Comments on: Jameson Tasklist

By: ZS

ZS — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:34:29 +0000

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.

By: Vaconcovat

Vaconcovat — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:31:01 +0000

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?

By: Farbs

Farbs — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:45:55 +0000

@Kite – Thx for all the narrative suggestions by the way. Some inspiring stuff in there.

By: Farbs

Farbs — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:44:54 +0000

@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)

By: ZS

ZS — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:32:55 +0000

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.

By: Kite

Kite — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:17:01 +0000

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.

By: Vaconcovat

Vaconcovat — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:26:23 +0000

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.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:27:41 +0000

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.

By: Kite

Kite — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:41:56 +0000

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.