The perceived value of indie games has dropped, so I’m trialling a lower price point. For a limited time only, Captain Forever supporter access is discounted from $20 to a mere $9. That’s a saving of 55%, and a perceived difference of an entire order of magnitude! This is an as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, so as soon as income (sales x price) drops below regular levels the sale will end. If the games sell well enough then the sale could go on indefinitely, but it could also end tomorrow. Buy now or you might miss out!
If you’re already a Captain Forever supporter then you’re a paragon of humanity, a model of perfection to which we all aspire. You’re probably not interested in the $9 as-long-as-it’s-profitable sale, unless you’re one of the incredible few who asked for a Gifting mechanism. I’ve added gifting to the payment system, so now you can purchase supporter accounts for family and friends, each at the probably-temporarily low price of $9.
The third barrel in today’s announcement holds a bullet marked 0.5. I’ve just released the latest build of Captain Jameson – the massive RPGish successor to Captain Forever I envisaged when I first started the CF project. This build smoothes out a hundred rough edges, eases the first step in the difficulty curve, adds another two ship modules, and opens up three new sectors of varying size for you to explore. If you’re already a supporter then you can play it right now, otherwise, you know what to do.
Buy! Buy! Buy!
<3
Farbs
Game on =D
Alright, so I checked the Captain Forever sites about 6 hours ago. I misclick on one of my favorites, and see 0.5 released. Me and my timing. Also, my reaction falls somewhere around:
1. “…”
2. “…uh…”
3. “0.5!!!”
4. “STATION GIRDERS OMFG”
Great update, I’m very happy with the game now.
Cheers – I’m glad you like the update.
Was it you who requested the return of station girders? I think I did most of the work for re-integrating them while discussing them on the forum chat.
Do you have any plan to put these new features and modules in Successor? Even until now I usually switch between Successor and Jameson when I get bored on one of the games . . . and I’m feeling that Successor has fallen behind in term of awesomeness
Well, I gave the gift of Captain Forever to one of my friends who I was previously allowing to use my account to play.
I really hope he can help me spread word of these games around now that he has an account of his own. I try my best, but I only have so much reach.
I already bought the game in february for 20$.
@GRB – I back-ported a few things a while ago. You should see better more sensible missile tracking, and I think I also ported the change that made sprint boosters ignore rotation keys, which makes them much more stable. The codebases are diverging pretty rapidly though, so the amount of work required to share features is increasing.
@Chris and holographix – Thanks!
I forgot to ask: Any thoughts on the new farbs.org layout?
The site looks… cleaner. I like it.
Heh, I didn’t even notice the change. However now that you mention it, the site definitely looks cleaner, and I’m not accidentally clicking on links that occupy empty space. Though this text entry field has decided not to shrink along with the webpage when I make my window smaller. But you can’t win ‘em all, right?
Oh interesting – thanks!
I think by default WordPress might give the comment field a fixed width. You can resize it manually though, which I’d never noticed before.
Now played all 4 games, and love them all so much that I took the liberty of advertising your sale over at DonationCoder [ http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=28472 ]
One question: Is it possible to download the games to play offline? Or must there be an internet connection to login and play?
Ha, offline, that’s silly…
Hey, didn’t you say you were considering that a a possibility in the future, mister Farbs(man)?
Yep, that’s still a possibility Chris.
Thanks Ampa!
This is so fun! I love it! My one complaint? Maybe it is just me being clumsy, or the slight lag of my slow computer, but I keep trying to add something to my huge ship and accidentally ripping a girder off or something, instead, and have bits of my ship fly everywhere. Once it was when short on oxygen and I had to run back without picking up most of them.
It may be just one of the dangers of space, but it definitely made me a little mad for a minute
Awesome game though
What Charlie says also really made me mad actually :/
You could probably decrease the sensivity for pulling out those modules that have a large branch of child modules
Stiletto’s suggestion sounds great, make modules feel more “stuck” depending on how many other modules trail off from them, so you really have to give a good yank to mess up your entire ship
First time Jameson managed to suck me in for hours… great fun, although once you’ve turned your ship into a monster things start to get a little slow.
