There’s a lot in development at the moment, including:
- Asteroid field surrounding start location (pictured) – I like sneaking out through its protective barrier at the start of each play, but the hundredth time it got a little repetitive. I had to speed the command module up a little to compensate. I’d love to see more formations like this across the map, and expect to spend lots of time figuring out how to generate them.
- Ingame email – currently functional but ugly
- Paying for oxygen – right now it’s free, which means you can go a long way without touching the economy. I want to try this out and see how it goes.
- Proper death sequence – I’m still using the Nemesis/Narcissus/Eris sequence, however the ships you fly in Jameson are normal civilian craft so they shouldn’t explode quite so spectacularly.
- Placeholder Quest Zones – spaces in the map that you need to visit to finish the game
- Emergency Beacons… are how you find the quest zones
- Bugs – are few but annoying.
- In-game Instructions – are necessary because…
…I’m about to submit the CF series for the Freeplay Awards. It’s funny how much gets done a day or two before a deadline 
<3 Farbs
So Jameson is a civilian craft, huh? That explains why starbases would actually deal with it. In that case, if you’re still trying to work out a storyline, you could try something like this:
Some new captain has a ship that constantly explodes and wiping out sectors. They want nothing more than to get back home. Unfortunately, their ship has a tendency to teleport after exploding, and they don’t have a the space equivalent of a compass, so they have no idea where home is. With assistance from Captain Farbs, they have worked out an exploit that let’s them take control of any ship registered under the surname Jameson and give control to the player. Jameson’s ship knows where home is but doesn’t know where the hacker is. The player knows the ship they need to find and protect is giving off a distress signal on a certain frequency, which happens to be the frequency a lot of other people broadcast distress signals at, making it necessary that they check every distressed ship in the sector. The new captain has managed to turn their ship invisible, so anyone else who follows the distress call will (hopefully) assume it’s a problem with their radio.
Jameson is a little upset about this, but has agreed to guide the player and deal with starbases on their behalf in order to help the new captain not destroy the sector (though he’s not entirely sure he believes the new captain’s story). Also the new captain has threatened to remotely explode Jameson’s craft if he doesn’t. If the player chooses to help the various distressed ships and starbases they find, Jameson will become more compliant and friendly. If the player destroys them for parts, Jameson will get more and more unhappy with them, possibly threatening to activate his ship’s self-destruct himself.
There are lots of variations on what Jameson, the new captain, and the player would do when the two ships met. Depending on what happened earlier . . .
-Jameson would have worked out or found a way to destroy the new captain’s ship without causing an explosion, and would encourage the player to do so rather than helping it get home.
-The new captain would conclude that the player was too nice and/or incompetent to be trusted taking their ship back home, thank them for the coordinates to Jameson’s homeworld, and then remotely destroy their ship for spare parts.
-The new captain would conclude that the player was sufficiently nice and/or competent and/or cold-hearted to be trusted with both ships, and let them make the next move. The ships could be controlled individually (WASD for one, arrowkeys for the other, both would have to fire simultaneously) or the new captain’s command mod would be fused to the existing ship as just another module (albeit one that must not be destroyed under any circumstances). Or the new captain’s ship could be left at the nearest trustworthy space station, which would be outfitted with as many lasers as possible and left to defend it while the player and Jameson go back to inform Jameson’s homeworld.
Feel free to make use of any part of this, if any part of it is useful to you.
Already has been said, but the whole oxygen / working for people / starbases willing to talk now makes sense now that Jameson is revealed to be a normal person flying a ship.
I… how should i put this, strongly recommend the paying for oxy. IF it was free it would become more of a checkpoint for a time trial than an oxy refill station.
It’d be nice if you could pay a large one-time fee and then get free oxy forever at a couple stations, but mostly have to pay-as-you-go.
Emergency beacons for quests makes them feel urgent, and paying for oxygen adds a financial element to long trips. I like these developments. The others all make perfect sense, apart from in-game email; what are your plans for that?
Best of luck with the Freeplay Awards. The CF series is a very strong submission.
@Vaconcovat, @Kite – I’ll muck around with a few different systems and see what works best.
@ZS – Cheers! In-game email is just a way of communicating with the player. Right now I plan to use it for:
* Briefing the player at the start of each game
* Issuing quest objectives
* Debriefing the player at the end of each game
* Flavour (messages from passenger, messages from former passengers, spam)
@Kite – Thx for all the narrative suggestions by the way. Some inspiring stuff in there.
Spam. I like it. I honestly feel worried when you say ‘end’ of each game. Do you mean end as in the good old ‘splosion ending or some other means?
Thanks for the clarification on the in-game email. Propaganda from the symmetry cultists, perhaps?
Whatever you decide, I’m sure Jameson will be a worthy successor to Successor.