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
Thanks for the update! Just a small questions, how does VMEDS work on keyboards without function keys?
Good question!
Although the system claims to require function key input, it also responds to regular top row and numpad number keys. I figured that would be the least intrusive solution.
I thought it must. Thanks again, can’t wait for the release date!
As a person who is introducing a command line program to not-necessarily tech-savvy people in a few days, I might actually fire up Python’s curses module and make something similar to this.
Without more information, I can’t really give my thoughts other than I prefer command lines. Video of it in action?
“Although the system claims to require function key input, it also responds to regular top row and numpad number keys”
Oh, great. My fingers recoiled at the sight of the menu because all the F keys by default are bound to useless/annoying mac system functions.
Ah, this menu system looks like ALOT more people will understand it straight away. Keep up the good work!
I love the new menu- should make worlds of difference for new players
I’m more concerned about that oxygen level below 50%…
I cannot wait for Jameson. Also, I love the concept of oxygen, I never noticed it prior to this.
If only you released a beta test… I’d pay another $20 to get in xD
[EMG: ---]?
@Exper:
I’ll second that motion =P
OR
us loyal forum fans should be offered some beta testing opportunities as to further, help improve the parts of the game that nooby casual gamers will have trouble with!!!
@Pen – Ha, yeah I’ve been meaning to remove that for a while. It used to read emergency beacon signals and give you a bearing toward the nearest. When there were multiple signals they interferred with each other dragging the bearing off a little. It was a neat system but sadly the goal structure was a bit broken. I might re-enable these when I build the endgame.
Emergency beacons on other ships?
On stations.
Ah… stations. That sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps other ships would try to defend it?
hey farbs, i cant believe i didn’t think of asking before, is there going to be friendly or neutral non-combat ships populating the spaces between and\or stations?
Looks much more user friendly then your DoS setup.
Looking forward to finally playing it! XD
I think the most important question of all is ‘can I dump my passengers into the void to fend for themselves?’
I thought the most important question was “When is Jameson being released?”.
@Exper – I wish I could tell you. My best guess at the moment is some time after it’s finished.
Must you wait until it’s entirely done?
How bout we forget about the release date, and INSTEAD, ADD MULTIPLAYER! Could you imagine!?!?!
Somehow I don’t think adding multiplayer is right for this particular game. Though a multiplayer CF would be cool, maybe.
For Jameson, multiplayer, no. For successor…
Good god, I’d pay a monthly fee for that.
I’d like to see something a little more interesting than a free-for-all deathmatch.
It might sound like a good idea on paper, but it seems to me like fighting player ships would make it really frustrating without some tweaking to keep it fair
Yeah multiplayer will blow this game into the next level. There would obviously need to be a few tweaks, but a massive multiplayer space game like this would be too good to be true.
It’d be interesting to see impostors face off against successors…
But it wouldn’t be fun to be up against someone with Juliet when you have Alpha parts. How would that be prevented?
I’m sorry, i cant post on this blog. I died in the rapture D:
@Pen
My idea would be something like the following:
•People join a room, of anywhere from 2-16 players.
•They all spawn in the same world, far from eachother.
•They have 15 minutes (Or whatever period of time was chosen) to collect pieces from random ships. (Nearby ships will be the appropriate level for THAT player.)
•After the 15 minutes are up, either: A) All players are revealed. (Possibly arrows guide you to the nearest player) or: B) All players in transfered into a small arena.
Something like that.
the multilayer could move along like the game the flow or something like it. as you acquire more pieces you are forced to move up an ‘evolution’ or its equal… maybe restrict up and down movement of levels to keep give a range of challenges
Multiplayer would make this the “minecraft” of top-down space shooters, just sayin.
IDEA 1)
just have a combination of successor and imposer. killing parts while attached to enemy ships increases your rank little by little until your core levels up, leveling up will fully repair you and all your components. now your core is stronger and you can build with stronger parts…
IDEA2)
similar concept except instead of finding better parts make it as your core levels up the parts attached get stronger (disconnected parts would go gray and be very weak, power comes directly from your core) … this would require tweaking, making the gap of power between levels very small so even with a Juliette class ship an alpha would still be annoying (defiantly not dangerous)
—————————————————————————————————
you would need a clan and squad system of sorts, stations to buy and sell at, a for of economy(cash for kills or a simple form of trade between stations) different servers could be different and called different “sectors”, linked by the absolute edges of the map. higher level cores could allow you to travel deeper into space where new, rare parts could be bought and sold, like a trade container to move product from station to station and can be stolen…
*this all is, literally, off the top of my head. its the basics to any good space combat sim. even if this is never done help me come up with some crazy, awesome new idea for multilayer\
also, maybe player/clan owned station too… just saying
There’d have to be a level/rank system, but unlike with other games, your dangerousness changes very fast. One hit to the wrong part of your ship and boom, you’re “down” “nine thousand” “levels”. A live comparison system or something would have to be put into place to make sure very different ships didn’t start fighting. But taking ship design and such into account is difficult.
Doesn’t matter what level your core is at if you don’t have any parts. And part of the fun of the game is rebuilding after you lose all your parts. Having a high-leveled core and no parts is like not having to rebuild much, you know what I mean? Your ship is your level. Putting levels onto the core is kind of defeating a point of the game.
Farbs,
Thank you so much for fixing the missiles!
…That is all
Who knew the name Captain Forever was a cruel, ironic twist?