No, don’t worry, I haven’t scrapped Captain Jameson. I have rewritten the beginning of the game.
Since Jameson adds some new and seemingly tricky features I’m worried that players will be lost, not knowing what’s happening or what they’re supposed to do. Over the past few months I’ve thought about this, wondering whether to address it with in-game email, pilot chat popups like in the revised version of Forever, or some other means. At GDC I watched Brandon Boyer’s talk, where he thanked developers for creating new worlds and inviting him to explore. I realized I hadn’t designed Jameson from this perspective, and when I did this issue solved itself! There’s already a character motivated to instruct the player. All I needed to do was figure out how he would communicate.
I decided to use preloaded text files, which the player can access at any time via the console. I’m happy with the theory, but I’m still not sure that it’s effective. With this in mind I adapted a neat little idea from Jason Rohrer’s Inside a Star-Filled Sky. I created a special build which records every input interaction and the length of every timestep, then saves these to disk. Now when someone tests the game remotely they can send me this file, and I can replay their entire game on my machine. I’m hoping these replays will show any areas where players get stuck, frustrated, bored or confused. The player can even type messages for me into the console, to let me know exactly how they feel. I expect to see a few angry comments, and I expect they’ll be enormously helpful!
<3 Farbs
i like that idea but having a story may actually limit the possibilities for the series. right now, with no guidelines other than a good game, farbs can make anything *captainy* and it’ll all ties in. a story would been fitting it all together and could be a pain. maybe we could get a section of this forum for coming up with ideas and add one WHEN EVERYTHING IS FINISHED AND DONE for the captain series…
>>>FARBS<<<
(thanks to Andrew-Apollo for the idea) is it possible that you have a section of this forum dedicated to community made stories to go with the game? i think it would be great to have somewhere to share our ideas for what the captain forever universe should feel like.
Canonical fiction is a fun idea, but like Matt says I’d be very worried about it interferring with future gameplay expansion. You can really get yourself tied up in knots with that stuff.
If I ever get a proper forum set up fiction and backstories would be extremely welcome.
I like the idea of every new game adding a little to the fiction. The world still holds plenty of mystery, but with every new game there’s a few new things to learn.
Really, there’s a lot that can be learned already. And I like how every game provides just a bit more information and whole lot to speculate on.
Hey Farbs, great to hear from you after your long absence. Sounds like you’re really pulling jameson together as a game rather than a collection of ideas which is great. I dont have a lot to say really apart from keep up the good work and that we’re rooting for you (and the good captain).
I know it’s been suggested multiple times before, but I think it would be cool if you did another VLog to highlight what’s changed and what’s new.
Though to your credit, you’ve done more than most would to tide people over who are waiting for a release. And I appreciate that quite a bit.
I might not even care about Captain Jameson by this point if it weren’t for that.
I wanted to add that although I’m stoked to play the game I trust you to keep it under wraps for as long as you think you need to get it just how you want it. Take your time, it’ll be worth it.
Yes. Another Vblog. It would be awesome to see what you ‘changed’ about the starting and such.
I concur!
Things getting ret-conned in the name of gameplay… they will get over it.
@Farbs:
QUESTION:
what got you started making captain forever? i mean, sure it was a good idea and all but why? and what keeps you going on captain Jameson(besides it being the GREATEST IDEA EVER)?
keep on keeping on Mr Farbs
also you should add links from this here website to the game… i alwyas seem to feel like shooting up the little spaceships(and some big ones) after positing here… or is that just me?
@Matt
Well, I love making games so obviously I wanted to make something. I have a big list of games I want to make, and when I quit my job (making normal commercial games) to do smaller games fulltime I sorted the list by what I thought was achievable and might make a little money, and picked Captain Forever off the top. CF is a relatively simple game, but it has a huge scope for expansion, and I want to play the massive game that I think it could become. That’s what keeps me working on it -> I want to play it!
Oh, and there is a link to the Captain Forever site on this site’s GAMES page :)
Hey Farbs, first time commenting on your blog, and I have an idea/suggestion about Cap.Foraxian. I think that it might be more fun if all the ships coming at you actually target you before they fire. That way, moving your ship randomly would have a bigger benefit for dodging fire. I realize that taking the time to change the code might not be worth it to you, but I think it`d be more fun.
I think the whole idea of that game is that enemies lay down a wall of fire rather than targeted fire. Maybe there could be a specific enemy type that targets you or something (if there isn’t already, I can’t remember)
My own impression from playing is not so much a wall of fire but rather randomly oriented laserfire; which makes them really hard to avoid being hit by.
Oh cool, thanks Refractionof. I’d like to revisit Foraxian one day, possibly adding in some of the shipbuilding elements that make up the regular series.
The current enemies aren’t entirely random, so much of the game is about observing patterns and extrapolating from the current situation to determine where to be in future. I agree though direct-firing enemies provide a different challenge that is also fun. If I add new enemy types I’ll definitely give that some thought.
actually i did notice after having played around with pycap
http://www.farbs.org/pycap.html
That the enemy flight trajectories and fire modes from petal hero were similar to those in foraxian
Hi!
I have great hope in your future games, and successor is damn fine, except one thing : CLONE!!
I had a GREAT ship, so great that the game spawned 3 exact clone of my ship, but full equip (I was blue/purple, the 3 other were white…)… that’s damn frustrating ;)
Can’t wait for the next Captain game! :D
Continue your great work! But please do not replicate the player’s ship with greater materials… that’s damn frustrating!! lol
Clones aren’t frustrating if you know how to exploit them ;)
And even in a fair fight, a well designed ship (read: not a spam machine) can take on and beat the clones.
But again, clones can be exploited in a way that makes fighting them completely unnecessary.
I must say, I created an heavy spam machine lol
I’ll try to exploit this :D
And keep up the good work Farbs!!! :D
Will the series ever be released to be non-browser based? I would love to see the games compatible with the bestselling game consoles as well, and am sure that I would buy them if they were.
I think most of the games would be quite different on console, as they require a precise pointing device for shipbuilding. I have a few ideas how this might work but I really want to get Jameson out and launch my other (frustratingly secret) project before thinking about anything else.
As for non-browser versions… yeah I’m definitely considering that. It’s still a bit of work though so again, I have other things to finish first.
Non browser versions would make me pretty happy. But until that happens I can always just load up the games while I’m connected to WiFi and play them later, so for now it works well enough.
It’s been a month.
Sure has been
Hey Farbs, did you play Portal 2?
Wow, how did that month slip past?
I haven’t played Portal 2 yet. My PC isn’t really up to snuff, so I’m waiting ’till the 360 version drops in price a bit. A retailer over here was charging $109 AUD for it on launch, which is currently equivalent to ~$115 USD. I know that game pricing is all based on a big mess of subjectivity, but still this seemed way too high.
Well, find a US buddy and send him/her $50 USD and have them gift the game to you. Or at least that’s what you might do if your PC could handle it. I did that for a buddy in Sweden
Though it isn’t the most demanding game in the world. (But then again, I suppose your profits from Captain Forever aren’t enough to support PC upgrading)