Scrap Yards didn’t change much when we left Earth. The chainlink and corrugated iron fences became girders, and business went on as usual. You can usually spot a pitbull terrier barking soundlessly at you from behind a habitation deck porthole.
You currently sell modules by dropping them somewhere near the station, but I’ll modify this soon to detect modules are in the scrap yard area. I’m excited about delivering modules by backing my ship up against the yard entrance, detaching a MkII booster from my vessel’s centerline aft, then unloading a huge bulk of girders and other spare parts to drift silently into the yard.
<3 Farbs
Dude! Where have you been for the past three weeks?
Looks nice. Not very exciing, but scrapyards aren’t supposed to be.
Can’t wait!
Errr. Two weeks. My bad.
Haha. I was playtesting and working on a few cleanup tasks, which meant I didn’t have much to show. I also put some time into something rather cool which unfortunately I realized I should cut for the first release. Hopefully I’ll get to add it in later.
That looks pretty great. I’m gonna have fun being a module scrapper I can see it already :D
Could you give some kind of vague hint as to what ‘something cool’ might be? Just out of curiosity.
OH BTW ITS CONFIRMED: CAPTAIN JAMESON GOES LIVE ON FEBUARY 27TH
Anyway, the scrapyards are looking good. Great work, on everything.
Ok. Cool. Two stations to go, right?
Oh, crap, fake HTML tags don’t show up in posts.
Does that mean I can use real ones?
Heh. On February 27th I’ll be in San Francisco for GDC. I’m pretty sure I won’t launch any games that week, though I may add 2plr to the Winnitron version of Captain Foraxian.
No idea about HTML in comments I’m sorry. I’m using a pretty standard install of WordPress, so you might find help on it someone on the ‘net.
@Inglonias – 2 or 3. I haven’t writtent the endgame yet :)
gonna say it again, take as long as you want on this game, it will be grand upon its release.
scrap stations are looking good, this is how i was hoping they would operate.
Can I make this text bold?
Oh, GDC. Well don’r push this release back too far. At some point nothing will be able to hold back my ravenous appetite for human flesh that comes when my patience runs low. Not even your charming demeanor.
Now i wonder. Are you planning on… passive Bootjackers who actually use these stations?
Or simply, enemies that interact more peacefully to their environment?
Stations looking good. Keep up the good work.
[b]Yes, Chris, you can.[/b]
oshi- I’ve been forum’ing for too long.
@Vaconcovat: 1st, its pronounced “oh sht” in Captain Forever terms, and 2nd, Yes, Yes you have.
Nice going on the Scrap stations! can’t wait for the next!
The time must be drawing close……(?)
http://uploadingit.com/file/o4wgatudwi83xtuj/jameson.jpg
Ooh, tasty tasty stuff. Do the enemy command modules “drop”/leave anything behind when they blow up (maybe on a random basis)that can be deposited at the scrap yards for goodies? Points = prizes.
You can’t hide forever Farbs… we know you’re in there… post, or the girl gets it!
Heh.
You’ll have to wait a bit – there will be no new posts during my honeymoon.
i was thinking you got married, congrats, you should have made a post about it.
Leave him alone. He deserves to get married without posting.
Or does he.
I suppose he’s earned a bit of personal time.
Who knows, maybe some brilliant game-improving idea will come in this time and delay Captain Jameson even further.
Which I could tolerate if it really made the game more fun.
And besides, with GDC coming up I’ll be too distracted by other news to be bothered for a while.
Oh! Well congratulations! I guess the girl got it anyway.
Did somebody say earlier Captain Jamison would be online on Feb. 27, 2011? Captain Forever is so much fun filled with so much potentual for creativety, I am looking forward to the next chapter in the series. Seems like it will be quite an advancement.
^ Where did you hear this?
Farbs is unactive for a bit, what with the wedding and all.
That was me joking around. I don’t know when the game’s coming, but probably not for a bit yet.
Heheh, very funny.
I’m at GDC this week, so yeah no release for a little while. I just finished a 2 player version of Captain Foraxian for the Winnitron though so it’ll be playable in the expo hall. Unfortunately it is horrible on most keyboards due to stupid multiple keypress limitations, so I think it’s going to stay Winnitron exclusive. There are Winnitrons popping up in major cities across the globe though, so you might get a chance to play it some time soon.
My addiction needs screenshot methadone
gah, i cant wait for this. i recently saw the video for this and im so freaking excited about it. =D
So how was GDC, Farbs?
I’d sure like to go someday…
Oh yeah, and what are the current plans concerning Captain Jameson (Forever?)?
Jameson is looking great Farbs.
Also, just curious, has anyone tried using Swiffout with Successor. I’ve tried without success (no pun intended) but don’t know if it’s because of my system or because of a basic incompatibility between swiffout and Successor.
Thanks
Ok farbs, you are home. Get your bearings, then either release jameson or post part VI.<3
hey guys. I’m new to the supporter community so I would just like to say I’m amazed with ‘captain forever’. Farbs, you are my hero! i have a habit of finding all the latest and greatest ‘in dev’ games but this ‘Captain Jameson’ game looks like it will take the cake! keep it up farbs… I’m going to spread the word to try and grab you some extra supporters. ;p
now… back to being a selfish prick. WHEN WILL YOU RELEASE CAPTAIN JAMESON!!!