One thing that really bugged me was making it to an oxygen station with 0 left, I thought the game might give me a break,and let me top up my oxygen, but I had to start again, really annoying. Maybe if there was a little leeway if you do happen to make it back with 0 your tanks would top up again!
Tanks!!
Running out of oxygen doesn’t mean you die right away. You usually still have a couple of minutes while the air grows stale around you.
But a couple of minutes is a long time for this game, isn’t it?
@Pen – yeah, you’re right. I figured players would prefer to have a reliable gauge to work by than some poorly defined feedback and period of time. Fictionally the ship is hardwired to fly only when there’s a pilot, so assumes that once life support shuts down that the ship is not occupied.
Suggestions(maybe some have been mentioned)
1.Turrets that point at the cursor (have a limited freedom in angle, maybe replace sprinklers, never really used them, or turret modules where anything can be placed atop of.)
2.Learning curve is a bit steep, I don’t mind and love it for what it is, but for more people to enjoy you might want to include tutorials at the beginning.(at least guide people to Charlie lvl)
3.Make the alphas free after the actual thing is out. Your games are awesome but you might need something more than Cap Forever to get people paying.
4.Fighter module and Battleship module.
Fighter module, enables ship to constantly (attempt to) face the cursor, disables turrets.(something like S.P.A.Z)
Battleship module, a slow heal perhaps?
Both are rare and require direct attachment to command module.
5.Trading, some stations sell girders where others purchase at higher costs. It’ll be really fun to haul huge amounts of cargo and actually see the cargo and how it affects your ship. Higher risk = higher profits, you could add pirates:)
6.RELEASE 0.6, I NEED MY FIX!!!
The optimum ship is still a chain of forward-facing chrono gears, with an arsenal of guns at the tip and a series of shields protecting it.
Or, in other words, the optimum ship still looks like a gigantic penis wearing multiple condoms with lasers coming out of the end.
If you want to make this not be true, then add some kind of absolute limit to how much a series of chrono gears can accelerate time. Otherwise, munchkins like me will continue to notice the potential for exponential growth of rate of fire and keep building super-rapid-firing spacecocks.
Also, on a less Freudian note, I don’t think there are quite enough docking stations.
Suggestion:
Create a “Shipyard station.”
Purpose:
To allow the creation and storage of complete ships, and allow “hot-swapping”.
Motivation:
Exploration and fighting call for different kinds of ships; Ie fast vs powerful.
Current warehouses limit storage space and require rebuilding; limiting the practicality of switching roles.
How it might work:
Let the user build a ship around a dummy command module attached to the station.
Allow the swapping of command modules between current and in-production ships without destroying or disassembling either ship.
Ships docked in the shipyard may be pirated/disassembled by hostile ships; creating some risk for the user.
Bug report: Using Safari on a Macbook Air, game keeps freezing (think it’s with a two-finger swipe). Sounds indicate it’s still going, but screen won’t change so the ship is lost.
Farbs, you should definitely try to make a Jameson for tablet!!!
I’m telling you all this game needs to go ultra epic famous status (like minecraft)… is MULTIPLAYER!!! Just do it! Please
Seriously though, I believe if this game had MP it would be unstoppable.
Thanks Farbs!
Mutliplayer would be hard to do right for a game like this, though. You’d have to find a good way to balance it…
I don’t doubt for a second that adding multiplayer would be difficult. I am just stating that, in my opinion, multiplayer is what this game needs in order to break out and become HUGELY popular.
Even small scale multiplayer (2 player co-op) would be amazing.
I guess I will just have to hope maybe some day it gets experimented with! Keep up the excellent work captain Farbs!
