Yesterday I continued my quest to compound complexity, this time creating Captain Jameson’s bounty mechanic. Currently it just gives you credits for defeating designated ships, but over the next few days I plan to add LAW stations, bounty maps, and possibly even police vehicles. First however I need to add some player feedback, and for that I must resurrect Captain Clippy. What I need is a way to notify the player when they receive a bounty. I considered using the COM line at the bottom left of the screen, but chances are they’ll miss it. No, I need to put this message front and center.

Captain Clippy is a player feedback system I added to Captain Forever some time after launch. I realized that many new players weren’t reading the flight manual, HLP hud lines, or pause screen command reference, and that the only way to teach them to play was to spam instructions across the middle of the screen. I needed them to last for a minimum time (regardless of player clicking), and for fun I added a variable delay to simulate human response/typing time and the ability to refer to the player by name. Now it seems this system, named after the world’s least loved paperclip, would be perfect for passing messages from non-player characters. I’ll port it over today.

Meanwhile, Indie Kombat maintains pace. With two and a half weeks remaining I’ve built a surprisingly difficult mashup of Fishie Fishie and SYNSO: Squid Harder, and Rob has built… a slot machine? Or something? I’m really not sure.

<3 Farbs

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