Apologies for the mic – it was supposed to sound space-radio-transmissiony, but got a little garbled in the process. What do people think – do you want more of these, or would you rather I went back to regular ol’ blogging?
<3 Farbs
Apologies for the mic – it was supposed to sound space-radio-transmissiony, but got a little garbled in the process. What do people think – do you want more of these, or would you rather I went back to regular ol’ blogging?
<3 Farbs
looking good. i was hoping that you would end up having some type of auto complete for the names with all that typing.
so if you end up liking the game play with dropping people off at the stations are you going to give them some kind of neat light up sequence with the girders flickering on like a fluorescent light? that would be cool.
is there a possibility of getting limited function out of a station if you happen to not have a passenger with you to pop in as an admin? also whats the game plan for picking up passengers? are you going to have it so certain stations “breed” certain admins, like oxy stations making oxy station admins and such? maybe have colony stations with a good mix of people for different uses.
hmm. in addition to my last paragraph there what about making it so any person can run a station but at a reduced benefit like lower oxy production or less info on nav. then you can put in specialized admins that can increase the effectiveness of the station, leaving constant room for improvement. this might give an additional layer of strategy, like letting a playing put a more efficient oxy admin at the edge of their explored territory allowing them to get more oxy out of the station ( higher production rate for more frequent fillups)so they can explore faster and further. also like oxy a more experienced nav admin could locate more stations for you or give you more accurate maps.
Love the idea of the video dev-logs. It’s nice to have a face (well, voice) to put with the game. Good also because it gives us all a little in-motion sneak-peek into how it’s all shaping up.
Looking forward to seeing this one out. I’m going to have to catch up now and get my hands on the previous episodes (and some spare time).
like the videos. Also, something that occurred to me- can you get oxygen tanks? like as extra parts, you attach them and they allow you to hold more oxy? or can you get extra computer expansions? like extra memory, that allows you to save the maps from those nav stations?
I enjoyed the video, it was nice seeing some gameplay. I don’t think it’d be good for every blog post though. I imagine it takes much more time to get a video together than to write a blog post, so I’d save video logs till you have a bunch of new features you want to show off in action, and blog in text in between those video logs about what you’re up to and adding to the game.
Ahhhh… Im having troubles with the video. If you could, have a video and a small blog post, because i found it hard to hear you sometimes.
Also, with the terminal, like ryan said you could have some sort of memory of commands previously entered. This would make repeated actions a lot easier, and can prevent annoying typos. Also, how do we know how to use the terminal? Do we get a little blurg on how to use it, or is it for us to figure out ourselves? It seems a very important part of gameplay and i sure hope you teach the player how to use it beforehand.
Being a huge fan of the forever series, i have had many ideas for modules, and i must say i like the idea of oxy tanks that either decrease oxy depletion, or increase capacity.
well what i was saying was i was happy hes done what he has for the terminal. you only have to type part of the name and it auto completes on return. i hope you add in pushing “up” to bring up previously entered commands like in most game consoles and windows cmd
I love the video dev blogs, keep em!
Also really like the terminal bit. Getting more and more excited for this every new post!
What about having up/down insert one of the possible commands (help/telnet…) if you have a blank command line?
That was fantastic! I loved the background music. I hope that’s ingame.
@ryan – Passenger specialities are definitely on my mind. I figured I’d block a bit more of the game in before getting to that level of detail though. Thx for the ideas.
@Ribbonwing – Oxy tanks would be great, but they’d also give you a huge advantage. If I add them they’ll probably either be very rare or have only a minor effect. Or both. Or heck, maybe they’ll just be really heavy. Not sure yet.
@Vaconcovat – Yeah, I’ll have to add some basic help systems. I’ll probably write up a new flight manual too.
@robolee – I was thinking about letting you scroll through previous commands (like in a normal terminal window), but it’s pretty rare you’ll want to repeat commands in CJ. I like your idea better. If time permits I might play around with an autocomplete system instead, so you could type “T “, which would become “TELNET “, then “M” and hit enter, which would autocomplete to and execute “TELNET OXY.MIKE.SMITH.ORG”.
Gah – there’s so much I want to do!
Looking great! This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped would come out of this series when I bought the game!
looks beautiful. For the oxy tanks, you could have them be set up so that they don’t function if they’re at all damaged. Also, would it be possible to set it up so that girders auto-weld to all other girders next to them? This would make large ships slightly more useful, in that they wouldn’t fall apart so easily. oh, and it might be good to have the different parts be slightly less linear in power level.
just make oxy tank explode and destroy anything their attached and then some when they break. that will make it a tough decision to use them or not.