BTW… I’m finished ranting and just thought “wouldn’t it be cool if there were planets in ‘captain Jameson…’. well being that im new to the forums here, could some one please give me the word on that? i think planets would be cool, or maybe just moons or something, it could be like an obstacle that moves and will occasional block off a station as it moves past or spawns stronger enemies or both! IDK… something cool =)… i like the idea of a dynamic universe where every venture is different within the same play-through.
Ah, Matt, we have asteroids. As far as we are concerned, they dont have their own gravity, or anything on them, (Farbs did hint about scrapyards on them though), and just drift around getting in the way.
…As far as we are concerned.
speaking of things getting in the way,
wonder if he will include a collision damage system outside of the ramming spikes…
i think it would be appropriate to cause some type of damage and be damaged by scrumming with an enemy or ramming them without a spike in place.
Haha. I’m home, but only just. I’ll write up a few post-GDC things soon, since GDC had a pretty great impact on Jameson development. I need to get my life in order a little before I do much else though. Today is my first “normal” day in about a month.
I haven’t added general collision damage to the game because people already find it frustrating how often they break their weapons, and pushing other ships around can be very useful. I should probably play a sound at least though. It’s a little weird because you would expect it to cause damage, but sadly reality isn’t always more fun. My favourite example of this is in Battlefield 1942, where you snap into a vehicle rather than showing an animation as you climb in. They used to have animations, but found them super frustrating so pulled them out of the game.
Ramming spikes add the option of collision damage very nicely. How about moveable joints like on Incredibots, so computer ships and your ships can have versions that grab onto each other, like little claws? And the missiles should have thier range increased slightly. And you should be able to zoom out more, allowing for larger ships. I tend to favor Star-Destroyer/Unicron style vessles… but am thankful that you took the time to make anything at all, of course, Captain!
The only thing that ever bothered me about missiles is that they are launched at the same velocity no matter how fast you’re moving. So if you’ve got missiles on the front and you want to fire them off while on the run, you nend up dead. Or your missile launchers do at the very least.
Yeah, rockets and even the torpedos have always seemed underpowered to me. The risk they present to the player should be counterbalanced by much higher damage, but the severe limit on range (or for torpedos, rate of fire) has always made the cons outweigh the pros.
I actually do like torpedoes, though they must be used with caution. Though I admit that in most situations I prefer a good laser for its precision and rate of fire.
the only time I’ve ever had a torpedo launcher help me out in a fight was when i fluked upon the wreckage of something that was caring 4 torpedo launchers… made use of them with some sprint boosters. but all good things must come to an end, i ended up shooting myself because i fired too early and sprinted into them =P missiles just always seem to kill ME so i don’t ever use them… too unpredictable. if missiles are guided, couldn’t they be made to avoid the owners ship? this would make them incredibly valuable because you could launch from behind a girder or they’d sail harmlessly past your ship. beats getting killed by your own missiles =)
I find torpedoes useful if I deliberately throw them at the enemy. The trick is to accelerate towards them, fire, then brake before entering their field of fire. The torpedoes carry on at the speed you were travelling + their launch speed relative to your vessel, so they travel much, much further.
Guided missiles however… yeah. They aren’t very good. They do actually spawn from your vessel at your current velocity, however they also experience drag so if you’re moving fast enough you’ll quickly fly into them. Without this drag effect they were phenomenally bad at hitting their targets, but I might be able to rewrite their targetting systems to better handle this. I’ll see if I can find time later.
Farbs, I like the idea of a grinding sound being played. Maybe you could vary the intensity with relation to the topological distance to the command module. Is it computationally cheap to measure the relative velocities of the two bodies in contact to vary the tonality of the sound?
I follow your logic, and i guess the thought i had not communicated was that the general collision damage should be an order of magnitude or so less than that of the current ramming spike implementation.
It could lead to more strategic ship building, as I typically recess my lasers already because they sometimes splash damage themselves at point blank range.
I also think that adding collision damage to everything could be game breaking cause you could just carry a space station module around and smack enemies about by dropping it on their command module.
Ah, yes. I have noted that as a loophole in the design of successor, i can carry a space station module around with the mouse and effectively use it as a giant shield and even sometimes use blurst shields to kill enemies in the same manor.
Hmm, the guided missile problem is an interesting one… Perhaps you could just make them move a bit faster and compensate by having them calculate the angular difference between their ideal velocity and current velocity and have them turn a but extra to adjust themselves onto the correct trajectory a little more quickly. Unless you’re already doing that.
Instead of calculating the difference in angle between ideal and current velocity, calculate the vector difference and accelerate against that (to remove the difference, yes?).
(That also means missiles might be ramming into vessels side-on, which would look really cool.)
wow… i wish any of the first part made sense to me =) glad you added the explanation on the end.
i have another, less technical idea, have the missiles only track in front of itself in say a 45 degree angle. this would mean you do have to aim but the missile wont track someone on the other side of your ship.
and i know that what i just posted above won’t solve the problem but its a start