Click to de-shrink
Argh, I’m having trouble with words at the moment. For now please accept these new screenies and this intriguing link in lieu of a post. I’ll come back and fill the words in tomorrow.
…time passes…
Okay, I’m back. Here’s what’s going on:
Captain Jameson got fun. It seems obvious now – all I had to do was remove the sucky part. Originally you would drop a passenger off at a station, then start the game again with a new ship. These 10 minute sessions would accumulate into a 60 hour game which was both frustrating and tedious. Whoops. Losing your ship felt more like punishment than reward, tracking over the same terrain was dull, the reward of accessing a new station was delayed right until the end of the next play session when you made your way back out there, and building up your ship seemed futile when you knew you couldn’t keep it. An obvious solution stared me in the face, and I stared right back. Of course I could let the player unlock each station without losing their ship. They could access the station’s services then be on their way. I couldn’t do it however, as the whole game would be over in just 10 minutes and I wanted to make Jameson far more substantial. Eventually I buckled, accepting that a fun 10 minutes trumped 60 hours of tedium. I added a docking station as an Angband-style save point (enter dock and your ship is saved, leave dock and your ship is vulnerable), and set off into the black.
10 minutes passed and my game did not finish. I had not explored to the outer rim of the system. I had not built an all-conquering Juliet class behemoth. I’d been busy just liberating the four stations clustered inside the starting asteroid field and making tentative scouting runs. An hour and a half later I acquired my first Delta level modules and put the ship back in dock. I had to stop playing to calm my nerves. I hadn’t found a bank station yet so all my wealth was invested in my ship, and all 90 minutes of play time could be lost at the tap of a ramming spike. Sure, the stations I’d liberated would still be free and my knowledge of the area would come in handy, but I’d still be stuck in a bare command module. I had to be very, very careful. The game went on, spread out across 10 hours and 11 play sessions. Some times I’d duck in for 15 minutes to collect some scrap or scout a promising cluster, other times I’d play a solid two hours, pushing out beyond known space and finding new routes though the asteroid fields. At the link I posted earlier you can see that I explored only ~15% of the map. Finally I located a Juliet class oxy station, fought off a pirate ambush, and declared the game won. Won and wonderful.
There’s lots more I want to add to Captain Jameson, but first I want to get it out so people can start playing. With this in mind I spun out a list of ~50 tasks to complete before launch, including the improved bubble shield graphics and station identification pictured above. There’s still much to do, but the game is fun so I’m sure I’ll get it done.
<3 Farbs
interesting. so the world is circular rather than square?
the scrap yards modules look like they eat things dragged over them. which would be entertaining. did you revamp the shield modules in that second pic?
Looks like quests are still in there. I wonder, did you find a way to make them more fun?
Can’t wait to play this, looks fantastic.
Awesome. I understand if you are hard for words… call it “Bloggers Block”. :F
@ryan: Yep, it’s currently circular. It’s also much clumpier than it used to be, which makes the game a bit more like pizza than soup. There are individual flavours now, rather than a big samey mix. I still have a few distribution problems to solve however. If you look closely you might find annoyingly distributed stations, like identical scrappers right next to each other. That can be quite frustrating.
I had originally plannned for the player to drag modules into the toothy cargo bays, but I figured it easier (for the player as well as myself) if the station simply took all free modules that were floating nearby. I might make the bays open only after eating or distributing some modules though.
The old shield modules annoyed me, so yeah I changed ’em. The big white circular lines didn’t fit the CF style at all IMO.
@Chris: Huh. Yeah, I haven’t removed those yet. I found the game much more fun without quests, so I ignored them on my playthrough. I might find a way to use them later, but for now I plan to disable them.
@Everyone: It must be frustrating waiting an unknown time for a blog post. Sorry about that. I don’t have time to post each day anymore, so instead I’m going to try to put something out at the start of each week. If that fails I’ll drop to fortnightly updates, but I’ll post something to let you know.
Huh, yeah, concerning the shields… Those things proved very annoying in Captain Successor. They made it very difficult to build while under fire (since they flash bright white when they are hit) plus problems with the physics often made it difficult to attach things inside their protective bubble.
Though their usefulness outweighed those problems by far.
Farbs, the stations sucking up any loose modules might get pretty irritating depending on how you do it. i imagine a lot of people would like to be able to break their ships down near a station to reconfigure and if that thing is sucking up all the loose parts it might get pretty discouraging really fast. maybe have a command for the console that tells the station that it can buy all loose modules in the area. that way you can rip apart your ship and rebuild, buy parts from the scraper when you decide you need a 2×1 girder or something then sell off the remainder when your happy with the design.
Is there some kind of currency mechanic, say like doing jobs for pay then using that pay to buy better parts?
@James Cash
As we’ve seen from the screenshots, I think that there is a “Credits” system.
http://www.farbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/19.jpg (Top-right of each pic)
Also, Farbs i’d love to hear if my idea actually worked in gameplay once you get it done :F
Excellent, you’re back!!
he is risen! he is risen indeed! its easter for FARBS! (lol glad youre alive, farbs)
Hey man, I just want to add that I totally support your decision to focus on the fun and cut away the tedium.
Reminds me of words of wisdom from Notch when he was starting out in Minecraft ‘think about what the player does the most of, and make that as accessible and fun as possible’ – paraphrased due to my bad memory.
@Vaconcovat oh thanks I see it now. I should have known what CRD: meant.
This is the first game I bought in a long time where I didn’t feel like I was ripped off. Great job Farbs! But it is too damn addictive! I think I might have to drop out during my final semester.
Captain Jameson is looking good! Having a big map to explore looks fun, although I don’t exactly understand how the game progression works yet. Do you basically just keep getting stations running, and then those stations will produce parts for you which you can add to your ship?