Ever given any thought to an online multiplayer version of captain forever? That might be the easiest way to bring the series to a larger audience, especially if you could port it to XBL or PSN. When you throw multiplayer into the mix, you get all sorts of new options ot expand gameplay. Just throwing out ideas, but you could do some simple last-man-standing style match where players (maybe 6 max) would all scrounge for parts off of AI players while trying to take out their competitors, or you could maybe do something like captain impostor tag, where one player plays as capt. impostor, is the only player who is able to score points, and is hunted down by the other players who will then become him upon dedstroying his command module.
It just seems like such a game would lend itself so well to multiplayer. Has the idea ever crossed your mind, or would such an attempt be unrealistically expensive/time consiming?
I have to agree with ross z. I can see a multiplayer captain forever game. maybe not now, not even in a few years… but eventually you’re gonna have to do it, because you know its such an amazing idea, Farbs.
again great work Farbs keep it up!
Hey Farbs, my vote would be to switch between the two styles, nice to have regualar blog posts broken up with these visual feasts.
MP would be sweet. Heavy oxy tanks would be sweet. Telnet interface is cool, and makes me feel old.
This looks like it’s shaping up to be really good. I love the way you’re building on arena/arcade style by adding the more expansive, objective driven elements.
Actually, my mate and I were talking about the original Captain Forever the other day and, well I’m sure you’d get this all the time, but have you ever considered developing a Captain …. game as an MMO? ‘Cause if you did, I’d probably play it nonstop.
Haha, yes I agree, a CF MMO could be amazing. I think about it occasionally, and it’s something I’d very much like to get to in the future, but I can’t see how to get there just yet.
weighing in on the oxy tank subject, I feel the risks are clear… Carting around that much extra oxygen can be useful, if heavy… However the downside doesn’t have to be anything really complex: Being stranded a long way from any kind of breathable atmosphere after some boot/jacker takes out your oxy supply tanks is downside enough.
Woe to the long range explorer who suddenly find himself with a lot less to breath, and a long long way to go for a refill.
CF MMO would be the best thing ever.
Also, I think that oxy tanks should just be really heavy and drain a lot faster when damaged,
so unless you have something to cover it (a shield, other component), it wont work for too long.
Even as a heavy command line user, I have mixed feeling about the ingame terminal. It seems like a lot of the time you’ll simply want to telnet to the nearest station.
That was awesome, especially for those of us who are too lazy to find out what this is all about day by day.
Thank you!!
Farb, I have a suggestion for the auto-complete part:
DOS uses tab, ie C:\W[tab] becomes C:\Windows or etc, but since you already have tab to open/close the command window, I think it’d be a good idea to use space.
You would type a space after the T for example:
“T[space]” makes it into “TELNET ” for you to type the rest.
Also, some other command prompt things http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/07/stupid-command-prompt-tricks.html
I don’t think CF MMO is the way to do it. Everyone knows MMOs take a lot of hardware/software to support (servers, bandwidth, accounts and administration to say the least). What CF needs in terms of multiplayer, is a lobby where players can make small games (2-8 players per game) and come and go as they please. I envision small games where everyone starts out the same, in an MMO environment you will always have people in the fully built up ships killing all the little guys, no fun there.
Hoping to some day see some sort of multiplayer, weather it big or small it would be great, Cheers!
I like the video progress reports, especially the space-radio effect, but I it was a little difficult to make the words out sometimes. Perhaps a transcript or written summary at the side would be appropriate? Some fine-tuning of the static effect could also solve the problem. I hope you make Progress RPT002, it’s great to see Jameson in action.
In regards to the hypothetical multiplayer, I agree with Mike. Starting in a lobby and forming smaller games where everyone begins the game equal would be perfect. I know it’s a distant possibility, but here are some thoughts:
- One person hosts the game, then others join, so no servers are needed.
- Emphasis on co-operative play. Working together in a CF game would be great fun.
Concerning Jameson:
- Will the player always reset location to the refugee colony upon the delivery of a passenger?
- Do you have plans to make enemies collide with asteroids?
- Can the player communicate with other ships as well as stations?
Everything you’ve done so far looks awesome, especially the command line interface. I’m looking forward to delivering passengers and rebuilding the verse in late 1990.
No more blog updatesssssssss whyyyy? >:(
Looking great!
i thought the bad mic was perfectly in character, and these kinda updates are AWESOME keep it up
i also became a supporter thanks to the content in this video , even though i was fully aware i would have to wait a while eheh
More I see, more I want. Really good job. Did you think this is possible to adapt on PSP console?
Hi, I’ve been thinking of setting up relatively web. However, not super with techie points. Is it challenging to create a place? Would I will be needing to devote time learning programming and coding?