them or fire them at an enemy that can easily outmaneuver them. This is’nt so much of an issue for lazers as they already travel at a very high speed.
Guys, honestly, every one is just saying make successor/forever again. Also that this is completely different.. DUH of course its different its a different game. its not called Captain Forever 2. Not to say there arent aspects that i dont like cough unbalencedships cough, but still, Its exactly what he said he was gonna make “Twitchy fragfest”.. if you dont like it dont play it lol.. its not like its the last captain game ever lol.
Andrew I don’t think anyone is spergin out, cept for maybe brian
Believe me, I would LOVE to make a CF MMO. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make this happen, and was even talking to a publisher about it for a while. The unfortunate truth though is that there is no magical MMO switch. An MMO may look like any other game, but there’s a HUGE amount of work that goes on in the background to make it work. That said, it is my dream that one day we could all Captain… Together.
RE: MMOs.
I do not believe that we need a full blown “MMO”, what we need is *persistence of character* and *multiplayer*.
Persistence – as I described before, you have a net, you can play CF-style as normal, but after fights you can put spare blocks in the net and drag it back to base.
When in base, you are out of game world. You can design ships etc. When you log off in base, it remembers what blocks you have.
Multiplayer – 1v1 will do to start. Each side has a points limit (Points let you bring blocks into the match). Ala mechwarrior, if you use less “tonnage” (blocks) and still win, you get a bonus. Maybe allow AI wingmen to be brought in from pre-made ships you have in your inventory.
Basically what I am getting at is don’t think WoW when people say “MMO”, think Guild Wars or Global Agenda – persistant characters with premade deathmatch arenas.
This could certainly be done in stages – get the persistance in PvE working, then think about allowing premade PvP matches.
an MMO sounds like the sexiest of all possible options
Hey, Farbs, just wanted to say that I really support you trying to experiment with the game design. Once there’s a status quo, people will have certain expectations, as we can see in this thread. I think it’s wonderful and admirable that you have the guts to do what you want rather than what everyone else wants. To me, that is the most important thing when creating anything.
So, keep doing what you’re doing, Farbs, you at least have my support. :3
After playing a bit more I am starting to enjoy Captain Impostor, however I still feel that the controls are often way over-responsive, which is doubly frustrating when I’m just flying the command module in search of a good ship to clone (it can be VERY difficult to even tell what direction I’m pointing with the camera zoomed out, and I almost always have it zoomed all the way out).
So I like this little experiment, but I do wish there was some sort of visual indicator of the direction your CM is pointing (so when the tail attaches itself to other ships I still know where I’m going) and also that the boosters were tweaked so you can make finer adjustments. Both of these things have caused me to die more than once now.
Even after playing all these games I still have no idea what the ‘C’ key does – projection or something? :S
Awesome game, I’m not going to complain, I enjoyed the fast paced gameplay, going form something to nothing then back to something so quickly is exciting although people have expressed their concerns and you know them. I made it to the last level (White) as far as I know hahaha It was quite enjoyable though very very difficult. Multiplayer is my main issue, a map/grid system, personal bases, team bases, a parts compound, and upgrade center for spending those points on ships you enjoy, Allied Spacestations!!! would be sick. If this si where you get ideas please let me knwo cause I would love to see this game get a full dev team behind it
Hardparty – In CF “Remote Projection” caused an image of the reflection of a pilot to appear on the screen. Just graphical ceye candy – no use to it…
Will, I think the C key is meant for uploading your ship layout to the Internet… I think it’s disabled in this version. I don’t know why you’d want to do that anyway.
7th time I’ve gotten to Indigo or Juliet and been killed by an enemy that was thrown from off-screen into my path. It’s a one-hit kill by that stage, it’s as if the game has come down and said “Nope, you’re not going any further. BAM.”
If you fix anything, PLEASE make it that.
A QUICK TIP FOR THOSE HAVING TROUBLE CONTROLLING THE CM:
Click on it, bring up the information dialogue, it’s gives you a line pointing in the direction the CM is facing. Same thing with the guns; acts like a makeshift crosshair.
Damn, double fail. Got both the person wrong and the key.
!!!SPOILER!!!
Just killed the Narcissus. Is that the end?
Farbs Edit: Added spoiler warning.
Yup. Gratz!
The C key is for when you have a webcam, projects your face onto the screen.
Yea, I’m curious if you actually implement anything suggested on these forums? or if the completed game is final? When you pass a ship in clone mode, even if you know where you are facing, the ships pull on you makes it REALLY difficult to see where you’re going. NOTE: I don’t mind at all that there’s a gravity physic being applied, the problem is that the entire ship+tail turn white. I feel like it would be a huge improvement, just to make the tail glow and attach when in range. In its current state, when you get pulled in, it doesn’t feel like “Oh no I’m being pulled in, I better maneuver this way” (which can be that much more satisfying when you do escape) but much more like “Oh God, I can’t even see where I’m pointing, this just sucks.” If the ship turning white is meant as a challenge, it seems undeveloped. I would even prefer to have the gravity off the enemy ships be stronger and pull you in even more as long as I could see where my ship is going, Ugly Duck even suggests having the info dialogue up to bypass the problem. Again, I don’t wish to change anything vital to the experience, just to fix a real problem instead of forcing us to open an info box for a makeshift crosshair. Also, can you address the sticky/merge/stuck inside solid blocks glitch I mentioned above (if its not a glitch I would really like to know, and if it is, would you be able to fix it) it just really doesn’t feel like this was a purposefully implemented feature, unlike the pause screen being scrambled which, as Chris pointed out to me, is on purpose.
I do sometimes take suggestions, yeah. This is especially true when people find bugs, but in the past it has also resulted in things like the resizeable game window, the replacement export system, default-off webcam mode, and the removal of Captain Successor’s clone ships from Captain Impostor (unless you count the player ship).
The tail effect is purely graphical and has no effect on physics. I agree it can be a little disorienting though. I’ve been trying to think of a workaround that doesn’t completely destroy the aesthetics, but so far no luck.
The intersection bug is a known issue, largely caused by the way translocators and transrotators work. They effectively sidestep the physics engine, moving the ship at fixed speeds without applying force or even modifying velocity. box2d simply isn’t built for this kind of thing. There’s an X-Files episode where a lizard and a rock exist in the same space and time, effectively fused together, as a side-effect of a UFO propulsion system. I figure this is using similar technology.
Okay, gtk. Also in terms of finding a proper a aesthetic fix, I think it could be a clear fade. As it stands the tip of the tail is sparking and white when in clone mode, then when attached to a ship the whole tail+the ship part turn the same shade. So instead of that, have the non-attached mode stay the same, and then when a ship attaches, the white extends up from the bottom of the tail (much like it does now) only it fades the whole way until the ship head is only lightly tinted white. The non-white part of this fade could simply be the color of the tail before clone mode (which helps to tell you what power/color ship you will clone into anyway)
Sorry If I sound presumptuous, I just honestly think that would look good and at the same time maintain visibility and directional conclusiveness.