Here’s hoping that that 3D episode gets made as well someday.
Then again, I imagine Farbs is about ready to move on to something different by now. That’d be okay, I suppose. It’s been a fun ride.
MP would be a lot of fun, I agree. I don’t see myself having the bandwidth to do it right now though. I’m currently splitting my time between CF games and Card Hunter, which I think is why I haven’t run out of enthusiasm for CF games yet. At the very least I plan to get Jameson out and expressing its full potential.
mp balancing is easy, institute part count/ or weight limits.
farbs, nasty bug well metabug…. had a guardian spawn in a space between several rocks and the physics went apeshart. managed to ctrl-alt delete and get shockwave to continue responding before i found the ofus stuck and basted him dead.
easy fix for that is institute some kind of damage penalty for very hard rock impacts.
Farbs,
Happy New Year.
Where is .6? Let me know if you need help, your fans are waiting…!
PS I like NixPhenom suggestion! Shipyard would be great. Add a cost for switching too.
Hey, just a quick question. I heard someone saying you could purchase items from merchants. Is this true? I haven’t heard anything about that, so I’m asking you.
Not the station factories, but like the pirates out in space
Triple post, woo.
Is there Juliet stations in the latest .5 map? I got India stations but every where I look, its black space past the India stations.
Hey!
You cannot trade w/ merchant ships, though that’d definitely be a cool thing to add later. Right now they all aggro on you immediately, so they’re not in the mood to trade.
I’m honestly not sure what’s at the outer rim of the new 0.5 map. I haven’t been there!
Oh, I’d totally buy – if only I could. Alas, without PayPal support in my country, I’ll just go back to playing Captain Forever. Forever.
So I’m curious, how close would you say Captain Jameson is in its current form to what you’d consider a final or at least beta-worthy state? Are there any major additions that are still on the horizon?
Also, I’m quite interested where you’re going to take this series next. Can’t wait to hear about the next game, whenever you get to that.
@Chris K – Honestly, I’m not sure. I could keep fiddling with this game for a long long time. A few life events have stolen my attention a bit lately, but I’m sure I’ll find more time for it again in future. It’s always ebbed and flowed.
I’m currently very interested in taking the game out of the browser, but unfortunately my first attempt hit a dead end very close to the finish, so I’m figuring out whether I can negotiate around it or if I need to start again from scratch. Bleh.
As far as a non browser version of the game is concerned, I’d love to see it happen… But I’m also pretty happy with things as they are. But I could definitely see a standalone version being good for sales. Particularly if it were on Steam or in one of the indie bundles. More people need to play these games…
Anyway, looking forward to see what you’ve got in store for 0.6 whenever that is ready.
I would agree with keeping this browser based. It’s obviously running well and it makes the game CROSS PLATFORM!!! This is huge for me.
I would assume players would love to see time spent on game updates and eventual multiplayer (I know this game could do extremely well if it makes it to that point) instead of on the complications of browser to desktop.
Thanks for all your work on an amazing game so far FARBS – always checking back for updates =)
i LOVE this game. is there any way to play it offline? because when i go on deployment i dont have internet, and id hate to not be able to play after i pay :/
You should read the previous few comments
I can’t believe you haven’t posted on this blog for six months.
Yeah, it’s certainly been a while. I can’t believe it’s been six months since I started this sale!
With my time split between Captain Jameson and Card Hunter (and also Cumulo Nimblers, which I should post about soon), and my social internetting split between here and twitter and email and the CF forums and the CH forums this blog has largely lost out. I’d rather work on Captain Jameson than write about it, basically.
Speaking of CJ, I have been working on it! The latest feature is pretty screenshot-worthy, so maybe I’ll post something here.
I look forwards to it!
Please do!!! Or at least link it to a forum post!
$9. Buy it? $9. BOUGHT IT. Capt. Neko reporting for duty.
Haha, thanks.
i like that game, but 9$ is quite high